SASNET News from previous years

In the second week of December 2010, a delegation from DM Foundation, a private business corporation based in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, India, visited Lund University. Led by the eminent Indian nuclear scientist Dr. Anil Kakodkar (photo), they are involved in a dialogue with Lund University Commissioned Education and the Department of Biology, Lund University regarding plans to establish a new university campus in India and staff it with teachers from Lund University. SASNET has been involved as a consultant to Lund University.More information on the visit.

• Prof Swaran Singh from the Center for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi, gave a SASNET lecture at Lund University on Friday 17 December 2010, 10.15-12.00. The seminar was co-organised by the university’s Department of Political Science. The presentation was entitled ”India's Disarmament Policy: Past, Present, Future”, and included discussions on India's nuclear policy and India's foreign policy in general. Prof. Singh teaches in Diplomacy & Disarmament Studies, and has written extensively on Asian Affairs, China’s foreign and security policy issues with special focus on China-India confidence building measures as also on Arms Control and Disarmament, Peace and Conflict Resolution, India’s foreign and security policy issues. Besides, he is President of the Association of Asia Scholars (an Asia-Wide Network with Secretariat in Delhi), General Secretary of Indian Association of Asian & Pacific Studies (Varanasi) and Member, Bangkok-based Asian Scholarship Foundation’s Regional Review Committee for South Asia. Venue for the seminar: Lilla konferensrummet, 2nd floor, Dept. of Political Science (Eden), Paradisgatan 5 H, Lund. More information, including abstract. 

SASNET was partly involved when two Indian researchers cum film makers from the Centre for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai, Professor K.P. Jayasankar and Professor Anjali Monteiro, visited Lund University from 7–10 December 2010. They were invited to to participate in the second Focus Asia Documentary Film Festival, organised by Dr. Marina Svensson at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE). 
During their stay in Lund, Jayasankar and Monteiro were introduced to SASNET, meeting the director, Dr. Anna Lindberg and deputy director, Mr. Lars Eklund. They also met other Lund University researchers and a number of Indian PhD students currently studying in Lund as being scholarship holders through the Erasmus Mundus Action 2 Indo-European mobility programme.More information. 

Dr. Heinz Werner Wessler, Guest Professor at the Dept. of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, held a SASNET lecture at Lund University on ”The Liberating Force of Hindi and ‘Goddess English‘. Language Policies and Identity Politics in India”, on Monday 6 December 2010. The seminar was organised in collaboration with theDept. of Political Science. Dr. Wessler took his starting point in the early anti-colonial classical “Hind Swaraj”, published a hundred years ago (1910), in which Mahatma Gandhi stressed the importance of a shift away from English to the Hindi/Hindustani language as a basic tool of cultural decolonization.More information, including abstract.
During his two-days stay in Lund, Dr. Wessler interacted with SASNET’s deputy director Lars Eklund, discussing ongoing joint plans to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore in Sweden and Denmark in March 2011. Academic seminars are planned to be held in both Lund and Uppsala, besides Stockholm, Copenhagen and Aarhus. 
Heinz Werner also participated in in a seminar with Peter Leifland, Executive Vice President, Alfa Laval Group, that was organised in Lund on Tuesday 7 December by the Sweden India Business Council (SIBC). More information on this seminar. 

Camilla Orjuela and Peter Schalk.

A SASNET/UPF seminar on ”Sri Lanka after the War was held in Lund on Wednesday 24 November 2010. 
The first speaker was Dr. Camilla Orjuela,Peace and Development Studies, School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, who talked about ”Sri Lanka after the War: Sustainable Peace or new Conflicts?”, focusing on the fact that the 26 year long and brutal war came to an end in May 2009 as the Sri Lankan government defeated the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). However, an end to the war does not mean that the underlying conflicts that led to and sustained it have been dealt with. Camilla presented the challenges for post-war Sri Lanka: what are the underlying conflicts that caused and were caused by the war and that have to be dealt with to reach sustainable peace?
Then followed Professor Peter Schalk, Chair in the History of Religions (in particular in Hinduism and Buddhism) at the Faculty of Theology, Uppsala university. He held a presentation entitled ”Defeated but Defiant. The Ilamtamil Resistance Movement after May 2009”, largely focusing on the resistance movements still exisiting among the Tamil speaking Diaspora in London, Sidney, Oslo, Paris, Berlin and Toronto demonstrating defiance by keeping theur loyalty towards the Vattukottai resolution from 1976 that demanded the recognition of the right of self-determination of the Tamil speaking people in Ilam/Lanka. 
The seminar was co-organised by SASNET and the Association of Foreign Affairs at Lund University (UPF). Venue for the seminar: Café Athen, Sandgatan 2, Lund. 
See the poster for the seminar, including abstracts. 
The entire seminar was recorded on video by the Association of Foreign Affairs, and can be seen on the web.
Go for the seminar video recording, part 1. 
Go for the seminar video recording, part 2. 

