Past Seminars

2006-2007 program:

Friday, September 22, 2006
South Asia Initiative Fall Reception
Time: 4:30-6:00 pm.
Ticknor Lounge.
Please join us for our Fall Reception to welcome in the new academic year.
The reception will take place next Friday, September 22nd, from 4:30-6:00pm in the Ticknor Lounge in Boylston Hall (the gray building on the West side of, and adjecent to, Widener Library in Harvard Yard).
Refreshments will be served, and this will  be a great opportunity to meet faculty, students and friends interested in the field of South Asia.

Monday, September 25, 2006
Inaugural Harish C. Mahindra lecture – India 's Security Perspective
Pranab Mukherjee, Indian Defense Minister
Time: 6:00-7:15pm
The Forum, Kennedy School of Government.
The South Asia Initiative's Inaugural Harish C. Mahindra lecture will be given by Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, Defense Minister of India, on the topic of "India's Security Perspective". We are pleased that the South Asia Initiative and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs are able to bring the Minister to Harvard to share his insight at this critical moment in the world.
Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, Defense Minister of India, ranks second in the Indian Cabinet, after the Prime Minister.  Mr. Mukherjee has held crucial Cabinet positions in successive Congress Party governments: he served in Indira Gandhi's cabinet during the ‘70s and ‘80s, in Narasimha Rao's cabinet from 1991-1996 (for part of which he was India's Foreign Minister) and again from 2004 to the present under Manmohan Singh.  He has held the Commerce, Finance and Foreign Minister's positions in addition to his current position as Minister of Defense.

Friday, September 29, 2006
Modern Asia Seminar Series: India 's Relations with the Rest of Asia
Hon. Jaswant Singh, Former Indian Minister of External Affairs, Former Indian Minister of Finance, Senior Fellow, Harvard Asia Center
Time: 12:30-2:00 pm
CGIS South, Concourse Seminar Room S050.

Thursday October 5, 2006
South Asia Seminar: Nuclear Diplomacy's Blind Spots: Iran, India and Pakistan
Ambassador Ali Sarwar Naqvi, Former Chairman of the Asia Group and Vice Chairman of the IAEA Board of Governors as Pakistan 's Permanent Representative to the IAEA.
Time: 3:00-5:00 pm.
Taubman Building, 5th Floor, Nye Conference Room, BC, Kennedy School of Government.
Drawing on his recent experiences as a senior official at the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ambassador Ali Sarwar Naqvi will highlight the shortcomings of current approaches to nuclear diplomacy using Iran, India, and Pakistan as case studies. In this effort, he will address the limitations of the IAEA in shaping nuclear policy and will suggest a more comprehensive approach to nuclear diplomacy that takes into account regional security contexts as well as the wider nuclear black market.
Co-sponsored by the Project on Managing the Atom.

Friday October 6, 2006
South Asia Seminar: Challenges before Higher Education in India
Pawan Agarwal, Visiting Scholar, Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations (ICRIER).
Time: 4:00-6:00 pm.
Robinson Hall Lower Library.
Mr. Agarwal is presently Visiting Scholar at the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations (ICRIER) based at New Delhi. He is working on the theme, 'Higher Education and Training Sector (in India): Public Policy and Regulatory Reforms'.
Earlier he was Financial Adviser and Coordinator (New Initiatives) in the University Grants Commission (India) dealing with issues of public funding and internationalization of higher education in India. Prior to this, Mr. Agarwal was Director in the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) in the Govt. of India where he was involved with policy issues relating to financing, governance, academic decentralization, restructuring, internationalization, testing services, use of technology in education, manpower development in IT and biotechnology.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006
South Asia Seminar: Making of the Linguistic Survey of India, c. 1890-1920
Shahid Amin, Professor of History, University of Delhi.
Time: 4:00-6:00 pm.
CGIS South, Room S050.
Mr. Amin received his D.Phil. from Oxford University and is currently Professor of History at the University of Delhi. Among his publications are Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922-1992 (1995) and Writing Alternative Histories: A View from India (2002). He is the editor of A Concise Encyclopaedia of North Indian Peasant Life (2005), the co-editor, with Gyan Pandey, of Nimnvargiya Itihas, Bhag Ek, Bhag Do (1994, 2001), and has also written the Hindustani dialogues of the feature film Karvan, directed by Pankaj Butalia.

