Spring 2004 - South Asia Program - Cornell University

South Asia
Newsletter
A Publication of the South Asia Program, Cornell University
A Publication of Cornell University's South Asia Program
Saying Goodbye after 37 Years of Dedicated Service
On December 4, 2003, friends, colleagues and well-wishers
gathered to bid Ved Kayasta, Librarian in charge of Asia and
South Asia section of the Cornell University Library, a happy and
long retirement after thirty-seven years of dedicated service. Ved
was honored by colleagues and faculty in remembrance speeches.
Most of us don't know what life at Cornell without Ved is like.
There were plenty of tissues passed around and misty eyes as
attendees at the retirement reception remembered Ved's huge contribution
and dedication to the library. Professor
Kenneth A. R. Kennedy remembered how helpful
Ved had been,
when he depended
on
“the magnificent
South
Asia collections
in
Cornell’s library
system,”
which Ved kept
up-to-date,
finding titles for
Professor Kennedy, and acquiring
those needed when
the source was not yet part
of the library’s collection.
He also remembered how
Ved surprisingly appeared
in New Delhi, where Professor
Kennedy was giving a
talk, having gotten wind of this lecture. Others remember Ved fondly
as taking over the whole Asia collection, which included the Middle
Eastern section, when there were no others who were available to
tackle such a job.
People spoke of Ved’s dedication, not only to the faculty,
but to the students as well. He was Faculty Advisor for a number of
student organizations through the years, such as Bhakti, and the
Hindu Student Council. Ved would open up his home to visiting
researchers, faculty and graduate students who needed a temporary
residence, treating them all like family members. Lisa LeFever,
Ved's devoted assistant of ten years, remembers that, "He was genuinely
concerned for students and myself. It was not unusual for a
student to drop by looking for 'Ved Uncle'." Lisa also remembers
being a bit intimidated by him at first, as she had never worked for
anyone from another country, but as time went by, she discovered
someone who was "a pleasure to work for." She recalls that at any
given time, she could be treated to an impromptu lecture on various
Spring 2004
topics, which opened her eyes to South Asia. She recalls, "His
knowledge and experience made the office an interesting place,
often he would bring a book to me and tell me all about the author,
i.e. he was a sibling's friend, etc." She adds, "During the ten years
I have worked for Ved, I found him most generous and understanding.
I count it as a privilege having worked for him."
After attending Panjab University in Chandigarh, Ved
went on to earn his B.A. in 1955 at Banaras Hindu University,
where he also earned an M.A. in Geography in 1958 and a Diploma
in 1960 in Library
Science. He then
earned another
Master’s degree in
1963, from Syracuse
University, in Library
Science. He has
worked as a
cataloger at Panjab
University Library in
Chandigarh, parttime
assistant at
Syracuse University
Library, and as a
Professional
Librarian of the
Oriental Collection
Photos by Valerie Jacoski and Rare Book
Collection at
Cleveland Public Library in Ohio. He first came to Cornell in
1966 as an Assistant Librarian, and quickly climbed the ranks
to Librarian in 1976. In 1994 he was appointed as the first Ernest L.
Stern ‘56 Asia Curator, which is an endowed chair.
Ved was a loyal friend to the South Asia Program,
attending SAP's Brown Bag Seminar Series on Monday afternoons
regularly. He was always active in the question and answer section
at the end of the lectures, which often stimulated more questions
and debate. Although his office was in the Olin Library Building,
he'd occasionally come by to have a chat during lunch break, or a
cup of his favorite Earl Grey tea, sometimes bringing contributions
to our own video library. He was a great lover of cinema, and kept
us up-to-date on the latest South Asian films. He did wonders at
developing the South Asia visual collection at the Kroch Library,
which now offers over 1,000 South Asia-related videos and DVD's
of both feature films and documentaries ranging from politics to
culture and the performing arts. In addition to this, it is estimated
that Ved is responsible for over 5,000 book acquisitions since he
first came to Cornell thirty-seven years ago.

NOTES FROM THE DIRECTOR
Dear Friends and Colleagues of the South Asia Program,
It is already the middle of another semester and at last it appears that spring is here in more than a definition. But, I am not
complaining about the delayed sunshine because the heart of the South Asia Program has been warmed by such a large number of
activities and events in recent months. In particular, this has been a remarkably productive time for the various – old and new – students
and student groups associated with the Program. So I want to use this issue of the newsletter to tell them how much we depend on them
and on their enthusiasm for and participation in the life of the Program.
While many of these individual activities find separate mention in other parts of this newsletter, I want to use my space here
to personally thank:
1) Jason Cons, Karuna Morarji, Nosheen Ali, Sara Shneiderman, Jessica Falcone, Farhana Ibrahim and Shital Pravinchandra for
thinking up and organizing the hugely successful Graduate Student Conference on South Asia. We all look forward to this
becoming an annual event, even if I am not sure that the students themselves are keen to repeat this energy-intensive experience.
2) Sara Shneiderman, Iftikar Dadi (no longer a student, but still) and Farhana Ibrahim for giving such interesting talks at our
Monday seminar series. Together with the seminars by Cornell faculty (by Ron Herring, Mukul Majumdar, Mahesh Rangarajan and
Shaker Ahmed) these helped us continue to mine the in-house talent that seems to so easily make up for the uncertainties with
getting outside visitors in the winter months.
3) Keyzom Ngodup, Suhair Khan and Natasha Qamar for beginning a new group on campus, South Asian Women (SAW), that will
try to illuminate and celebrate the diversity and strengths of South Asian women at Cornell and worldwide. They inaugurated their
existence by inviting Yasmine Kabir, the well known documentary filmmaker from Bangladesh, to show and discuss her latest film
“A Certain Liberation”. This was an extremely successful event that owed its success to a remarkable film, and not just to the
samosas and pakodas that the audience was plied with. If SAW can keep up this standard of activity, it will be doing a great favor
to the Cornell community. It is even more gratifying that the founders of SAW are all undergraduates.
4) Karuna Morarji, Nosheen Ali and Farhana Ibrahim for reviving SAAPAA, the South Asian Association for Political and
Academic Awareness . Once the campus voice of conscience for South Asian affairs, I am extremely pleased that SAAPAA plans
to throw itself once more into fostering a critical engagement with South Asia as well as with issues of labor, race, gender and
sexuality in general as they pertain to the South Asian community. This semester SAAPAA was involved in organizing the
Graduate Students’ Conference as well as the Yasmine Kabir film showing.
