Benjamin Siegel, an assistant professor of History at Boston University and a former fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, will discuss his new book “Hungry Nation: Food Famine, and the making of Modern India”, alongside commentators Prakash Humar, an associate professor of History and Asian Studies at Penn State University, and Rachel Berger, and associate professor of History at Concordia University.
About the Book:
This ambitious new account details independent India’s struggle to overcome famine and malnutrition in the twentieth century. Siegel explains the historical origins of contemporary India’s malnutrition epidemic, showing how food and sustenance moved to the center of nationalist thought in the final years of colonial rule. Hungry Nation interrogates how citizens and politicians contested the meanings of nation building and citizenship through food, and how these contestations receded in the wake of the Green Revolution. This is the story of how Indians challenged meanings of welfare and citizenship across class, caste, region, and gender in a new nation-state.
Sponsored by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
