SASNET: Root node activities

The third Nordic Conference on South Asian Studies for Young Scholars was held 16–18 August 2011 at Falsterbo kursgård in Höllviken, 20 km south of Malmö.
As usual, it was organised by SASNET but from this year in collaboration with the Copenhagen based Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS). Julia Velkova from SASNET was the main coordinator.
The conference became a grand success, gathering graduate students and postdocs, along with other junior scholars affiliated with universities in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, who are focusing on South Asia in their work. This year a few students from other European countries (Scotland and Germany) were also invited.

Besides altogether 27 young scholars, the conference also included 15 senior scholars working with South Asia related research in different fields, giving lectures and acting as respondents in the four panel sessions. The keynote speaker, Professor Patricia Jeffery (photo) from the Dept. of Sociology, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, UK, was one of them. Her presentation was entitled ”Daughter Aversion, Dowry and Demographic Change”. Prof. Jeffery also participated as a champion in a challengers-champions session on Gender, as well as being a group leader in the thematic group on Gender.
The conference was interdisciplinary and had separate panels on – Gender Issues; – Climate Change/Water Issues; – Mapping the Mental Landscape of Eurasia; and – Alternative Career Paths beyond the Academia. Invited speakers included Professor Ummu Salma Bava, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India; Professor Jussi Kauhanen, Director for Nordic Centre in India(NCI); Professor Abul Mandal, Skövde University; Mr. Kyrre Lind, President, Doctors Without Borders Norway; and Ms. Christina Nilsson, International Workgroup for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), Copenhagen.
The conference also included an appreciated cultural programme, consisting of a poetic reading by Pireeni Sundaralingam. She read out excerpts from the recently published volume Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry, co-edited by Pireeni. Born in Sri Lanka and raised both there and in the UK, Sundaralingam currently lives in San Francisco, California, USA.
More information about the 2011 conference.
See the conference folder (as a pdf-file)
See a photo gallery from the conference.

On Thursday 15 September 2011, SASNET holds its first Brown bag lunch seminar during the fall semester 2011. The aim of SASNET’s Brown Bag seminars, introduced in January 2011, is to present and disseminate the eminent South Asia related research that is carried out in so many departments at Lund University. The seminars are open to the public, and during the fall 2011 they will be held once a month at Thursdays at Murbeckssalen, Gula Villan (inside the Botanical Gardens), Östra Vallgatan 14, Lund.
More information about the seminar series. Seminar series poster.

– The first SASNET Brown Bag 2011 Fall seminar will be held on 15th September 2011, 12.00–13.00. Dr. Malin Gregersen (photo) from the Department of History will give a presentation entitled ”Fostering Obligations: Swedish Medical Missionary Narratives from South India”. Even though Sweden was not participating in the run for colonies during the era of the new imperialism in late 19th and early 20th century, Swedes often took a close interest in African and Asian countries through the work of Christian missionaries. Thus, Christian missionaries played an important role in forming early 20th century Swedish world views. But their depictions of everyday life in foreign countries were formulated on the basis of an aspiration not only to convert people to Christianity, but also to educate, shape and change people according to Swedish and Christian
ideals. Such missionary narratives, originating from a South Indian hospital, will be the focus of her lecture. Malin defended her doctoral dissertation on this issue as recently as a year ago. Read an abstract.
– The second Brown Bag seminar will be held on Thursday 13 October, with Associate Professor Åsa Ljungh from the Section of Medical Microbiology, Department of Laboratory Medicine.
– The third Brown Bag seminar will be held on Thursday 10 November, with Dr. Olle Frödin from the Department of Sociology.
More information will follow about these seminars.

SASNET again organises a Rabindranath Tagore 150th birth anniversary celebration week in Sweden and Denmark 19–23 September 2011. The celebration includes academic seminars in Copenhagen (19th), Lund (21st), Stockholm (22nd) and Uppsala (23rd). They will be organised in collaboration with the Indian embassies in Copenhagen and Stockholm, and with support from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR).
Invited scholars include Professor William Radice, SOAS, University of London; Dr. Reba Som, Director, ICCR Rabindranath Tagore Centre in Kolkata; and Professor Asoke Bhattacharya, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. The seminar at Lund University will be held on Wednesday 21 September, 09.00–13.00, at Stadshallen in central Lund. See the full Lund University seminar programme.
On the night before, Tuesday 20 September at 19.00, a cultural evening will also be organised at Teater Sagohuset. The programme includes William Radice reading out his brand new English translations of poems from the Gitanjali volume. Reba Som and Bubu Munshi Eklund will sing Rabindrasangheet songs. The event will be attended by the Ambassadors from both Bangladesh and India, Mr. Gousal Azam Sarker and Mr. Ashok Sajjanhar respectively.See the poster for the Cultural Evening at Sagohuset.

Dr. Bidyut Mohanty, Head, Women’s Studies Department at the Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), New Delhi, India holds a SASNET lecture at Lund University on Monday 19 September 2011, 16.15–18.00. During the lecture, co-organised by the Department of History of Religion, she will talk about ”Nuances of Rice Culture, Goddess Lakshmi and the Status of Women in India”. The lecture is based on her forthcoming book entitled ”Rice Culture and Status of Women: A Comparative Study of Laksmi Puranas”. Read an article written by Dr. Mohanty on the same issue.

Bidyut Mohanty has been a Visiting Professor in the Global and International Studies program at the University of California, Santa Barbara and is the coordinator of an ISS and UNDP project on capacity building of elected women leaders in local government in India, and as well as of a project sponsored by the National Commission on the protection of child rights.
She has also coordinated several UNIFEM funded projects on HIV and AIDS and role of panchayats, trafficking and local government’s new role. Besides, Dr. Mohanty is also a specialist on famine, agrarian history and decentralization. She combines grassroots activism with participatory research. Her publications include several research papers and edited books, among them: Urbanization in Developing Countries: Access to Basic Services and Community Participation (1993) Women and Political Empowerment (annual volumes from 1995 till 2006) and Local Governance in Search for New Path (2011).
Venue for the seminar: Centre for Theology and Religious Studies (CTR), room 438, Allhelgona Kyrkogata 8, Lund. More information.

Manoranjan Mohanty, Durgabai Deshmukh Professor of Social Development at the Council for Social Development in New Delhi, India holds a SASNET lecture at Lund University on Tuesday 20 September 2011, 15.15–17.00. During the seminar, co-organised by the departments of Sociology and Political Science, he will talk about ”India and China: Competing Hegemonies or Forces of Democratization”. Prof. Mohantry is a China scholar with many publications on theoretical and empirical dimensions of social movements, human rights, development experience and regional role of India and China. Currently he is also the Chairperson, Institute of Chinese Studies in Delhi, and President, Development Research Institute, Bhubaneshwar. Besides, he is a Visiting Professor in Global Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara since 2007 where he teaches every Spring.
Prof. Mohanty retired in 2004 as the Director, Developing Countries Research Centre and Professor of Political Science at the University of Delhi, where he taught since 1969. He is a former Director of ICS and a former Editor of China Report. His earlier academic assignments abroad included Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Moscow (1973), UC, Berkeley (1974), Peking University (1979), Oxford (1987) and Copenhagen (1990) and Lagos (2005). He is also active in the human rights and peace movement. His recent publications include Contemporary Indian Political Theory (2000), Class, Caste, Gender (Ed.2004) and Grass-roots Democracy in India and China (Co-ed. 2007), India: Social Development Report 2010 (Ed. 2010), Weapon of the oppressed: An Inventory of People's Rights in India ( Co-author, 2011) and China’s Success Trap: Lessons for World Development ( Forthcoming).
Venue for the seminar: Conference room 1, Dept. of Sociology, Paradisgatan 5, Lund. More information.

Professor Venkatesh Athreya from the Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, India holds a SASNET lecture at Lund University on Tuesday 27 September 2011, 15.15–17.00. During the seminar, organised in collaboration with the Dept. of Sociology, he will talk about ”Political Economy of Indian Development since 1991”.
Professor Athreya has been co-operating for many years with Prof. Göran Djurfeldt and Prof. Emeritus Staffan Lindberg at Lund University. Among his most well-known publications are“Literacy and Empowerment” (Sage 1996) and “Barriers Broken” (with Djurfeldt and Lindberg, Sage 1990). Currently he is co-operating with Djurfeldt and Lindberg at Lund University in a restudy after 25 years of 213 agricultural households in the Cauvery delta in Tamilnadu. Venue for the seminar: Conference room 1, Dept. of Sociology, Paradisgatan 5, Lund. More information.

During the academic year 2011/12, G K Karanth, Professor of Sociology at the Centre for Study of Social Change and Development, Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC) in Bangalore, will be the Visiting ICCR Professor at Lund University. He is supposed to arrive in mid-September 2011, and be will hosted by the Department of Sociology.

Prof. Karanth has a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi, and his main research fields are Peasant Economy and Society; Caste and Social Stratification; Rural-Urban Linkages; and Sociology of Development. He will be second Visiting ICCR Professor at Lund University, after Prof. Lipi Ghosh who spent five months in Lund till March 2011.
The ICCR professorships at Lund University are an outcome of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and Lund University, that was signed on 22 June 2010 by Mr. Balkrishna Shetty, former Indian Ambassador to Sweden, and Prof. Per Eriksson, Vice-Chancellor, Lund University. The agreement is valid for four years, with a new Indian Professor to be selected each year. SASNET was actively involved in finalizing the ICCR professorship at Lund University, with strong support from the Embassy of India in Stockholm.
An inaugural seminar with Professor Karanth will be held on Thuursday 6th October 2011, at 15.00. The theme for his lecture wil be ”Changing Rural India: Caste and Social Mobility”. After the lecture, a cultural programme will be organised with the Tabla player Subrata Manna, singer Sudokshina Manna, and Kathak dancer Sohini Debnath, all from Kolkata.
Venue for the seminar: Edens hörsal (auditorium), Lund University’s Department of Political Science, Paradisgatan 5, Lund. All are most welcome to the event that includes free Indian food and continues up to 7 P.M.

Past activities:

Professor Mizanur Rahman from the Dept. of Accounting & Information Systems, Dhaka University, Bangladesh (and also the Treasurer of Dhaka University), held a SASNET lecture at Lund University on Thursday 26 May 2011. He spoke about ”Social Marketing: Lessons from Bangladesh”. The seminar was organized in collaboration with the Dept. of Sociology. Prof. Rahman has a research interest in Global payment imbalance and the current global economic crisis; and Infrastructure, trade and economic growth in Asia, Venue: Dept. of Sociology, conference room 1, Paradisgatan 5, Lund. More information.

On Thursday 19 May 2011, SASNET held its second Brown bag lunch seminar. The aim of which is to present and disseminate the eminent South Asia related research that is carried out in so many departments at Lund University.
Professor Rajni Hatti-Kaul from the Department of Biotechnology, talked about ”Biotechnology and sustainable development”. She informed about the eminent environmental research that is carried out at Lund University. A major part of is has been directed towards the use of biotechnology for environmental bioremediation and for producing bioenergy and biodegradable chemicals and materials from renewable resources. Several projects have focussed on India, including a project on treatment of textile dyes using biological and physiochemical techniques in the city of Tirupur in Tamil Nadu (more information). Venue: Centre for Theology and Religious Studies (CTR), conference room 438, 4th floor, Allhelgona Kyrkogata 8, Lund.
More information about the seminar.

Partha N. Mukherjee, Professor Emeritus, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, came to Lund University in the first week of May 2011, to be a member of an international team to evaluate the university. The week-long evaluation was part of the EQ 11 project initiated at Lund University in 2009 in order to improve education quality. More information on EQ11.
Partha Mukherji has been the holder of a Ford Professorship at the Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), New Delhi. He was formerly Vice Chancellor of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, and President of the Indian Sociological Society.
While in Lund, Prof. Mukherjee held a SASNET Guest Lecture, organised in collaboration with the Departments of Sociology and Political Science, Lund University, on ”Land Acquisition for Industrialisation in West Bengal: the Case of Nano and Tata Motors” on Wednesday 11 May 2011, 10.15–12.00.
The well-attended seminar drew an audience consisting of students, teachers and researchers also from other departments such as Human Ecology, Development Studies, Sociology of Law, and from Albins Folkhögskola in Malmö.
Lecture 11 May

The lecture focused on the social transformation necessary in order to develop rural areas and agriculture so that unemployed and underemployed people can find work in a growing industrial and service economy. A tight labour market will result in higher wage levels for non-farm jobs, thus giving rural households income which they can invest in agriculture.
However, establishing industries in rural areas often result in ‘primitive accumulation’, whereby land is appropriated from farmers and little or compensation paid. This may lead to strong counter movements, as in the case that Prof. Mukherji spoke about, focusing on the tumultous events around controversial industrialisation projects in Singur and Nandigram from 2006 and onwards.
West Bengal is currently of political interest because of the State elections that had just taken place. The Communist Party of India (CPM) has been in power since 1977, and has instituted land reforms, etc., and yet was, at the time of the SASNET lecture, in danger of being voted out of office. The results from the West Bengal assembly elections were to be published two days later, on 13th May 2011. Venue for the seminar: Lecture Hall No. 3, Dept. of Sociology, Paradisgatan 5, Lund. Poster for the seminar.

The Swedish South Asian Studies Network (SASNET) at Lund University; Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS); and The Swallows India Bangladesh jointly organised a seminar on ”Forest Rights in India” on Wednesday 4 may 2011, 13.00–17.00. The seminar, that drew an audience of about 30 people, was organised because 2011 has been selected to be the United Nation's International Year of Forests. Issues related to forests and deforestation in India were discussed, as well as the problems that the tribal people who live there face. More information about the seminar.
The first speaker was Dr. Beppe Karlsson, Dept. of Social Antropology, Stockholm University, who talked about ”The Wet Desert and the Sacred Grove: Environmental Narratives in Northeast India", focusing on the situation in the state of Meghalaya. Dr. Pernille Gooch, Human Ecology Division, Lund University, came next and talked about "Victims of Conservation or Rights as Forest Dwellers: Van Gujjar Pastoralists between Contesting Codes of Law", and PhD candidate Nabikanta Jha, from the same department, made complimentary observations about the forest rights situation for the nomadic communities in the state of Uttarakhand.
Finally, Mr. Praveen Kaushal Manto from SOPHIA organisation in India, talked about ”Forest Rights – examples from The Himalayas & The Van Gujjars stategies for survival". The seminar was moderated by Dr. Monica Erwér from the Swallows India Bangladesh.
Venue: Geocentrum I, room Världen, Sölvegatan 10, Lund.
Links to all three presentations.

SASNET successfully organised a full-day seminar on "Managing Diversity: The Indian Experience", in collaboration with the Embassy of India in Stockholm on Thursday 14 April 2011, 09.30–17.00 and with a concluding cultural programme from 17.30–19.30. The events gathered an audience of more than 100 people, in the Pictura hall, inside the main Lund University Building for the day sessions, and then in The Old Bishop’s Palace.
See Lars Eklund’s photos from the day.
Per

A welcome address was delivered by Prof. Per Eriksson (photo), Lund University Vice Chancellor, after which H.E. Mr. Göran Tunhammar, the Governor of Skåne County gave a presentation.
H.E. Ashok Sajjanhar, Ambassador of India to Sweden and Latvia, then made an introduction to the theme for the day, Managing Diversity: The Indian Experience.

