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On January 25, 2014, the Center for South Asian Studies will be hosting a one-day symposium on "India as a Regional Power." Given India’s rising prominence in geopolitics, this symposium will consider regional dynamics in South Asia, with particular attention to India as perceived in and its impact on Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. It will also consider India’s northeast region, both within and beyond its borders. The symposium is bringing together an interdisciplinary group: journalists, a lawyer, and an anthropologist/graphic artist. Students, faculty, and community members are invited to join us for the day of conversation.
How Pakistanis See India
Mohammed Hanif, special correspondent for BBC Urdu, Karachi, Pakistan, and one of Pakistan’s preeminent fiction writers. He is the author of, A Case of Exploding Mangoes (2008), which was reviewed in such major publications as the New York Times, The Independent (UK), and The Guardian (UK). The book was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, short-listed for The Guardian First Book Award and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel. His most recent novel, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (2012), has similarly been reviewed in major publications, including the New York Times, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.
Overlooking East: Is India’s Engagement with its Look East Policy Trapped in its own Northeast?
Arijit Sen, Senior Editor, Northeast India, CNN-IBN. Sen has over a dozen years of experience as a print and television journalist with leading news outlets such as The Pioneer, India Today, and The Indian Express. At CNN-IBN, he covers the eight states of India’s northeast region and the neighboring countries of Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, and the Sino-Indian borders along Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim. He covers issues of conflict, armed struggle, peace negotiations, migration, and development, among others.
The Role of India and the UN in the search for Justice and Accountability in Sri Lanka
Bhavani Fonseka, lawyer and Senior Researcher, Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Fonseka is a human rights lawyer and activist, with a focus on assisting victims and affected populations in various parts of Sri Lanka. She has worked on a range of issues including the rights of the displaced, women, children, minorities, HIV/AIDS, land and legal issues. She has also been involved in and supported several key fundamental rights cases protecting the rights of victims and affected populations in recent times in Sri Lanka. This year, she is a fellow at the Mason Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
A Missing General, Indian Jawans, and Submerged Narratives of Bangladesh's 1971 Liberation War
Naeem Mohaiemen, visual artist, writer, New York and Dhaka. Mohaiemen is also a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at Columbia University. Mohaiemen explores histories of the international left and the contradictions of nationalisms through essays, photography, film, and installation. Since 2006, he has worked on The Young Man Was, a history of the ultra-left in the 1970s, with each portion in a different medium. The latest installment of the project, United Red Army, is a film about the 1977 hijack of a Japan Airlines flight. The themes he has addressed in his work have been described as “not yet disillusioned fully with the capacity of human society” (Vijay Prashad, Take on Art).