Friday, October 13, 2006
South Asia Without Borders musical performance: Purabi: The East in its Feminine Gender - The Music of Rabindranath Tagore
Pramita Mallick, recording artist.
Time: 8:00-9:45 pm.
The Thompson Room, The Barker Center.
Pramita Mallick is a leading exponent of the music of Rabindranath Tagore, the great Bengali poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. She has recently recorded a CD with Professor Sugata Bose to accompany a book of translations of Tagore's poems and songs to be published in March 2007. She will perform nine songs from that CD in a special 'South Asia without Borders' concert in the Thompson Room of the Barker Center on Friday, October 13, 2006, at 8 pm. Professor Bose will read the English translations of the songs. The concert by Pramita Mallick will feature Siddharth Bhattacharjee on the tabla and Dipankar Deshmukh on the esraj.
Co-sponsored by Harvard Sangeet.

Friday, October 20, 2006
South Asia Without Borders Seminar: Indo-US Nuclear Cooperation: Genesis, Prospects, Problems
Hon. Jaswant Singh, Former Indian Minister of External Affairs, Former Indian Minister of Finance, Senior Fellow, Harvard Asia Center
Time: 4:00-6:00 pm.
The Tsai Audotorium, CGIS South S010.
Hon. Jaswant Singh is the Former Indian Minister of External Affairs, Defense, and Finance. He is a seven time member of Parliament and one of the architects of India 's Nuclear Doctrine. Additionally, his diplomatic efforts led to thawing of India 's relations with Pakistan and China. Mr. Singh is currently a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Asia Center and the South Asia Initiative.

Monday, October 30, 2006
South Asia Without Borders: The Indian Economy in the Global Context
Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairperson of the Planning Commission, and Tarun Das, Chief Mentor of CII
Time: 2:00-4:00 pm.
Harvard Faculty Club Library.
Reception to follow.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia was the first Director of the Independent Evaluation Office from 2001-2004, when he was appointed Deputy Chairperson of the Planning Commission. Prior to taking up his position at the IMF, Mr. Ahluwalia was a Member of the Planning Commission in New Delhi as well as a Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. He had previously served as Finance Secretary, Ministry of Finance; Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs; Commerce Secretary; Special Secretary to the Prime Minister; and Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance.
Tarun Das has spent his entire working career in industry associations, starting with the predecessor body of CII in November 1963 and has been the Chief Executive of the permanent secretariat since April 1974 when CII (formerly AIEI) was formed. Mr. Das has been conferred an Honorary CBE by Her Majesty for his contribution to the Indo-British Partnership. He is also the non-executive Chairman of The Associated Cement Companies Ltd., India; and Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd, India; non-executive Director on the Boards of John Keells Holdings Ltd., Sri Lanka and GIVE Foundation. He is also a member of Board of Trustees of The Aspen Institute, USA and member of the International Advisory Board of the Coca Cola Company Ltd., USA.

Thursday, November 2, 2006
From Dissonance to Detour: Negotiating Artistic Identity
7:00 - 8:30 pm
Remis Auditorium, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Shahzia Sikander joins cultural critic Homi Bhabha to discuss the ways in which she negotiates her artistic identity, having been trained in traditional miniature painting techniques in her native Pakistan, but now living and working in New York. Her paintings were featured in the recent MoMA exhibition "Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking," and her painting Pathology of Suspension #6 was recently acquired by the MFA.
Presented in cooperation with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Detail events also available at the MFA website.
$10 (MFA member), $13 (non-members)


Friday, November 17, 2006
South Asia Seminar: The Familial Dimension of Indian Nationalism: Gandhi, Bose, Nehru
Reba Som, School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata
Time: 4:00-6:00 pm.
Robinson Hall Lower Library.
Reba Som graduated from Presidency College, Kolkata and took her PhD from Calcutta University. Her publications include Differences within Consensus: The Left–Right Divide in the Congress 1929–39 and Subhas Chandra Bose and the Resolution of the Women's Question. Her most recent publication, Gandhi, Bose, Nehru and the Making of the Modern Indian Mind, was published in 2004 by Penguin Viking Press.