The academic speakers included Professor Sushil Khanna, Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Kolkata (but currently ICCR guest Professor at the Asia Research Centre, Copenhagen Business School) – read his CV. He spoke about ”Regional and Social Diversity: The New Bourgeoisie in India”, how regional corporations now grow faster in India than the traditional large business groups.
Publik

Dr. Stig Toft Madsen, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS), Copenhagen, spoke about ”Managing External Complexities: India as a Soft Power”, referring to a recent UK conference on this issue; Dr. Christina Nygren, Visiting Research Fellow, Dept. of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University, spoke about ”Diversity in Indian theatre practices with special regard to folk traditions”; and Professor Staffan Lindberg, Dept. of Sociology, Lund University, spoke about ”The Role of Industry and State Policies in Rural Development - A Tamil Nadu Perspective”, based on his comparative sociological studies for the period 1979–2004.
Anette

In the afternoon session devoted to business, Mr. Ulf Pehrsson, Vice President, Government and Industry Relations at Ericsson, gave a presentation on ”Doing business in India”, on Ericsson’s phenomenal growth in India, especially duirng the last 8 years. Finally, SASNET’s director, Dr. Anna Lindberg rounded off the seminar by heading a short summary session on ”Managing Diversity: The Indian Experience”.

The reception at the Old Bishop’s Palace was hosted by the Embassy of India in Sweden. A mixed crowd consisting both by Lund University academicians and students, and members of the Indian/South Asian community in Malmö/Lund, enjoyed a marvellous performance by Anette Pooja (photo to the right), eminent classical Odissi dancer from Gothenburg. Ms. Sri Kripa from Malmö also sang two delicate classical Indian songs.
More information about the 14th April SASNET seminar. Conference poster.
Ingela Björck from Lund University Information department attended the seminar and wrote a report, entitled ”Mångfald i Indien”. Read her report (only in Swedish)

SASNET successfully organised a Rabindranath Tagore 150th birth anniversary celebration week in Lund 20–24 March 2011.
In collaboration with other local institutions and organisations, the week included popular lectures by by Dr. Olavi Hemmilä and P-O Henricson, Swedish experts on Rabindranath’s life and literature, as well as exhibitions, film shows, concerts and poetry reading. On Tuesday 22 March, SASNET and Lund University organised a well-atttended academic seminar, featuring Prof. Wiliam Radice from SOAS, University of London. Prof. Radice, who has made new inspiring translations of Tagore’s poetry and prose from Bengali into English – a new volume of Gitanjali will be published in May 2011, spoke extensively and passionately about the relevance still present in his literature. More information on Prof. Radice’s lecture.

The seminar programme, prepared by SASNET’s deputy director Lars Eklund, also included lectures by Dr. Claes-Göran Holmberg, Comparative Literature, Centre for Languages and Literature, who talked about ”Tagore in Sweden and the Nobel Prize of 1913”, and Mag. Art Annemette Karpen from Copenhagen who talked about ”Tagore’s Drama Production, and Satyajit Ray’s films based on Tagore works”. Free-lance journalist Gabrielle Gunneberg talked about Tagore’s Nobel prize medal that were stolen from Santiniketan in 2004. Prof. Lipi Ghosh from Calcutta University, and currently ICCR guest professor at Lund University, recited poems by Rabindranath Tagore, and Bubu Munshi Eklund sang some of his songs. Ms. Madhumita Bhagat, First Secretary, Embassy of India, was the chief guest-of -honour.
Tagore i Kryptan

Full information about the March 2011 Tagore Week in Lund.
See Lars Eklund’s photos from the Tagore Week.
Listen (on Youtube) to the Swedish choir Svart på Vitt singing Tagore’s song Ontoro Momo Bikoshito Koro as part of the Tagore Week. Please note a well-known male singer in the choir (on photo).

Other Tagore seminars in Sweden and Denmark will take place in September 2011 in collaboration with the Indian embassies in Scandinavia, and with support from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). Leading South Asian Tagore scholars have already been invited for these occasions. See above.

Associate Professor Maria Lantz from the Dept. of Art & Architecture at Royal Institute of Art (KKH), Stockholm, held a SASNET/Lund University seminar on Thursday 31 March 2011, 09.15–12.00. Her lecture was entitled ”Informal Cities” and is based on a 2008 book about the Dharavi slums in Mumbai, India, produced by Dr. Lantz and colleagues at KKH in collaboration with local organisations. The name of the book was ”Dharavi: Documenting Informalities” (more information). The seminar was hosted by the Division of Housing Development and Management, Dept. of Architecture and Built Environment, Lund University. Venue for the seminar: Design Lilla Hörsalen (DC:Lhö), Ingvar Kamprad Design Centre, Sölvegatan 26, Lund.

In January 2011, SASNET launched an Interdisciplinary South Asia Seminar series at Lund University, in the form of Brown bag lunch seminars. The aim is to present and disseminate the eminent South Asia related research that is carried out in so many departments at Lund University. The first seminar was held on Tuesday 18 January 2011, 12–13, with Associate Professor Catarina Kinnwall, Department of Political Science, who talked about ”Religion, Nationalism and Discourses on Terror in South Asia”. The seminars are open to the public, and they will all be held at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies (CTR), conference room 438, 4th floor, Allhelgona Kyrkogata 8, Lund. More information.

• 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.
In 2005, Prof. Singh spent some time as Guest Faculty at Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in Stockholm.
More information, including seminar abstract.

For some time, Lund University Commissioned Education and the Department of Biology, Lund University have been in dialogue with DM Foundation/DM Corporation, a private business corporation based in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, India. The discussions refer to plans for establishing a new university campus in India and staff it with teachers from Lund University, and where students will be recruited from around the world. SASNET has been involved as a consultant to Lund University.

In the second week of December 2010, a delegation from DM Foundation/DM Corporation, led by the eminent Indian nuclear scientist Dr. Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Board of Directors, DM Foundation, visited Lund University. Dr. Kakodkar, previousy chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India, and Director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Trombay, was accompanied by Mr. Vijay Joshi, DM Corporation Director; Dr. Ravi Rayanade, DM Corporation Consultant; and Dr. Kjell-Ove Holmström, Member, Board of Directors, DM Foundation (but until October 2010 Assistant Professor in Molecular Biology at the School of Life Sciences, Skövde University). They were hosted by Mr. Per Malmberg, Sales Manager, Lund University Commissioned Education.
DMINFRA

DM Corporation is part of the DMINFRA industrial group chaired by the industrialist Dilip Mohite. The company was formerly known as Mohite & Mohite (Engineers and Contractors) Pvt. Ltd. In September 2010, DM Corporation was also involved in setting up a major collaboration agreement with ORF Genetics of Iceland, to develop, produce and market protein drugs (more information on this project).
During the visit to Lund University the dialogue continued with an aim to finalise a contract education collaboration between DM Foundation and Lund University Commissioned Education/Department of Biology. The delegation visited Ideon Science Park and Lund University’s Clinical Research Centre (CRC) and met the Pro Vice-Chancellor Eva Åkesson. They also had a meeting with representatives of the International Relations division; Anna Lindberg and Lars Eklund from SASNET; and a few Indian PhD candidates currently studying at Lund University. Finally, the delegation participated in a seminar with Peter Leifland, Executive Vice President, Alfa Laval Group, that was organised by the Sweden India Business Council (SIBC). More information on this seminar.

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).
The theme of the festival was ”Urban Docs Asia: Identities, Memories, and Struggles in Asian Cities”. Professors Jayasankar and Monteiro were given an opportunity to show two of their documentary films shot in their hometown Mumbai – ”Saacha” and ”Naata”, and they also took part in the final day seminar on”Cities and the Visual: Ethnography, Documentaries, and Image-based Research”. More information about the Focus Asia Documentary Film Festival.
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.

Dr. Heinz Werner Wessler, Guest Professor at the Dept. of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, holds 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 the Dept. 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. English, so Gandhi argues, is part of the enslaving mechanism of colonial rule. The anti-colonial movement and in its aftermath independent India until today never openly questioned this position, even under challenge, and the promotion of a Sanskritized code of modern standard Hindi has continued to be a pillar of national language policies having lead to the reconciling “three languages formula” in Indian education.
In social reality, however, social upward mobility in Indian society has continued to be associated with English education, and Indian parents invest fortunes to secure Anglophone schooling to their offspring.
Venue for the seminar: Lilla konferensrummet, 2nd floor, Dept. of Political Science (Eden), Paradisgatan 5 H, Lund.
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.

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. Can 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.

On 9 November 2010, Professor Lipi Ghosh from the Dept. of South and South East Asian Studies, Calcutta University in Kolkata, India took up the position as the first Visiting ICCR (Indian Council for Cultural Relations) Chair Professor at Lund University. Lipi Ghosh will stay in Sweden for the rest of the academic year 2010/11, and be hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences. Her workplace is located at the university’s Centre for Gender Studies.
Prof. Ghosh is a historian, and as a visiting professor at Lund University, she will primarily be engaged in research, but also take an active role in teaching. In addition, she will deliver at least two public addresses during the academic year to be called “The ICCR Lecture on India”. Her major areas of research interest are ethnicity, and minority & cultural studies in the context of South & Southeast Asia. She has written on issues such as ”Prostitution in Thailand: Myth and Reality”; ”Indian Diaspora in the Asian & Pacific Regions”; and ”Political Governance and Minority Rights in a South & Southeast Asian Scenario”. Read her full CV.

On Monday 15 November 2010, SASNET organised her inaugural lecture as new ICCR Professor at Lund University. Her presentation was entitled ”Ethnicity, Religion and Nation Building: The Northeast Indian Profile”. It focused on the number of identity movements that have sprung up among the various ethnic groups in Northeast India where a large number of tribal group of people live. These movements are often perceived as a threat to or a reversal of the process of nation building being pursued in the country.
Prof. Ghosh argues against this, taking Northeast
India as a case of positive interrelation between ethnicity, religion and identity (more information).

The Indian Ambassador to Sweden, H.E. Mr. Ashok Sajjanhar (on photo along with Prof. Ghosh) was the guest of honour for the joyous occasion, and he gave an interetsing presentation on ”India-Sweden Bilateral Relations”.

Lund University was represented by Professor Sven Strömquist, Assistant Vice-Chancellor; Dr. Ann-Katrin Bäcklund, Dean of the Faculty for Social Sciences; Dr. Kerstin Sandell, Head of department, Centre for Gender Studies; and Dr. Anna Lindberg, SASNET. They all gave speeches welcoming Prof. Ghosh to Lund University.
The seminar was introduced with a beautiful inaugural prayer song by Rabindranath Tagore, performed by Bubu Munshi-Eklund with Harmonium accompaniment. The inaugural seminar also included a dance performance by the professional Odissi artist Anette Pooja from Gothenburg, and finally a mingling session where tea and Indian snacks from Govinda’s Restaurant were served. Venue for the seminar: Auditorium (hörsalen), Lund University’s Centre for Languages and Literature (SOL-Centrum), Helgonabacken 14, Lund. See full seminar programme. More photos from the seminar.

The new professorship is an outcome of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and Lund University, that was signed on 22 June 2010 by Mr. Balkrishna Shetty, former Indian Ambassador to Sweden, and Prof. Per Eriksson, Vice-Chancellor, Lund University. In a first phase, the agreement is valid for four years, with a new Indian Professor to be selected each year.
SASNET was actively involved in finalizing the ICCR professorship at Lund University, with strong support from the Embassy of India in Stockholm. In April 2010, SASNET’s director, Dr. Anna Lindberg, participated in an official Lund University delegation to Delhi, where final negotiations were held with representatives of the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, regarding the proposed Indian visiting guest professorship at Lund University.
More information about the ICCR professorships at Lund University and worldwide.

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).

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.

A SASNET seminar on ”Emancipation or Dependency: Microcredits in South Asia” was held in Lund on Wednesday 20 October 2010, 19.00–21.00. 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, critical of microfinance. Ms. Kabir gave an engaged presentation entitled ”Setting Development Priorities: Economic Well Being or Empowerment for the Poorest” (see photo). The following discussion was moderated by Dr. Anna Lindberg, SASNET. Venue for the seminar: Café Athen, Sandgatan 2, Lund.
See the poster for the seminar.
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.
Khushi and Markus

– Markus Pauli (photo to the left) is currently working on his doctoral thesis (with the provisional title ”The Power of Individual Freedom as a Concept and Practice in Development – Operationalization of the Capability Approach for Assessing the Impact of Poverty-Oriented Microfinance in India”) within Heidelberg University’s Cluster of Excellence 'Asia and Europe in a Global Context' Graduate Programme for Transcultural Studies. The thesis is based on based on fieldwork carried out in Tamil Nadu, India.
He also works as a Research Assistant to Prof. Subrata K. Mitra at the Dept. of Political Science, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg.
In his research based on fieldwork conducted in Tamil Nadu, Mr. Pauli studies the impact of microfinance in India, trying to operationalize the capability approach of Amartya Sen in order to draw a more comprehensive picture of the positive and negative impact of microfinance. The focus lies on those institutions which claim to target the very poor and who are providing additional services such as skill training, health care, sanitation or education.
– Kushi Kabir is Executive Director for Nijera Kori, Bangladesh, an organisation working in 1,375 villages in 17 districts of Bangladesh, organising 293,746 landless peasants, of whom 154,853 are women. Nijera Kori believes in creating strong autonomous organizations of the rural poor, able to assert their rights and ensure their entitlements as citizens of Bangladesh, facilitating better access to rural services and available resources, with a view to building self-reliance through mobilisation and collective action rejecting use of micro credit as well as other service delivery approaches.
Ms. Kabir is also the Chairperson for the Association of Land Reform and Development (ALRD), a network of NGOs and Bangladeshi citizens active in land rights issues. She has for decades been actively involved in promoting gender equality, rights of women and other marginalised communities, land and water rights, secularism, environmental justice, food sovereignty, ensuring democratic values and accountability at all levels, besides protecting landless and slum dwellers from eviction, preventing transformation of agriculture land to shrimp farms, worked against the use of fatwas, extra judicial killings etc.
Read the full CVs of Markus Pauli and Khushi Kabir.

SASNET’s director, Dr. Anna Lindberg, held an informal public lecture at Lund University on Tuesday 2 November 2010, 15.15-17.00. She talked about ”Gender, Dowry, and the Marriage of Children in South India”. The seminar was organized by the University’s Global Gender Matters Network, hosted by the Department of Gender Studies.
The Global Gender Matters Network examines the transnational ways in which gender is configured socio-culturally, economically, and politically in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America. The Network encourages scholars with a particular interest in global gender matters to meet and discuss how sexualized and racialized roles, relationships, powers, and conflicts inform gender ideas and practices in particular non-Western contexts.
Venue: Dept. of Gender Studies, Building M1, Allhelgona Kyrkogata 14, Lund. More information.

