South Asia Centre

Pakistan High Commission hosts dinner for LSE students and alumni

On 21 October, the High Commission of Pakistan in London generously hosted a dinner for current LSE students and alumni who are based in the UK. The event was coordinated by the LSE SU Pakistan Society and members of the Pakistan Development Society and South Asia Centre were also in attendance. 

At the event, the High Commission announced some of the events they will be organising in 2017 to mark 70 years of independence. The LSE SU Pakistan Development Society also announced the launch of tickets for their Future of Pakistan Conference, which takes place on 19 November. Find out more about the conference and buy tickets.

Indian Parliamentarians visit LSE

On 21 October the South Asia Centre hosted a group of Indian Parliamentarians who were visiting the UK as part of a Foreign and Commonwealth Office study trip. During their visit to LSE the group had talks on the British and Indian economies in comparative perspective from Dr Swati Dhingra and the legal issues around Brexit from lawyer and LSE alumna Sarah George. They also had a chance to meet current LSE students and visit the statue of Social Reformer and LSE alumnus Dr BR Ambedkar. 

PhD welcome reception and Masterclass

This month the South Asia Centre held two events for PhD students: a welcome drinks reception and a Masterclass on Rethinking Quantitative Data. The reception offered doctoral researchers the opportunity to meet those from other years and disciplines working on the region. The workshop led by Dr Laura Zimmermann, SAC Visiting Fellow, explored the availability and diversity of data and how they can be used to greater effect by both quantitative and qualitative researchers. 

Director of the South Asia Centre's message for the new academic year [video]

Watch Dr Mukulika Banerjee discussing the motivations for establishing the South Asia Centre, how the SAC hopes to engage with people across the School and what is planned for the year ahead. 

Click here to see the video.

Supporting student societies

In September the SAC team met Raza Nazar, Ushma Shah and Tamanna Moushumi, the current presidents of the LSE Student Union Pakistan, India and Bangladesh societies respectively. The South Asia Centre looks forward to supporting their activities in the coming year.

2015/16 Annual Report

In its first year the South Asia Centre forged greater and more substantial links between South Asia and all aspects of LSE and stepped up the School's engagement with the region.

Read about all our activities - from LSE public events and the first ever India LSE Summit to our collaborations with students, alumni, faculty, regional experts and organsitions and the High Commissions - in our 2015/16 annual report, available here.

SAC Deputy Director Meets Alumni in Nepal

On 6 August Dr Nilanjan Sarkar, Deputy Director of the South Asia Centre, met with the Nepali alumni association in Kathmandu to discuss the South Asia Centre's plans and activities - particularly in relation to Nepal - and find out more about the careers that alumni had pursued since leaving LSE.

Farewell reception for Deputy High Commisioner of India to the UK Dr Virander Paul

The South Asia Centre, in partnership with the National Indian Students and Alumni Union UK, hosted a farewell reception for Deputy High Commissioner of India to the UK Dr Virander Paul. 

Dr Paul has been a strong advocate for the South Asia Centre supporting joint enterprises between the Indian Government and the South Asia Centre. This has included developing a Practioner in Residence Scheme, and a residential programme delivered at the LSE focusing on social inequality, injustice and empowerment affecting contemporary Britain. 50 research scholars and 8 government officers from across India took part in the programme, which was part of the 125th Birth Anniversary Celebrations of Dr B R Ambedkar.

To see more photos from the event click here. 

The event was supported by Rami Ranger CBE.

SAC Visit to Bangladesh

Dr Nilanjan Sarkar, Deputy Director of the South Asia Centre, visited Bangladesh from 18-21 June 2016, to meet prominent business leaders and alumni. He led an LSE delegation which included Professor David Lewis (Head of the Department of Social Policy & Member of the SAC Faculty Advisory Group), and prominent alumni Dr Mushtaque Chowdhury (Vice President, BRAC and member of the SAC Advisory Board) and Professor Imran Rahman (Vice Chancellor, University of the Liberal Arts Bangladesh). The meetings had the twin purpose of raising funds for the Centre, and to organise the first ever LSE Bangladesh Summit in Dhaka in 2017.

