The 1st International Seminar of MINDAS in FY 2018

• Date：Tuesday, May 29, 2018 15:30 - 17:30
• Venue：Seminar Room (L)/#4073, 4th Floor, National Museum of Ethnology
• Language：English
• e-mail：mindas★idc.minpaku.ac.jp
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Abstract

My presentation will look at the challenges which India faced in territorially reintegrating itself as a newly independent nation. The break-up of Punjab and Bengal in 1947 presented extraordinary challenges. The hasty accession of over 550 princely states added even more complexity to the project of constructing a national political space which would incorporate indigenous identities based on language, culture and region. My presentation will focus on some of the key debates which took place between 1947 and 1956 over issues such as how a ‘region’ could be defined; the different ‘types’ of regions which existed within the body-politic; the challenge posed by ‘sub-regions’; and finally, the need to balance the region vis-à-vis pan-Indian authority.

Profile

GYANESH KUDAISYA teaches contemporary South Asian history at the National University of Singapore. He studied at the University of Delhi and the Jawaharlal Nehru University for his BA and Masters degrees and was a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Cambridge, from where he obtained his Ph. D. He has authored Region, Nation, ‘Heartland’: Uttar Pradesh in India’s Body-Politic (New Delhi, Sage, 2006), co-authored The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia (London, Routledge, 2000) and co-edited Partition and Post-Colonial South Asia, in 3 volumes (London, Routledge, 2008). His most recent work is A Republic in the Making, India in the 1950s (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2017).

Program

◆ Speaker
Dr. Gyanesh Kudaisya (Overseas Visiting Fellows, National Museum of Ethnology Associate Professor, National University of Singapore)

◆ Title
“Cartographies of the Nation and Region-Making: India in the 1950s”

• 15:30 - 15:35
  Introduction
  Minoru Mio (Professor & Director, the Centre for South Asian Studies, National Museum of Ethnology)
• 15:35 - 16:35
  Presentation
  “Cartographies of the Nation and Region-Making: India in the 1950s”
  Dr. Gyanesh Kudaisya (Overseas Visiting Fellows, National Museum of Ethnology Associate Professor, National University of Singapore)
• 16:35 - 16:50
  Tea Break
• 16:50 - 17:30
  Discussion
• 17:30
  Close