Saturday, December 2, 2006
Panel Discussion: Human Rights Policy Challenges in Bangladesh
Part of the conference "The Millennium Generation in Diaspora: Owning Our Future", celebrating the 35th year of independence of Bangladesh.
Time: 5:15-6:40 pm.
Fong Auditorium, Boylston Hall (next to Widener Library), Harvard Yard, Cambridge, MA 02138.
The panel discussion will center around human rights and policy challenges faced by Bangladesh, the impact of the issues on the generation moving towards future leadership of the country, and on expatriate young Bangladeshis.
Panelists: Dr. Ayesha Jalal, Professor of History, Tufts University; Dr. Rounaq Jahan, Senior Research Scholar, Columbia University; Dr. Nazli Kibria, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Boston University; Dr. Elora Chowdhury, Assistant Professor of Women's Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston; Panel Moderator: Dr. Jalal Alamgir, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Conference co-hosted by: Amra Kojon; Change Bangladesh; Drishtipat; Harvard Law School Advocates for Human Rights; Human Rights Project at Fletcher School of Diplomacy (Tufts University); International Development Group at Fletcher School of Diplomacy (Tufts University); South Asian Journalists Association; South Asian Law Students Association.
To view the conference website, click here.

Friday, February 9, 2007
South Asia Seminar: A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of an American Hinduism
Prema Kurien, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Maxwell School, Syracuse University
Time: 4:00-6:00 pm.
Robinson Hall Lower Library.
Prema Kurien is associate professor of sociology at Syracuse University. Prof. Kurien's research focuses on the relationship between religion, ethnicity, and international migration. Her first book, Kaleidoscopic Ethnicity: International Migration and the Reconstruction of Community Identities in India (2002), explored differences in migration and migration-induced social change of three ethno-religious communities in Kerala, India. She has completed her second book, A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of an American Hinduism, (to be published in August 2007) on the institutionalization of Hinduism as a minority religion in the U.S. and the politicization of Hinduism. She is also researching Indian Christian Americans, and on how Indian Americans have entered the public sphere in the U.S.

Friday, March 2, 2007
South Asia Seminar: India's New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform
Leela Fernandes, Associate Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University.
Time: 4:00-6:00 pm.
Robinson Hall Lower Library.
Leela Fernandes is Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Her most recent book, India's New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform (University of Minnesota Press, December 2006) examines the political implications that the rise of the Indian middle class has had for Indian democracy and the politics of globalization. She is also the author of Producing Workers: The Politics of Gender, Class and Culture in the Calcutta Jute Mills (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997) and Transforming Feminist Practice: Non-Violence, Social Justice and the Possibilities of a Spiritualized Feminism (A. Lute Books, 2003). Her research interests lie at the intersection of the study of culture, gender and political economy. She has published numerous articles on labor, gender, cultural politics, nationalism, human rights and globalization, and has received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, American Institute for Indian Studies, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Social Science Research Council.

Friday, March 9, 2007
South Asia Seminar: Archive Without Address: Naming, Namelessness and the Question of the Proper in History
Aishwary Kumar, Rouse Ball Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge University.
Time: 4:00-6:00 pm.
Robinson Hall Lower Library.
Aishwary Kumar is Rouse Ball Fellow in History at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a Nehru Doctoral Fellow between 2003 and 2006 at Trinity College, where he completed his thesis on South Asian Intellectual History. His work is concerned with the relationship between colonial archives, popular memory, and native narrative strategies in South Bihar. A central thrust in his work is geared towards unpacking the complex usages of testimony and writing in the colonial legal sphere. He is working on a book manuscript which examines how juridical ideas about land and status, and thus of land reform and 'socialism' itself, were produced in an intellectual field cut across by competing narratives about citizenship, propriety, and community. His current engagement with political ethics extends this inquiry further into ideas of giving, affect, and responsibility, as these shaped the liberal and communitarian strands of South Asia's anti-colonial thought. He has published on the allegorical uses of citizenship in Salman Rushdie's writings, and on the aporias of speech in colonial societies.