On Monday 11 October 2010, the new Indian Ambassador to Sweden, H.E. Mr. Ashok Sajjanhar made a first visit to Lund University. The programme was planned for by SASNET, and included a lunch meeting with Ingalill Rahm Hallberg, Lund University Assistant Vice Chancellor (and Professor in Health Care Science); Ann-Katrin Bäcklund, Dean for the Faculty of Social Sciences; and Gunilla Carlecrantz, Acting Head, Division of International Relations.
(Photo to the right of Mr. Sajjanhar with Gunilla Carlecrantz and Ingalill Rahm Hallberg).
Representatives from the Division of International Relations informed the Ambassador about the ongoing Erasmus Mundus Action 2 mobility programmes that Lund university currently coordinates with a number of Indian partner universities (more information).
Per Malmberg, Sales Manager, Lund University Commissioned Education, discussed possible new India projects. The Ambassador also met a number of university professors, working on India related projects.
LTH

A separate meting was held with SASNET’s director, Dr. Anna Lindberg, and deputy director, Mr. Lars Eklund, on details regarding the new ICCR professorship at Lund University, a position that will be taken up by Prof. Lipi Ghosh, Calcutta University from November 1st, 2010 (more information).
In the morning, the Ambassador also visited the university's Faculty of Engineering (LTH) where he was introduced by its Vice-Dean for International Relations, Prof. Per Warfvinge. He then got an opportunity to visit the Department of Electrical and Information Technology, where Prof. Ove Edfors presented its Masters programmes in System-on-Chip (SoC) and Wireless Communication. There, the Ambassador was introduced to Indian students/PhD candidates.
(Photo to the left of PhD candidate Deepak Dasalukunte, Ms. Shikha Kudar, and Prof. Ove Edfors).

The Ambassador of Sri Lanka to Sweden, H.E. Mr. R.P. Jayasooriya also visited Lund University on Monday 11 October 2010. SASNET was involved in organising a meeting for the Ambassador, who came with a mission from the University Grants Commission of Sri Lanka to inform about the Srilankan government’s keen interest to promote strenghtened academic collaboration between universities in Sri Lanka and Sweden, and not the least with Lund University. A recent changed legislation that also opens up Sri Lanka for private university initiatives facilitates such efforts, according to Mr. Jayasooriya.
Srilankan universities are already involved in several collaboration projects with Swedish universities, especially with the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Uppsala University and Gävle University. A few joint projects are also running with Lund University researchers. Besides, Lund University Commissioned Education is involved in a number of ongoing professional training courses with Srilankan participants.
The meeting with Mr. Jayasooriya was hosted by Ms. Gunilla Carlecrantz, Acting Head of Lund University’s International Relations division. The other participants were Ms. Emma Alfredsson, Project Manager, Lund University Commissioned Education; Mr. Henrik Hofvendahl, Programme Officer in charge of Asia activities, International Relations Office; plus Anna Lindberg and Lars Eklund from SASNET.

SASNET has been closely involved in the planning for a new Asia Regional Erasmus Mundus Action 2 mobility programme that was decided upon by the European Commission in July 2010 (more information). The project is led by Lund University that already since 2008 successfully coordinates an existing Indo-European Erasmus Mundus mobility programme. Now the university will also administer a new Asia Regional project that includes seven South Asian universities, four in India (Delhi University; Jadavpur University, Kolkata; Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK); and Tata Instititute of Social Sciences, Mumbai), and one each in Pakistan (Karachi University), Nepal (Tribhuvan University), and Bangladesh (Jahangirnagar University).
The project has been named EMEA – Erasmus Mundus Europe Asia – and will be open for applications from November 1, 2010 and remain open until December 15.

The project coordinators are Ms. Elisabeth Axell and Ms. Katarina Wingkvist, International Relations, Lund University (photo).
Go for the EMEA project web site.

A first consortium meeting was held in Lund 23–24 September 2010, when Vice Chancellors and international coordinators from the consortium member universities came to Lund for a hectic meeting to decide upon the principles for the selection process, discuss the implementation of the project, and to elect a steering committeee. During the kick-off meeting, it was also decided to set up four thematic groups – on quality assurance, on development of joint projects, on events/conferences, and finally on a visibility strategy for the project. SASNET’s deputy director Lars Eklund is a member of this visibility strategy group.
More information about the Lund kick-off meeting.

Professor Shahana Urooj Kazmi, Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Karachi, Pakistan gave an engaged presentation entitled ”Devastating Floods in Pakistan: A story of Pain, Grief and Suffering – Can We Help?” at Lund University on Wednesday 22 September 2010. Prof. Kazmi, on a short visit to Lund to participate in the consortium meeting of the Erasmus Mundus Asia Regional mobility programme (more information), gave an overview regarding the flood relief activities carried out by teachers and students at her university in the Northern part of Sindh province, through the Karachi University Disaster Management Volunteer Corps, a work carried out under the patronage of Chancellor Dr. Ishrat-ul Ibaad, Vice Chancellor Dr. Przada Qasim R. Siddiqui and Pro VC Dr. Shahana Urooj Kazmi. She was introduced by SASNET’s deputy director, Lars Eklund.
A large audience of students and faculty from Lund University, some of them actually coming from University of Karachi, attended the seminar and afterwards a group was formed to discuss immediate relief efforts. The seminar was jointly organised by SASNET and Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS). Venue: Lecture Hall Världen, Geocentrum 1, Sölvegatan 10, Lund.
More information about the seminar.

The daily newspaper Sydsvenskan published an interview with Prof. Kazmi, on the new Erasmus Mundus mobility programme, on Thursday 23 September. Read the article entitled ”Utbytet med Asien ökar”.

Associate Professor Jagannath Prasad Panda from the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis (IDSA) in New Delhi, India, held a SASNET lecture on ”The Pattern of Sino-Indian Relations: Evaluating the Strategic Discourse” at Lund University on Wednesday 29 September 2010. The seminar is organised in collaboration with Associate Professor Catarina Kinnvall at the Department of Political Science, Lund University. Dr. Panda works as a Research Fellow at IDSA, the premier and most eminent think-tank body in India, since August 2010. He is also the Managing Editor for the Peace and Development Digest, published by Foundation for Peace and Sustainable Development in New Delhi. He defended his doctoral dissertation in 2007 at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. His research interests focuses on Sino-Indian relations. He has come to Sweden in connection with collaborative research work at the Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP) in Nacka/Stockholm. He is preparing a paper on ”China, India and BRIC: Realist Interpretation of a Multi-polar World Order”. Venue for the seminar: Main conference hall (room 366), 2nd floor, Dept. of Political Science, Paradisgatan 5, Lund.
More information about the seminar.
During his stay in Lund, Dr. Panda also visited SASNET’s office and discussed with its deputy director Lars Eklund on possible future collaboration projects between the Indian Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis, and SASNET. Photo from the meeting.

• Prof. Venkatesh B. Athreya, R.S.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, India, held a well-attended lecture on ”Food Security Challenge in India” at Lund University on Friday 17 September 2010, 10.15–12.00. The seminar was jointly organised by SASNET and the Research group Society, Development, Environment (Samhälle, utveckling och miljö) at the Department of Sociology.
Prof. Athreya has been co-operating for many years with Prof. Göran Djurfeldt and Prof. Emeritus Staffan Lindberg at Lund University. Among his most well-known publications are “Literacy and Empowerment” (Sage 1996) and “Barriers Broken” (with Djurfeldt and Lindberg, Sage 1990). Currently he is, just like Dr. Rajagopal mentioned above, co-operating with Djurfeldt and Lindberg at Lund University in a restudy after 25 years of 213 agricultural households in the Cauvery delta in Tamilnadu.
The lecture at Lund University was based on the 2009 World Food programme report ”State of Food Insecurity in Rural India”, to which he contributed (more information). Venue for the seminar: Dept. of Sociology, Conference room no. 1 (335), Paradisgatan 5, Lund.
See the poster for the lecture.

• Dr. A. Rajagopal, R.S.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, India, lectures on ”Water Management and Agrarian change in India” at Lund University on Monday 13 September 2010, 13.15–15.00. The seminar is jointly organised by SASNET and the Research group Society, Development, Environment (Samhälle, utveckling och miljö) at the Department of Sociology. Dr. Rajagopal received his PhD on Water Management in 1991. After that, he worked for many years as a researcher with the South Asia Consortium for Inter Disciplinary Water Resources Studies at Hyderabad, India. Currently he is co-operating with Prof. Göran Djurfeldt and Prof. Emeritus Staffan Lindberg at Lund University in a restudy after 25 years of 213 agricultural households in the Cauvery delta in Tamil Nadu. Dr. Rajagopal’s lecture is based on a paper presented at the 2010 World Water Week at Stockholm (more information). Venue for the seminar: Dept. of Sociology, Conference room no. 2 (405), Paradisgatan 5, Lund.

On Wednesday 1 September 2010, a delegation of Indian government officials from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, researchers and business people working in the field of Biogas production and utilization in India visited Lund University in order to meet Indian students, and representatives of the International Relations department in charge of the university’s ongoing and coming Indo-European and South Asian regional-European Erasmus Mundus mobility programmes. The delegation was accompanied by Mr. Mikael Kullman (photo), Counsellor and Special Attaché for Environment, Climate Control and Energy at the Swedish Embassy in New Delhi.
Four Indian PhD candidates had been invited to present their experiences from work and extracurricular activities at Lund University. They were Biswanath Das from Viswa Bharati University in Shantiniketan, currently at the Division of Chemical Physics, Department of Chemistry, LU; Ami Patel from Anand Agricultural University, currently at Dept. of Biotechnology, LU; Firoz Hussain Shah from Delhi University, and Pramod Kamble from Pravara Institute of Medical Sciences, Loni, both now currently at the Section of Microbial Ecology, Dept of Ecology, LU.
SASNET’s deputy director Lars Eklund also got time to present the Lund University based SASNET network.

The official delegation was headed by Dr. Atma Ram Shukla from the Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, and Mr. Eric Rönnols from Avfall Sverige, hosting the delegation’s week-long stay in Sweden.
Associate Professor Virendra Kumar Vijay from the Centre for Rural Development and Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD), was a member of the delegation. Dr. Vijay coordinates the Biogas Development & Training Centre at IITD.
During a visit to Lund University on the preceding day, the Indian delegation had a study tour to the Dept. of Biotechnology and met researchers working on biogas projects with Indian partners. They also visited the Pro Vice Chancellor of Lund University, Dr. Eva Åkesson.

The second SASNET conference on South Asian Studies for young Nordic scholars was held successfully in Höllviken, south of Malmö, on 18–20 August 2010. 23 masters students, PhD candidates and recent PhDs from Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland participated in the three-day conference focusing on three major issues: Interdisciplinary Research; Field Work and Ethics; and Academic Career (Publishing, Teaching, Networking).
Graham

The keynote speaker was Prof. Emeritus Graham Chapman (photo) from the Dept. of Geography, Lancaster University, UK. Other main speakers were Dr. Sirpa Tenhunen, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Helsinki, Finland; Mr. Teddy Primack, Director of Academic Documents Associates, USA; Associate Professor Jan Vang, Department of Production, Aalborg University, Denmark; Dr. Anna Godhe, Department of Marine Ecology, University of Gothenburg; and Dr. Maria Lantz, Department of Art & Architecture, Royal University College of Fine Arts (KKH), Stockholm.
Bird watching

The 2010 Höllviken conference was a follow-up to the successful conference on the same topic that SASNET arranged the year before (more information on the 2009 conference). It proved to make a difference from the standard academic conferences and paid attention explicitly to the students. Something that was evaluated very positively from all participants. The 2010 conference was again held at Falsterbo conference retreat (Falsterbo kursgård) in Höllviken. This time an ornitological excursion led by Dr. Stig Toft Madsen was included in the programme, in order to watch birds and seals at the Falsterbo peninsula. (Prof. Bo Lindblad watches birds on photo above).
More information on the conference web page.
See the full programme in the conference folder.
See Lars Eklund’s photos from the conference

• Professor Sudipta Bhattacharya from the Dept. of Economics and Politics, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India, and currently Visiting Professor at the Asia Research Centre, Copenhagen Business School (CBS), held a SASNET lecture on ”Neo-liberalism, Weaking State and Peasant Differentiation in Indian Agriculture” at Lund University on Wednesday 26 May 2010. The seminar was organized in collaboration with the Department of Sociology, Lund University, and is based on Prof. Bhattacharya’s Survey Findings from Panel Data in West Bengal during the periods 1993-94, and 2004-05. He analyses the changing structure of investment and production over a period of neo-liberal policy regime in India that the Left Front government in West Bengal had to accept as a constitutional compulsion. The interventionist legacy of empowerment of rural poor through land reform and rural transformation through decentralized participatory governance in the state had been disturbed since 1991 when the Indian government adopted neo-liberal policies of cutting fertilizer, food and credit subsidies in agriculture, conversion of 8 millions hectares of land from food to export oriented crops, making PDS and nationalized/co-operative banks less effective for the poor. Venue: Department of Sociology, room 335, Paradisgatan 5, Lund. More information.

• Professor Gitiara Nasreen, Professor & Chair, Department of Mass Communication and Journalism, Dhaka University, Bangladesh, held a SASNET lecture on ”Images of Gender on Media in Bangladesh” at Lund University on Monday 24 May 2010. The seminar was organized in collaboration with the Department of Sociology, Lund University.
More information about the seminar.
Prof. Nasreen had come to Sweden on invitation by The Global School Sweden (Globala Skolan), a programme run by the International Programme Office for Education and Training and supported by Sida, in order to participate in a Sida-funded seminar on the responsibility of the rich world – twenty-four hours for global learning, held in Stockholm 20–21 May (more information), but then travelled to Lund to visit researchers and students at relevant departments at Lund University – a visit planned for by SASNET’s Lars Eklund.
Accompanied by Mr. Bo Kramsjö, representative for Globala Skolan, she visited Lund University’s Dept. of Media and Communication Studies, where Prof. Peter Dahlgren (photo) had organised a programme including meeting with students and researchers. Before the afternoon seminar at the Dept. of Sociology, Prof. Nasreen was also given an opportunity to visit SASNET’s office at Scheelevägen.

• Muhammad Azam Khan Swati, federal minister of Science and Technology from Pakistan, participated in a seminar on ”The Role of Overseas Pakistani Students in Nation Building” at Lund University on Saturday 22 May 2010. As a minister, Mr. Khan Swati has among other things played a pivotal role in establishing the Hazara University in District Mansehra. It is the only institution of higher learning in the area with special emphasis on universal values. The seminar was organised by Pakistani students of Asian Studies at Lund University, and Mr. Muhammad Athar Javed, South Asia expert in Copenhagen, Denmark (who also spoke at the seminar), with support from SASNET. The seminar was introduced by Dr. Anna Lindberg, Director of SASNET. After the Minister’s lecture, time was provided for an interactive debate/question-answer session. Refreshments along with Pakistani food were served. Venue: Hörsalen, Kårhuset, Faculty of Engineering (LTH), John Ericssons väg 3, Lund. More information.

