Join us for the conference, “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
Chairs:
• Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University
• Radhika Singha, Retd. Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Visiting Professor at Shiv Nadar University
Presenters:
• P. Arun, Mittal Institute India Fellow 2025
• Midori Ogaswara, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria
• Robert Rahman Raman, Assistant Professor, Department of History, SRM University Andhra Pradesh
• Javed Iqbal Wani, Senior Assistant Professor at the School of Legal and Socio-Political Studies, Dr. B.R Ambedkar University Delhi
(Please note: Midori Ogaswara will be joining the seminar virtually.)