Roger Jeffery and Margret Frenz

Professor Roger Jeffery and Dr. Margret Frenz, President and Vice-President respectively for the European Association of South Asian Studies (EASAS) visited SASNET and Lund University 8–10 November 2010. They came to discuss closer collaboration between EASAS and SASNET, as well as strenghtening links between Lund University and University of Edinburgh, UK in the field of South Asian studies. Prof. Jeffery is the Director for the Centre for South Asian Studies in Edinburgh, and Dr. Frenz is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (but otherwise connected to the University of Leicester). 
During their stay in Lund, they had long and fruitful discussions with Anna Lindberg and Lars Eklund from SASNET, but they also given an opportunity to meet representatives of the university’s Division of International Relations; the succcessful International Masters programme on Applied Management in Development (LUMID); and Lund University’s Centre of Excellence for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS). 
See some photos. 
SASNET and LUCSUS jointly organised a seminar with Roger Jeffery on Tuesday 9 November. The theme for the lecture was ”Trust and the Regulation of Pharmaceuticals: South Asia in a Globalised World”, based on material from a recently-concluded research project comparing the trajectories of pharmaceuticals from producer to patient in South Asia. In his presentation, Prof. Jeffery focused on ongoing disputes over quality standards in Indian generic drug manufacturering, including allegations that they are responsible for a plague of counterfeit and spurious medicines, within India and globally. Venue: Java Hall, Scheelevägen 15 B, Lund. 
More information about the seminar. 
Later the same day, on Tuesday 9 November, Margret Frenz held another SASNET lecture, this time in collaboration with the Dept. of Sociology. She spoke about ”Making the World One’s Home. Goan Migration across the Indian Ocean and Beyond”, focusing on the migration of Goans (from the present day Indian state of Goa) from South Asia to East Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, and their second migration from East Africa to countries such as the UK and Canada. By analysing their migration patterns, their economic, social and political engagement in East Africa and in this process, their ability to recreate material and social practices, Dr. Frenz highlights how one community has made the world its home. Venue for the seminar: Conference room 3, Lund University, Dept. of Sociology, Paradisgatan 5, Lund. 
More information about the seminar. 

The Indian Council for Cultural Relations is actively working to set up more visiting professorships and chairs in Indian studies in foreign universities. Currently there are about 60 visiting ICCR professorships worldwide, but within a few years the ambition is that there should be 30 more such chairs around the world. In the Nordic countries ICCR professorships exist at Lund University and Copenhagen Business School. See the complete list of ICCR professorships. 
The council is working to make the chairs “virtual hubs of Indian studies”. Programmes for youth audiences and lecture tours are being linked to institutions that have received ICCR endowments. This is all part of India’s efforts to project the country’s soft power. Currently, ICCR has 24 centres around the world, but it plans to add 15 new centres in the coming year. Related to the university focus has been ICCR’s move to sponsor academic seminars, an introduction of 30 ICCR fellowships to bring foreign scholars to India and 3,500 scholarships for overseas students, 1600 of which go to Afghans. The once iconic “festivals of India”, characteristic of the 1980s, have also been resurrected. In 2010, two long festivals are organised in China and France and half-a-dozen shorter ones in seven other countries. More information in a June 19, 2010 Hindustan Times article. 

On Monday 8 November 2010, Dr. Sujit Kumar Paul, Senior Lecturer and Vice Principal for the Institute of Rural Reconstruction at Visva-Bharati University in Sriniketan, West Bengal, India, visited SASNET/Lund University. He met with SASNET’s deputy director Lars Eklund (seen on photo together), and also Dr. Olle Frödin from the School of Social Work, Lund University. 
Dr. Paul has spent four weeks in Denmark on invitation by the Association for World Education (AWE). He has been associated with this Denmark based organisation since 2001, and at its general meeting held at the International People's College (IPC) in Helsingør on 21-23 October 2010, Dr. Paul was elected as new Vice President. AWE, started in 1995, has a consultative status of the United Nations. It has chapters and individual members all over the world. More information about AWE. 
During his stay in Denmark, Dr. Paul has also met researchers working on India related projects at the The Danish School of Education (DPU) in Copenhagen, and on 11-13 November he participates in the Asian Dynamics Initiative conference at Copenhagen University. During a panel on Indigenous Peoples in the 21st Century, he gives a presentation on ”Socio-Economic Development of the Tribals. The Changing Scenario Through Self Help Groups” (more information on the panel, convened by Dr. Peter B Andersen).

The two successful conferences for young Nordic scholars involved in South Asia related studies and research that SASNET organised 2009 and 2010 (more information about the 2010 conference), will get a follow-up in 2011. This time the conference, aimed at masters students, PhD candidates and young post-docs, will be jointly organised by SASNET and the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS). A decision regarding collaboration was taken at a meeting in Copenhagen on Tuesday 28 September 2010, between Anna Lindberg and Lars Eklund from SASNET, and NIAS Director Dr. Geir Helgesen, and other representatives of the institute. More information on the 2011 conference, that again will be held at Höllviken, south of Malmö, will be posted soon. 

On Monday 1 November 2010, SASNET’s deputy director Lars Eklund participated in a half-day seminar at Stockholm University on Mahatma Gandhi, organised by the Embassy of India in Sweden. The seminar, entitled ”Is the Mahatma still relevant?”, was hosted by Prof. Vinayagum Chinapah and the Institute of International Educationat Stockholm University and featured presentations by the Ambassador H.E. Mr. Ashok Sajjanhar and Prof. Chinapah (seen on the photo above). 
Two other prominent speakers with a deep knowledge of Mahatma Gandhi were invited to elaborate on the subject, namely Prof. Björn Wittrock from Uppsala University, Principal of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS); and Prof. Emeritus Ishtiaq Ahmed, Dept. of Political Science, Stockholm University. 

A SASNET seminar on ”Emancipation or Dependency: Microcredits in South Asia” was held in Lund on Wednesday 20 October 2010. The seminar was co-organised by The Association of Foreign Affairs at Lund University (UPF), and The Swallows India Bangladesh, an NGO based at Lund, and drew an audience of more than 100 people. The seminar featured Markus Pauli, Doctoral Candidate, University of Heidelberg, Germany who talked about ”Microfinance in India – assessing its impact with the capability approach”; and Ms. Khushi Kabir, Coordinator for Nijera Kori, a non governmental development organization in Bangladesh. Ms. Kabir gave a presentation entitled ”