During the visit, Professor Lewis gave a public lecture, organised by ULAB, on "The Decline of Radical Development NGOs in Bangladesh".

Read more about his lecture in the news coverage here and here.

South Asia Centre completes first year

Yesterday the LSE South Asia Centre (SAC) celebrated its first anniversary. It has been a busy year: the SAC has hosted more than fifteen events and supported LSESU societies to run their own talks and conferences. South Asia @ LSE, the Centre blog, has expanded its remit considerably and produces regular academic analysis of topical debates.

The SAC also hosted the first LSE India Summit in Goa, and in February Professor Craig Calhoun became the first LSE Director to visit Pakistan as he participated in an official SAC visit. They also organised a range of events to mark the 125th birth anniversary of leading social reformer and jurist Dr BR Ambedkar, an LSE alumnus.

The team are looking forward to expanding engagement across LSE and South Asia over the coming year, with special events planned to mark 70 years of independence.

Click here to for more info about SAC's first year.

Dr Gagan Sood  (Assistan Professor in the Department of International History) has authored the following book, which has just been published by Cambridge University Press. 

India and the Islamic Heartlands: An Eighteenth-Century World of Circulation and Exchange

Based on the chance survival of a remarkable cache of documents, India and the Islamic Heartlands recaptures a vanished and forgotten world from the eighteenth century spanning much of today's Middle East and South Asia. Gagan Sood focuses on ordinary people - traders, pilgrims, bankers, clerics, brokers, scribes, among others - who were engaged in activities marked by large distances and long silences. By elucidating their everyday lives in a range of settings, from the family household to the polity at large, Sood pieces together the connective tissue of a world that lay beyond the sovereign purview. Recapturing this obscured and neglected world helps us better understand the region during a pivotal moment in its history, and offers new answers to old questions concerning early modern Eurasia and its transition to colonialism.

India's new High Commissioner to the UK H.E. Mr Navtej Sarna welcomed at the LSE

High Commissioner H.E. Mr. Navtej Sarna visited the LSE on March 9. He was hosted by the Director and President, Prof. Craig Calhoun who shared with him the vision and plans of the newly formed South Asia Centre; he also interacted with academics associated with the Centre working on issues of importance to India.

At the High Commissioner's suggestion, it was agreed that given the close proximity of the LSE and the HCI, as the two institutions are literally across the road, they will strengthen their ties through a new '100 Foot Journey Club' (#100FJC) that will host regular events and discussions on topical issues and research about India.

Professor Craig Calhoun has become the first LSE Director to visit Pakistan.

This was at the beginning of a week long trip around the country, including Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, where Professor Calhoun, along with Dr Mukulika Banerjee and Dr Nilanjan Sarkar, Director and Deputy Director of the LSE South Asia Centre respectively, met with Government ministers, students, alumni, and gave presentations at Universities in each city. 

Read about his meeting with PM Nawaz Sharif here  

You can see more highlights from the visit on our faceboook and twitter accounts.

Reception for LSE Alumni from Pakistan in the UK

On Tuesday 16th February 2016, the South Asia Centre held a reception for LSE Alumni from Pakistan in the UK where they met the LSE President & Director, Professor Craig Calhoun, and His Excellency Mr. S. Ibne Abbas, High Commissioner of Pakistan to the UK. 

Dr Mukulika Banerjee also spoke about the South Asia Centre and its imminent trip to Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.

Thanks to all alumni who came, and for the support given by members of the LSE SU Pakistan Society and LSE SU Pakistan Development Society. It was great to meet you and hope to see you at South Asia Centre events in the near future

Photos of the event are on our Facebook page here

LSE India Summit 2016

‘We live in a world where UBER, the largest taxi company, does not own taxis; Airbnb, the largest accommodation company, does not own rooms; Alibaba, the biggest retailer in the world, does not have a shop. In this world, the language of GDP, balance sheets, per capita income no longer make sense. We need a total redesign of how we look at global finance.’

