Shankar Bajpai named distinguished scholar at Library of Congress

At the Library, Bajpai hopes to explore the roots and history of Indo-American relations, and to examine more closely the question of post-colonial attitudes towards the colonial experience, a media release said.

Bajpai's appointment started in mid-June and will run approximately three months, until September 22.

Through a generous endowment from John W. Kluge, the Library of Congress established the Kluge Center in 2000 to bring together the world's best thinkers to stimulate and energise one another to distill wisdom from the Library's rich resources and to interact with policymakers in Washington.

India's Foreign Secretary from 1982 to 1983, Bajpai spent many of his formative years in Washington. An expert in security issues, he joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1952 and served in Germany, Turkey and Pakistan. He was named high commissioner to Pakistan from 1976 to 1980 and ambassador to China from 1980 to 1982 and to the US from 1984 to 1986.

On retirement from government service in 1986, he entered academic life, working as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and as the first professor of non-Western studies at Brandeis University.

He has been a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, and the co-founder and chairman of the Delhi Policy Group, an independent policy analysis centre in India.

The author of numerous articles on diplomacy, foreign affairs and national security, Bajpai was the editor of "Democracy and Diversity: Comparing India and the United States" (2007).