• A successful seminar on Arsenic in Drinking Water was held at Lund University on Wednesday 5 May 2010. The well-attended seminar drew a mixed audience of researchers, students and other interested people. The seminar was organized by SASNET in collaboration with Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS); the Division of Water Resources Engineering, Lund University; KTH-International Groundwater Arsenic Research Group at the Dept. of Land and Water Resources Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm; and The Swallows India-Bangladesh section. H.E. Mr. Imtiaz Ahmed, Ambassador of Bangladesh to Sweden was the guest of honour during the day.
Arsenic in groundwater constitutes a major human health issue in many countries globally. Although the source of arsenic is natural, people’s exposure to arsenic in drinking water is the result of extensive groundwater development that began in the 1970s with the support of international development agencies. The problem is particularly acute in the Bengal Delta Plains in Bangladesh and India but has also prevalent in many other parts of the world, including Argentina, Chile, Mongolia, and the United States. The problem of arsenic poisoning in the Bengali countryside has received considerable media attention, since it affects a maximum umber of people, 30 million in Bangladesh and 5 million in West Bengal.
Arsenic poisoning caused by the widespread boring of wells for drinking water has become a major problem, maybe on a scale equivalent to the problem of unhygienic surface water causing diarrhoea diseases (and which was the original reason behind the massive efforts to bore groundwater wells from the 1970s).
The seminar probed the issue of arsenic poisoning in a broad social context and an interdisciplinary perspective, with a focus on how to provide safe drinking water in the future, and what is presently being done by researchers, donors and practitioners working with these issues. The presentations gave insights from many different perspectives. Presentations were given by Prof. Torleif Dahlin, Engineering Geology, Lund University, Prof. Prosun Bhattacharya, KTH, Prof. Marie Vahter, Division of Metals & Health, Institute of Environmental Medicine (IMM), Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Dr. Abul Mandal, School of Life Sciences, Skövde University, Dr. Mattias von Brömssen, Ramböll AB, and Eva Hägerstrand, Coordinator for the Swallows India-Bangladesh Section, based in Lund. Prof. Lennart Olsson from LUCSUS was the moderator for the day and led the final discussion.
Funding was provided by Swedish Water House (SWH) in Stockholm, and Sydvatten AB in Malmö.
Read a report from the seminar.

• Nils Finn Munch-Petersen, Senior expert at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) in Copenhagen, Denmark, held an open SASNET lecture at Lund University on Tuesday 27 April 2010.

Nils Finn Munch-Petersen talked about ”The Maldives – Paradise Lost?”, focusing on the current developments in the Indian Ocean republic, claimed to be threatened by a rise in sea level due to expected global warming. However, more immediate threats are issues such as a break-down of society caused by a growing economic and demographic imbalance precipitated by uncontrolled tourism growth and the influx of lowly-paid foreign workers. This leads to social inequality, a growing number of unemployed youth, narcotics related criminality and a growing Islamic fundamentalism.
Nils Finn Munch-Petersen is a social anthropologist who first visited the Maldives in the 1970s, and has since travelled extensively in the Northern and Southern Atolls for research and work for international organizations such as UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA, and the World Bank. He is considered to be one of the leading, non-Maldivian, world specialists on the Maldives.
Another leading Nordic Maldives expert, Professor Emeritus Nils-Axel Mörner, previously connected to the Unit of Palegeophysics and Geodynamics, Stockholm University, was one among the audience, and his presence ensured a vital debate on the real problems that the Indian Ocean republic currently faces.
Venue for the seminar: Conference room, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE), Lund University.More information.

• Anthony P. D'Costa, Professor of Indian Studies at the Asia Research Centre (ARC), Copenhagen Business School, held an open SASNET lecture at Lund University on Monday 19 April 2010, 11.15–13.00. He talked about ”India's Changing Role in the Global Political Economy”.
The seminar was inaugurated by the Indian Ambassador to Sweden, H.E. Mr. Balkrishna Shetty, who also gave some some opening remarks.
Prior he came to ARC in 2008, Prof. Anthony D’Costa was with the University of Washington for eighteen years. He has written extensively on the global steel, Indian automobile and IT industries, globalization, development, innovations, and industrial restructuring. He is currently working on globalization and the international mobility of IT workers examining migration pattern, immigration policies, national innovation systems, and tertiary education in India, China, Japan, and the US, co-authoring a photographic essay on Indian modernity and industrialization, and editing volumes on economic nationalism and the development experiences of India and China. More information about Anthony D’Costa.

The seminar was co-organised by the Sweden India Business Council (SIBC), and held with kind support from the Embassy of India in Sweden.
Venue for the seminar: Museum of Cultural History/Auditorium (Kulturens hörsal), Tegnérplatsen, Lund.
More information about the seminar.
After the seminar, Lund University Vice Chancellor Prof. Per Eriksson invited the Indian Ambassador, the First Secretary Mrs. Madhumita Bhagat and Prof. D’Costa for an official lunch at the Old Bishop’s House. The lunch was also attended by the University Director Dr. Marianne Granfelt, Anna Lindberg and Lars Eklund from SASNET, SIBC Senior Advisor Mr. Stig Victorin, and a few invited guests from Lund University.

• Prof. Yogendra Yadav, Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, India, held a SASNET lecture on ”Democracy and Poverty in India”, on Thursday 18 March 2010. The well-attended seminar was organised in collaboration with the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE). Yadav is a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study at Berlin, Germany, during the academic year 2009–2010. His areas of interests include democratic theory, election studies, survey research, political theory, modern Indian political thought and Indian socialism. He has co-authored State of Democracy in South Asia (OUP, 2008) and co-edited (with Sandeep Shastri and K C Suri) Electoral Politics in Indian States (OUP, 2009). He has also been involved in designing and coordinating the National Election Studies, the most comprehensive series of academic surveys of the Indian electorate, from 1996 to 2009. In his presentation, he focused on the co-existence of democracy and poverty, specifically the continued existence of electoral democracy with popular participation along with mass poverty. The paradox is not trivial: we have good reasons to be surprised about it. Making sense of this paradox takes us to the explanatory framework that may shed light on the mechanism that makes this paradoxical co-existence possible. The framework may also enable us to do a little more: understand the changes over time and differences across the various states in the relationship of democracy with poverty. More information.

• On Saturday 19 December 2009, Her Excellency Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh, visited Lund University to hold a public lecture on ”Climate Change in Bangladesh – Facing the Challenges”. Sheikh Hasina was invited to visit Lund by SASNET and the Association of Foreign Affairs at Lund University (UPF), and was hosted by Lund University Vice Chancellor Per Eriksson.
A large delegation of ministers and around 20 members of the Bangladeshi parliament (who have attended the COP 15 climate conference in Copenhagen) accompanied the Prime Minister from Copenhagen during this high-security visit to Lund. The interest from Lund University students and researchers, as well as from the local Bangladeshi community was overwhelming.
The lecture hall was crowded, and the event was documented by a couple of Bangladeshi TV company crews. More information.
See Lars Eklund’s photos from Sheikh Hasina’s visit to Lund.

• On Thursday 22 October 2009, SASNET invited Lund University Masters students, Ph.D. candidates and senior researchers interested in studies and research related to South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and Maldives) to an open meeting. Nearly 50 people turned up for the meeting that was intended to increase the interest in pursuing South Asia related education and research at Lund University. Eminent researchers involved in South Asia related projects, including Prof. Baboo Nair, Dept. of Applied Nutrition, Prof. Staffan Lindberg, Dept. of Sociology, Prof. Rajni Hatti Kaul, Dept. of Biotechnology, and Dr. Catarina Kinnvall, Dept. of Political Science, gave presentations on their work. Dr. Vipin Negi, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, and Dr. Gupinath Bhandari, Lund University Centre for Risk Assessment and Management (LUCRAM), also told about their experiences being scholarship holders through the Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window Programme. After the meeting, the participants stayed on for snacks and refreshments. Venue for the meeting: Kårhuset, Hörsalen, John Ericssons väg 3, Lund. Read a report from the meeting (with photos).

• A joint SASNET/UPF (Association of Foreign Affairs at Lund University) seminar on ”Political Transitions affecting the Peace Process in Nepal” was held in Lund on Wednesday 23 September 2009, 19.30–21.00. Anjoo Sharan Upadhyaya, Professor of Political Science and Director, Centre for the Study of Nepal at Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi, India, participated in the seminar along with Mr. Vijaykant Lal Karna, Nepalese ambassador to Scandinavia (based in Denmark) who is also a political scientist by profession, having worked at Tribhuvan University for 20 years.
The audience consisted of more than 70 people, mostly Lund University students, but also visiting Nepalese students (see photo with the Ambassador and a gathering of these).
Anjoo Upadhyaya

In her 35 years of teaching career at Banaras Hindu University, Prof. Anjoo Sharan Upadhyayay (photo) has been the Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences; and served twice as the Head, Department of Political Science. Outside of India, she has worked for example as Research Director at UNU/Ulster University INCORE (Institute of Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity), UK; as Fellow at London School of Economics & Politics (LSE), and as Scholar-in Residence at the Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars, Washington DC, USA. Professor Upadhyaya has published extensively both nationally and internationally on themes related to issues of self-determination, ethnicity, conflict, federalism, gender, development and peace. Currently she is engaged in a collaboration project with Karlstad University. Dr. Leif Bjellin from the the Dept. of Cell and Organism Biology, Lund University, was the moderator for the seminar. Venue: Café Athen, Akademiska Föreningen (AF), Sandgatan 2, Lund. More information about the seminar.

• Professor Priyankar Upadhyaya from Benaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, India, held a lecture at Lund University on ”Religious Peace Building in India” on Thursday 24 September, 10.15–12.00. The seminar was jointly organised by the Dept.of History of Religions, Lund University, and SASNET. Prof. Upadhyaya is Director at the Malaviya Centre for Peace Research at BHU. He holds a PhD of Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Advance International Diploma(s) in Conflict Resolution from Uppsala University, Sweden. In Sweden, he has also served as a Visiting Professor at Karlstad University. During September 2009 he has been based at the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO) in Oslo. Venue: Room 438, Centre for Theology and Religious Studies (CTR), Allhelgona Kyrkogata 8, Lund. More information.

• The joint SASNET/UPF (Association of Foreign Affairs at Lund University) seminar on ”Contemporary Pakistan: Islamism, Human Rights and Terrorism”, held in Lund on Wednesday 16 September 2009, drew an audience of more than 100 people. The speakers were Prof. Ishtiaq Ahmed, working as Visiting Research Professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore; and Dr. Rubya Mehdi, University of Copenhagen.
Pakistan seminar

Prof. Ahmed is currently on leave from the Dept. of Political Science, Stockholm University. At ISAS, he is working on a research project ebtitled ”Is Pakistan a Garrison State?” The aim of the study is to generate a comprehensive analysis of the reasons why the military came to play the dominant role in Pakistani politics. He is also in the process of completing a major study based on first-hand accounts of the partition of the Punjab in 1947. Ishtiaq has taught and carried out research on issues of human rights, women's rights and minorities extensively in South Asian contexts in general and in Pakistan in particular. He has also written extensively on the politics of South Asia, especially Pakistan. He wrote a weekly column in the Pakistan English-language newspapers, The Daily Times and The News International during May 2002 and June 2007. Besides, he is on the editorial advisory board of Asian Ethnicity, Journal of Punjab Studies, IPRI Journal and PIPS Journal of Conflict and Peace Studies.
Rubya Mehdi (photo to the right) has a PhD in Law, and is a senior researcher at the Carsten Niebuhr Institute, Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. She is one of Denmark’s leading experts in Islamic law, and has conducted research in Denmark for 20 years. She is also a visiting professor with the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan, and she was involved in the Protection of Women Act 2006, which was passed to improve the situation of women in Pakistan. It also tried to make some changes in the Hudood ordinance which was very much discriminating against women in rape cases. Dr. Stig Toft Madsen, SASNET, was the moderator for the discussion. Venue: Café Athen, Akademiska Föreningen (AF), Sandgatan 2, Lund. More information.

• Dr. Ruby Sain from the Dept. of Sociology, Jadavpur University, India, held an open lecture at Lund University on Wednesday 16 September 2009, 14.15 – 17.00. The seminar was jointly organised by the School of Social Work at Lund university, Vårdalinstitutet and SASNET. Dr. Sain, who mostly works on health, illness, ageing, religion and research methodology issues, will talk about “Depression – a social problem of the elderly population in India”. She is the founding editor of the Jadavpur University Journal of Sociology, and her forthcoming books are titled ”Contemporary Social Problems in India-Vol I” (ed.) and ”Folk Religion in Bengal”. Besides, Dr Sain is secretary of the International Forum for the Study of Society and Religion (IFFSR), a forum that links researchers and scholars from Jadavpur University, University of Gothenburg and the Oxford Center for Hindu Studies. She came to Sweden on a SASNET guest lecture programme grant, invited by the Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion, Gothenburg University. Venue for the Lund seminar: Edebalksalen, School of Social Work, Bredgatan 26, Lund. More information.

• The Mahatma Gandhi Book Collection (part of the Karl Reinhold Haellquist Memorial Collection) was formally inaugurated by the Indian Ambassador to Sweden, Mr. Balkrishna Shetty, on Thursday 10 September 2009. On behalf of the Indian government, the Ambassador also took the opportunity to donate to Lund University and SASNET another 120 volumes of Mahatma Gandhi literature, either works written by Gandhi himself or books focusing on him.
The function, including a puja ceremony by Ms. Bubu Munshi-Eklund, took place at Lund University’s Asia Library at Scheelevägen 15. A large number of Lund University professors and researchers, and also Indian students and guest researchers who have come to Lund University through the Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window India lot 15, participated. Lund University was officially represented by the Assistant Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Sven Strömqvist. The daily newspaper Sydsvenskan carried a report from the inauguration, and also Lund University magazine LUM in its issue No. 8/2009. See the newspaper reports. (as a pdf-file).

Ms. Inger Sondén Haellquist (photo to the left) was the guest of honour since she is the person who in 2004 donated the extensive private book collection of her late husband, Karl Reinhold Haellquist, to Lund University. This collection, consisting of nearly 7 000 volumes of South Asia related literature, was selected by Lund University researchers Neelambar Hatti and Jan Magnusson, and has since been catalogued by SASNET. A small part of the collection, primarily the Mahatma Gandhi collection, is exhibited in the Asia Library. More information about the Karl Reinhold Haellquist Memorial Collection.
After the inauguration ceremony, and the presentation of the new book donation by the Indian Ambassador, a 45 minutes documentary on the life of Mahatma Gandhi was shown. The film, entitled ”Mahatma – A Great Soul of the 20th Century”, has been jointly produced by the Public Diplomacy Division, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India; and the Gandhi Films Foundation.
Not only the book collection was inaugurated. Also SASNET’s web site on the Mahatma Gandhi collection (www.sasnet.lu.se/gandhi) was officially launched. The web site has been prepared for SASNET by the librarian Erik Svanström.

