SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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The Relevance of Mahatma Gandhi in Today’s Society

Welcome to a SASNET Seminar,
Thursday 10 September 2009, 19.00 – 21.00

Participants:
– Balkrishna Shetty, Ambassador of India to Sweden
on ”Gandhi’s Role in Today’s World”.
– David Arnold,
Professor of Asian and Global History, University of Warwick, UK on ”Gandhi: The Mahatma and the Machine”.

Moderator:
Anna Lindberg,
Director, SASNET

Venue:
Main auditorium of Lund University’s Centre for Languages and Literature
(SOL-Centrum), Helgonabacken 14, Lund

Organised by:
Swedish South Asian Studies Network (SASNET), Lund University

– Mr. Balkrishna Shetty did his B.Sc Honours in Mathematics from Presidency College, Calcutta (1970) and M.Sc. (Mathematics) from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (1972). After a period of research in Mathematics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, he joined Indian Statistical Service in 1973 and was Assistant Director, dealing with Industries and Trade Statistics in Central Statistical Organisation, Government of India, New Delhi. In recent years, Mr. Shetty has been posted at the Embassy of India in Paris, as Minister (Economic), dealing with all bilateral economic matters and relations with Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He has also been associated with the establishment of TEAM–9 (Techno-Economic Cooperation for Africa–India Movement), a regional economic cooperation mechanism between India and eight West African countries. From September 2005 to January 2009, he was Ambassador of India to Bahrain. He has been India’s Ambassador to Sweden since January 2009.

– Prof. David Arnold was formerly Professor of South Asian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and was a founding member of the Subaltern Studies group of South Asia scholars whose work helped to transform the writing of Indian history in the 1980s and 1990s. Besides, he is a Fellow of the British Academy. David Arnold taught an undergraduate course on Mahatma Gandhi and Gandhism at SOAS for many years, and in 2001 published a work on Gandhi in the ‘Profiles in Power’ series. His research and writing has ranged widely over the social, cultural and political history of modern India and has extensively explored issues in the history of empire, science, environment and medicine. His published works include Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change (1988); Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (1993); The Problem of Nature: Environment, Culture and the Expansion of Europe (1996); Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India (2004); and The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800-1856 (2006). His work has been translated into more than a dozen European and Asian languages (but not, so far, Swedish!)
His current research is on everyday technology in India from 1880 to 1960. This includes a re-appraisal of Gandhi’s significance as a critic of modernity and his impact on technological change in twentieth-century India. This forms the background to his SASNET presentation.

Inauguration of Lund University’s Mahatma Gandhi books collection

Earlier on the same day, Thursday 10 September 2009, at 15.00, the Mahatma Gandhi books collection (part of the Karl Reinhold Haellquist Memorial Collection) and SASNET’s web site on the collection (www.sasnet.lu.se/gandhi) will be formally inaugurated by the Ambassador of India to Sweden, Mr. Balkrishna Shetty, at Lund University’s Asia Library at Scheelevägen 15 C.
The extensive books collection was donated to Lund University in 2004 and has since been catalogued by SASNET. Ms. Inger Sondén Haellquist, Karl Reinhold Haellquist’s widow, will be the guest of honour during the function. For more information about the Mahatma Gandhi books collection, see http://www.sasnet.lu.se/library_books_jour.html

– The function will be concluded with screening the 45 minutes documentary film ”Mahatma – A Great Soul of the 20th Century”, jointly produced by the Public Diplomacy Division, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India; and the Gandhi Films Foundation. Venue: Javasalen, Scheelevägen 15 C (beside the Asia Library).