He is a professor of South Asian politics and history the Centre d'études et de recherches internationales (CERI) at Sciences Po (Paris), a professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King's India Institute (London), and a Research Director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS).

Jaffrelot was awarded the CNRS Bronze Medal in 1993, has served as editor or editor-in-chief of several scholarly journals on politics and sociology, and is a Permanent Consultant at the Direction de la Prospective of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

[5][6] Similarly, on Pakistan, his scholarship has focused on Pakistani nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, Taliban and Kashmir militancy, politics, coups and its history as a rentier state in the context of global geopolitics.

Walter Andersen, a scholar who has studied the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS),[14] said that "for the expert on South Asia, this book is an absolute must."

[20] According to T. V. Sathyamurthy, Jaffrelot's scholarship on Hindu nationalism is an important contribution with empirical depth and field research in Madhya Pradesh and the interviews of RSS members.

Along with this and numerous other remarkable insights, Jaffrelot advocates a rubric of "Stigmatising and Emulating Threatening Others" strategy, which Satyamurthy finds to be flawed, "not only childish" but also "psychologically reductionist and politically nonsensical" in the context of India.

[22] According to Tania Patel, Jaffrelot provides "compelling insights for understanding the nuances of the contestations and continuities in Pakistan’s state and society" and elaborates "the country’s chronic instability in three contradictions whose roots lie in tensions apparent since the 1940s".