Kavita Datla, an associate professor of history at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, died at home on July 22. She was 42 years old and had waged a three-year battle with a rare form of cancer.
Dr. Datla earned a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of Michigan. She earned a master’s degree at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, India, and a Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Datla joined the faculty at Mount Holyoke College in 2006 and was promoted to associate professor in 2013. Her research focused on the political, social, and cultural history of South Asia. She was affiliated with the Asian studies program, the critical social thought program and the department of international relations at the college. Dr. Datla was the author of The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India (University of Hawaii Press, 2013).