     ~ Sam Pitroda, pioneer of India’s IT revolution, speaking at             the LSE India Summit in Goa  

The South Asia Centre hosted the first ever ‘LSE India Summit 2016’ at the Cidade de Goa on 28-30 January 2016.

Sponsored in full by Difficult Dialogues LLP, the Summit was immensely successful, with more than 300 people attended it over 3 days. 

Read more about the Summit here.

Details on panels and speakers here.

Twitter Hashtag used for this event: #LSEIndia2016 

The second delegation of Ambedkar Research Students had a successful visit, finishing with a reception hosted by the South Asia Centre on Friday 27th November. 

Whilst here, two of the students were interviewed by Rozelle Laha, from the Hindustan Times, which features in an article published in the Delhi edition on Wednesday 2nd December. 

The article is featured on page 19 of the Delhi edition. Click here  to view.

About the South Asia Centre logo

Sacred Fig (ficus religiosa), Pipal, Bodhi - this symbolises at once social, cultural, religious and ecological benevolence, representing a shared cultural geography and noetic economy. Find out more about the symbol and why it has been adopted as the LSE South Asia Centre logo here.

Who Gets Ahead? Caste, Class, and Socio-Economic Mobility in India 

This is a South Asia Centre workshop for LSE faculty & doctoral researchers

Tuesday 22nd November 2016

2:00 - 4:00pm

Graham Wallas Room, Old Building

Speaker: Ashwini Deshpande

Ashwini Deshpande is Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India. Her Ph.D. and early publications have been on the international debt crisis of the 1980s. Subsequently, she has been working on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action issues, with a focus on caste and gender in India, as well as on aspects of the Chinese economy: role of FDI in the reform process, regional disparities and gender discrimination. She has published extensively in leading scholarly journals. She is the author of Grammar of Caste: economic discrimination in contemporary India (2011) and Affirmative Action in India (2013).

She is the editor of: Boundaries of Clan and Color: Transnational studies of inter-group disparity,  along with William Darity, Jr. (2003); Globalization and Development: A Handbook of New Perspectives (2007); Captial  without borders: challenges to development (2010); and Global Economic Crisis and the developing world, with Keith Nurse (2012). 

Please email if you would like to attend. Academics and doctoral students who are working on these topics are particularly encouraged to attend. 

Cities of the Empire

This is a South Asia Centre '100 Foot Journey Club’ (#100FJC) event.

Wednesday 23rd November 2016

5:00-6:30pm

Wolfson Theatre, NAB

Speaker: The Hon Dr Tristram Hunt, MP

The Hon Dr Tristram Hunt, MP, will speak on the cities of Calcutta, Bombay and New Delhi, and their role in making the Empire over a century, drawing direct and close links between the colonial cities and their relationship with cities like Liverpool on the one hand, and Britain as a whole on the other. 

The Hon Dr Tristram Hunt, MP, is an intellectual and cultural historian specialising in urban pasts. He is Senior Lecturer in modern British history at Queen Mary University of London, and Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central. He is the author of Ten Cities that made an Empire  (2014).

This event is free and open to all. It is part of the Colony as Empire: Histories from Whitehall series. 

Please email if you have any queries.

My Liver is Bleeding

A LSE Arts Public Exhibition

Monday 28th November - Friday 9 December 2016

Mon-Fri 10am-8pm

Atrium Gallery, Old Building

In December 2015, photographer Magda Rakita and writer Mark De Rond travelled to Afghanistan to investigate how more than three decades of war and endemic violence has impacted the nation’s psyche.

MY LIVER IS BLEEDING presents 16 photographs by Magda Rakita taken during their visit to Afghanistan. It depicts the lives, struggles and hopes of the medical staff, the patients and their families as they attempt to address the mental health issues of a population surrounded by conflict.

More details can be found here.

Why do we need New Economic Thinking?

This is a South Asia Centre public lecture

Tuesday 29th November 2016

7:00-8:30pm

32L.G.03, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, LSE 

Speaker: Rob Johnson

Rob Johnson will be speaking on the role of finance, connecting his lecture to specifically emerging market economies.

