Elijah Roggen
Claremont, CA| Grant Category: | Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Program |
| Project Title: | Diaspora and Nation: Understanding Political Development among India’s Jews |
| Field of Study: | Political Science |
| Home Institution: | Pomona College, Claremont, CA |
| Host Institution: | O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana |
| Grant Start Month: | September 2025 |
| Duration of Grant: | Nine months |
Brief Bio:
Elijah Roggen is a 2025 graduate of Pomona College, where he received his BA in politics and religious studies. At Pomona, he won the Stauffacher Thesis Prize in Religious Studies. He is especially interested in the confluence of religious and modern political narratives in the Jewish context. Elijah has spent time as a summer camp counselor and programming director, as a reading tutor, a disaster relief volunteer, and as an elementary school classroom assistant. He grew up in Arlington, Virginia.
Elijah’s Fulbright-Nehru project is exploring the nuances of political identity among India’s Jewish communities, particularly the Bene Israel community in the decades preceding and following Indian independence. The project emerges from an interest in family history – Elijah’s grandfather is a Bene Israel Jew born in Fort Kochi and raised in Mumbai. Through interviews and archival work, the project is seeking to fill a gap in the literature by considering the seemingly opposed political positions of Bene Israel individuals in the late colonial era and various forms of political dissent.