Friday, March 16, 2007
South Asia Without Borders: Bridging Hearts: A Road to Better Health from New Delhi to Kabul
Dr. Ravi Kasliwal, Director of Cardiology, Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre, New Delhi.
Time: 4:00-6:00 pm.
Robinson Hall Lower Library.
PLEASE NOTE REVISED DATE AND LOCATION.
Dr. Kasliwal has been working with Escorts Heart Institute in New Delhi since 1987, and is currently the Director of Non Invasive Cardiology, Director of the Community Out-reach Program, Program Director of the DNB (Diplomat National Board, Cardiology). He also runs the Post Graduate Diploma in Community Cardiology with Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). Dr. Kasliwal is an editorial advisor and International advisor for national & international organizations including the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of India, and the Delhi Medical Council (2005–2009).
Dr. Kasliwal is the Founder and Director of Academic Programs at the Escort Heart Institute and Research Center, and has rceived over 150 awards and Honors in the field of Cardiology on Professional & Academic front. He has contributed chapters and text for approximately 25 books on cardiology and 150 scientific research papers in Indian and international medical journals.

Saturday, March 24, 2007
Annual Meeting for the Association for Asian Studies Reception
Time: 8:00-10:00 pm.
Suffolk Room, 3rd Floor, Boston Marriott Copley Place.
Harvard University Asia Center * Fairbank Center for East Asian Research
Korea Institute * Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies * South Asia Initiative
We cordially invite you to a reception in honor of incoming President Elizabeth Perry at the Annual Meeting for the Association for Asian Studies.
Drinks and light refreshments will be served.
Contact: Jorge Espada, jespada@fas.harvard.edu

Friday, April 6 and Saturday, April 7, 2007
Harvard and Tufts University Conference: Contested Spaces, Competing Narratives: Towards Human Rights and Democracy in Pakistan
Conference Presenters and Moderators: Khaled Ahmed, senior journalist (Consulting Editor, Daily Times and Friday Times, Pakistan ) currently at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, researching "Sectarian Violence in Pakistan and Its Linkages to Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States ". Syed Asif Alam, Reuters (technical account management), co founded the Association of Pakistani Professionals (http://www.aopp.org) shortly after 9/11 that aims to engage media in a proactive manner to help create a better understanding about Pakistan. Kamran Ali Asdar, Associate professor of anthropology, Middle East studies and Asian studies at the University of Texas, Austin, TX. Jacqueline Bhabha, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy. A graduate of Oxford University, executive director of the University Committee on Human Rights Studies at Harvard University and a lecturer at Harvard Law School. Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, head of South Asia Initiative at Harvard University. Main areas of research: modern South Asia and history of the Indian Ocean region; publications include Modern South Asia : History, Culture, Political Economy (2004, with Ayesha Jalal). Christopher Candland, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Wellesley College ; teaches courses related to politics, literature and political economy of South Asia ; (http://www.candland.info). Ethan Casey, journalist, editor, radio show host (http://www.pakcast.com); author of Alive And Well In Pakistan ; Seattle, WA. Shahla Haeri, Director of Women's Studies Program and Associate Professor in Boston University's Department of Anthropology, has researched and written extensively on religion, law and gender dynamics in the Muslim world; publications include No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women (2004) and Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage, Mut'a, in Iran (1989, 1993). Ayesha Jalal, Professor of History, Tufts University; author of several books including Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective & The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan's Political Economy of Defence. Hamid Kizilbash, Principal Research Analyst at American Institutes for Research, Washington, D.C; founding member of SAHE, the Society for the Advancement of Education, and former Professor of Political Science at Punjab University. Andy McCord, freelance journalist, poet, Pakistan and South Asia specialist. Saadia Toor, Assistant Professor, Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, College of Staten Island, NY. Adil Najam, Associate Professor of International Negotiation & Diplomacy, The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University. Humaira Rahman, Director of the World Sindhi Institute (Canada); former architect, teacher, environmental and political activist; pursuing post graduate studies at York University, Toronto, Canada. Hasan Askari Rizvi, political analyst, columnist, former professor of political science, Punjab University; 2006-07 Pakistan Studies Scholar at School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. Shahnaz Rouse teaches sociology at Sarah Lawrence College, has written on agrarian transformation in Pakistan and is currently working on the social history of pre-Partition Lahore. Her many publications include Shifting body politics: gender, nation, state in Pakistan (2004). Sehba Sarwar, poet, fiction writer ( Black Wings, 2004); Founding Director of Voices Breaking Boundaries, a non-profit multi-media arts organization in Houston – (http://www.vbbarts.org) – co-hosts a radio show and is involved in the anti-war/ pro-immigration movement. Beena Sarwar, journalist and documentary filmmaker; Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Kennedy School. Ayesha Siddiqa is a Ph.D. in War Studies from King's College, London. She is the author of Pakistan 's Arms Procurement and Military Buildup, 1979-99 In Search of a Policy (2000) and Military Inc, Inside Pakistan 's Military Economy (2007).
To register, please contact Naveed Malik (naveed_malik@ksg08.harvard.edu), Tanya Ghani (tanya_ghani@ksg08.harvard.edu) or Usman Khan (umankhan@hotmail.com)
Times: Friday, April 6: 5:30-7:15 pm; Saturday, April 7th: 10:00 am-4:00 pm.
For the full conference agenda, click here.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007
South Asia Seminar: Cultural Icons and Copyright: The 'Nationalisation' of Bharati
A.R. Venkatachalapathy, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India.
Time: 4:00-6:00 pm.
CGIS South, Concourse Seminar Room S050.
A.R. Venkatachalapathy took his Phd from the Jawaharlal Nehru University for his work on print culture in colonial Tamilnadu. Presently he is Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. Earlier he taught at Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tiruneveli and University of Madras, Chennai and held visiting assignments at Chicago, Cambridge and Paris. His areas of interest include the social and cultural history of colonial Tamilnadu. He is an accomplished writer in Tamil with over a dozen published books. His recent publications include: In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History (Yoda, 2006); ed. Chennai, Not Madras (Marg, 2006) and ed. A.K. Chettiar, In the Tracks of the Mahatma: the Making of a Documentary (Orient Longman, 2006).