5) Arshiya Lokhandwala for doing something quite different. In March, she curated an exhibition of women’s video art from India,
called Rites/Rights/Rewrites and organized a panel discussion around the theme of “Rethinking Video”.
6) The members of ASHA for keeping up the tradition of their wildly popular dinners to raise money for projects in India and the
members of SPICMACAY for treating us to a heart-thumping tabla recital by Anuradha Pal, one of the few female experts on a
traditional male instrument.
7) And finally, the various student associations and cultural organizations connected with South Asia on campus. Through their
dance and music and celebration of some of the numerous rites and festivals of the South Asian region, they raised the temperatures
on campus even as the autumn ended too soon and the winter too late.
I believe one of the highlights of the season has been the late night
broadcasts of the India-Pakistan cricket matches being currently played
in Pakistan. This positive example of “friendly fire” has raised such
hopes for regional peace that the excitement has drenched even those
of us so far away from the action.
Since this is a note dedicated to the students at Cornell, let me
close by wishing them all the luck that they need to end the semester with
miraculously successful exams and unduly happy summers.
Sincerely,
The Brides Toilet by Amrita Sher Gill
2
Alaka Basu

VISITORS
A Scholar-Practitioner Speaks: The Honorable Thomas W. Simons, Jr.
at the South Asia Program's Seminar Series
by Karthika Sasikumar
At a time when India-Pakistan negotiations are spurring hopes of peace in the
region, the South Asia Program was fortunate to host a talk by Thomas W. Simons, Jr.
Simons, a former Ambassador to Pakistan and a professor of international politics at several
distinguished institutions is the Provost’s Visiting Professor at Cornell this spring. He also
spoke at the Peace Studies Program and gave a public lecture on Islam at the University.
In his talk for the South Asia Program on 23 February 2004, Simons drew upon his experience
as Ambassador to Pakistan in the crucial 1996-1998 period. Taking the current peace negotiations
as his starting point, he traced their connection to developments in the subcontinent over the
last fifty years. While Simons believes that the security problematic in South Asia is structural in
that it stems from the huge power imbalance between India and Pakistan, he holds that domestic
politics are equally important in explaining outcomes.
Therefore, he spent a considerable amount of time discussing the growing disenchantment
in Pakistan with radical Islamism. In a Pakistan that has seen the disintegration of its neighbor
under the Taliban regime and that has itself experienced the divisiveness of religious politics, the
two assassination attempts on President Musharraf in December, 2003, strengthened the moderate voices advocating dialogue with
India. Simons sees reasons for hope in India as well. The BJP government hopes to reap a ‘peace dividend’ in the forthcoming elections
through a peaceful settlement with Pakistan spearheaded by Prime MinisterVajpayee.
Simons admitted that radical Islamism had penetrated into the body politic, a process that is hard to reverse. However, he drew
on the analogy with the US-Soviet Cold War relationship to claim that parties need not compromise on their declared ideology to enter
into pragmatic risk-reduction arrangements. Answering a question from Kaushik Basu, he also pointed out that sustained and
comprehensive India-Pakistan interaction would lower the risks of a war triggered by an ‘out-of-control’ faction. On the US role in the
region, Simons believes that the US is now applying the lessons of the past. It is more enthusiastic about democracy in Pakistan, even
if that means the ascendance of moderate Islamic parties. It seeks to engage both parties in a broader relationship in order to avoid the
type of dangerous escalation in which the US role creates perverse incentives for brinksmanship.
This was a talk that could only have been given by a senior statesman who has spent a lifetime applying his personal experience
to current theoretical debates in political science.
Karthika Sasikumar is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government.
SAP Hosts Fulbright Scholar from Bangladesh
The South Asia Program welcomes Fulbright Scholar, Dr.
Shaker Ahmed, who will be in residence at the Program from January
to June, 2004. Ahmed obtained his
Ph.D. in Economics from the Institute of
National Economy in Moscow in 1981.
Prior to that, he obtained an M.S. in Economics
with a Specialization in Industrial
Planning from the Institute of National
Economy, Odessa, Ukraine in 1977. He has
an undergraduate degree from Dhaka College
and is currently a Professor of Economics
at Dhaka University.
On April 19, as part of SAP’s
Seminar Series, Ahmed gave a lecture entitled
Cross Border Energy Trade in South
Asia, where he elaborated on the natural resource supplies and
energy consumption throughout South Asia in a demographic
presentation. He gave several solutions to the sharing of natural
resources between the South Asian countries, and political reasons
as to why the obvious doesn’t always work. He suggests
closer cooperation between countries within SAARC (South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation), including between India
and Pakistan. There is also immense potential for developing South
Asia as a market for natural gas from
Myanmar. He surprised the audience with
the fact that only 30 percent of Bangladeshi
households have electricity. He also gave
statistics of the carbon monoxide waste in
metric tons generated by each individual
country, which, as in the case of India, is a
staggeringly huge number.
While Shaker's previous research involved
the topic of trade and poverty, the
energy area is a new field of study for him.
He emphasizes energy trade as an important
factor in helping to mobilize South Asia. He
is here at Cornell collecting data on this topic for an upcoming
book, as he states that Cornell’s abundant libraries and easily available
internet access offers resources he could not get in Bangladesh,
due to breakdowns in their telecommunications system.
Shaker is in Ithaca accompanied by his wife Heera and
13-year-old son, Fahraj.
3

LIBRARY
SAP Welcomes New South Asia Collections Librarian, Adnan Malik
The South Asia Program’s faculty and staff would like to extend a warm welcome to Adnan
Malik, who will be the successor to Librarian, Ved Kayasta, in charge of the South
Asia Collection at the Kroch Library. Adnan came from Pakistan to the United States an
engineering student. As an undergraduate he attended Ohio Wesleyan University, which is a
small liberal arts institution. After taking courses in sociology and anthropology, he decided to
change his major from science to the humanities, and graduated with a B.A. in sociology. While
pursuing a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago, Adnan took a position to supplement
his funding, and by chance was hired at the South Asia Department of the Regenstein Library
at the University of Chicago’s main library. His familiarity with a number of South Asian
languages and scripts was a big asset. He started working on the South Asia Microfilm Project
and researched and made records for several India Office catalogues in different languages.
After that, he processed the Regenstein Library’s own huge backlog of South Asian monographs.
He states, “…that is how I was sucked into the strange world of libraries and cataloging. I found it interesting enough that I decided to
make it my career and started applying for jobs, and here I am…”
Adnan hopes to contribute to the growth of the South Asia Collection by enhancing its strengths, and also building on its
less-developed areas. He finds it impressive that, unlike many other South Asian libraries, the Kroch's South Asia Collection has
many resources on Sri Lanka and Nepal, whereas other univeristies' libraries are more focused on India. We look forward to working
with Adnan and encourage students and faculty to drop by the Kroch Library to meet him.