• SASNET’s seminar on the Role of Mahatma Gandhi in Today’s Society became a major success. More than 120 people, Lund University professors, researchers and students but also many interested persons from outside the academic world, gathered for the seminar featuring David Arnold, Professor of Asian and Global History at the University of Warwick, UK, and the Indian Ambassador to Sweden, Mr. Balkrishna Shetty. The two-hour seminar was held on Thursday 10 September 2009, 19–21, at Lund University’s Centre for Languages and Literature (SOL-Centrum) and was moderated by SASNET’s Director, Dr. Anna Lindberg.
Gandhi seminar

The Ambassador, Mr. Balkrishna Shetty, was the first speaker, and he gave a personal narrative on Mahatma Gandhi’s life, the important role he has played in history, and the basic values that he stands for, values that should still play an important role.
Prof. David Arnold came next. His presentation, entitled ”Gandhi: The Mahatma and the Machine”, differed in its specific focus on Mahatma Gandhi’s complicated relation to machines. Whereas Gandhi was well-known for his resentment against modern industrial inventions that robbed people of their employment, he was still very much dependent on the radio transmitters, microphones, and trains, in order to reach out to the masses with his message.
After the seminar, a rich vegetarian buffet dinner from Restaurant Govinda was served to all participants in the foyer of SOL-Centrum.
Full information about SASNET’s Gandhi seminar.

• SASNET successfully organised a Nordic conference on South Asian Studies for young scholars at Falsterbo Kursgård in Höllviken (south of Malmö) 17-19 August 2009. Read the conference report.
The aim of the conference was to gather masters students, PhD candidates, and young post-docs in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway who focus on South Asia in their research studies. 45 participants came to the conference, that had been planned by an organising committee led by Dr. Kristina Myrvold, Dept. of History of Religions, Lund University, and Ms. Julia Velkova, MA in Eastern Philosophy and Culture from the University of Sofia, Bulgaria.
The aim behind the conference, which was very much similar to another successful conference that SASNET organised in Marstrand in October 2002 (more information about the 2002 conference), was to provide an opportunity for young scholars to present their future and ongoing research projects, establish contacts with colleagues in the Nordic countries, and discuss common challenges and opportunities when conducting research in South Asia related studies.

Prof. Vinayak Chaturvedi, University of California Irvine, had been invited to be the keynote speaker. He lectured about ”Dialogues with M.K. Gandhi on History and Violence in India”.
Prof. Pamela Price, Oslo University, was another principal speaker. She talked about ”Being a South Asianist in the Nordic countries: Being Glocal”.
Dr. Mirja Juntunen, Uppsala University, coordinator of the Nordic Center in India (NCI), talked about ”A Nordic Perspective on Prospects and Challenges for Scholarly Interaction with South Asia”; and Mr. Teddy Primack, Editor, Academic Documents Associates, New York, made an exciting and useful presentation entitled ”How to displease an editor” about how to deliver manuscripts for scientific publishing.
A number of thematic sessions were led by Prof. Knut A. Jacobsen, University of Bergen (History, Religion, and Culture I); Dr. Peter B Andersen, Copenhagen University (History, Religion, and Culture II); Dr. Catarina Kinnvall, Lund University (Society, Development, and Gender); Dr. Per Hilding, Stockholm University (Nature, Health, and Environment); and Dr. Per Knutsson, Gothenburg University (Technology, Economics, and International Relations).

Finally three plenary interdisciplinary sessions were organised on important issues. They were prepared by selected student participants, who raised questions on three given topics, namely ”Career Planning, Funding, and Passion for South Asian Studies”, ”Publication, Conference,Teaching and Other Activities”; and ”Networking and Future Research”, to a number of ”champions”, senior Nordic researchers from the SASNET network. (photo from one of the sessions).
The ”champions” were Prof. Bo Lindblad, Karolinska Institutet; Dr. Anna Godhe, Gothenburg University; Dr. Jan Magnusson, Lund University; Dr. Christer Norström, Stockholm University, Prof. Devdatt Dubhashi, Chalmers University of Technology; Dr. Zarina Kabir, Karolinska Institutet; Dr. Stig Toft Madsen, SASNET; and Prof. Staffan Lindberg, Lund University. See the programme, including a list of participants (as a pdf-file)
More photos from the conference.

• SASNET sponsored a photographic project set up by second-year students from Lund University’s Masters programme in Development and Management (LUMID) 2007–09 batch. During the period 25 May – 4 June 2009, they exhibited photos from their fieldworks in Asian and African countries. The exhibition was part of the LFA (LUMID Fotographic Art) Project, as it is called. A festive vernissage that was held on Friday 29 May 2009. Anna Lindberg, Lars Eklund and Stig Toft Madsen from SASNET participated in the event. Venue: Wickmanska gården, Bredgatan 2 in central Lund (close to the City Library). More information.

• The Tabla player Subrata Manna, the classical singer Sudokshina Chatterjee Manna, and the Kathak dancer Sohini Debnath (photo), all from Kolkata, India, participated in an well-attended academic seminar on intercultural education research in Malmö on Tuesday 26 May 2009, 13.30–16.00.
They gave a presentation titled ”Application of Classical Indian Music in World Music of today”. The artists visited Scandinavia as part of a European tour (with concerts in Copenhagen on May 26th and in Lund on May 27th).
The Malmö seminar was jointly organised by Lund University Intercultural Education Research Forum (since November 2008 coordinated by the International Art and Cultural Education Competency Centre, KIKK, at Malmö Academy of Music), and SASNET. Besides the three Indian artists, who discussed Indian forms of music and dance and show their skills, two presentations of ongoing research projects at Lund University were given. Dr. Bosse Bergstedt, Dept. of Education talked about ”The Genuine Voice – on a Prelinguistic Fellowship”; and Senior Lecturer Eva Sæther, Dept. of Music Education Research talked about ”To play oneself Persian or Swedish – or?”. Venue: Musikhögskolan i Malmö, Ystadvägen 25. More information.

• Professor G.N. Tiwari from the Centre for Energy Studies at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi visited SASNET’s root node office in Lund on Tuesday 19 May 2009. He was accompanied by Professor Krister Håkansson, Dept. of Psychology, Växjö University, with whom Prof. Tiwari is involved in a collaboration project to organise research and a conference on hybrid photovoltaic-thermal technology (H-PV/T), to be held in New Delhi. The conference, entitled ”Implementation strategies for the transfer of hybrid photovoltaic-thermal technology (H-PV/T) from research to lab to field” should have been held already in March 2009, but due to the Indian elections it was postponed, and new dates will be in the end of August. Prof. Tiwari is a leading expert in the research on how solar energy can be introduced in Indian villages without electricity. In 2007 he organised the 3rd International Conference on Solar Radiation and Day Lighting, ”SOLARIS 2007” at IIT Delhi. Then he established contact with Dr. Om Prakash at the School of Technology and Design, Växjö University, and originally they were supposed to plan for the new conference. But due to illness, Dr. Prakash had to give up the project, and he gave it over to Christer Håkansson. Being a psychologist, Håkansson is interested to launch a broader interdisciplinary research project on issues widely connected to village development and the introduction of solar energy in India. More information.

• Dr. Tabish Khair from the Dept. of English, University of Aarhus, Denmark, held a SASNET lecture in Lund on ”The Gothic and Postcolonialism: Alterity, Difference and Narration” on Monday 18 May 2009, 13.15–15.00. The seminar was co-organised by Prof. Claes-Göran Holmberg, Dept. of Comparative Literature, Lund University. Born and educated mostly in Gaya, India, Tabish Khair is the author of various books. His honours and prizes include the All India Poetry Prize (awarded by the Poetry Society and the British Council). Academic papers, reviews, essays, fiction and poems by Khair have appeared in Indian, British, Danish, American, German, Italian, South African, Chinese and other publications. Khair has just finished a study, entitled ”The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness”, which will be published in USA and UK by Palgrave (Macmillan) in August 2009. Venue for the Lund seminar: Room L 201, Lund University’s Centre for Languages and Literature (SOL-Centrum), Helgonabacken 14, Lund.
More information.

• On Thursday 14 May 2009, SASNET organised the visit to Lund and Malmö by the new Ambassador of India to Sweden, H.E. Mr. Balkrishna Shetty.During his stay in Lund he had discussions with SASNET’s director Anna Lindberg and deputy director Lars Eklund. He also met with the University Director Dr. Marianne Granfelt and participated in a seminar with researchers, teachers, students, and international coordinators involved in India related projects at Lund University. Mr. Shetty was accompanied by Mrs. Madhumita Hazarika Bhagat, First Secretary (Commercial, Consular, Culture), Embassy of India. The Ambassador listened to a few selected presentations: Dr. Sidsel Hansson presented the Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window lot 15 programme, coordinated by Lund University; Prof. Baboo Nair, Dept. of Applied Nutrition and Food Chemistry, informed about the SASNET Fermented Foods project; and Prof. Olle Qvarnström presented the Division of Indic Religions at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University. More information about the seminar.
SASNET also co-hosted an India seminar in co-operation with SIBC (Sweden-India Business Council) and Ideon Research park, where the Ambassador was the key speaker. With his wide experiences he gave an interesting presentation. In recent years he 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. Besides the speech by the Ambassador, the seminar also included a presentation by Prof. Baboo Nair, who talked about ”Doing Business in India”. SASNET’s Director, Dr. Anna Lindberg, was the moderator. More information.
During his stay in Lund and Malmö, the Ambassador also visited the Mayor of Lund, Ms Annica Annerby Jansson, visited Lund University’s Faculty of Engineering, and especially its Department of Electrical and Information Technology. In the evening Mr. Shetty went to Malmö, first to visit the Bollywood cinema hall in Limhamn, and then to host a reception at Hipp for 100 invited guests, mostly from the Indian community in Malmö/Lund, but also a delegation from Malmö University, and people working on India related projects within art, music, and theatre.
Read the full programme for the Ambassador’s visit to Lund on May 14, 2009, and see photos.

• Prof. Dipak Malik, Director of the Gandhian Institute in Varanasi, India, held an open SASNET lecture at Lund University on ”Riots and Elections in India” on Monday 11 May 2009. Prof. Malik, also working at the Dept. of Commerce, Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi, discussed the multi-faceted factors deciding the outcome of the ongoing elections for the Indian parliament, Lok Sabha (results to be announced on May 16th), and the profile of Indian communal riots, now and in the past. The seminar was organised in collaboration with the Research group on Development and Environment at the Dept. of Sociology, Lund University, being part of a Swedish guest lecture tour that also brought him to the universities of Gothenburg and Karlstad (funded by a SASNET grant). Venue: Conference room 1 (335), Dept.of Sociology, Lund University, Paradisgatan 5 (house G).
More information.

• The Vice Chancellor from Jahangirnagar University in Bangladesh, Prof. Shariff Enamur Kabir, visited SASNET’s root node office in Lund on Wednesday 25 March 2009. He was accompanied by Professor Pradeep Mathur from the Dept. of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai, and Dr. Ebbe Nordlander, Dept. of Chemical Physics, Lund University. The three researchers are involved in a joint reserach project on ”Modelling of hydrodesulfurization reactions and development of new molecular hydrodesulfurization catalyst” that received a SASNET planning grant in 2008, the planning of which was carried out during the stay in Lund. The purpose behind the project is to establish a network where the reaction mechanisms of the industrially and environmentally important hydrodesulfurization process (the removal of sulfur from fossil fuels, e.g. oil) will be studied on metal complexes that function as models for industrial hydrodesulfurization catalysts. In addition, attempts will be made to develop new clean and effective hydrodesulfurization catalysts. More information.
During the visit in Lund, Prof. Shariff Enamur Kabir also met with Lund University’s Pro vice-chancellor Eva Åkesson to discuss a possible Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Lund University and Jahangirnagar University.

• Dr. Walter Andersen, Associate Director of the South Asia Studies Program at Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C., USA held a joint SASNET/UPF (Lund University Association of Foreign Affairs) lecture in Lund on Monday 16 March 2009, at 19.30. Dr. Andersen, who has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago, lectured on ”Islamic militancy in India: A domestic issue with significant foreign policy implications” He has recently retired as chief of the U.S. State Department's South Asia Division in the Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia. Venue for the seminar: Café Athen, Sandgatan 2, Lund. More information about Dr. Andersen.

• Professor Ravinder Kaur from the Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi held a SASNET lecture at Lund University on Wednesday 11 March 2009, 14.15–16. Prof. Kaur talked about ”Strangers as Spouses: Marriage Implications of India’s Skewed sex Ratio”, focusing on the continuing gender imbalance and the recent steep declines in the child sex ratio in India. The presentation was based on extensive fieldwork consisting of interviews with cross-region couples in the state of Haryana with additional evidence from Uttar Pradesh. Some fieldwork-based evidence has also been obtained from the bride-sending states of West Bengal and Kerala. An interesting finding and a hopeful sign is the positive sex ratio of the offspring of such marriages. The lecture was organised in collaboration with Lund University’s Dept. of Economic History, and Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE). Venue: Conference room, Dept. of Economic History, Scheelevägen 15 B, 1st floor, Lund. More information.

• Dr. Daya Kishan Thussu from the University of Westminster, UK, was invited by SASNET to lecture at a Focus Asia conference on ”Media Cultures and Politics in Asia and Beyond” that was held at Lund University 26–27 February 2009. Focus Asia is a yearly event organised by the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE) at Lund University, and this 10th Focus Asia event brings together leading media scholars who discussed media in Asia and beyond. Several of the lectures at the Focus Asia conference addressed the relationship between media, democracy and the public sphere in different national and regional contexts. Dr. Thussu talked about ”Infotainment – Indian Style: Changing Contours of TV News in the World’s Largest Democracy” on Thursday 26 February, 16.00–17.30. Read the full programme for the Focus Asia February 2009.

• Two smart quizz winning Indian students from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai, Rahul Singh (from Jamshedpur) and Haripriya Mukundarajan (from Bangalore), visited SASNET and Lund University on Monday 23 February 2009. They were the winners of a Nobel prize quizz competition organised by the Embassy of Sweden in India in October 2008. The winners’ prize was an all-expenses paid, weeklong trip to Sweden where they would get an opportunity to visit Swedish universities and major technology companies in Lund, Göteborg, Linköping, Sandviken and Stockholm. SASNET’s deputy director Lars Eklund organised their visit to Lund University, that included visiting the Nanoscience laboratory at the Dept. of Physics (photo above). More information.

