Lloyd Rudolph obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/26/lloyd-rudolph-obituary

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My friend Lloyd Rudolph, who has died aged 88, was a renowned scholar of South Asia studies and a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Chicago.

Lloyd and his wife Susanne, also a University of Chicago professor, were insightful commentators on South Asia for more than 60 years and co-wrote books including The Modernity of Tradition (1967), Education and Politics in India (1972), In Pursuit of Lakshmi; The Political Economy of the Indian State (1987), Reversing the Gaze (2000), Postmodern Gandhi (2006) and Explaining Indian Democracy (2008).

The Rudolphs’ final Oxford University Press book, Destination India (2014), related their first gruelling and illuminating 1956 car journey to and across India. In the year it was published they were recipients of the Padma Bhushan award, one of India’s highest civilian decorations.

Son of Bertha and Norman Rudolph, Lloyd was born in Elgin, Illinois, where his parents ran a shoe company. After a year at West Point military academy, he switched to Harvard to study for a BA in 1948 and a MPA (master of public administration) in 1950.

In the late 1940s he served as a research assistant on the Council of Economic Advisers and in the US Department of the Interior. Returning to Harvard, and after a two-year stint in the army, he received a PhD in 1956. He married Susanne in 1952. She had already written her PhD dissertation on Gandhi, and together they undertook their journey by Land Rover to India. They were smitten with the country.

Joining the University of Chicago in 1964, Lloyd served as chair of both the master’s degree programme of the social sciences and of the committee on international relations. He and Susanne were key figures in establishing Chicago as a centre for South Asia studies. They prized interdisciplinary approaches, and were enviably adept in many other disciplines, especially anthropology.

They retired in 2002, but they remained as busy as ever. In Chicago, Jaipur, Vermont and elsewhere, they lavished hospitality, wit and wisdom on numerous visitors.

Susanne died in December last year. Lloyd is survived by their three children, Jenny, Amelia and Matthew.