4
Library’s South Asia Collection Receives Gift of Slide Collection
Indian architectural elements from the Maurya period;
one of a collection of more than 3,700 slides of Indian
and Southeast Asian art and architecture that was given
to Cornell Library’s South Asia Collection by C. K.
Gairola, who assembled the collection during his travels.
by Elizabeth Fontana
A valuable collection of more than 3,700 slides of Indian and Southeast
Asian art has been added to Cornell University Library’s renowned South Asia
Collection. The collection was given to Cornell by C. Krishna Gairola, a retired
professor of Indian history and archaeology who assembled the collection during
his travels as a student and later, professor, in various parts of South and South East
Asia.
The Gairola Slide Collection is a unique set of images that includes a significant
representation of Indian art and architecture from the dynastic periods through the
early 1960s, as well as art from Cambodia, Burma, Thailand, and Indonesia. The
variety of subject matter should prove useful to students and scholars of South
Asian architecture, art, anthropology, and history. The images, photographed by
Dr. Gairola himself between 1950 and 2000, offer a perspective that differs from that
of official or commercial photographs of Indian art works and historical sites.
C. K. Gairola was born in Dehra Dun, India. He received an M.A. in history from the
University of Allahabad, India in 1946 and a Ph.D. in Indian history and archaeology
from the University of London in 1949. He studied art history and completed a
Diplome de l’Ecole at the School of the Lourvre, Paris, in 1953. After working for the
Embassy of India and the Indian Foreign Service in Switzerland and New Delhi, he accepted a position as professor and department head
at the M.S. University of Baroda, India in 1962. Dr. Gairola also worked as a journalist for the Hindustan Times and Week End Review in
New Delhi before immigrating to the United States in 1967.
In the U.S., Dr. Gairola held professorships at Kansas State University, the University of Washington (Seattle), and Virginia
Commonwealth University before retiring in 1987. Among the many honors he received was the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship,
awarded by the German government, as well as fellowships from the French government and the Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Gairola died
in July 2003.
The Gairola Slide Collection was acquired through the efforts of Ved P. Kayastha, the retired South Asia Curator. This slide
collection combined with the Robert MacDougal Slide Collection (which focuses mostly on religious sites in South Asia) will create one
of the most outstanding slide collection on South Asia in the United States.
For more information, contact Adnan Malik, curator of Cornell Library’s South Asia Collection, phone: 607-255-9479 or email
asm48@cornell.edu.

CONFERENCES
Recent Cornell Graduate Gives Paper in Sri Lanka
Cynthia Caron, postdoctoral associate of the Polson Institute for Global Development,
and recent Ph.D. graduate from Cornell in Development Sociology, presented a
paper entitled, “Repatriation and Resettlement: Internally-Displaced Person (IDP) & Host
Community Perceptions” at a workshop sponsored by The American Institute of Lankan
Studies in Colombo on Muslims in Sri Lanka: Social, Political, and Cultural Issues. Dr.
Dennis McGilvray (also pictured), Anthropology Department at UC Boulder, organized
the July, 2003, workshop. Cindy’s research is sponsored by the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation's Program on Global Security and Sustainability. Her research,
which began in June, 2003, has focused on relations between Muslims who were expelled
from Sri Lanka's northern province in October, 1990, and the multi-ethnic community they
have been living with since the time of their displacement. She has been collecting oral histories about the day of expulsion from youth
as well as documenting the experience of young persons as well as the second-generation which was born and has grown up in
government-operated welfare centers and relocated villages. The second phase of her research, which will begin in May, 2004, will be
based in Mannar district, one of the places from which Muslims were expelled. With the signing of the cease-fire agreement between
the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in February, 2002, internally-displaced persons (IDPs) are slowly
returning to their places of origin. The second phase of research will focus on return migration, pluralism, and social integration.
reminiscing about the World Social Forum (WSF), 2004 ....
by Nosheen Ali
at 4:00 p.m. on jan 16 th , the official starting time of the WSF, i was stuck at the VT
police thana where Pakistani citizens are required to report within 24 hours of their entry
into Mumbai. the officer hastened his ritualistic inquiries when i told him that the WSF –
my reason for being in Mumbai – had already started. of course, i was quite sure that like
all desi events, the WSF would run way behind schedule. imagine my shock when a friend
called and asked me to hurry up as the forum, indeed, had started almost on time! the
surprise had only begun.
i knew a lot of people were going to be at the NESCO grounds in goregaon, the
venue for the WSF, but 100,000, and that too from more than 120 countries, was way
A protest for tribal rights at the WSF
beyond my expectations. even more heartening was the fact that this massive crowd
seemed to be dominated not by NGO-types as i had expected, but by groups such as the adhivasis (tribals) from Jharkhand, dalits
(untouchables) from Maharashtra, and mahila mandals (women organizations) from Gujarat. you could not walk two steps without
encountering a new group representing and advocating a different cause through placards, pamphlets, street theatre, impromptu dance,
folk music and slogan-chanting processions. meanwhile, the various halls and tents were hosting seminars, panel discussions, workshops,
film screenings and art exhibitions that dealt with every imaginable political, economic and socio-cultural issue. all this with great chai
and food all around!
of course, there were plenty of frustrating moments as well in the thrilling chaos of the WSF: when the opening plenary (with
such celebrities as writer/activist Arundhati Roy and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Abadi) was full of lackluster speeches, when i felt
that “key panels” with big names were not just a thing of the plenary session but came to dominate the entire forum, when panels that
i had gotten up at 8:00 a.m for after sleeping for four hours got cancelled, when it was impossible to decide which events to attend as there
were tons of them happening simultaneously, and when, the famous dancer Malika Sarabai, emcee for the WSF, standing on Stage Faiz
which was named after the brilliant Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, kept pronouncing his name as “Fayyaz”!!!.
but there were larger issues with the WSF – the lack of democratic decision-making in the organization of the WSF, the lack of
concrete proposals for change, and problematic sources of funding, to name just a few. “another world is possible” was the official
slogan of the WSF, but i’m not sure what “world” the WSF hoped to claim to create, and what kind of change came out of WSF activities.
it was encouraging, though, that there were spaces for critique both within the WSF – for instance, in panels organized specifically to
discuss the politics of the WSF – as well as outside of it in the form of the “Mumbai Resistance 2004”. also encouraging was the fact that
according to many participants, the WSF in India was much more diverse, and much better organized than the one in Brazil the year
before.
well, i’m not sure if the previous and future WSFs will make another world possible, but at least at the forum in Mumbai itself,
amidst thousands of people from all over the world struggling for constructive change, and amidst the inspiring performances on the
streets and informative deliberations in the tents, it really did feel like i was in another world ☺
Nosheen Ali, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Cornell Univeristy, prefers her own system of letter
capitalization.
