Join us for the seminar, “Colonial Surveillance in Asia.”
This seminar aims to explore the persistence and evolution of colonial surveillance under various imperial regimes in Asia. Colonial surveillance was an indispensable facet of imperial control across Asia. It operated through multifaceted mechanisms that were often repressive, coercive, racialized, and gendered, and were executed through measures such as policing, intelligence gathering, interception, detention, censorship, and propaganda. Such practices were driven by the imperial need for knowledge and control, and by anxieties surrounding the governance of colonial territories perceived as unstable or dangerous. Rather than being monolithic, colonial surveillance was shaped and adapted to local contexts, influenced by racial ideologies, national and transnational threats, anti-colonial movements, wartime exigencies, and other regional dynamics. Importantly, it operated across regional, national, and transnational scales. It focuses on the diverse strategies employed by colonial powers to assert control, revealing how colonial surveillance intersected with broader structures of power, resistance, and governance.
Date: Friday, December 19, 2025
Time: 9:30am – 12:30pm IST / 3:00pm – 6:00pm AEDT / 11:00pm – 2:00am EST
Venue: Lecture Hall 2, India International Center (Annex), New Delhi and on Zoom
Seminar Chair:
• Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University
Panel 1
Chair
Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University
Presenters:
• Midori Ogaswara, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria (joining virtually)
“Identifying Colonial Bodies: Japan’s Biometric Surveillance in Occupied Northeast China”
• P. Arun, Mittal Institute India Fellow 2025
“Perlustrating Messages: Postal and Telegraph Surveillance during India’s Freedom Movement”
Panel 2
Chair
• Radhika Singha, Retd. Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Visiting Professor at Shiv Nadar University
Presenters:
• Javed Iqbal Wani, Senior Assistant Professor at the School of Legal and Socio-Political Studies, Dr. B.R Ambedkar University Delhi
“Between Colonial Utility and Democratic Necessity: The Persistence and Transformation of Colonial Surveillance in Post-1947 India”
• Robert Rahman Raman, Assistant Professor, Department of History, SRM University Andhra Pradesh; and P. Arun, Mittal Institute India Fellow 2025
“Surveilling Strikes: Colonial State, Surveillance and Labour Protests in Late 1920s Bombay”
Selected copies of intercepted letters and telegrams, along with reactions to colonial surveillance will also be on display at the venue.
