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
SAI’s Annual Symposium, ”South Asia Regionalism: Workshops on Shared Challenges and the Way Forward’ will take the form of workshops to highlight SAI’s ongoing multi-year interfaculty research projects. April 24 & 25, 2014, Charles Hotel, Cambridge, MA.
Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School, talks about how emerging markets throw up opportunities and why these very triggers may turn into impediments.
In this podcast, Harleen Singh, Brandeis, and Thomas Lamont, Groton School, discuss the lives and impact of three Indian women who played crucial roles during different eras of modern Indian history: Lakshmi Bai, Indira Gandhi, and Indira Mayawati.
This multi-university Boston Water Consortium, includes Harvard, MIT, Tufts and BU, and organizes monthly roundtable discussions to identify a common language around understanding the various issues related to water. The group met on April 15 at a dinner hosted by SAI and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Providing access to water for an expanding urban population within a stressed and aging water infrastructure creates unprecedented challenges. These challenges are further exacerbated in South Asia. As part of SAI’s Annual Symposium, Shafiqul Islam of Tufts will lead a workshop on April 25 about urban water challenges.
On April 4, 2014, teachers from across Massachusetts gathered for the sixth annual Educators for Teaching India (EFTI) Conference, brought together high school and middle school educators from both private and public schools who are interested in teaching courses about India and South Asia. Listen to a podcast from the event, ‘Women’s Rights and Gender Based Violence: The Influence of the Education System.’
Hide and Seek” (Chuppan Chupai in Urdu) by Saad Khan and Saadat Munir is a Pakistani-Danish documentary that highlights the lives and concerns of non-straight people in Pakistan – some who identify as “gay” or “trans”, some who use other terms not in currency in the West.