5

6
Cornell South Asia Program Hosts First Graduate Conference on South Asia
The first
annual Cornell
University Graduate
Conference on South
Asia was held this
March 12 th and 13 th .
Presenters from
universities around
the country—from
Alaka Basu gives welcome speech, while panel
member, Jason Cons looks on
the University of
Washington and
Stanford to Columbia and the University of Syracuse, as well as six
presenters from Cornell—representing broad ranges of
disciplines—from Political Science to Comparative Literature—came
to deliver papers, receive feedback on work in progress, meet new
people in the field, and eat some delicious food.
The conference, which was entirely student
organized, was conceived in the spring of 2003
as a way of both pulling graduate students
interested in South Asia at Cornell together
and of getting to know people in other
universities conducting or preparing to
conduct new and exciting work in/on South
Asia.
Originally planned as a one-day
conference with 10-12 papers, the organizing
committee—consisting of Nosheen Ali
(Development Sociology), Jason Cons
(Development Sociology), Jessica Falcone
(Anthropology), Farhana Ibrahim
(Anthropology), Karuna Morarji (Development
Sociology), Shital Pravinchandra (Comparative Literature), and Sara
Shneiderman (Anthropology)—structured a call for papers that,
instead of focusing on one specific topic, called for submissions
across four themes that we felt were critical in contemporary
research on South Asia: violence, environments, borders, and
historiography/methodology. The response was overwhelming. We
received 45 excellent proposals, far more than we had originally
expected, and decided to expand the conference to a two-day event,
inviting 24 presenters (20 of which eventually presented) to sit on
five panels.
The keynote address for the conference was delivered by
Amita Baviskar, a sociologist currently at University of California,
Berkeley, and a graduate of Cornell’s Development Sociology
program. Prof. Baviskar delivered a talk titled “Environmental
Identities: The Politics of Nature and Place,” in which she argued
that both urban ‘bourgeois environmentalism’ and rural land-based
movements in India have contributed to the invisibility of claims
and rights of landless migrant workers. Focusing on the context of
contemporary Delhi, Prof. Baviskar illustrated how middle-class
By Nosheen Ali, Jason Cons, Farhana Ibrahim, Karuna Morarji, and Shital Pravinchandra
activism for the closure of small scale industries framed the problem
in terms of clean-air rather than worker’s rights. Equally marginalized
by rural movements tending to romanticize attachment to land as a
marker of legitimacy, landless migrants become visible only as
victims through discourses of improvement.
Prof. Baviskar also attended each panel at the conference
and offered detailed feedback and probing questions to each
panelist. Her participation and thoughtful advice contributed
greatly to the conferences success.
Individual panels at the conference were structured around
themes of the state, globalization, violence, borders and methods.
The first panel, titled “Confronting the State: Negotiating Identity,
Agency and History,” was chaired by Nosheen Ali. Through
explorations of debates between historians in the wake of subaltern
studies (Anoop Mirpuri, U. Washington), analysis of biopolitics
and alcohol amongst Adivasi’s in
Jharkhand (Roger Begrich, Johns
Hopkins), and a study of Afghan
refugees in Pakistan (Anila Dualitzai,
Johns Hopkins), panelists offered
different ways and sites for
understanding the processes of stateformation
and subject-formation, as well
as the relationship between these
processes through a specific exploration
of subaltern spaces.
Friday’s second panel, chaired by
Karuna Morarji, was titled “History,
Culture, and Power in the Construction
of Globalization.” Papers on this panel
relocated globalization in the context of
expansion of the East India Company into Sindh (Matthew Cook,
Columbia), explored questions of globalization and religion in
transnational South Asian religious organizations (Angela Rudert,
Cornell University), and interrogated India’s location within
emerging global counter-terrorist regimes (Karthika Sasikumar,
Cornell University). A common thread running through these
papers was a concern with how varyingly identified actors have
agency to shape the meanings and rules of the social relations of
which they are a part.
Saturday’s proceedings began with the panel “Locating
Violence: Politics, Institutions, and Disciplines,” chaired by Shital
Pravinchandra. This panel offered an analysis of the spatial
dynamics of a riot in Columbo (Francesca Bremner, Columbia),
raised questions about ethics in the context of fieldwork with violent
subjects (Jessica Falcone, Cornell University), presented data on
domestic violence in rural India (Niveditha Menon), and examined
the colonial censorship (as violence) of a Bengali poet given the
nationalist and anticolonial views expressed in his verse (Samarpita
Mitra, Syracuse University). In varying ways, these papers
Robert Bagrich talks about alcohol amongst
Adivasis in Jharkhand
Continued on back page

FINE ARTS
Rites/Rights/Rewrites: Women's Video Art from India
Monali Meher
Surekha
Sonia Khurana
Sharmila Samant
Darshana Vora
Shilpa Gupta
Shakuntala Kulkarni
Rites/Rights/Rewrites
Women’s Video Art from India
curated by Arshiya Lokhandwala
March 1-6 2004
Hartell Gallery Sibley Dome Cornell University Ithaca NY 14853
March 1, 2004, saw the opening of an
unusual exhibit of video art, Rites/
Rights/Rewrites: Women's Video Art
from India, by seven Indian women artists.
The exhibition took place under
the Sibley Dome, in Sibley Hall and was
curated by Arshiya Lokhandwala, Ph.D.
candidate in the History of Art Department
at Cornell University. Arshiya was
the founder and curator of the Lakeeren
Art Gallery in Mumbai, and was the recipient
of the Charles Wallace India
Trust Award in 2001 for an M.A. in creative curating at Goldsmiths
College, London.
The exhibition looked to examine the intervention of video
within the practice of contemporary Indian women who use the
body as an allegory to locate their concerns and contexts. In this
exploration, the exhibition analysed various factors that inform
the women's artistic concerns including globalisation, postcolonial
feminist critique and issues of race and gender within the context
of India today. Although all works in the exhibition reference the
artists using their images and bodies, this exhibition rather than
engaging with individual reflection, emphasizes the usage of cor-
Stellar Concert Series Planned for Fall '04
poreal bodies as "weapons" embodied as sites of resisitance.
