India In Mind

Pankaj Mishra

Pankaj Mishra (born 1969) is an Indian essayist and novelist. He is a recipient of the 2014 Windham–Campbell Prize for non-fiction In 2011, Niall Ferguson threatened to sue Mishra for libel after Mishra published a review of his book Civilisation: The West and the Rest in the London Review of Books. Ferguson claimed that Mishra accused him of racism. In March 2014, Yale University awarded Mishra the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. In an article published on 19 March 2018 in the New York Review of Books titled "Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism", Mishra wrote that Canadian clinical psychologist and author Jordan Peterson's activities with Charles Joseph, a native member of the coastal Pacific Kwakwakaʼwakw tribe in Canada, "...may seem the latest in a long line of eggheads pretentiously but harmlessly romancing the noble savage." Peterson perceived Mishra's use of the phrase "romancing the noble savage" as an insult to his friend Joseph, and his response via Twitter, which included a threat of violence to Mishra, went viral