Chair: Madhav Khosla, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Theory, Department of Government, Harvard University
On April 25, Nepal was hit by a devastating earthquake. Almost 5000 people have died and the numbers are steadily increasing. The full scale of losses in terms of human casualties, homes destroyed and cultural heritage reduced to rubble is still not known. The earthquake has tested the already limited resolve of the Nepali state, which is struggling to cope and respond to the disaster – especially in rural areas. In this backdrop, what is the current situation on the ground and challenges ahead for the government? How did Nepal get here and could a functional political order have equipped the country to deal with this better? What will be the possible political implications of this disaster – in terms of the quest for a new constitution? What has been the role of India in relief efforts – and in general in Nepal? Where does the rest of the international community come in? The talk will focus on these and related issues.
Note: This event was originally scheduled to be titled ‘Remaking a nation: Nepal’s tryst with peace, constitutionalism and sovereignty.’
Sanchita Saxena,Director of the Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies, Berkeley; Executive Director, Institute for South Asia Studies, UC Berkeley
Fauzia Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies, Miami University; SAI Research Affiliate
Chair: John A. Quelch, Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; Professor in Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health
By analyzing the garment sector through the lens of domestic coalitions, Made in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka: The Labor Behind the Global Garments and Textiles Industries presents new and innovative ways of conceptualizing the garment and textiles industries that include the possibility for change and resistance from a vantage point of cooperation among key groups, rather than only contention. The book utilizes the established policy networks framework, which has traditionally only been applied to the United States and European nations, but expertly adapts it to countries in the global South. Saxena’s domestic coalitions approach, which can be thought of as a precursor to a full policy network, differs from the policy network approach in crucial ways by highlighting the importance of other actors or facilitators in the network, recognizing that interactions among stakeholders are just as important as interactions between groups and the state, as well as the incentives associated with expanding the existing coalition.
Luke Patey, Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies
Discussants:
Rohit Chandra, PhD candidate, Harvard Kennedy School
Ahmad Al-Mahi, MPA candidate, Harvard Kennedy School
Note: Due to heightened security because of visiting dignitaries, please enter the Rubinstein building from the JFK park entrance on October 2. Non-Harvard attendees should contact Rohit Chandra (rchandra@fas.harvard.edu) ASAP otherwise they may be unable to enter the building.
For over a decade, Sudan fuelled the rise of China and India’s national oil companies. But the political turmoil surrounding the historic division of Africa’s largest country, with the birth of South Sudan, challenged Asia’s oil giants to chart a new course. The outbreak of conflict in South Sudan last December only deepened the instability and insecurity and sent Chinese and Indian diplomats scrambling to reinvigorate their foreign policies to protect their interests and bring an end to the conflict.
The lecture will discuss the overseas investments of Chinese and Indian national oil companies, their close ties with their respective governments in Beijing and New Delhi, and experiences with political and security risks in Sudan and South Sudan. It draws from Luke Patey’s recent book The New Kings of Crude: China, India, and the Global Struggle for Oil in Sudan and South Sudan. Beyond examining the economic and political impact of Chinese and Indian engagement in Sudan and South Sudan, the book argues that the two Sudans are examples of how Africa is shaping the rise of China and India as world powers.
Luke Patey is a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. His work focuses on the political economy of oil in Sudan and South Sudan, the role of China and India in Africa, and the global investments of Chinese and Indian national oil companies. He has written for the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Hindu, and VICE News. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Peking University (Beijing), the Social Science Research Council (New York), and the Centre d’études et de recherches internationales (Paris).
Ayesha Jalal, Mary Richardson Professor of History, Director, Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies, Tufts University
Discussant: Atiya Khan, SAI Aman Fellow
Chair: Ali Asani, Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures, Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Director, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program
Cosponsored by the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program
*Please note the updated date and time (December 3, 2014, 5:00PM).
Established as a homeland for India’s Muslims in 1947, Pakistan has had a tumultuous history that has unfolded in the vortex of dire regional and international conflicts. Beset by assassinations, coups, ethnic strife, and the breakaway of Bangladesh in 1971, the country has found itself too often contending with religious extremism and military authoritarianism. Now, in a probing biography of her native land amid the throes of global change, Ayesha Jalal provides an insider’s assessment of how this nuclear-armed Muslim nation evolved as it did and explains why its dilemmas weigh so heavily on prospects for peace in the region.
Attentive to Pakistan’s external relations as well as its internal dynamics, Jalal shows how the vexed relationship with the United States, border disputes with Afghanistan in the west, and the conflict with India over Kashmir in the east have played into the hands of the generals who purchased security at the cost of strong democratic institutions. Combined with domestic ethnic and regional rivalries, such pressures have created a siege mentality that encourages military domination and militant extremism.
Since 9/11, the country has been widely portrayed as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism. Assessing the threats posed by Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as American troops withdraw from Afghanistan, Jalal contends that the battle for Pakistan’s soul is far from over. Her definitive biography reveals how pluralism and democracy continue to struggle for a place in this Muslim homeland, where they are so essential to its future.
Based on a true story that sent shock waves through India in 1992, this drama concerns Sanwari (Nandita Das), a lower-caste woman with a husband, Sohan (Raghuvir Yadav), and two children, who is raising her family in a rural village. While it’s generally Sanwari’s nature to mind her own business and take care of her family, when she sees a neighbor woman being mistreated by an man from the city’s upper caste, Sanwari is outraged and speaks out in public about the incident. Shobha (Deepti Naval), a social worker, is impressed by Sanwari’s conviction and hires her as an assistant as the Indian government begins implementing a program to give greater rights and protection to Indian women. While she’s timid at first, Sanwari soon comes to value her work as a feminist activist, but as she becomes more outspoken against sexism and abuse of caste position, she earns the enmity of many powerful men in the community. First Sanwari and her family are shunned by the local leaders, and then a group of men from the town’s leadership take their revenge by subjecting Sanwari first to a savage beating and then to a gang rape. Sanwari, Shobha, and Sohan refuse to be intimidated or silenced, and when the local leadership refuses to bring Sanwari’s attackers to justice, they bring the crime to the attention of the national media, leading people across the country to demand justice for Sanwari — and for women all over India.