Rites/Rights/Rewrites, engages with the exploration of contemporary
Indian women in the process of rewriting their own histories;
through the breaking of the patriarchal tradition and codes,
creating new signs and signifiers in the process. Rites/Rights/
Rewrites presented the work of seven such women artists who
employ video as a new language to
articulate their resistance namely
Sharmila Samant, Shilpa Gupta,
Darshana Vora, Shakuntala
Kulkarni, Surekha, Sonia Khurana,
and Monali Meher from the megalopolis
of Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.
Each of the works in the
exhibition alludes to the body as a
metaphorical site of resistance: the
Arshiya Lokhandwala
fragmentation of the body in Passing (Sharmila Samant); body
as memory in Blue Nostalgia (Monali Meher); the mediated body
in Untitled (Shilpa Gupta); the persisting body in Bird (Sonia
Khurana); the absent body in Mesma Trilogy (Darshana Vora);
body as an allegory in Confinement (Shakuntala Kulkarni); and
finally the body as a double (Surekha).
The Fall '04 semester promises to be a particular exciting one as far as
cultural events are concerned. To ease the transition from the relaxation of
summer to the rigor of returning to classes, the South Asia Program, Asha for
Education at Cornell, and the Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical
Music Among Youths (SPICMACAY), are in the planning stages of arranging
concerts with stellar artists! Asha Cornell, is having a fund-raiser to benefit
grass-roots education in India, featuring Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia on
bansuri (bamboo flute). Anyone who has spent anytime listening to Indian
classical music, realizes that Hariji is definitely one of India’s top-ranking North
Indian classical musicians. Chaurasia graced the Cornell stage in 2001, leaving his audience mesmerized.
Numerous audience members have requested his return, and Asha is complying. He will perform on September 18, in the Statler
Auditorium. Stay tuned for details about time and ticket purchase, or visit Asha’s website closer to the concert date (http://
www.ashanet.org/cornell/index-7.html).
On Monday, October 18 at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall Auditorium, SPICMACAY will host two versatile musicians, namely, Saskia de
Haas (cello) and her husband Shubhendra Rao (sitar). They have teamed up to form a creative duo, performing a type of fusion and
traditional classical Hindustani music. For further information, please check the artists’ websites at : www.saskiarao.com and
www.shubhendrarao.com.
On Sunday afternoon, October 31, at 3 p.m. the South Asia Program presents an unusual group of South Indian musicians. The
group has named their program “A Musical Odyssey in Rhythm Fantasies”, and is led by mrudangam master Padmabhushan
Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman (“Padmabhushan” is the highest civilian title bestowed upon an artist in India). This program will also
feature Anaiyamapatti Ganesan on jalatharangam (glasses filled with water), M.A. Sundaresan on violin, E. M. Subramaniam on
ghatam (large clay pot used as a drum) Mattanur Sankaran Kutty Nair on Chenda (large drum played with sticks) , and Unnikrishnan
on thimila and edakka (percussion instruments).
Also in the planning is a dance performance by an upcoming Kuchipudi dancer, Amrita Lahiri of New Delhi. An Indian classical
dance and music showcase of Cornell students will take place on campus next Fall featuring Cornell then-to-be senior Geetha
Shanmugam (Bharat Natyam) and others. Details of both performances are still in the planning stages, but will be announced as soon
as time and place are determined.
All the above concerts, with the exception of Chauracia, are free and open to the public
7

NOTES FROM THE FIELD
8
Kapil Gupta: Cornell Law School’s NSEP Fellow in New Delhi
I began my NSEP David L. Boren Fellowship last semester as a visiting student at
the New York University School of Law. NYU is one of the few law schools in the United
States featuring a course offering on the law of South Asia. The South Asian law course
provided an introduction to the legal history, institutions, and socio-legal context primarily
in India and secondarily in Pakistan. The course focused on constitutional and legal development
in South Asia, as well as broader governance issues related to authoritarianism, and
the relationship between legal systems and culture.
Presently I am in New Delhi, working as an intern with the World Bank’s legal
department. In the month that I have been at the Bank, I have worked on two research
projects for the legal department, and participated in various other meetings.
My first project is an analysis of the Government of India’s Electricity Act of 2003.
The legislation creates a framework for significant reforms and development of the Indian
electrical power sector. The legal framework created by the Electricity Act provides a necessary
but insufficient structure for the advancement of the contemplated development and
reform goals. Full implementation of the act and actual enforcement of key provisions
remains to be accomplished, most notably in the areas of preventing the theft of electricity
and reducing economically inefficient state-level cross-subsidies for designated sectors.
My work has been to identify the policy gaps and other requirements necessary for the
achievement potential created by the legislation. Further work remains to be done to assess
how this central government legislation will impact specific state-level reform efforts. Finally,
I will be drawing out the practical, on-the-ground implications of the act in terms of
investment and the likely success of various elements of reform included within the act.
The second project I have been working on is a review of India’s corporate governance
regime. Using the OECD Corporate Governance Principles as a baseline of international
standards, I am analyzing various recommended reforms to improve corporate governance
in India. My research so far suggests that the specificities of the Indian financial and business environment pose unique corporate
governance concerns that do not correspond directly with the political-economic context in which the current dominant “Anglo-
American” model of corporate governance has evolved. A broader historical perspective is necessary to appreciate these differences,
and to effectively “interpret” international standards for application in India.
The unique features of India’s business environment include a large public sector, with the government playing a historically
significant role in financial intermediation: banking, insurance and pensions funds. Thus, the largest institutional investors have
traditionally been government controlled. While economic liberalization and privatization has resulted in new opportunities for private
sector participation, reforms to the corporate governance regime lags behind. The disciplining pressure exerted by large institutional
investors (which can benefit small investors as well) has yet to be fully realized in India.
The contrast between old-economy and new-economy firms is a useful heuristic, notwithstanding, increasing convergence in
business and corporate-governance practices. A unique feature of the “old-economy” Indian private sector is the dominant role of large,
family-controlled conglomerates. These organizations occupied a privileged political position and rent-based profits during India’s first
four decades of protectionist economic policies. The socio-politics of corporate control that evolved in this context persist in various
forms, even while these companies have successfully extended their operations into “new economy” ventures. On the other hand,
several successful “start-up” Indian companies providing information technology services reflect the greatest strides in following
corporate governance best practices. Accordingly, one ironic dimension of the current political backlash in the United States against
outsourcing is that the companies who actually perform the outsourced services are the most effective “ambassadors” of the international
management and corporate governance standards promoted by the United States.