Friday, April 13, 2007
South Asia Seminar: The Godhra Incident and the Gujarat Riots, 2002
Jayanti Ravi, Masons Fellow, Kennedy School of Government.
Time: 4:00-6:00 pm.
Robinson Hall Lower Library.
Jayanti Ravi, a civil servant from India has worked in the development sector in New Delhi and Gujarat, India. She was the District Magistrate of Godhra, India during the Sabarmati Express train Incident. In the aftermath, the response of the district team under her leadership for maintaining law & order and providing Relief and Rehabilitation was widely appreciated. The Computer Society of India has awarded her for the innovative work in the area of citizen empowerment using ICTs. She has contributed to the Education sector as the Commissioner, Schools and the Chairperson of the State Board of Secondary Education, Gujarat. Most recently, she was appointed Director of the National Advisory Council, a National level think tank in New Delhi . She lives with her husband and two children. She was a University topper in Nuclear Physics, is a performing vocalist in Indian music and has also been a column writer for a leading fortnightly in India. She is currently a Mason Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government.

Friday, April 20, 2007
South Asia Without Borders: Musical Subjects Across and Beyond the Atlantic: Indian-Caribbean Conversations
Tejaswini Niranjana, Director and Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore.
Time: 4:00-6:00 pm.
Robinson Hall Lower Library.
Tejaswini Niranjana is Director and Senior Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society in Bangalore. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, her M.A. from the University of Bombay, and her B.A. from Bangalore University.
Ms. Niranjana is the author of Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism and the Colonial Context (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); the editor, with P.Sudhir and Vivek Dhareshwar, of Interrogating Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India (Calcutta: Seagull, 1993); the editor, with Seemanthini Niranjana of Streevaadi Vimarshe , in Kannada (Bangalore: Kannada Sangha, Christ College, 1994). She is currently coordinating the project on Gender and Modernity for CSCS.
Ms. Niranjana was the recipient of a Sephis Postdoctoral Fellowship (1997-99) for a project on Mobilizing 'India': Gender and Ethnicity in Trinidad and South Africa.
Ms. Niranjana has published widely on cinema, translation theory and feminist theory. She has lectured at universities in the West Indies, Brazil, South Africa, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, the United Kingdom and the USA. She has taught at the University of Hyderabad and the University of Chicago.