Rob Johnson serves as President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and a Senior Fellow and Director of the Global Finance Project for the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in New York.

This event is free and open to open to all on a first come, first served basis. 

Please email if you have any queries. 

Making Politics Work for Development

An IGC report launch

Monday 5th December 2016

5:00-6:30pm

Thai Theatre, NAB

Fear of openly confronting the problem of politics can come in the way of achieving economic development goals. To help address this, the Development Research Group of the World Bank has prepared a report synthesising the vanguard of economics research on the functioning of political markets to understand its implications.

This report, Making Politics Work for Development, will be presented by its lead author Stuti Khemani (World Bank) and discussed by Ali Cheema (Centre of Economic Research Pakistan) and Gerard Padró i Miquel (LSE).

Click here for more information about the report, and here to register your attendence.

Leslie Knott, Filmmaker

This is a Polis Media Agenda Talk

Tuesday 6th December 2016

5-6pm

Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House

Leslie Knott is an award-winning filmmaker and photographer who has focused most of her career on documenting the lives of refugees.

In 2013, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Buzkashi Boys, a short feature shot on location in Afghanistan. In 2014, she received an Emmy nomination for “Kim Vs. Kabul” in Dan Rather Reports.  Knott has spent more than a decade working in Afghanistan, with many of her films focused on the lives of women.

More details on Leslie Knott and the Media Agenda Talks here.

‘The Bloomsbury Indians’: Writing Across the Tracks in Colonial London

This is a South Asia Centre public lecture which is part of the Colony as Empire: Histories from Whitehall series. 

Thursday 26 January 2017

6:30-8:00pm

Thai Theatre, NAB

Speaker: Susheila Nasta

‘Bloomsbury’ is often represented as a culturally dynamic space, the familiar crucible oftwentieth century Euro-American modernism where bohemians lived in squares but loved in triangles. Many of those very streets, squares and lodging houses which criss-cross its parameters were inhabited by several hundreds of Indian students, intellectuals and writers who had taken up residence at the heart of Empire through the 19th-20th centuries.

Drawing on recent research, Nasta’s lecture will reveal how the Indian presence in Bloomsbury began to shape a transnational global modernity, simultaneously shifting British perspectives and angles of vision. In mapping such material traces, one simultaneously encounters the fascinating characters who once walked its streets: novelist, public intellectual and BBC broadcaster, Mulk Raj Anand;  poet, editor and publisher, Tambimuttu; Labour councillor and Founding Editor of the Penguin Pelican series, Krishna Menon;  and gay Irish-Indian novelist, drama critic and journalist, Aubrey Menen. Although writing Britain from a range of different perspectives, this distinctive group were key to exposing the hidden contours of a differently inflected modernity situated both within and outside the European body.  

Susheila Nasta is professor in Modern Literature at the Open University. She has earlier held teaching and research positions at Queen Mary University of London, Cambridge and the University of Portsmouth. Nasta have always been interested in issues of cultural difference and diversity having grown up in India, Britain, Holland and Germany.  In 1984, she founded the famous literary magazine, Wasafiri: The Magazine of International Contemporary Writing, now housed at the Open University and co-published with Routledge.   

This event is free and open to all.

Please email if you have any queries.

Forgotten Soldiers of the Raj

This is a South Asia Centre public lecture

Wednesday 8th February 2017

6:30-8:00pm

32L.G.03, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields

Speaker: Shrabani Basu

Shrabani Basu will speak about the nearly one and a half million soldiers from the Indian subcontinent who fought in the British army in the First World War. Travelling from remote villages in India to the harsh trenches of Flanders and France for a war that was not of their making, they fought with unquestioning valour and loyalty, winning some of the highest bravery awards.  Despite being the largest colonial military contingent, their contribution to Britain’s military engagement is almost completely forgotten.