• A joint SASNET/UPF (Association of Foreign Affairs at Lund University) seminar on the political development in Nepal was held on Thursday 23 October 2008, 19.30–21.00. David Ludden (photo to the right), Professor of Political Economy and Globalization in the Department of History at New York University, USA was the main speaker with a presentation titled ”Where is the revolution? Towards a Post-National Politics of Social Justice”. Prof. Ludden received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978 and was Professor of History there from 1999-2008. His research concentrates on South Asia and on histories of development in very long-term perspective, focusing on economic development, agrarian conditions, health environments, empire, inequality, and social conflict. In August 2008, he was invited by the Social Science Baha to hold the 2008 Mahesh Chandra Regmi Lecture in Kathmandu. Other participants to the Lund seminar were Dr. Katak Malla from the Dept. of Law, Stockholm University, who talked about ”Nepal from monarchy to republic: the ongoing political process”; and HE the Ambassador of Nepal to Denmark (with a side accreditation to Sweden), Mr. Vijaykant Lal Karna, who is also a political scientist by profession, having worked at Tribhuvan University for 20 years.
SASNET’s former Director Prof. Staffan Lindberg, Dept. of Sociology, Lund University was the moderator for the seminar that drew a crowd of around 40 people. Venue for the seminar: Auditorium (Hörsalen) at Lund University’s Centre for Languages and Literature (SOL-Centrum), Helgonabacken 14, Lund. See the full information about the seminar and the three speakers (as a pdf-file).
Ambassadsor and Bexell

During their stay in Lund, the Ambassador Mr. Vijaykant Lal Karna and Dr. Katak Malla from Stockholm University, old colleagues fom Tribhuvan University, also visited SASNET’s root node office at Scheelevägen. A fruitful discussion took place regarding the ongoing democratic transition process in Nepal and the urgency of support for the positive development. The Ambassador would welcome such initiatives from Sweden, and he thinks that SASNET should play a facilitating role.
A meeting was also organised in the afternoon for the Ambassador and the other participants to the SASNET/UPF Nepal seminar to meet the Vice Chancellor of Lund University, Prof. Göran Bexell (photo from the accasion).
Earlier the same daty, Prof. David Ludden also held a lecture on the concept of Asian area studies, for Master’s students at Lund University. In an illuminating talk, he briefly explained the US national agenda behind the set up and funding of Area Studies departments in US universities. The relevance of area studies (which had a prominent role during the Cold War years) was questioned in the 1990s by advocates of Globalisation as a new way to understand and articulate knowledge about the world; the need for experts on a particular area (or country) seemed outdated in the face of the new globalising world, where borders wouldn’t matter anymore and local differences would eventually be absorbed in the greater global frame. The tragic shock of 9/11, however, brought area studies back to the limelight; US realised it needed a corpus of highly professional experts on areas considered at risk for national security. SASNET’s Maria Tonini attended the lecture, read her report.

• Prof. Rana P.B. Singh gave a SASNET lecture on ”Indian village: tradition, modernity and change” in Lund on Tuesday 28 October 2008. The seminar focusing on the developments in a village in Uttar Pradesh not far from Varanasi, was organised in collaboration with the Dept. of History and Anthropology of Religions, Lund University. Photo from the seminar to the right.
Rana P.B. Singh is a Professor of Cultural Geography at Banaras Hindu University, BHU. He has been involved in studying, performing and promoting the heritage planning, eco-tourism and rural studies and development in the Varanasi region for more than two decades, as consultant, project director, collaborator and organiser. In research, he combines the trilogy of historical process, cultural tradition and environmental ethics to understand the people and landscape in India. His publications include more than 30 volumes, and 150 research papers. He has also a long and strong connection to Sweden, regularly coming here since 1988 mostly being a visiting professor at Karlstad University, but he has also given lectures at the universities of Lund, Göteborg, Uppsala, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Aarhus, Åbo, Vasa, Oslo and Bergen. As president of the Indo-Nordic Cultural Association in Varanasi Prof. Singh has been involved in organising various India Study programmes for both Karlstad University and also Copenhagen University, and been a keen SASNET promoter in India. In 2004 he participated in the 18th ECMSAS conference, organised by SASNET in Lund. He convened Panel No 46 on ”Spirit and Power of Sacred Places, and Preservation of Cultural Heritage”. This year Prof. Singh was invited as a visiting faculty for a month to the Dept. of Religious Studies and Theology at Göteborg University. Read a summary of the SASNET lecture. During his stay in Lund, Prof. Singh also visited SASNET’s root node office at Ideon Research Park and had discussions with the acting director Sidsel Hansson and deputy director Lars Eklund. Besides, he was given an opportunity to meet Erik Svanström, the librarian that is currently working for SASNET with digitalization of the Karl Reinhold Haellquist memorial collection (more information). This unique collection consists of more than 6000 South Asia related books, journals, videotapes and pamphlets on various aspects of South Asian studies that was donated to SASNET and the Asia Library in 2004. Since an important part of donation focuses on Mahatma Gandhi and his work, Mr. Svanström has created a special web site with this material, a web site that will soon be published by SASNET. Prof. Singh showed great enthusiasm for the project and contributed with several ideas on links. (Photo of Rana P B Singh with Erik Svanström).

• SASNET participated in a half-day seminar on Indo-Swedish research and educational collaboration organised by the Faculty of Engineering (LTH), Lund University on Tuesday 21 October 2008. A large number of researchers gathered to listen to presentations by Tomas Aronsson from the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems, VINNOVA, who talked about the formalised India-Sweden collaboration within the field of Science & Technology; and Prof. Ramon Wyss, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, who presented INSTEC, the national network for India-Swedish Cooperation on Technical Research and Education (more information about INSTEC).
Lars Eklund then presented SASNET and its role as a national resource base for increased collaboration between researchers and institutions in Sweden and India (and the rest of South Asia). Finally Prof. Per Warfvinge, Vice-Dean for International Relations at the Faculty of Engineering presented the European Commission funded Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window (EMECW) programmes and especially the new India lot being coordinated by Lund University. This programme will enable a mobility flow of 400 fully funded students, researchers and academic staff per year between European and Indian universities. Prof. Warfvinge talked about the great possibilities of the EMECW programme, and the urgency of a quick process to recruit students and researchers. SASNET’s acting Director Dr. Sidsel Hansson will become the coordinator for this EU-India programme (more information).

• Prof. James Heitzman should have given a SASNET lecture on ”The City in South Asia: Historical Templates and Contemporary Challenges” in Lund on Tuesday 11 November 2008, in collaboration with the Division of Housing Development and Management, Lund Institute of Technology, Lund University. However, due to health problems Prof. Heitzman was forced to cancel his tour to Scandinavia and the seminar in Lund. On 15 November 2008, Prof. Heizman passed away (more information).

• Dr. Durre S. Ahmed, Head of Communication & Cultural Studies, National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan, gave a seminar in Lund, titled ”Human Rights and Women’s Activism in Contemporary Pakistan” on Tuesday 7 October 2008. Chapters from the book ”Gendering the Spirit: Women and Religion and the Post-Colonial Response” [2002], edited by prof Durre Ahmed, and an Article by Kishore Mahbubani, were recommended reading before the seminar. The seminar is jointly organised by SASNET, the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies (CME), and Lund University’s Human Rights programme (based at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies). Dr. Ahmed has a doctorate in Communications from Columbia University in New York, but is also a practicing psychotherapist. From her South Asian vantage point she delivers a civilisatory critique of modernisms and the Cartesian derived ethos of ‘The West’. Being also a protagonist of dialogue between adherents of the different world religions, Dr Ahmed currently includes in her analysis also different forms of Islam, criticizing “hegemonic notions of masculinity” found within Islam. Venue: Room 218, Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Allhelgona Kyrkogata 8, Lund. More information.

• A seminar/panel discussion on Afghanistan was held in Lund on Wednesday 24 September 2008. The seminar was titled ”Upptrappning Afghanistan. Vilken roll spelar de svenska soldaterna?” (Escalation in Afghanistan. Which role do the Swedish soldiers play?), and was jointly organised by SASNET, the Association of Foreign Affairs at Lund University (UPF), the Swedish Committe for Afghanistan (SCA) in Lund, and the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies (MES). The participants were Mr. Bengt Kristiansson, former general secretary for SCA Sweden; and Mr. Allan Widman, MP representing Folkpartiet, specialised on defence policy issues. Dr. Catarina Kinnvall, Dept. of Political Science, Lund University, was the moderator for the discussion. Dr. Stig Toft Madsen, senior researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) in Copenhagen was also supposed to participate, but he fell ill and could not come. Venue: Auditorium (Hörsalen) at Lund University’s Centre for Languages and Literature (SOL-Centrum), Helgonabacken 14, Lund. More information.

• Prof. Radhika Desai, Dept of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, held a SASNET lecture on ”The Dynamics of Caste, Class and Hindu Nationalism in India” in Lund on Friday 19 September 2008. The seminar was organised in collaboration with the Dept. of Political Science, Lund University. Prof. Desai discussed the fact that the politics of Hindutva and those of caste are generally assumed to be opposed in India. In her paper, she contests this view on the basis of an original account of caste and its modern dynamics and their interaction with class, especially in the context of liberalizing economic policy since the late 1960s. On the basis of these, the paper goes on to provide a novel interpretation of the political evolution of India in recent decades. In this account, the rise of Hindutva is the result of the rise of the middle castes and their political assertion. The different form it takes in different states, and the variety of different relationships between this middle caste political assertion and Hindutva, are also outlined.
Prof. Desai is the author of ”Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics” (2004) and ”Intellectuals and Socialism: Social Democrats‚ and the Labour Party” (1994), a New Statesman and Society Book of the Month, and editor of Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms a special issue of Third World Quarterly (2008). She is also the author of of numerous articles in Economic and Political Weekly, New Left Review, Third World Quarterly and other journals and in edited collections on parties, political economy, culture and nationalism. She is currently working on two books ”When Was Globalization? Origin and End of a US Strategy”, and ”The Making of the Indian Capitalist Class”. The main reason for her coming to Sweden was to participate in the 2008 European Social Forum, held in Malmö 17-21 September. Venue for the Lund lecture: Main conference room, Dept. of Political Science, Paradisgatan 5, Lund. More information.

• Parul Sharma, CSR Advisor, Group Assurance, Sandvik AB, held a SASNET lecture at Lund University on Wednesday 10 September 2008, 13.15–15.00. The lecture was titled ”A Globalised South Asia and Human Rights”, and drew an audience of more than 40 people (mostly students from the Masters programme in Asian studies at Lund University’s Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE), and Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Humanitarian Rights (RWI). Ms. Sharma is to some extent connected to the Dept. of Law, Stockholm University, and the National Law School of India University in Bangalore, India, but has also worked for the Amnesty Business Group. Since August 2008, she works for the Swedish company Sandvik AB. Her lecture focused about the current increased interest in how the role of business operations in society has been promoted by heightened business debates about human rights conditions in the South Asian region. Venue: Java Hall, Scheelevägen 15 C (next to the Asia Library). More information about the seminar.

• SASNET was very much involved when Baul Shilpi, a group of baul singers from Bangladesh, visited Lund in the end of August 2008. The group that made a great success during their Sweden tour in 2003, now again visited Sweden invited by Dr. Christina Nygren from the Dept. of Musicology and Theatre Studies, Stockholm University. The group consisted of four professional baul singers – Kajal Dewan, Akkas Dewan, Aklima Begam and Nasima Dewan – and two other musicians (playing drums and flute), plus the tour leader Sirajul Islam, coming from villages near to Dhaka. On Tuesday 26 August, a Baul Shilpi performance was successfully given at the theatre Sagohuset in Lund. Earlier the same day, SASNET organised a seminar on baul music and other forms of Bengali folk culture with Dr. Nygren (who wrote a wonderful book, ”Brokiga Bengalen” on this topic in 2006). The seminar was also held at Sagohuset. While in Sweden, Baul Shilpi also performed in Södertälje on Saturday 23 August, during the Kulturfestival/Kringelfestivalen, at Stockholm University (Dept. of Oriental Languages, Kräftriket) on Wednesday 27 August, and at Kulturhuset in Ytterjärna on Saturday 30 August.
More information about Baul Shilpi (in Swedish only).

• Professor Venkatesh B. Athreya, MS Swaminathan Foundation, Chennai, India, held a well-attended SASNET/UPF lecture at Lund University, on Monday 12 May 2008, 19.00–21.00. The lecture, jointly organised by SASNET and the Association of Foreign Affairs at Lund University (UPF), was titled ”Wealth and Poverty in Rapidly Globalising India”. Currently, Prof. Athreya is co-operating with the Swedish sociologists Göran Djurfeldt and Staffan Lindberg, Dept. of Sociology, Lund University; and the two Indian researchers Dr. R. Vidyasagar from the Madras Institute of Development Studies in Chennai, India, and Dr. A. Rajagopal from SaciWATERs in Hyderabad, in a restudy of 300 agricultural households in Tiruchirapalli District, Tamil Nadu, people who were originally interviewed in 1979/80. The reason for coming to Lund was actually to participate in a concluding workshop regarding this project. Venue: Athen, AF-Borgen, Sandgatan 2, Lund. More information, with fact sheets from the lecture.

• On Thursday 10 April 2008, 12.00–17.00, SASNET and SIBC (Sweden-India Business Council) organised a business seminar in Lund in collaboration with the Ideon Science Park. The seminar was titled ”Operating in India” (Verksam i Indien), and included presentations focusing on challenges that Swedish companies face when they establish businesses in India. SASNET’s former Director, Prof. Staffan Lindberg, was the moderator, and deputy Director Lars Eklund made an introduction to the seminar (See the full programme). The issue of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) was a key concept, and representatives of IKEA, Indiska magasinet, Lufthansa, and the Swedish Export Council discussed their experiences of CSR. Read a report from the business seminar.

• Dr. Anirudh Krishna, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at the Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, N.C., USA held a lecture in Lund on Tuesday 1 April 2008, 19.00. The lecture, jointly organised by SASNET and the Association of Foreign Affairs at Lund University (UPF), was titled ”Active Social Capital: Tracing the Roots of Development and Democracy in India”, which is also the title of Dr. Krishna’s recently published book. During the academic year 2007/08, Dr. Krishna is on sabbatical leave from Duke University, instead being Olof Palme Visiting Professor at Uppsala University (more information about Dr. Krishna). Venue: Edens hörsal, Dept. of Political Science, Paradisgatan 5, Lund. More information (as a pdf-file)

• Dr. Hans Blomkvist and Dr. Katrin Uba from the Dept. of Government, Uppsala University, held a joint SASNET seminar in Lund on Thursday 13 March 2008. Dr. Blomkvist, currently doing research on institutions and political decision making in India on energy and bioenergy in particular, talked about ”Energy Challenges in India's Rapidly Growing Economy”. Dr. Uba, who defended her PhD thesis in 2007 on political activism in developing countries, talked about ”Protests against privatisation and their outcomes in India”. Her presentation provided an overview of the privatisation process in India from 1991 till 2003, actors opposing the process, and the eventual impact of protest mobilisation. Venue: Java Hall, Ideon Alfa 1 building, Scheelevägen 15 B, ground floor (next to the Asia Library), Lund. More information.

• Dr. Soumyajit Samantha from North Bengal University in Siliguri, India, held a SASNET lecture in Lund on Monday 10 March 2008, 18.30–20.00. He lectured on ”From Salman Rushdie to Arundhati Roy – Modern Indian Novels as Analysis of Changing India and as World Literature”. The seminar was organised by SASNET in collaboration with the Association of Foreign Affairs (UPF) and the Dept. of Comparative Literature, Lund University. Dr. Samantha was invited to Sweden with the help of a SASNET guest lecture tour grant, to hold lectures at Lund University and Växjö University. He was accommodated by Prof. Staffan Lindberg, SASNET’s former Director. Venue: Atriumgården, Stadsbiblioteket, Lund. More information.