Following a decade of sustained successful economic liberalization in India, the private sector is assuming greater importance
as increasing reliance is placed on it for generating economic growth. Privatization is shifting previously government-controlled
functions to the private sector, and India’s infrastructure needs can only be met through public-private coordination and increased
private investment. In this context, the legal mechanisms governing private sector investments and corporate control will necessarily
assume greater importance.
In addition to my research work, I have been invited to participate in a variety of the Bank’s activities here in India; most recently
I was included in the negotiations with representatives from the Government of India and the State of Tamil Nadu, regarding a Structural
Adjustment Loan (SAL).
To conclude, I encourage other Cornell students (undergraduate and graduate) to apply for the NSEP program, which provides
generous support for a combination of foreign language study and academic specialization.
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and should not be cited or attributed for any
purpose.

STUDENTS
Cornell Graduate Receives Tenure-Track Appointment
Congratulations to Dia Mohan, recent Ph.D. graduate from Cornell (August, 2003) who will start
a tenure-track assistant professorship in Fall, 2004, at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva,
New York, where she will be teaching courses cross-listed with Asian Studies, Women’s Studies,
Sociology and Anthropology. Dia has currently been working as a Lecturer at Cornell teaching a
course on sociology of sustainable development. Her dissertation, entitled Scripting Power and
Changing the Subject: The Political Theatre of Jana Sanskriti in Rural Bengal, examined the work of
an organization called Jana Sanskriti (Peoples Culture) which uses Augusto Boal’s internationally
renowned “theatre of the oppressed” in the Indian state of West Bengal. In the context of Bengal’s
Communist regime that has reorganized relations of production, she studied the causes, meanings, and
persistence of alienation and marginalization amongst landless, labouring men and women in rural
Bengal. Jana Sanskriti is composed of landless labourers who combine liberation theatre and pedagogy
to offer a redefinition of the state of their world and the meaning of development in rural West Bengal.
Through semi-structured interviews, life histories, and detailed observation, her dissertation
demonstrates the significant social and pedagogical effects of using creative media for fighting unequal
access to and control over processes of representation.
The Beginner's Guide to Bollywood
by Nilanjana Bhattacharjya
Last afternoon, I received in the mail a spectacular three-
CD set, The Beginner’s Guide to Bollywood; the first CD purports
to be “Vintage Bollywood,” the second CD “Funky Bollywood,”
and the third CD, “Modern Bollywood.” I have not unwrapped the
shrink-wrap yet, but I am struck to read that John Lewis, who writes
about jazz and world music for Time Out
in London, has compiled the set. The
small print also reveals that the series on
which this “guide” appears, Nascente
(part of the Demon Music Group Ltd., in
London,) also features the albums World
Music and Folk Music. Now that we have
learned how to carve up Bollywood into
three discrete categories, how do we
even begin to discuss the circumstances
that led to The Beginner’s Guide to
Bollywood’s release
The course I am teaching this
semester attempts to answer this question.
It’s called “Travel, Trade, and Transmission:
Viewing the World Industry,”
and is being offered this spring as an
upper level course in the music department
at Mount Holyoke College in South
Hadley, Massachusetts, where I am in residence this year. (The
Five College Fellowship is a dissertation fellowship; each of the
Five Colleges — Amherst, Smith, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and
the University of Massachusetts at Amherst — hosts a fellow as a
visiting faculty member, who usually teaches a course second semester
in his or her respective specialty.)
My course traces the ways in which political, economic,
and academic interests have converged to create what we now
recognize as the world music industry. Although the term “world
music” was supposedly coined by a small group of London record
store owners in the late 1980’s, American and European audiences
have been interested in music from “other places” for a very long
time, and my course focuses on this history. We begin with colonial
travel narratives, and then look at the gathering of archival
recordings, as well as the ethics surrounding music’s collection,
attribution, preservation, and distribution. These ethics, of course,
become particularly thorny as we consider developments in recording
technology, and the Internet; immigration
and the globalization of the music
industry further thicken the mix.
Throughout the course, students confront
the fact that world’s music identity depends
on dividing music into music from
“here” and “there,” and that “here” and
“there” are often in different places than
we would expect.
The world music industry not
only disorients our sense of space, but
also of time, which opens fascinating possibilities.
Consider the case of Janaki Bai,
a well-known courtesan singer, who was
recorded between 1906 and 1908 by the
British-owned Gramophone Co. of India,
which later became a subsidiary of EMI.
In 1993, Rounder Records (based in Cambridge,
Massachusetts,) re-released
Janaki Bai’s recording on a compilation, Vintage Music from India:
Early Twentieth-Century Classical and Light-Classical
Music. This compilation, enhanced by ethnomusicologist Peter
Manuel’s informative liner notes, and Zahir Anwar’s translations,
is sold on amazon.com to all of us who want to bask in courtesan
culture from a bygone era — even on our graduate student stipends.
Nilanjana Bhattacharjya is a Ph.D. Candidate at
Cornell University's Department of Music. She has recently been
hired in a tenure-track position in popular music by the Department
of Music at Colorado College, in Colorado Springs.
9

PUBLICATIONS
In the Time of Trees and Sorrows: Nature, Power, and Memory in Rajasthan by
Ann Grodzins Gold and Bhoju Ram Gujar. Duke University Press, Durham and
London, 2002.
by Dia Mohan
10
Ann Gold is an artist amongst anthropologists. In the Time of Trees and Sorrows is a
product of over 20 years of collaborative work with schoolteacher and long-time research
associate, Bhoju Ram Gujar, from Ghatiyali village in the Ajmer district of Rajasthan. This is a
richly textured and moving ethnography of the moral ecology of Sawar – a former kingdom
comprising 27 villages in the state of Rajasthan. Gold and Gujar capture through oral sources
and memory reconstruction the pivotal time from 1930-1950 when Sawar changed from being
a kingdom to becoming part of independent India.
In the chapter entitled Voice, Gold tells us that she and Gujar consistently suspected
each other’s assumptions of authority even as they relied on the other’s knowledge and
abilities to access particular sources, people and narratives. This kind of relationship is a key
foundation of the method and epistemology that makes this book. In other words, this book is
able to bring us a deep sense of Sawar’s ecological past because it is an outcome of Gold and
Gujar’s long term, co-produced ethnographic and historical research. The result is a remarkable
and unprecedented methodological adventure into ethnographically reconstructing memory
as history and moral ecology.
