LSE’s engagements in South Asia are almost as old as the LSE itself – much older than the modern countries of the region but of course very young compared to the civilisations of the subcontinent. In 1911–12, LSE founders Sidney and Beatrice Webb visited schools, colleges and other institutions in Lahore, Peshawar and Lyallpur (now in Pakistan), and later, Bombay (India) where they met with Sir Ratan Tata, the philanthropist-industrialist, and son of Jamsetji Tata. Sir Ratan would make an endowment for a Professorial Chair the following year to encourage research on India’s social policy, economy & labour – its first incumbent would be Major The Rt Hon. The 1st Earl of Attlee, Clement Richard Attlee (later Prime Minister of Great Britain, 1945–51); in the same year (1912–13), Mr Nandlal Maneklal Muzumdar from India became the first non-European President of the LSE Student’s Union.
Building on what Sir Ratan started, LSE appointed world-famous scholars like R.H. Tawney, T. H. Marshall and Richard Titmus. With Director William Beveridge and others, they helped shape the rise of the British welfare state, but they also began a long tradition of close mutual relations between South Asia and the LSE -- whose greatest fruits have been visible over the last century in the generations of fine minds arriving at LSE for higher studies, several of whom in later life became presidents, prime ministers, chief justices, parliamentarians, business leaders, diplomats, thinkers, activists, barristers, academics and Nobel laureates in their countries. They include President K R Narayanan (India) who studied with Sir Harold Laski; Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba (Nepal); Diplomats Munir Butt (Pakistan), Abul Fateh (Bangladesh); Attorney General Makhdoom Ali Khan (Pakistan); leaders Tyronne Fernando (Sri Lanka) and Abdul Qayyum Khan (Pakistan); Justices Mustafa Kamal (Bangladesh) and Dorab Patel (Pakistan); economists I G Patel (ex-Director of LSE, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India), A. S. Jayawardene (former Governor, Central Bank of Sri Lanka), Syed Ali Raza (former President of the National Bank of Pakistan); and trade unionist and women’s activist Vivienne Goonewardena (Sri Lanka), to name but a few. Dr B R Ambedkar, author of the Constitution of independent India, completed his PhD at LSE in the early 1920s; and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen taught at LSE before moving to the US.
Today students from South Asia are among the most numerous and most active at LSE, studying subjects throughout the School. The region is also prominent in the interests of over 75 faculty members across all disciplines and subjects through their teaching, research, comparative analysis and travel.
LSE has proudly hosted heads of state, key economic leaders and public figures like Nobel Laureates Muhammad Yunus from Bangladesh, and Aung San Suu Kyi from Myanmar.
It is thus altogether appropriate that LSE has created a South Asia Centre. The Centre will build new bridges between LSE and the subcontinent as well as continue its rich inheritances. A key inspiration for the Centre is the growing importance of South Asia to processes of globalisation. Its agenda is not only to look at local culture, economy, and social conditions but to look from the various perspectives of South Asia at the world as a whole. I am proud of the LSE’s leadership not just in the relations between the UK and South Asia, but between the world and South Asia.
Craig Calhoun
President & Director
London School of Economics and Political Science