• The documentary film ”Killing Time”, focusing on the Bhutanese refugees now living in camps in Nepal, was shown at an open SASNET seminar in Lund on Wednesday 6 February 2008. The film is made by the Swedish-Canadian Director Annika Gustafson, and follows the people who were forced to leave Bhutan after the the Buddhist King of Bhutan in the late 1980s implemented strict cultural laws directly affecting the life and religious freedom of the Hindu population in the south. It includes interviews with Nisha Varia, Asia Specialist, Human Rights Watch, New York; Eve Lester, Refugee Coordinator, Amnesty International, London; Abraham Abraham, Country Director, UNHCR, Nepal; Donna Galwa, Security Officer, UNHCR, Nepal; and Daw Penjo, Bhutanese Ambassador to the UN, New York. The screening of the film, organised in collaboration with the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, was followed by an open discussion with the Director herself, about refugees, religion, development aid, exile, war, education, and the Gross National Happiness concept. Annika Gustafson was interviewed in Sydsvenskan the same day, read the article titled ”Filmare hittade bortglömd flyktingkatastrof” (as a pdf-file, in Swedish)

• Professor Arild Engelsen Ruud from the Dept. of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS), University of Oslo, held a well-attended lecture in Lund on Wednesday 12 December 2007, 19.30–21.00. The seminar was jointly organised by SASNET and the Association of Foreign Affairs at Lund University (UPF). Prof. Ruud, who has a PhD in in History, Anthropology, and Development Studies from London School of Economics (LSE), talked about 'Democracy in a poor country: Bangladesh at the crossroads?'. Venue: Athen, AF-borgen, Sandgatan 10, Lund.

• Mr. Sunandan Roy Chowdhury, Editor-Publisher of the Sampark Journal of Global Understanding in Kolkata, India, gave a SASNET lecture on ”Ideology of Nation State and Educational Policy”, focusing on Indian Higher education since 1947, at Lund University on Tuesday 23 October 2007, 15.15–17.00. Mr. Roy Chowdhury, who is also a researcher in didactics and participated as a key speaker at SASNET’s workshop on ”The Role of South Asia in the Internationalisation of Higher Education in Sweden” (held at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, November 2006, more information) critiques the skewed elitist development of higher education and shows how various policy options that could have created a more equitable and just society fell by the wayside as India rushed towards modernity. He argues that the nation needs to rethink its higher education policies if majority of Indians are to be brought into the fold of higher education and the country can go ahead in terms of progress with equity. Venue: Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Java Hall, Alfa 1 building (ground floor), Scheelevägen 15 A, Lund. See the poster for the event.

• A well-attended seminar on ”Global Terrorism: Myth or Reality” was held in Lund on Wednesday 10 October 2007, 19.30–21.15. The seminar was organised by SASNET in collaboration with the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies and the Association of Foreign Affairs at Lund University.
The Ambassador of Pakistan to Sweden, H.E. Mr. Shaheen A. Gillani was the key speaker to talk about the theme for the evening, questioning the use of the concept ”terrorism” only by individuals and groups but excluding the prevalent cases of state terrorism.

Other speakers at the seminar were Prof. Bo Huldt from the Swedish National Defence College in Stockholm, who talked about ”Is Terrorism the Model for Warfare in the New Millennium?”, Dr. Maria Bjernevi, former Senior Analyst at the Swedish Security Service (Säpo), who talked about ”Global Jihad, Local Terrorism”, and Iram Asif from Copenhagen University, who talked about ”Behind the Screen: Young Women of Jamia Hafsa”. Her speech was based on material from fieldwork carried out in Pakistan.

The seminar, attended by more than 150 people, was held at SOL-Centrum, Lund University’s Centre for Languages and Literature. More information.
A newspaper report about the seminar appeared in the 12 October issue of the weekly web magazine Veckobladet. Read the article, written by Bertil Egerö.

• Professor Priyankar Upadyaya, Director at the Malaviya Centre for Peace Research at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, held a SASNET lecture at Lund University on Tuesday 25 September 2007, 13.15–15.00, about ”Naxal Violence in India. Security Threat or Failure of Governance?”. The lecture was organised in collaboration with Lund University’s Dept. of Economic History. Prof. Upadhyaya’s presentation unravels the dynamic of the maost/naxalite rebellion in India’s 'Red Corridor', stretching from Nepal to Andhra Pradesh, and whether its exclusive treatment as a security threat tends to obfuscate the generic issues of skewed democracy and development. Venue: Conference room, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE), Scheelevägen 15 D, 1st floor. Professor Upadhyaya, who has old Swedish connections to the Dept. of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, and the Dept. of Religious Studies, Karlstad University, also made a visit to the SASNET root node office for a meeting withe Anna Lindberg and Lars Eklund, SASNET, and Neelambar Hatti, Dept. of Economic History. More information about Prof. Upadhyaya.

• On Wednesday 23 May 2007, the Sweden-India Business Council (SIBC) organised a successful afternoon seminar in Lund titled ”The New India” (Det nya Indien) in collaboration with SASNET and Ideon Science Park. It attracted around 50 people from companies in South Sweden and from Lund University. SASNET’s Director, Prof. Staffan Lindberg, was the moderator for the day, and he also lectured about ”Vad är nytt med Indien – förändringar de senaste 25 åren”. Other participants included Susanna Bill, Innovations Manager at Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB in Lund. She talked about ”How to Unleash the Power of Emerging Markets”, based on Sony Ericsson’s experiences. Anne-Charlotte Sukhia from ACS Interkulturell Utbildning discussed cultural differences in business life, and Ingemar Ljungdahl from CTO Telelogic AB presented the development of Telelogic AB in the Indian market. Read a report from the business seminar in Lund.

• SASNET organises a combined seminar/film show titled ”One year after Nepal‘s Rhododendron Revolution” on Thursday 26 April 2007, 19.00. A film showing the dramatic events of April 2006 that paved the way for a political settlement in Nepal has been produced by the General Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions (Gefont). It was presented by Leif Bjellin, researcher at the Dept. of Cell and Organism Biology, Lund University, with strong links to Nepal. After the film he talked about the changes that have taken place since the so-called Rhododendron Revolution. The seminar was organised in collaboration with the Swedish Organisation for Individual Relief (IM) and the Swallows India-Bangladesh section (Svalorna), both organisations based in Lund. Venue: Conference room, IM, Spolegatan 12 B, Lund. More information.

In collaboration with the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE), SASNET organised a series a public lectures and seminars during the Spring 2007. The lectures were attended by the Lund University Masters students in Asian Studies, as part of their training. See the poster for the public lectures/seminars series.
On Monday 26 March 2007, Ravinder Kaur, Post-doctoral Fellow at Roskilde University, Denmark, gave a lecture about ”Islam between East and West – the political situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan”. Venue: Department of Sociology, Paradisgatan 5, Lund. On Tuesday 3 April 2007, Dr. Camilla Orjuela, Researcher at the Dept. of Peace and Development Studies, School of Global Studies, Göteborg University, lectured about ”Ethnicity and Violent Conflict in Sri Lanka”. Venue: Java Hall, Scheelevägen 15 A, Lund. On Tuesday 17 April, Neil Webster, Senior researcher at Development Studies, Danish Institute of International Studies (DIIS), Copenhagen, lectured about ”Nepal: Kingdom versus Maoism”. Venue: Java Hall, Scheelevägen 15 A, Lund.

• Dr. Kazi Ali Toufique from Bangladesh and Prof. R. Parthasarathy from India participated in a SASNET seminar about fish production and aquaculture in India and Bangladesh in Lund on Thursday 15 March 2007. Dr. Kazi Ali Toufique is affiliated to Bangladesh Institute for Development Studies, BIDS, in Dhaka, and he talked about ”Floodplain Aquaculture in Bangladesh: A case of Enchantment or Disenchantment?". Prof. R. Parthasarathy from the Gujarat Institute of Development Research in Gota, Ahmedabad, India, talked about ”Governance Issues in Natural Resources Management: The case of Fisheries in India”. Prof. Both Dr. Toufique and Prof. Parthasarathy visited Sweden to participate in a three-days workshop on ”Community Management of Openwater Inland Fisheries in Bangladesh and India” held in Lund 14–17 March. The seminar was organised in collaboration with the Dept. of Economics. Some of the seminar participants seen on the photo above.

• The Danish journalist Eva Arnvig held a SASNET lecture about ”Afghanistan: Warlords, Taliban or who will rule in the future?” in Lund on Wednesday 29 November 2006, 19.30. The event was organised in collaboration with the the Association of Foreign Affairs at Lund University and the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) in Lund. Eva Arnvig is not only an experienced journalist but also a clinical psychologist. She has worked for 18 years for UN organisationsa such as UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), and has travelled extensively in Asia, not the least in Afghanistan. Ms. Arnvig is presently working with training senior journalists in Asia, but is also engaged in documentary film productions about the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In 2002 she received the Media Communications Association (MCA) Gold Award for the documentary ”Children of Allah”, about everyday life in the Haqqania madrassah in Pakistan (photo from the film to the left).
In her speech Eva Arnvig presented a grim picture of the situation in the country today. According to her view, the military occupation by Nato forces has now turned the clock back to the situation in 1994, with bad governance, murder and kidnappings. The Taliban rule years were actually the most peaceful in recent times, and it is therefore no surprise that the support for the Taliban is widespread even today. A solution to the crisis in Afghanistan can, Arnvig pointed out, never be won by weapons, but negotiations are absolutely necessary. Negotiations that have to include the Taliban. After the lecture, a discussion followed with Anders Davidson from SCA Lund (photo of Eva and Anders above), and several people in the audience. Some of them with own first hand experiences from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, and also a large number of Masters students at Lund University, were given an opportunity to raise questions to Eva Arnvig.

• Prof. K. C. Suri from Nagarjuna University in Andhra Pradesh, India, held a SASNET lecture in Lund on Wednesday 6 December 2006. He talked about ”The Emergence of coalitional politics in South Asia, with special reference to India”. Prof. K.C. Suri is a specialist on Indian and South Asian politics and also on agrarian economic and political issues. The lecture was organised by SASNET in collaboration with the Development Studies Seminar at the Dept. of Sociology. Before coming to Lund, Prof. Suri participated in a conference on leadership in South Asia at the University of Oslo. He also visited Stockholm where he met research partners at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), involved in a research project on ”State of Democracy in South Asia”, a regional assessment to reflect citizens’ perceptions and experiences of democracy in the region. A report combining quantitative data (surveys) along with qualitative data (from case studies, dialogues and expert assessments) will soon be published. More information about the SASNET lecture (as a pdf-file).

• The physician Ingrid Eckerman from Stockholm held a SASNET lecture about the 1984 toxic disaster in Bhopal, in Lund on Wednesday 15 November 2006. The lecture, organised in collaboration with the Association of Foreign Affairs in Lund, was titled ”The Bhopal Saga – causes and consequences of the world’s largest industrial disaster”. This is also the title of a book she published on Universities Press (India) in Hyderabad in 2005. In 1994, Dr. Eckerman was a member of the International Medical Commission on Bhopal, that studied the effects after the disaster that took place at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal in December 1984, the world’s worst industrial accident. On the night of December 2 1984, while Bhopal slept, 43 tons of methylisocyanate and other substances leaked from the Union Carbide factory located in the city. By next morning the place was a graveyard of dead humans and animals. Of the 520,000 people who were exposed to the gases 8,000 died during the first week and 8,000 later. The impact on the survivors is visible even today. The pesticide plant from which the gas leaked was majority owned and controlled by the multinational Union Carbide. Dr. Eckerman also reviews of most of what has been written about the incident since 1984, discussing the conflicting stance of the Union Carbide Corporation and the Governments of India on the moral responsibility for the tragedy. The lecture was held at Eden, Paradisgatan 5, and drew an audience of around 30 people, mostly students from different facultues at Lund University. More information about Dr. Eckerman’s book.

• Sri Lankan poet Pireeni Sundaralingam and Irish composer/violinist Colm O’Riain (photo to the right), residing in San Fransisco, USA, visited Sweden in the end of September to perform with a program called ”Word and Violin”. SASNET invited them to Lund to give a well-attended performance on Wednesday 27 September 2006, 19.00. From Lund they proceeded to Uppsala University where they gave a performance for the Uppsala University English Society on Thursday 28 September. In the program Sundaralingam and O’Riain weave together music and word in a series of duets exploring the nature of exile and immigration. More information (as a pdf-file)

• Prof. Sucha Singh Gill from the Punjabi University, Patiala, India, held a SASNET lecture at the Dept. of Sociology, Lund University on Wednesday 7 June 2006. He lectured about ”Marginalised Peasantry Seeking Safe Exit in India in the Era of Globalisation”. Prof. Sucha Singh Gill is professor of Economics at the Punjabi University and is a leading expert on agriculture and rural development. He has written extensively on agricultural economics and change, land reforms, resources mobilisation and farmers movements. In 2001 he authored ”Land Reforms in India, Vol. 6: Intervention for Capitalist Transformation in Punjab and Haryana”. During June 2006 he was a guest researcher at NIAS in Copenhagen and the Department of Sociology, Lund University. More information.

• SASNET arranged a guest lecture with Prof. Sirimevan S. Colombage and Dr. Chandrabose from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Sri Lanka Open University, on Tuesday 18 April 2006. They lectured about ”The role of microfinance in fighting rural poverty in Sri Lanka”. Prof. Colombage is an eminent economist specialised in macro-economic processes in Sri Lanka, and Dr. Chandrabose is regional economist specialised in the tea plantation economy. Since 2003 they have been engaged in a study of microfinance and rural poverty in Sri Lanka, a research project financed by a Swedish Research Links grant. The project has been carried out in collaboration with Associate Professor Alia Ahmad, Dept. of Economics, Lund University. Venue: Conference Room, Centre for East- and South-East Asian Studies, Scheelevägen 15 D, Alfa 1, Lund.

• Dr. Gunilla Blomqvist from the Dept. of Peace and Development Studies (PADRIGU), Göteborg University, Prof. Staffan Lindberg, SASNET, and the freelance journalist Petter Larsson, Malmö, participated in a seminar called ”Women in the export industry in South Asia – Exploitation or Emancipation?” held on Wednesday 29 March 2006.
The seminar was jointly organised by SASNET and the Association of Foreign Affairs in Lund, and the venue was Nya Festsalen in the Academic Society Building (AF), Lund.
Gunilla Blomqvist used findings from her 2004 doctoral dissertation on ”Gender Discourses at Work: Export Industry Workers and Construction Workers in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India”. In the Lund seminar she focused on gender segregation and the situation of women within the garment export industry in Cehnnai. Her main thesis was that the discrimination and seclusion of women was reproduced when they entered the labour market as mostly unskilled or semi-skilled workers. However, coming out of the home, the work place and collectivity also offered a new opportunites for changing genedr roles and emancipation.
Based on results from his ongoing research project in rural Tamil Nadu, Staffan Lindberg then talked about the emancipation of women during the past 25 years. The main factors in changing gender relations are increased work outside agriculture, the development of Self Help Groups, and increasing participation in local politics.
Petter Larsson, finally, discussed issues of g lobalisation and similarities/differences between the Asian development of today and the European industrialisation 100–150 years ago. An important difference, he pointed out, was the increasing informalisation of labour and the lack of labour laws covering small workshops and home based wage labour. In the discussion it was pointed out that this made it much more different to organise trade unions and protect labour rights.
The seminar was well attended by Lund university students, many of them from the Masters programme in Asian studies. More information on the seminar (as a pdf-file).

