Research Community News

The Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML) in New Delhi was established in the memory of former Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) and is an autonomous institution under the Ministry of Culture of the Government of India, Located in the majestic Teen Murti House, the official residence of the first Prime Minister of India. It has four major constituents namely, a Memorial Museum, a Library on modern India, a Centre for Contemporary Studies and a Planetarium.
The Library is a favourite place for researchers, a s documented by Dr. Derek L. Elliott, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge, who writes enthusiastically about the institution in Dissertation Reviews on 15th January 2013, see his text, ”A review of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library”, where he describes that it is hard to find a more pleasant work environment in India than the Nehru Memorial Library, set amidst beautiful gardens flush with peafowl, squirrels, and macaques.
Every year, NMML organises a number of high-profile Lecture Series.
– First comes the Weekly Seminars series. Go for the 2013 programme.
– A number of  specialised lecture series also appear, such as a 2013 series entitled ”Rethinking History”. Among the lecturers could be mentioned Professor Mushirul Hasan, National Archives of India; Professor K Sivaramakrishnan, Yale University, USA; and Professor Mariam Dossal, University of Mumbai. See the full programme.
– Another focused public lecture series is entitled ”India and the Wider World”. See the 2013 lecture programme.
– Finally, a series entitled ”Science, Society and Nature” is held. See the 2013 lecture programme.

On 10th December 2013 (the Human Rights Day), a one-day Training Workshop on ‘Child Labour: Childhood under Threat’ was organized by the Rajiv Gandhi Chair in Contemporary Studies, University of Allahabad, India. The workshop was sponsored by the Indian National Human Rights Commission. Four Working Sessions were held on the themes like ‘Child Labour: Indian Perspective’, ‘Child Labour as an Encroachment of Child Right’, ‘Policy Initiatives by Indian Government to Prevent Child Labour’, and ‘Possible Ways to Prevent Child Labour in India’. The inaugural address was given by Professor Rajagopal Dhar Chakraborti, International Faculty, United Nations International Institute on Ageing (UN-INIA), Malta. Read a conference report written by Senior Research Fellow Nandini Basistha.

Anvita Abbi, Professor of Linguistics at the Centre for Linguistics, School of Language Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is one of the foremost linguists in India, being an expert on every language family of the country. She has served as a Visiting Scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and was nominated as a Distinguished Fellow of 2001 by the Language Typology Research Center, La Trobe University in Australia. She has recently been nominated an honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America. At present she is one of the members of the Advisory Board of Terralingua, and advisor to UNESCO on language issues. She received the Rarashtriya Lokbhasha Samman 2003 for her contribution towards the tribal languages of India.
In late November 2012, Professor Abbi was invited by Professor Anju Saxena, Department of Linguistics & Philology, Uppsala University, to give two lectures at Uppsala University, through the interdisciplinary Forum for Advanced Studies in Arts, Languages and Theology programme – SALT. Both seminars focused on the languages of the Andaman Islands, an area of research she has dealt with extensiveley in recent years, being the Principal Investigator/Director of a mega project at JNU on ”Vanishing Voices of the Great Andamanese”. The team behind this interdisciplinary research project consists of linguists, anthropologists, biologists and geneticists, and their work has resulted, among other things, in the publicaion of the ”Great Andamanese Dictionary. An interactive English-Great Andamanese-Hindi dictionary of the endangered language of the Andaman Islands with pictures and sounds” (2012) och ”Endangered Languages of the Andaman Islands” (2006). More information about Prof. Abbi and her research.
The first seminar at Uppsala University was not surprisingly entitled ”Breathing life into a dying language: documenting Great Andamanese”, and the second one ”Linguistic diversity and language endangerment: endangered languages of Andaman”. Professor Abbi spoke about the origin of the Andamanese people, and illustrated her talks with unique sound and video recordings from the Andamans.

Lars Tore Flåten, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS), University of Oslo, will defend his doctoral dissertation entitled ”History and Identity Politics: Educational Reforms and History Textbook during the Rule of the BJP” on Friday 25 January 2013, at 09.15. First opponent is Research Director Veronique Bénéï, Centre National Reserche Scientifique, Paris, France. Venue: Auditorium 3, Helga Engs Hus, Blindern, Oslo.
Abstract: When the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) assumed power in India in 1998, as the largest party of the National Democratic Alliance, it soon became evident that it prioritized educational reforms. The BJP is a cultural nationalist party, which seeks to define India according to its Hindu cultural legacy. It may also be construed in terms of identity politics, since the BJP attempts to make Hindu identity the primary frame of identification for India’s Hindus. In this study Flåten examines the main features of BJP’s reforms of the National Council of Educational Research and Training, with particular emphasis on the publication of four new history textbooks in 2002. He views these textbooks as integral to BJP’s identity political agenda, and examine in what ways they invoked Hindu identity.
The largest challenge to BJP’s appeals to Hindu identity stems from the immense heterogeneity of Indian society – past and present – which divides Hindus along caste, regional, linguistic, and to some extent also religious lines. As a means to counter this challenge, Flåten argues that the textbooks promoted Hindu cultural similarity, by emphasizing a fundamental, yet vague, sense of cultural unity among Hindus in the past. The textbooks, he argues, are reminiscient of collective memory, by highlighting coherence and continuity, rather than internal tensions and ruptures. He also proposes that the concept of decontextualization sheds light on how these textbooks managed to convey their key message of Hindu cultural similarity. This concept refers to the way in which the textbooks transformed the particularities of the past into manifestations of something general, partly by undercommunicating geographical and temporal contexts. It also denotes instances whereagency was not accurately defined, or when problematic factors were omitted from a narrative. These two latter aspects were most visible with regard to the caste system. Hence, decontextualization produces a more unified past, which the BJP could utilize in its political appeals to Hindu identity.
Lars Tore Flåten will hold his trial lecture on the day before, Thursday 24 January 2013, at 16.15. The title has not been decided upon yet. Venue: Auditorium 2, Helga Engs hus, Blindern. More information about Lars Tore Flåten and his research.