For the past 35 years much of CSDS work has centered on the politics and theory of democracy. The Chair is in the name of the founder of CSDS Professor Rajni Kothari, the pre-eminent political scientist of India. Instituted in 2004, the Centre seeks to make the Chair a definitive kind of referent in the discourse on democracy. The first incumbent was Professor Charles Douglas Lummis, author of Radical Democracy and the second incumbent was the eminent Iranian-Canadian scholar Professor Ramin Jahanbegloo who has exclusively written on Gandhi and Tagore as well as on Democracy, Modernity and the Intellectual Traditions of Iran. The next Rajni Kothari Chairs are: Professor Sudipta Kaviraj (2007-08), Columbia University, and Professor Gananath Obeyesekere (2008-09) from Sri Lanka.