Shrabani Basu is a journalist and writer. Her latest book For King and Another Country: Indian Soldiers on the Western Front 1914-1918  (2015) tells, for the first time, the stories of Indian soldiers who went to the Western Front: from a Maharaja who fought for Empire to the Pathan who won the first Victoria Cross; from cooks and sweepers who accompanied the troops to the young pilots who brought down German planes; from the Indian Muslim soldiers who prayed to Mecca in the fields of France to the bonds that were forged in the mud and blood of the battlefields.  

This event is free and open to all. It is part of the Colony as Empire: Histories from Whitehall series. 

Please email if you have any queries.

Inglorious Empire: What the British did to India

This is a South Asia Centre public lecture

Date: TBC (Early March)

Venue: TBC

Speaker: Shashi Tharoor

Focusing on his latest book Inglorious Empire: What the British did to India (2017), Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes the argument that British imperialism in the Indian subcontinent was a form of enlightened despotism that would benefit the Indians, demonstrating how every supposed imperial ‘gift’, from the railways to the rule of law, was designed in Britain’s interests alone. This incisive reassessment of colonialism exposes to devastating effect the inglorious reality of Britain’s stained Indian legacy.

Dr Shashi Tharoor is a sitting Member of the Indian Parliament affiliated to the Congress Party.  Tharoor has a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in the US, and was named by the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1998 as a Global Leader of Tomorrow; he has authored fourteen previous books and has won numerous literary awards, including a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. 

This event is free and open to all. It is part of the Colony as Empire: Histories from Whitehall series. 

Please email if you have any queries.

Flights of Empire: Allies, Aeronautics, and Adversary in World War II Bangalore

This is a South Asia Centre public lecture

Wednesday 8th March 2017

6:30-8:00pm

32L.G.03, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields

Speaker: Jahnavi Phalkey

Jahnavi Phalkey will tell the little-known story of an aircraft base in Bangalore -- part of Britain’s Southeast Asia Command during World War II -- its relationship with Germany, and its use by British and allied armies to plan military action in Southeast Asia. Being able to use India as a base gave the British a strategic advantage in the region beginning from Burma to Japan. What is less known is its connection to the establishment of aeronautics research in independent India. 

Jahnavi Phalkey is Senior Lecturer in the History of Science and Technology at King’s College London. She is the author of Atomic State: Big Science in Twentieth Century India (2013).

This event is free and open to all.This event is free and open to all. It is part of the Colony as Empire: Histories from Whitehall series. 

Please email if you have any queries.    

Distorting History: Robert Clive and the Capture of Bengal in 1757

This is a South Asia Centre public lecture

Wednesday 17th May 2017

6:30-8:00pm

Alumni Theatre, NAB

Speaker: Roy Moxham 

Roy Moxham has made his mark in readers’ minds with his sensitive studies of the great hedge (2002) and tea (2003), highlighting the stark yet unknown consequences of British imperial rule in the subcontinent; he has also written a book on Phoolan Devi, India’s ‘Bandit Queen’ (2010). His forthcoming book The Theft of India (2017) deals with the human cost and consequences of Clive’s annexation of Bengal in 1757; while the Battle of Plassey (which led to the final defeat of Bengal is well-known, the tremendous human suffering and loss of life is a rarely discussed chapter in history. The Theft of India will be on sale at his lecture.

Roy Moxham grew up in Worcestershire. His varied and exciting life has seen him work on a Herefordshire fruit farm; as a tea planter in Nyasaland, and later Malawi – spending 13 years in Eastern Africa before returning to London in 1974 to set up a gallery of African art. He is a trained book and paper conservator, has worked at the Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Senate House library, University of London. From 2005, Moxham spends his time in writing and giving talks.

This event is free and open to all. It is part of the Colony as Empire: Histories from Whitehall series. 

Please email if you have any queries.   

Bacha Khan Lecture: The relevance of Bacha Khan and the non-violent Khudai Khidmatgar movement (1930-1947) in the contemporary world

Friday 18th November 

7:00pm-9:00pm

Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG

Speaker: Dr Mukulika Banerjee

Chair: Dr James Caron

Introductory note: Mr Ziauddin Yousafzai

Dr Mukulika Banerjee is Director of the South Asia Centre at LSE and Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology. She was awarded her doctorate from the University of Oxford where she worked on Bacha Khan, pubilshed as The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in the North West Frontier (2001). Mukuklika has since published several other books, most recently Why India Votes? (2014).