Friday, April 27, 2007
South Asia Seminar: Re-writing a Nationalist Narrative: The 1940s in India
Indivar Kamtekar, Associate Professor, JNU, New Delhi.
Time: 4:00-6:00 pm.
Robinson Hall Lower Library.
Indivar Kamtekar is associate professor of modern history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, has taught at the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, and has been a fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study at Shimla. His publications include articles in the journals Past and Present, and Studies in History.

Thursday, May 24, 2007
The UN Secretary-Generalship and Secretariat since 1945: the Hidden and Indispensible Political Organ of the UN System
Time: 1:00-3:00 pm.
Thompson Room, Barker Center (map).
Dr Thant Myint-U was educated at Harvard (A.B.'87) and Cambridge Universities and received his PhD in history at Cambridge in 1996. He was a Fellow of Trinity College from 1995-1999 and is the author of two books on Burmese history, the Making of Modern Burma (Cambridge 2000) and The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma (FSG 2006). He has also served on three United Nations peacekeeping operations, in Cambodia (2002-3) and in the former Yugoslavia, including as the UN's spokesman in Sarajevo in 1994.
From 2000-2006 he worked in the UN Secretariat in New York, most recently as head of policy planning in the Department of Political Affairs and as a senior officer in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General. He is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow at the International Peace Academy.
Dr Thant Myint-U will provide an overview of the history of the UN's least understood and in some ways most important institution - the Secretariat and its chief, the UN Secretary-General. Whereas there has always been much discussion of the reform of the Security Council and other parts of the UN, there is rarely been much attention given to the Secretariat itself, despite its many changes over the years and its key role in the UN system. The lecture will focus on the attempts of each of the seven past UN chiefs to develop the Secretary-Generalship as an independent political institution (usually against big power resistance) and turn the Secretariat into the efficient civil service the UN's founders envisaged.

2005-2006 program:

South Asia without Borders Series

Friday September 23, 2005
‘Medical culture in transition: the Mughal gentleman physician and the 'native doctor' in early
modern India'.
Seema Alavi, Jamia Millia University, Delhi.
Venue: Robinson Hall Lower Library. Time: 4-6 pm.

Friday October 14, 2005
‘Burma, India and the Decolonization of Asia'.
C.A. Bayly, University of Cambridge.
Venue: Thompson Room, Barker Center. Time: 4-6 pm. Reception to follow.

Friday October 21, 2005
‘Poverty and Development in India and China'.
Jayati Ghosh, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Venue: Robinson Lower Library. Time: 4-6 pm. Reception to follow.

Friday April 28, 2006
‘Narratives of Hannoi Intelligentsia Life in the Worlds of International Socialist Modernity'.
Susan Bayly, University of Cambridge
Robinson Lower Library. Time: 4-6 pm. Reception to follow.

Friday May 5, 2006
‘The Indus Civilization: Uncovering the Discovery'.
Nayanjot Lahiri, University of Delhi
Venue: Humanities Center, Room 133. Time: 4-6 pm. Reception to follow.

Special Events

Friday October 28 and Saturday October 29, 2005
Conference on ‘South Asia and Central Europe: Exchanges of Ideas and Culture'.
Keynote Lecture on ‘Empires and Liberalism: Historicism and History in India in the Nineteenth Century' by C.A. Bayly, University of Cambridge, Friday, October 28, 2005, 4:00 PM, CGIS South, S010. Reception to follow.

Monday October 31, 2005
Address by Ambassador Jehangir Karamat on ‘Pakistan-US Relations'.
Tsai Auditorium (S010) of CGIS South. Time: 4-5 pm. Iftaar reception to follow.

