Mahmood Mamdani was born on 23 April 1946 in Bombay (now Mumbai),India,the year before the end of British Raj.[1][2] He was raised in Kampala,Uganda,[3][4] as part of the Indian diaspora in Southeast Africa. Both his parents,a Gujarati Muslim couple,were born and raised in the British territory of Tanganyika (present-day Tanzania). The couple moved to Bombay while his father attended college there.[5][6] The family returned to Dar es Salaam,Tanganyika,when Mamdani was two,and moved to Uganda when he was five or six years old.[5]
At the time,Uganda was racially segregated,including where people lived,the schools,the mosques,and children's play areas. For his primary school education,Mamdani first attended a madrasa,and then the Government Indian Primary School.[5] He grew up speaking Gujarati,Urdu,and Swahili. He started studying English in sixth grade.[5] After junior secondary school,he attended Old Kampala Senior Secondary School,where he was secretary of the Do-it-Yourself Physics club.[7]
Mamdani was one of 23 Ugandan students in the 1963 group of the Kennedy Airlift,a US-funded scholarship program that brought hundreds of East Africans to universities in the United States and Canada between 1959 and 1963.[8][9] Mamdani graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pittsburgh[2] in 1967.[10]
He was among the many students in the northern US who made the bus journey south to Montgomery,Alabama,organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in March 1965 to participate in the civil rights movement. This was during the time of,but distinct from,the Selma to Montgomery marches. He was jailed during the march and was allowed to make a phone call. Mamdani called the Ugandan ambassador in Washington,DC,for assistance. The ambassador asked him why he was "interfering in the internal affairs of a foreign country",to which he responded by saying that this was not an internal affair but a freedom struggle and that they too had gotten their freedom only last year.[11] Soon after,Mamdani learned about Karl Marx's work from an FBI visit.[12]
Mamdani returned to Uganda in early 1972 and was employed by Makerere University in Kampala as a teaching assistant,at the same time conducting his doctoral research. He and most Asians were expelled later that year by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin because of their ethnicity;Amin intended to "reclaim" businesses and properties. Mamdani left Uganda for a refugee camp in the United Kingdom in early November.[16]
From 1980 until 1993 he was again employed by Makerere University.[18][20] In 1984,while attending a conference in Dakar,Senegal,he became stateless after his Ugandan citizenship was withdrawn by the government under Milton Obote because of his criticism of its policies.[21] He returned to Dar es Salaam. After Obote was deposed for the second time,Mamdani once again returned to Uganda in June 1986.[9]
He was the founding director of the Centre for Basic Research (CBR),Uganda's first non-governmental research organisation,where he served from 1987 to 1996.[22][17][23]
In 1996,he was appointed the inaugural holder of the AC Jordan chair of African studies at the University of Cape Town,[25] and in early 1997 became head of the Centre for African Studies (CAS).[26] He left after having disagreements with the (mostly white) faculty over the draft of his syllabus for a foundation course on Africa called "Problematising Africa".[27][17] Mamdani,who labelled the present syllabus as "Bantu studies" (in a reference to education of Black people under the apartheid regime)[17] was suspended and eventually resigned.[28] "The Mamdani affair" continues to be referenced in debates about the decolonisation of higher education. He later said that there was no personal bitterness,and he had many enduring relationships from his time there. He said it was about differences in perspective,in particular the structure of the curriculum with regard to the study of South Africa as an African country. He was later (2018) brought back into the fold as a highly-regarded honorary professor.[b][26]
In 1999,Mamdani was appointed director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University,a post he held until 2004.[26] He has continued to teach there ever since (as of 2025).[29]
Mamdani specialises in the study of African and international politics,colonialism and post‐colonialism,and the politics of knowledge production. His works explore the intersection between politics and culture,a comparative study of colonialism since 1452,the history of civil war and genocide in Africa,the Cold War and the War on Terror,and the theoretical history of human rights.[35]
His research as of 2016 took "as its point of departure his 1996 book,Citizen and Subject:Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Colonialism".[36] In it,he argued that the post-colonial state cannot be understood without a clear analysis of the institutional colonial state. The nature of the colonial state in Africa was a response to the dilemma of the 'native question' and argued that it took on the form of a 'Bifurcated State'.[37] This was characterised on the one hand by 'direct rule',which was a form of 'urban civil power' and focused on the exclusion of natives from civil freedoms guaranteed to citizens in civil society,[38] and on the other hand by indirect rule,which was rural in nature and involved the incorporation of 'natives' into a 'state enforced customary order' enforced by a 'rural tribal authority',which he termed as 'decentralised despotism'.[38] This state was 'Janus faced' and 'contained a duality:two forms of power under a single hegemonic authority'.[38] In the post-colonial realm,the urban sphere was to an extent deracialised but the rural one remained subject to quasi-colonial control whether at the hands of conservative rulers for whom it provided their own power base or those of radical ones with centralised authoritarian projects of their own.[39] In this way both experiences reproduced 'one part of the dual legacy of the bifurcated state and created their own distinctive version of despotism'.[40] Mamdani analysed historical case studies in South Africa and Uganda to argue that colonial rule tapped into authoritarian possibilities whose legacies often persist after independence.[41] Challenging conventional perceptions of apartheid in South Africa as exceptional,he argues that apartheid was the generic form of a European colony in Africa,encompassing aspects of indirect rule and association.[42]
