Pervez Hoodbhoy seminar given as part of the Modern South Asian Seminar series in October 2023 What had been a relatively small gap in 1947 between Pakistan and India is turning into an ever widening chasm. Given the common origins of these two countries what essential differences led to the present situation? Or were the trajectories predetermined? After discussing historical similarities and differences, I will explore whether Pakistan can now choose a different future for itself. Pervez...

Ajay Skaria - University of Minnesota, speaks at the Oxford South Asian Intellectual History Seminar on 1 May 2023. The figures of the neighbor and friend are ubiquitous in Gandhi’s writings. While he himself assumes he is only reaffirming old figures, something truly radical happens in his writings (as in those of his sharpest critic, Ambedkar). Both write at a time when a modern commandment, so to speak, exemplified in the categorical imperative, is displacing the Biblical and other...

Miftah Ismail Pakistan’s former Minister of Finance gives a lecture Many Pakistani colonial institutions such has the bureaucracy, the judiciary and especially the army have evolved into self-perpetuating elite institutions that resist change and seek to maintain the status quo. And over the years they have co-opted politicians, religious leaders, the landed gentry and also large industrial conglomerates and together they have neither pursued inclusive economic growth nor a liberal, tolerant...

Zaib un Nisa Aziz (University of South Florida, Tampa) speaks at the Oxford South Asian Intellectual History Seminar on 13 March 2023. For queries, please contact seminar convenor at [email protected] At the turn of the twentieth century, the global imperial order was in peril. In cities across the world, revolutionary factions emerged where nationalists deliberated radical, even violent paths to a post- imperial world. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin belonged to and wrote of this world – a world...

Vikram Visana (University of Leicester) speaks at the Oxford South Asian Intellectual History Seminar on 7 March 2023. Uncivil Liberalism studies how ideas of liberty from the colonized South claimed universality in the North. Recovering the political thought of Dadabhai Naoroji, India’s pre-eminent liberal, this book focusses on the Grand Old Man’s pre-occupation with social interdependence and civil peace in an age of growing cultural diversity and economic inequality. It shows how Naoroji...

Sarah Ansari (Royal Holloway, University of London) speaks at the Oxford South Asian Intellectual History Seminar on 31 Oct 2022 South Asia’s transition from colonialism to independence in 1947 was undoubtedly one of the most momentous events of the twentieth century. Not surprisingly perhaps, its early postcolonial years have come to exercise a great pull for a range of scholars, who explore this key period, on the one hand, to ask questions about colonial-era legacies or continuities, and,...

Luna Sabastian (Northeastern University- London) speaks at the Oxford South Asian Intellectual History Seminar on 7 Nov 2022. Luna Sabastian is Assistant Professor in History at Northeastern University - London. Prior to assuming this position, she held a postdoc at Cambridge University, from where she also received her PhD in 2020. Her work focuses on modern Indian political thought. She is writing a book titled ‘Indian Fascism?’. Among its highlights is an exploration of Savarkar's...

Freedom Between Order and Chaos: Reading a Political Satire From India Jyotirmaya Sharma (University of Hyderabad) speaks at the Oxford South Asian Intellectual History Seminar on 16 May 2022. For queries, please contact seminar convenors at saih@history Hasyarnava or The Ocean of Mirth, a medieval Sanskrit political satire, delineates two compelling themes that require serious consideration. First, the Indic traditions underline the centrality of order in a polity. This preoccupation is...

In 2019, the Indian government unilaterally revoked the autonomy of the disputed region of Kashmir amidst one of the harshest and longest military blockades and communications blackouts in history of the region In 2019, the Indian government unilaterally revoked the autonomy of the disputed region of Kashmir amidst one of the harshest and longest military blockades and communications blackouts in history of the region. While the move was primarily justified as a national security imperative...

Talk by Cemil Aydin from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Cemil Aydin (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) speaks at the Oxford South Asian Intellectual History Seminar on 6 June 2022. For queries, please contact seminar convenors at [email protected]. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Alicia Decker (Penn State) as part of the Conference - Expulsion: Uganda’s Asians and the Remaking of Nationality Between October 2 and December 31, 1982, nearly 80,000 Banyarwanda – most of whom were citizens of Uganda – were violently expelled from their homes by state operatives in Mbarara and Bushenyi Districts. Approximately half fled to neighboring Rwanda, while the rest crowded into existing refugee settlements in the southwest or found themselves stranded on the Ugandan side of the...

Anneeth Kaur Hundle (UC Irvine) as part of the Conference - Expulsion: Uganda’s Asians and the Remaking of Nationality In this short talk, I offer a synopsis of my forthcoming book and its core interventions. Namely, I recenter contemporary Uganda within scholarly discussion on the 1972 Asian expulsion. I assess the exceptional ways in which the 1972 Asian expulsion is understood within global knowledge formations, arguing that expulsion is a “critical event” with lingering effects and...

Shobana Shanker (Stonybrook) as part of the Conference - Expulsion: Uganda’s Asians and the Remaking of Nationality Most accounts of Idi Amin’s expulsion of Asians from Uganda in 1972 assume that African leaders and the Organization of African Unity were largely silent or unmoved to action. This interpretation assumes that Africans understood the Asian expulsion as a political problem—by contrast, I argue that Africans understood the question of Indian settlers as a fundamental problem of the...

Round table discussion

Ammar Ali Jan (Haqooq-e-Khalq Movement) speaks at the Oxford South Asian Intellectual History Seminar on 17 January 2022. For queries, please contact the seminar convenor at [email protected]. This talk will discuss salient features of authoritarian rule in Pakistan. First, the permanent state of emergency that shapes political life in the country fuels arbitrary and whimsical forms of governance. The perpetual violation of the constitution by the ruling classes tells us that rather than...

Sudipta Sen (University of California, Davis) speaks at the Oxford South Asian Intellectual History Seminar on 26 April 2021.

Sundar Sarukkai (Centre for Society and Policy, IISc) speaks at the Oxford South Asian Intellectual History Seminar on 10 May 2021. For more information on the event, see here. For queries, please contact the seminar convenor at [email protected]. Please note that there were some unavoidable technical difficulties during this talk, which have impacted the quality of the recording.

Sumathi Ramaswamy (Duke University) speaks at the Oxford South Asian Intellectual History Seminar on 31 May 2021.

Durba Ghosh (Cornell University) speaks at the Oxford South Asian Intellectual History Seminar on 7 June 2021.

Saili Palande-Datar gives the fourth and final presentation on the second day of the Maharashtra Studies Conference.

Bina Sengar gives the third presentation on the second day of the Maharashtra Studies Conference.

Sachin Ketkar gives the second presentation on the second day of the Maharashtra Studies Conference.

Anjali Nerlekar gives the first talk on the second day of the Maharashtra Studies Conference.

Rahul Sarwate gives the fourth presentation on the first day of the Maharashtra Studies Conference.