Friday March 10, 2006
'The Indo-US Nuclear Deal: Looking Forward'.
Venue: CGIS South, S030. Lunch followed by address: 12-2 pm.

South Asia Humanities Seminar

Friday October 7, 2005
‘Crises in Contemporary Indian Performance'.
Ananda Lal, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
Robinson Hall Lower Library. Time: 2-4 pm.

Friday November 4, 2005
‘Early Twentieth Century Critical Biography'.
Sunil Sharma, Boston University .
Venue: Humanities Center. Time: 4-6 pm.

Friday February 10, 2006
'Islamic Barbie: The Politics of Gender and Performativity'.
Amina Yaqin, SOAS, University of London .
Venue: Humanities Cente . Time: 4-6 pm.

Friday March 17, 2006
'Gender and Inequality in the Globalization of Care'.
Rhacel Parrenas, University of California, Davis.
Venue: Humanities Center. Time: 4-6 pm.

Friday April 14, 2006
'The Limits of Imagination: Salman Rushdie and the English Tradition'.
Peter Morey, University of London .
Venue: Humanities Center. Time: 4-6 pm .

Friday May 12, 2006
‘Women at the Muslim Center: Islamist Ideals and Democratic Exigencies'.
Elora Shehabuddin, Rice University .
Venue: Humanities Center, Room 133. Time: 4-6 pm.

South Asia Social Sciences Seminar

Friday September 30, 2005
‘Banking Reforms in India'.
Speaker: Nachiket Mor, ICICI Bank, Mumbai.
Venue: Robinson Hall Lower Library. Time: 2-4 pm.

Friday October 7, 2005
‘Crises in Contemporary Indian Performance'.
Speaker: Ananda Lal, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
Venue: Robinson Hall Lower Library. Time: 2-4 pm.

Friday April 21, 2006
‘Bandung, Inter-Asian Migration and Citizenship'.
Itty Abraham, The East-West Center , Washington , DC .
Venue: Robinson Lower Library. Time: 4-6 pm .

2003-2004 program:

Friday, October 31, 2003
Rehman Sobhan, Executive Director, South Asia Centre for Policy Studies, Dhaka, Bangladesh
"Rediscovering South Asia"

Friday, November 14, 2003
Justice J. S. Verma, Former Chief Justice of India and former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission
"Civil Liberties in South Asia: Impact of 9/11"

Friday, February 6, 2004
Professor Stanley J. Tambiah, Harvard University
"Urban Riots and Cricket in South Asia"

Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Asma Jahangir, Magsaysay Award Winner and UN Rapporteur for Missing Persons
"A South Asian Peace Process? Obstacles and Opportunities"

2002-2003 program:

Tuesday, October 8, 2002
Romila Thapar
" Western India and Maritime Trade in the First Millennium C.E."

Friday, October 25, 2002
South Asia Initiative Faculty and Graduate Student Roundtable

Friday, November 15, 2002
South Asia Initiative Faculty and Graduate Student Roundtable with Mrs. Krishna Bose, M.P.

Friday, February 7, 2003
Michael Pearson
"Coastal Commonalities: Littoral Society of the Indian Ocean"

Friday, March 7, 2003
K.N. Chaudhuri
"The Anatomy of the Gaze: the Graphic Identity of South Asia and the Indian Ocean in History"

Friday, April 4, 2003
Willem Van Schendel, Professor of History, University of Amsterdam
"Partition Happened Here: A View from the Bengal Borderland"

Friday, May 2, 2003
Ayesha Jalal
"Partisans of Allah: Jihad in Theory and History"

2001-2002 program:

October 2001
Amitav Ghosh, City University of New York
" Wordless Pasts: Memory and the Indian Diaspora"

November 2001
Sheldon Pollock, University of Chicago
"The Borders of Indian Knowledge"

March 2002
Sara Suleri Goodyear, Yale University
"Uncovering India: The Significance of the Contemporary Literary Discovery of South Asia"

April 2002
Amartya Sen, University of Cambridge
"India and China: the Contemporary Significance of Ancient Connections"

May 2002
C.A. Bayly, University of Cambridge
"Yangon (Rangoon): the Death of an Indian City, 1939–1949"