He earned his Ph.D. under the supervision of Partha Chatterjee on inner-party ideological struggles leading to Naxalism.
Its advisory board includes Amartya Sen, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Partha Chatterjee, Dipesh Chakraborty, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Ashis Nandy, Sobhanlal Datta Gupta, Sukumari Bhattacharji and others.
[1] He specializes in postmodernism and the Naxalite movement, and was actively involved in Naxalite politics during 1974–1981, but gradually became critical of Naxalism and orthodox Marxism, and became interested in western Marxism, and the works of Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, and the Frankfurt School.
Over time he further moved towards poststructuralism, especially the works of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
His chief academic interest lies in working for a possible dialogue between Naxalism and postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism and feminism.