Depicts the extraordinary journey of Kashmiri women from loss, separation, pain, anger, helplessness to hope, faith, grit and determination thrown up by tragedies and circumstances around them. The film is about ‘women in wait’ for their loved ones, who went missing in the conflict ridden valley of Kashmir, India, in last two decades. Woven around the life of Parveena Ahanger, a Kashmiri mother and other such women, the narrative of the film interweaves their memories of loss, pain, struggle, separation vented cathartic that have formed into a resistance movement which in practicality relives their hope to trace a clue about their missing family members.
V.V. (Sugi) Ganeshananthan, Bunting Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University; Author of Love Marriage
Chair: Charles Hallisey, Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer on Buddhist Literatures, Harvard Divinity School
Book sale to follow event.
For three decades, Sri Lanka’s civil war tore communities apart. In 2009, the Sri Lankan army finally defeated the separatist Tamil Tigers guerrillas in a fierce battle that swept up about 300,000 civilians and killed more than 40,000. More than a million had been displaced by the conflict, and the resilient among them still dared to hope. But the next five years changed everything.
Rohini Mohan’s searing account of three lives caught up in the devastation looks beyond the heroism of wartime survival to reveal the creeping violence of the everyday. When city-bred Sarva is dragged off the streets by state forces, his middle-aged mother, Indra, searches for him through the labyrinthine Sri Lankan bureaucracy. Meanwhile, Mugil, a former child soldier, deserts the Tigers in the thick of war to protect her family.
Having survived, they struggle to live as the Sri Lankan state continues to attack minority Tamils and Muslims, frittering away the era of peace. Sarva flees the country, losing his way – and almost his life – in a bid for asylum. Mugil stays, breaking out of the refugee camp to rebuild her family and an ordinary life in the village she left as a girl. But in her tumultuous world, desires, plans, and people can be snatched away in a moment.
The Seasons of Trouble is a startling, brutal, yet beautifully written debut from a prize-winning journalist. It is a classic piece of reportage, five years in the making, and a trenchant, compassionate examination of the corrosive effect of conflict on a people.
Sat Nov 1: Saint’s Day: Directors in Conversation
11:20 am A Brief History of Pakistani Cinema
Lecture by Iftikhar Dadi
12:00 pm Josh (104 minutes)
2:00 pm Q+A with Josh Director, Iram Parveen Bilal
3:00 pm Lunch
4:15 pm Zinda Bhaag (120 minutes)
6:30 pm Q+A with Zinda Bhaag Director Meenu Gaur &
Producer Mazhar Zaidi
7:30 pm Reception
Sun Nov 2: Bloody Sunday: Contexts of War
10:00 am Panel Discussion: Bollywood and Hollywood; Betwixt & Beyond
Ramyar Rossoukh, Richard Delacy, Kamran Ali
11:30 am Waar (140 min)
2:00 pm Discussion on Waar
3:30 pm Roundtable Screen Stories & the Lives of Others
There will be a free shuttle from Harvard Square. to Brown on Nov1st.
Jocelyne Cesari, Senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Visiting Associate professor in the Department of Government, Georgetown University; Director of Islam in the West, Harvard University
Chair: Asad Ahmed, Assistant Professor, Social Anthropology Program, Harvard University
In this book, Jocelyne Cesari explores the relationship between modernization, politics, and Islam in Muslim-majority countries. She contends that nation-building in these environments has produced national ideologies rooted in the politicization of Islam, rather than liberal democracies following the Western model. Cesari’s historical examination covers the post-WWII period to the Arab Spring and informs the book’s consideration of the role of Islam in contemporary Middle Eastern emerging democracies.
Moeed Yusuf,Editor of Pakistan’s Counterterrorism Challenge and Director of South Asia Programs at the US Institute of Peace
Chair: Adil Najam, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University
Dr.Yusuf has studied counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency responses in many countries including Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal and other non-South Asian countries. In his talk, he will draw upon his two most recent edited volumes, Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies in South Asia: Through a Peacebuilding Lens and Pakistan’s Counterterrorism Challenge to discuss the experience of South Asian countries with insurgencies, causes of their onsets, and the effectiveness of various strategies to counter them. He will apply these lessons to Pakistan’s current predicament. With 180 million people, the world’s fifth largest nuclear arsenal, and a festering insurgency internally and operating as a hub for cross-border militancy regionally, Pakistan remains a crucial security challenge for the U.S. He will shed light on the status of the terrorist threat to the Pakistani state and people, the opportunities and constraints in tackling it, and the way forward.
The film is set against the backdrop of unrest in East Pakistan in the late 1960s leading up to the Bangladesh War of Liberation. In this setting, a small family must come to grips with its culture, its faith, and the brutal political changes entering its small-town world.
Fatima, a committed schoolteacher living the cosmopolitan high life in Karachi, has her life shattered when her nanny, Nusrat, inexplicably disappears. Josh is the story of Fatima’s search, despite the warning of her friends and family, for a dangerous truth in Nusrat’s feudal village. Musically intense and colorfully raw, JOSH takes a sneak peek inside Pakistan today- the way you didn’t know it.