This book’s ancestry can be traced through a number of different genealogies. The most
significant of these are social ecology, environmental history, historical anthropology and
subaltern ethnography. The art of Gold’s anthropology lies first and foremost in her
methodological practice, her ability to draw upon various disciplinary modes of capturing and telling a story that is as moving as it is
a subtle, political commentary of both past and present.
In the foreground of our imaginations, Rajasthan is a timeless desert, where history does not alter the landscape. We can
thus immediately appreciate Gold and Gujar search of people’s memories for a simple question: what happened to the trees and what
role did the transition from past kingship autocracy to current democracy play in the making of Rajasthan’s deforested ecological
present The story of deforestation privileges the experience of subjects, rather than rulers, uncovering with minute detail what it was
like ‘for poor farmers and herders and labourers during the time of kings (and empire)’ (Gold and Gujar 2002: 5).
The principal story and lesson in the book is anchored in the fact that Sawar’s contemporary residents remember the time of
kings in ambivalent terms. The time of kings was both a time of trees and of sorrows. It was a time of nature’s abundance since
protecting trees, maintaining gardens and protecting certain wild animals while hunting others enhanced the reputation and status of
kings. However, it was equally a time of sorrow since Sawar’s residents could not ensure their own survival because they were not
allowed to harm the protected wild pigs, which systematically destroyed crops and other sources of their livelihood.
Weaving stories about the relation between king and subject, British empire and royalty, domestic ecology, forced labour,
and foreign into a complex, ambivalent, yet powerful story, Gold and Gujar bring their history to the postcolonial present of land
reform, abolition of forced labour, deforestation, and desert in Rajasthan. Here the ethnography is not the empiricist version where the
story that comes from the horse’s mouth (marginalized subjects of Sawar) is treated as unqualified truth. Giving someone’s account
of the past the status of truth is not the point. The point is rather to show that the richness of life is not undermined by what gets
projected and archived as hegemonic truth. The story then is as much in the telling, in the contradictions and disarticulations, in the
fact that people choose to retell particular stories about the oppression of wild pigs rather than the jajmani system. In other words,
part of the story is in understanding how power and history shape the very stories people choose to tell about the past in a particular
place. (Excerpt from http://www.india-seminar.com/2003/530/530 books.htm • Thursday, 2 October 2003)
Ann Grodzins Gold, South Asia Program, Courtesy Professor, Cornell University, and Professor of Religion and
Anthropology, Syracuse University, (Ph.D. University of Chicago 1984) specializes in teaching and research on popular religious
practice in modern India, gender and religion, and religions and the natural environment. Gold’s extensive work in the North
Indian state of Rajasthan has included studies of pilgrimage, performance, world-renunciation, women’s expressive traditions, and
cultural constructions of the environment. Among her publications are articles on spirit possession, semiotics of identity, the
practice of ethnography, women’s ritual storytelling, children’s environmental perceptions, moral interpretations of climate change,
memories as history, and three other books (published by the University of California Press):
Fruitful Journeys: The Ways of Rajasthani Pilgrims (1988);
A Carnival of Parting: The Tales of King Bharthari and King Gopi Chand (1992); and
Listen to the Heron’s Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India (coauthored with Gloria Raheja, 1994).
Dia Mohan is a 2003 Ph.D. Alumnus from Cornell and currently a Lecturer (see page 7 & 11).

FACULTY BRIEFS
Kaushik Basu (Department of Economics) has just published an edited book, India’s Emerging Economy: Performance and Prospects in the
1990s and Beyond, MIT Press, 2004. He is editor of the book and has contributed the introductory essay. The book is based on a conference that
he had organized at Cornell in April, 2002. He has just begun writing a monthly column on South Asia and Economics for BBC Online. With Oxford
University Press he has two ongoing projects. OUP is about to publish a two-volume set of his Collected Theoretical Papers in Economics; and he
has taken over as chief editor of a flagship project of the Press called Oxford Companion to Economics India. This will be a reference volume with
entries on around 250 topics related to the Indian economy. With five members on the editorial advisory board and over 100 contributors, the book
will take a while to produce but is aimed to be the major reference on the subject. On May 7-9, 2004, he is organizing a conference on “75 Years
of Development Research” at Cornell. The conference will bring in prominent social scientists from all over the world, including India and Pakistan.
Anne Blackburn, (Department of Asian Studies) participated in Duke University’s symposium on Global Flows and the Restructuring of Asian
Buddhism in an Age of Empires in February, 2004. She will participate in Syracuse University’s symposium, Drawing a Line in the Water:
Religious Boundaries in South Asia, in April, 2004. She expects to return to Sri Lanka during July - August, 2004, for research towards her book
in progress, Horizons Not Washed Away: Buddhism, Colonialism and Modernity in Lanka. She was invited to Harvard University for Spring, 2005,
as Numata Visiting Professor in Buddhist Studies and will be Society for the Humanities Fellow for Fall, 2005, working under the theme
‘translation’ on sections of her new book mentioned above.
Ann Grodzins Gold, (South Asia Program, Cornell University and Departments of Anthropology and Religion, Syracuse University), was
presented the Chancellor’s Citation for Exceptional Academic Achievement in February at Syracuse University and in March, together with Bhoju
Ram Gujar, for their coauthored book, In the Time of Trees and Sorrows, the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize from the Association
for Asian Studies for “best English-language work in South Asian studies,” published in 2002.
David Henderson (Department of Mathematics) is putting finishing touches on the Third Edition of Experiencing Geometry text which will be in
print August 2004. As in the previous editions it contains South Asian content about geometry in the Sulba Sutram and some shorter mentions of
later contributions from India. The new edition is David W. Henderson and Daina Taimina, Experiencing Geometry: Euclidean and Non-Euclidean
with Strands of History, Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2005.
Kenneth A.R. Kennedy (Departments of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Anthropology and Asian Studies) Became Senator of the University
Senate (2003 - 2006), Member of the Undergraduate Admissions Committee (2004 - 2007), and Member of the University Lectures Committee
(2002 - 2005), and has two more publications to his credit: “The uninvited skeleton at the archaeological table: The crisis of palaeoanthropology
in South Asia in the twenty-first century,” in Asian Perspectives 42:(1): 329 - 351, 2003 and “Resolutions of the Proceedings of the Seventysecond
Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, Tempe Arizona in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology,
122:387-388, 2003.
