This year, with the generous support of the Prasad family, the South Asia Institute has funded four Harvard College undergraduate students from various disciplines to study and complete internships in India this summer on issues ranging from the role of media in Indian democracy to environmental governance.
On Monday, May 5, SAI hosted a book talk with prominent Indian historian Romila Thapar about Thapar’s most recent book, The Past Before Us: Historical Traditions of Early North India, which is a panoramic survey of the historical traditions of North India. In the book, Thapar reveals a deep and sophisticated consciousness of history embedded in the diverse body of classical Indian literature.
“This is not an India problem, or a South Asia problem. It is global,” said Lakshmi Iyer, Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School at SAI’s webinar ‘Women in Politics: The Case of India.’ Iyer was referring to the fact that women comprise only 21 percent of national parliaments worldwide.
Melissa Theiss, a junior psychology concentrator at Harvard College, will be interning this summer at VidyaGyan with support from a SAI internship grant. VidyaGyan is a school for rural underprivileged students in Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, India that takes an innovative approach to providing transformational education for students from 6th to 12th grades
On Thursday, May 1, Muhammad Zahir, SAI’s Aman Fellow for the spring semester, shared his ongoing archaeology research at a seminar titled ‘Modern Ethnicities and Ancient Graves: The Deconstruction and Re-Analysis of the Protohistoric Cemeteries and Ethnic Origin Stories in Pakistan.’
This summer, over 30 undergraduates and graduate students will be in South Asia for research and internships, on topics ranging from the role of media in Indian democracy, Sanskrit study, to postwar resettlement in Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka.
On April 29, SAI hosted a book talk with Ramachandra Guha, who discussed his new book Gandhi Before India. The event, which took place at the Harvard Book Store with a packed audience, was moderated by Pratap Bhanu Mehta. Guha’s book, Mehta said, was a critical component of this new literature and was a monumental biographical account of Gandhi in South Africa. [Video]
SAI held its Annual Symposium on April 24 and 25 titled ‘South Asia Regionalism: Workshops on Shared Challenges and the Way Forward.’ The workshops highlighted and showcased ongoing faculty research projects supported by SAI. Topics included mobile technology, disaster response and mental health, urbanism in South Asia, urban water challenges, religion and secularism, and the informal economy.
“Hope is an element in which people take action, and energize themselves out of poverty,” said Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, Founder and Chairperson of BRAC, at the South Asia Institute Annual Harish C. Mahindra lecture on April 24, 2014. BRAC is the world’s largest NGO dedicated to development and fighting poverty, and Abed’s lecture provided the 150 attendees with an enlightening account of the extraordinary accomplishments of the global organization.
The Harvard College Pakistan Students Association (HCPSA) hosted its inaugural Harvard College Pakistan Weekend (HCPW), Ensuring Economic Progress in the Pakistan of the Future, on April 19th and 20th. The conference provided students from Harvard and other universities the opportunity to engage with experts on a range of issues relating to Pakistan’s economic future. The goal was to offer an alternative narrative on Pakistan by bringing together leading industry experts to discuss the pertinent topics shaping the future of the country.
On Friday, April 18, SAI traveled to the West Coast for the first event in its San Francisco Series, ‘Conversations with Harvard Faculty,’ Diana Eck, FAS and HDS, presented on the Mapping the Kumbh Mela project, a SAI interdisciplinary research initiative that studies the largest human gathering in the world