Dr James Caron is an academic and the Director of Centre for the Study of Pakistan (CSP) at SOAS. His academic research is on Pakhtuns, Pushto literature and history and politics of the region. 

Mr Ziauddin Yousafzai is from Swat, Pakistan. He is an activist and works on girl's education. He will briefly speak on his inspiration of Bacha Khan and Khudai Khidmatgar movement.

Organised by: Bloomsbury Pakistan 

Contact E-mail: info@bloomsburypakistan.org

St Antony’s Asian Studies Centre Seminar Programme: South Asian History 

11 October - 29 November 2016 (weekly)

Convened by Dr Faisal Devji, the seminars take place on Tuesdays at 2 pm in St Antony’s College, University of Oxford.

Full programme available here.

All are welcome. Enquires to asian@sant.ox.ac.uk
Abstracts for upcoming talks can be found on the College website

Black Chronicles - Photographic Portraits 1862-1948

18 May - 11 December 2016

National Portrait Gallery, St Martins Lane, WC2H 0HE

The National Portrait Gallery in partnership with Autograph ABP presents a unique ‘snapshot’ of black lives and experiences in Britain.

This important display of photographs reveal some of the stories of Black and Asian lives in Britain from the 1860s through to the 1940s.

Black Chronicles: Photographic Portraits 1862-1948 brings together some of the earliest photographs of Black and Asian sitters in the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection.

These are exhibited alongside recently discovered images from the Hulton Archive, a division of Getty Images. The display of over 40 photographs highlight an important and complex black presence in Britain before 1948, a watershed moment when the Empire Windrush brought the first group of Caribbean migrants to Great Britain.

In addition, Black Chronicles: Photographic Portraits 1862-1948 highlights new acquisitions including a series of portraits by Angus McBean, of Les Ballets Nègres, Britain’s first all-black ballet company and a selection of photographs of the pioneer of classical Indian dance in Britain, Pandit Ram Gopal, by George Hurrell.

This exhibition is free. 

For more info click here.

British Library South Asia Series

A series of talks based around the British Library's ‘Two Centuries of Indian Print’ project and the BL South Asia collection.

14, 21 and 28 November 2016

5-6:30pm 

The British Library, 96 Euston Road, NW1 2DB

Monday 14 November Dr Richard Williams (Oxford). Forgotten Music and Muted Women: gender, performance, and print in the British Library

Monday 21 November Neha Vermani (RHUL). Mughals on the menu: A probe into the culinary world of Mughal elite

Monday 28 November The ‘High’ and ‘Low’ of the Farce in Colonial Bengal: Bat-tala, Proscenium and Beyond

Click here for more info. No booking required. In case of queries contact Dr Layli Uddin at layli.uddin@bl.uk.

Image credit: Nathaniel Halhed's 'A Grammar of the Bengal Language' (Hoogly, 1778). British Library, T 6863. 

MN Srinivas Memorial Lecture 2016: Outside Caste?

A King's India Institute Lecture

Tuesday 29 November 2016

Old Anatomy Lecture Theatre (K6.29), Kings College Strand Campus

Speaker: Professor David Mosse (School of Oriental and African Studies)

Dr B.R. Ambedkar, whose 125th birth anniversary is celebrated this year (2016), provided a basis for social policy and law in India in relation to caste inequality and discrimination. However, the course he charted towards justice and common humanity in the age of equality and rationalism was frequently challenged by crosswinds of religion and nationalism.

Taking the separate cases of caste and caste-based discrimination among non-Hindus, and outside India — the exclusion of Christian and Muslim Dalits from provisions and protections as Scheduled Castes in India, and response to the outlawing of case discrimination in the UK — this lecture looks at various ways in which caste comes to be enclosed within religion (specifically Hinduism) and the nation, so as to restrict the field of social policy, exempt caste from law, and limit the social politics of caste.

Read more about the event here and click here to register (required). The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.