Kathryn March (Department of Anthropology) continues to work on Digital Himalaya (see South Asia Newsletter, Spring 03, page 4) and has also
begun (with support from both Asian Studies and the South Asia Program) to develop web-based materials for the Nepali language instruction. She
spent the month of November, 2003, in Nepal to both supervise the Cornell-Nepal Study Program and to begin a new research project on Tamang
migration into wage labor in and out of Nepal). She gave a number of guest lectures, including one at Martin Chautari, at the Social Science Baha
and at Tribhuvan University and public interviews, including one for Nepal television.
Dia Mohan (Department of Rural Sociology, see page 7) Publications: Book Review of In the Time of Trees and Sorrows: Nature, Power, and
Memory in Rajasthan by Ann Grodzins Gold. Forthcoming in Seminar. Issue on Restoration and Renewal, October, 2003. Online edition URL:
http://www.india-seminar.com/semframe.htm; “Re-imagining community: Scripting power and changing the subject through Jana Sanskriti’s
political theatre in rural north India” Forthcoming in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. 2004, 33 (2); “The Political Theatre and Practice of
Jana Sanskriti: The Making of ‘Popular Culture’” Forthcoming in South Asian Popular Culture. Spring 2004.
Debali Mookerjea-Leonard (Department of Asian Studies) recently completed her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She also won the
Percy Buchanan Prize for the best graduate research paper on South Asia at the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs, 2003. In December she
presented a paper on “Transnational Migration and the Politics of Identity” at the Women and Migration in Asia conference organized by the
Developing Countries Research Centre, University of Delhi. One of her articles was published in the journal Genders and another is forthcoming
in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Mahesh Rangarajan (Department of History, South Asia Program) has the following recent publications: 2004: “Advantage Vajpayee”, Seminar,
No. 533, January 2004; Contributor, to Shepard Krech III, JR McNeill and Carolyn Merchant ed., Encyclopedia of World Environmental History,
Routledge, New York and London, 2004; “The Raj and the Natural World, The campaign against ‘dangerous beasts’ in colonial India,” in John
Knight ed., Animals in Asia: Cultural Perspectives, Routledge Curzon Press, London and New York, 2004. Lectures given/ to be given include “
A political History of the lion in India”, Yale South Asia Program, 25 February 2004 and “Battles For Nature,” Center for the Study of Population,
Institutions and Change, Indiana University, Indianapolis, Birmingham, March 5, 2004 and a paper “From Princely symbol to conservation icon:
A political history of the lion in India,” at the workshop on History and Theory, Subaltern Pasts, Popular Futures, University of California, Irvine,
March 13 2004.
Norman Uphoff (CIIFAD, Department of Government and International Agriculture) spent ten days in India at the end of January making field
visits in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh to consider farmers’ experience with the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) that he and colleagues have
been introducing in South Asia and elsewhere. After serving as a resource person for an Asian Productivity Organization seminar in Colombo, Sri
Lanka, in December, he participated in a national SRI workshop at the Agrarian Research and Training Institute on December 22. Plans to
participate in a national SRI workshop for Bangladesh being held in Dhaka December 24 were thwarted by difficulties in getting a visa planned. SRI
was introduced in Andhra Pradesh for the first time in the 2003 kharif (summer) season, with 300 evaluation trials on farmers’ fields across all 22
districts of the state. Practically all were positive, and some were very positive. The first 12 results reported showed a yield range of 4.3-6.4 tons/
ha with conventional methods and 8.5-12.2 t/ha with SRI. This was with short-maturing varieties. When longer-maturing varieties were harvested,
the yield was as high as 15.75 t/ha.
11

Grad conference, continued from page 6
interrogated the problems researchers face when attempting to
discuss violence: what constitutes violence How can it be
defined How do we (as researchers) represent violence without
becoming implicated in it At what point can say “this is where
violence begins”
Saturday’s second panel, “Unsettling Frontiers: Border,
State, and Identity Formation,” chaired by Jason Cons, offered
papers that shifted the growing debate over real and metaphorical
borders in South Asia—ranging from reexaminations of partition
to the growing importance of diaspora studies—into new territory.
Papers addressed the cross-border politics in the rise of Nepali
nationalism in literature (Mark Flmmerfelt, Chicago), analyzed
surveillance, geography, and subject formation along the postpartition
border between India and East Pakistan (Haimanti Roy,
University of Cincinnati), explored World War II pan-Asianism in
the India-Chinese-Burmese supply front (Lim Tai Wei, Cornell
University), and pushed border-theory towards understanding the
relationship between cross-border migration, the state, and ethnic
identity formation in the Nepali Thangmi (Sara Shneiderman, Cornell
University.
The conferences final panel addressed “Methods, Tactics,
and Postcolonial Historiographies” and was chaired by Farhana
Ibrahim. This panel offered a range of papers pushing questions
of method in South Asian Studies in new directions. Papers urged
for a reconsideration of Subaltern Studies within the field of
Archeology (Teresa Raczek, University of Pennsylvania), raised
questions around memory and partition (Sarah Khokor, Johns
Hopkins), offered innovative ways to imagine architectural, social,
and structural resistance through a semi-fictional history of urban
design and transformation in Mumbai (Rupali Gupte, Cornell), and
presented thoughts on examining questions of witness and freedom
of information through studies of scandals in postcolonial India
(Maya Dodd, Stanford). Central to each of the papers was a concern
with what constitutes primary sources for research and the need
to critically open these sources up for a more nuanced analysis.
Each of the chairs offered detailed responses to their
panelists’ papers that raised questions about individual research
and located the papers in relation to one another and within larger
emerging questions in South Asian studies. Each of the panels
was followed by a lively question and answer session. Overall,
more than 150 people attended the conference over the course of
the weekend. Attendees came from Cornell, universities relatively
close to Cornell (such as Syracuse and Colombia), and far
(University of Michigan and Washington University). Overall, we
were overwhelmed by the responses, participation, and the
outstanding quality of the papers presented at the conference. We
look forward to making this an annual event.
Funding for the conference was provided by: The South
Asia Program, Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies,
Polson Institute for Global Development, Department of Art History,
Department of English, Department of Anthropology, Department
of Comparative Literature and SAAPAA. For a complete list of
papers and abstracts, visit: http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/
SouthAsia/gradconference/index.asppage=schedule.
Panel participants, Anoop Mirpuri and Nosheen Ali
South Asia Program Staff
Alaka Basu, Director 255-8493
Anne Stengle, Administrative Manager 255-8493
Durga Bor, Newsletter Editor 255-8493
Sheila Anane, Work Study Office Assistant 255-8910
for an unabridged copy of this newsleteter visit:
Website: http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/southasia
South Asia Program
Cornell University
170 Uris Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-7601
(607)255-8493
Please recycle this newsletter.