In his 2004 book Good Muslim,Bad Muslim:America,the Cold War,and the Roots of Terror Mamdani said that suicide bombers should be recognized "as a category of soldier" and that it should be "understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism".[43] One academic said this was not an advocacy of suicide bombing but an analysis which blamed '"U.S. foreign policy decisions,especially during the Cold War" to "create the kinds of conditions in which militant Islamism and political violence" thrived.[44]
His essays have appeared in the London Review of Books and other publications.[45] According to the CAS,Mamdani's texts "have been core readings for undergraduate and postgraduate studies at UCT and far beyond on the major debates on the study of African history and politics,exploring the intersection between politics and culture,comparative studies of colonialism,civil wars and the state,and genocide in Africa".[26]
In October 2011,Mamdani (alongside Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh) served as keynote speaker at the inaugural national conference for Students for Justice in Palestine.[48][49]
In 2017 he was invited to give the TB Davie Memorial Lecture on academic freedom at the University of Cape Town,and his talk,titled "Decolonising the Post-Colonial University" gave rise to much debate.[26][28]
From December 2017 until March 2018,Mamdani served as Rajni Kothari Chair Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi,India. After his term ended,on 4 April 2018 he delivered the annual Rajni Kothari Chair lecture,titled "Thinking of Justice through Africa's Experience in the 20th Century".[23]
On 28 May 2018 (Africa Day),Mamdani was appointed honorary professor at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town. CAS director Lungisile Ntsebeza,director of CAS,called the appointment "institutionally historic",and important in the process of decolonisation of the university since the "Rhodes Must Fall" student protests in March 2015. Numerous student leaders had pointed to the relevance of Mamdani's scholarship,and in the light of this,UCT would be making fundamental changes to its curricula.[26][17][55]
Mamdani married Mira Nair,an Indian film director and producer based in the United States,in 1991. They first met in Nairobi,Kenya,and then again in Kampala,Uganda,in 1989 when Nair was conducting research for her film,Mississippi Masala.[64][9] They married in 1991. As of 2025[update] Mamdani and Nair live in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in Manhattan,close to Columbia University.[29][65]
Mamdani and Nair's only son,Zohran Mamdani,was born in Kampala in 1991. In 1996 the family moved to Cape Town,South Africa,for Mamdani to take up an appointment as head of the African studies program at the University of Cape Town,and lived there for around three years.[64]
Around 1999 they moved to the US and settled in New York.[64] Zohran became a politician and is the mayor-elect of New York City as of 4 November 2025,having been a member of the New York State Assembly since 2021.[66][67][68] His campaign to be elected was supported by his parents.[29]
Bibliography
Books
The Myth of Population Control:Family,Class and Caste in an Indian Village (1972)
From Citizen to Refugee:Ugandan Asians Come to Britain (1973)[69]
↑ Mamdani later said "I was a strong critic of the then mainstream tendency at UCT which saw the South African experience as exceptional. I did not argue that South Africa was the same as any other African country, but I did insist on a comparative understanding of the African experience as necessary if students were to study South Africa's history as a variant within the broader context of colonialism and post-colonialism in Africa". According to director of CAS Ntsebeza in 2018, "the core African Studies course he argued for … was successfully implemented as a core course at postgraduate level in African Studies, and much of the themes within his scholarship have been introduced in the highly successful foundational African Studies major first rolled out in 2017".[26]
↑ Shachtman, Tom (2009). Airlift to America. How Barack Obama Sr, John F. Kennedy, Tom Mboya, and 800 East African Students Changed Their World and Ours. St. Martins Press.[pageneeded]
↑ Allen, Judith Van; Mamdani, Mahmood; Shivji, Issa G. (November 1977). "Reviewed Works: Politics and Class Formation in Uganda. by Mahmood Mamdani; Class Struggles in Tanzania. by Issa G. Shivji". Contemporary Sociology. 6 (6). American Sociological Association: 702. doi:10.2307/2066367. eISSN1939-8638. ISSN0094-3061. JSTOR2066367.
↑ Mamdani, Mahmood (1 January 1996). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. pp.15–16. ISBN9780852553992.
1 2 3 Mamdani, Mahmood (1 January 1996). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. p.18. ISBN9780852553992.
↑ Clapham, Chris (1997). "Review: Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism by Mahmood Mamdani'". Royal Institute of International Affairs. 73: 606.
↑ Mamdani, Mahmood (1 January 1996). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. ISBN9780852553992.
↑ Mamdani, Mahmood (1 January 1996). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. p.37. ISBN9780852553992.
↑ Mamdani, Mahmood (1 January 1996). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. pp.16–18. ISBN9780852553992.
1 2 3 Nair, Mira (2 December 2002). "Whirlwind". The New Yorker (Interview). Interviewed by Lahr, John. Archived from the original on 22 October 2014. Published in the print edition of the December 9, 2002, issue.
↑ Mamdani, Mahmood (2007). Scholars in the Marketplace. The Dilemmas of Neo-Liberal Reform at Makerere University, 1989-2005. Codesria. ISBN9782869782013.
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