• Professor Tulsi Patel from the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, held a SASNET lecture at Lund University on Tuesday 31 January 2006. She lectured on ”Health Professionals, New Reproductive Technologies and Sex ratio in India”, and the lecture was very well attended. Nearly 30 persons, senior researchers at Lund University as well as Masters students at the Programme for Asian Studies, participated in the meeting held in the conference room of ACE, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies.
Professor Patel is a well-known scholar doing research on gender, population and sustainable development in India, including the issues of female foeticide and missing girls. For a period of six months she is holding the India Studies Chair at the South Asia Institute/Dept. of Anthropology at Heidelberg University, Germany. More information (as a pdf-file)

• Professor Frank J. Korom from the Dept. of Religion, Boston University, USA, held a SASNET lecture at Lund University on Monday 19 December 2005. Korom talked about ”Singing Modernity: Bengali Scroll Painters Confront Globalization”, based on four years of field work among Patuas, a community of itinerant scroll painters/singers residing in Medinipur District, West Bengal, India. here impoverished artists adapt to modernity, and expand their repertoires to contemporary social and political issues (such as communal violence in India, religious identity, HIV prevention, and even 9/11 and the recent tsunami). Venue: Room 438, Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund. More information.

• Professor Saraswati Raju from the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, gave a SASNET lecture at Lund University on Tuesday 8 November 2005. Prof. Raju who is a geographer (photo to the right) lectured on ”Gender, Poverty and Labour Market in Rural India in the context of Globalization”, focusing on the very low number of officially reported working women in North India compared to South India, irrespectively of poverty rates and ecological factors. She argues that this has to do with a ruling preference within the patriarchal social structure of the Gangetic plains, that women if possible should not work. It explains why the ratio of working women is equally low in the poor state of Bihar and the rich state of Haryana, and in wheat-growing Punjab and rice-growing West Bengal. Saraswati Raju had come to Sweden to participate in the GADNET Workshop, held in Uppsala 10–11 November (more information on the workshop). Venue for the SASNET lecture: Conference room, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Scheelevägen 15 D. More information (as a pdf-file).

• ØRNAST, the Øresund Network of Asian Studies, invited students and scholars from both sides of Öresund for a social gathering in Lund, on Wednesday 26 October 2005, 18–21. The programme included a lecture by Professor Olle Qvarnström (photo to the left) on ”From Hampton Roads to Lundagård. Lund University Research on Indic religions”, and a musical performance by Bubu Munshi Eklund, singing Rabindrasangeet, the musical treasure of the Indian/Bengali Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. More information.

• Dr. Rukhsana Chowdhury (photo to the right), Assistant Director of the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology in Kolkata, India, visited the SASNET root node office in Lund on Tuesday 13 September 2005. Dr. Chowdhury is specialised on vibriocholera bacteria and their adaptation to environmental stress. She is member of a new collaborative research project with the Division of Bacteriology at Lund University, a project that was given a SASNET planning grant in February 2005. More information.

• The Indian Ambassador to Sweden, Ms. Deepa Gopalan Wadhwa (photo to the left), along with the First Secretary of the Embassy, Ms. Vani Rao, visited Lund University on Monday 13 June 2005. The programme for the day, prepared by SASNET, included visits to the Dept. of Biotechnology, and the Section for Indic Religions at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, where meetings were held with a large number of South Asia related reserachers at Lund University. The Ambassador also had meetings with the Vice-Chancellor Prof. Göran Bexell, and with the SASNET root node staff. More information on the visit.

• Professor Manoj Kumar Sinha from the Indian Society of International Law, New Delhi held a SASNET lecture at Lund University on Wednesday 25 May 2005, 13.15–15.00. Sinha (photo to the right) is currently a Visiting Professor at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Lund, and he will lecture on ”Protection of Human Rights in India through Courts and Human Rights Commission”. The lecture was arranged together with the Development Studies Seminar at the Dept. of Sociology and the Dept. of Sociology of Law. More information (as a pdf-file)

• Professor Venkatesh B. Athreya, Economics Department at Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirapalli, India, held a SASNET lecture at Lund University on Wednesday 11 May 2005. Athreya, who is specialised in the political economy of development, agricultural and social development, lectured on ”Indian Development under the Neoliberal Reforms, 1991-2005”. Among his most well-known publications are ”Literacy and Empowerment” (with Sheela Rani Chunk, Sage Publications, 1996) and ”Barriers Broken” (with G. Djurfeldt and S. Lindberg, Sage Publications, 1990). Currently he is co-operating with the sociologists Göran Djurfeldt and Staffan Lindberg at Lund University in a restudy of 300 agricultural households in Tiruchirapalli District, Tamil Nadu, which originally were interviewed in 1979/80. Venue: Conference Room 1, Department of Sociology, Paradisgatan 5, Lund. Professors Athreya and Djurfeldt on the photo to the right. More information on the lecture (that was also given at DIIS in Copenhagen the day before)

• Geshe Pema Dorje, Director of Sarah College for Higher Tibetan Studies in Dharamsala, India, held a SASNET lecture on ”Tibetan Education in Exil” at Lund University on Tuesday 10 May 2005. Dorje who is a Buddhist monk lectured on the organization and development of educational institutions in the Tibetan refugee community in India and Nepal. With a Geshe degree from the Tibetan monastic educational system, Pema Dorje has been Principal of Tibetan Children’s Village School as well as School of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala. He has been a driving force in the establishment of schools for teacher training and higher education in the refugee community, travelling extensively and co-operating with schools and universities all over the world. In Sweden he has a long-standing relationship with Karlstad University, and from Lund he proceeded there, to be a guest lecturer for a few weeks. Venue: Conference Room, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE). Geshe Pema Dorje on the photo to the left together with Dr. Jan Magnusson, ACE and SASNET.

• In collaboration with Lund University’s Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE), and AGESI (a Lund University network dealing with global equity and sustainability issues) SASNET organised a public seminar on ”Beyond Control – Risk and Learning after the Tsunami” on Monday 11 April 2005. It consisted of lectures focusing on different aspects of risk and disaster management, and a panel discussion. Among the lecturers were Dr. Simron Jit Singh from the University of Vienna and Dr Camilla Orjuela, Dept. of Peace and Development Research, Göteborg University. Read a summary of the post-Tsunami seminar, written by Sabina Andrén, AGESI.
The journalist Stig Larsén wrote an article on the seminar in Sydsvenskan, 12 april 2005. Read the article, called ”Tsunamihjälp får skarp kritik” (as a pdf-file). Sören Sommelius, journalist and a participant in the seminar himself, also wrote an article, in Helsingborgs Dagblad 13 April 2005. Read the article, called ”Hur länge varar vårt intresse för offren?”

• The Professor of Economics at Dhaka University Abul Barkat gave a SASNET lecture at Lund University on Tuesday 15 March 2005. Abul Barkat, respected researcher and much engaged in development issues and the public debate on human rights and politics in Bangladesh, lectured on the ”Criminalization of Politics in Bangladesh”. Barkat was coming to Sweden to participate in a workshop on ”Globalization and Health” organised by Health Economics Division at the Dept. of Community Medicine, Lund University (in Malmö) 16–17 March 2005. Besides being a professor at Dhaka University Barkat is the general secretary for the Bangladesh Economic Association, an association of 2 500 economists, and an advisor to the Human Development Research Centre. Venue for the SASNET lecture: Conference room 1, Dept. of Sociology, Paradisgatan, Lund. More information (as a pdf-file)
Abul Barkat also gave another lecture at the Green Library in Lund later on the same day, Tuesday 15 March 2005. In a lecture focusing on ”The Right to Development & Human Decelopment”, jointly organised by SASNET and the Swallows India-Bangladesh section in Lund, Barkat discussed the development assistance Bangladesh has received over the years – 40 Billion US dollars since 1971. ”Has this helped Bangladesh”, Barkat asks, and gives the answer himself: ”No, 75 p.c. of the money has been embezzled!”.

• Doris Jakobsh, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, gave a SASNET lecture on ”Innovation or Invention? The Sikhs, Colonization, Gender and the Feminization of Ritual” at Lund University, on Wednesday 8 December 2004. Venue: Centre for Theology and Religious Studies (CTR), Allhelgona Kyrkogata 8, Lund. Doris Jakobsh (photo to the left) is a researcher specialized on Gender in Sikh Studies and visited Sweden in connection with the Nordic conference on ”Ritual Practices in Indian Religions and Contexts” held at Lund University 9–11 December 2004. More information on the lecture (as a pdf-file).

• The two practicing Indian lawyers Vasudha Nagaraj and Anuroopa Giliyal (photo to the right) visited SASNET on Wednesday 24 November 2004, along with Oscar Hemer from the School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University. Nagaraj is working for the Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies in Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh; and Giliyal is a member of the Alternative Law Forum, based in Bangalore. They have have been invited to Sweden in order to lead a workshop at the Third Space Seminar, arranged in Malmö and Lund 26–28 November 2004. More information.

• Dr. Suruchi Thapar-Björkert from Dept. of Sociology at the University of Bristol gave a SASNET lecture on Tuesday 23 November 2004, 13.15–15.00. She lectured on ”Gendered Caste Conflicts in rural North India”. Dr. Thapar-Björkert (photo to the left), has been a visiting research fellow with the Dept. of Ethnic Studies at Linköping University, Campus Norrköping during the Fall 2004. The guest lecture in Lund was arranged in cooperation with the Development Study Group at the Dept. of Political Science and the Development Studies Seminar at the Dept. of Sociology. Venue: Conference Room 1, Dept. of Sociology, Lund University, Paradisgatan 5.

• Prof. Naila Kabeer, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK, held a SASNET guest lecture on Monday 8 November 2004, 14.15–16.00. She lectured on ”Citizenship and Empowerment”. Kabeer, during 2004 guest professor at PADRIGU, Göteborg University, is an economist with specialisation on such areas as gender dimensions of poverty, population and health, and poverty and food security. The lecture was jointly organised by SASNET; the Development Study Group at the Dept. of Political Science; and the Development Studies Seminar at the Dept. of Sociology, Lund University.

• SASNET successfully arranged the 18th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies in Lund 6–9 July 2004. With 360 participants from all over the World actually turning up (including a large number of PhD candidates and participants from from South Asia itself) it was the largest ECMSAS conference so far, and certainly the largest gathering ever on Swedish soil of South Asia oriented researchers, covering all fields from the humanities and social sciences to technology, natural sciences and medicine. More information on the Lund conference.

The last of three SASNET lectures during the Spring 2004 was organized with Dr. Martin Gansten, Centre for Theology and Religion, Lund University, on Tuesday 11 May 2004. Gansten, a Sanskritist and historian of religion specializing in classical Hinduism, lectured on ”Astrology in Ancient and Modern India” His research interests include Indian philosophical traditions as well as astrology and other divinatory arts. Venue: Centre for Theology and Religion, Allhelgona Kyrkogata, Lund. More information on Martin Gansten.

• Dr. Kumudu Wijewardena (photo to the left) from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura (SJP), Sri Lanka, visited SASNET on Thursday 6 May 2004. Dr. Wijewardena, who regularly visits Uppsala University where she is involved in research collaboration with the Dept. of Women's and Children's Health, is a member of SASNET’s South Asian reference group, overlooking our work from a South Asian perspective. More information on this collaboration.

• Eva-Maria Hardtmann, Dept. of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University held a SASNET guest lecture at Lund University on Tuesday 13 April 2004. She lectured on ”Indian Dalits in a globalisng world”, discussing their networks, messages and strategies. Besides she talked about their participation in the World Social Forum in Mumbai in January 2004. Eva-Maria Hardtmann defended her PhD thesis 'Our Fury is Burning': Local Practice and Global Connections in the Dalit Movement' in November 2003. Venue: Hanlin hall, ACE, House Alfa 1, Ideon Research Park. The lecture was organized jointly with the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University.

• Dr. Sidsel Hansson from the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, and the Centre for East och South East Asian Studies held a SASNET lecture on ”Reinventing a sacred landscape? The Ganges river as a contested domain” on Tuesday 2 March 2004. The lecture was based on material from her 2001 doctoral thesis entitled ‘Not just any water? Hinduism, ecology and the Ganges water controversy’. This was the first SASNET lecture to be held at its new location in connection with the Centre for East och South East Asian Studies at Ideon Research Park, Alfa 1 building.

• Professor. Dipak Malik from the Dept. of Commerce, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, lectures at Lund University on “IT, Hindu Fundamentialism and Class Struggles in India”, Tuesday 19 November 2003. Professor Malik’s research has mainly focused on labour market and trade unions. He has extensive experience of international cooperation and has been guest professor at University of West Indies St. Augustine, Trindidad & Tobago; and University of York, Ontario, Canada. In this connection he has developed courses in for example ”Politics and Sociology of Communalism”. Professor Malik has previously been chairman of the Teachers Association at Banaras Hindu University and adviser to the government in India. Presently Malik is engaged in SASNET (Swedish South Asian Studies Network) as adviser. The lecture is organized by the General Seminar, Dept. of Sociology, Lund University, in collaboration with SASNET. Venue: Dept. of Sociology, room 3, Paradisgatan 3, Lund.

• Bidyut Mohanty, Head of the Women's Studies Dept, Institute of Social Sciences, JNU, New Delhi, gave a SASNET lecture at Lund University on Thursday 5 June 2003. Mohanty was on her way to the conference on ”Women and Politics in Asia” in Halmstad, and she lectured on ”Seat Reservation in Local Politics – Impact on the Lives of Women in India”. Venue: Dept of Sociology, Paradisgatan 5, Lund.

• Professor R S Deshpande from the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore, India, visited Lund University during the later part of May 2003. R S Deshpande (photo to the right) held a SASNET lecture on ”Consequences of the Green Revolution in India”, on Monday 26 May 2003, at the Dept of Economic History, Ekonomicentrum, Tycho Brahes väg 1, Lund.

• SASNET arranged a concert with Amit Chatterjee and Suman Laha, two young Indian classical musicians from Kolkata, in Lund on Sunday 25 May 2003. Amit Chatterjee is a talented tabla player who has frequently toured Europe and the USA, whereas Suman Laha (photo to the right) played the guitar in a rather unusual mode, like an Indian veena. The concert was arranged in collaboration with the Zimba Marimba World Music Studio in Lund, which also provided for the concert hall at the crossing Kobjersvägen/Qvantenborgsvägen in the northwestern part of Lund.

• SASNET in cooperation with the General Seminar at the Department of Sociology, Lund University, arranged a Guest Lecture by Prof. em. Jan Breman (photo to the right), Dept. of Sociology, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on Tuesday 6 May 2003.
He lectured on ”Informalisation of work in India”. Professor Breman has a long and distinguished career as field researcher on working life in western India and Java, Indonesia. Most recently he has studied the closure and firing of workers in the textile industries in Ahmedabad in the 1990s. With these studies he is one of the main contributors to the development of a new theory and understanding of the informal sector in Third World capitalist economies.

• Dr. Rajesh Kharat, political scientist from the Department of Civics & Politics, University of Mumbai, held a SASNET Guest Lecture on ”The Bhutan Refugee Problem”, Thursday 13 February 2003, at the International Office, Lund University. Dr. Kharat is a leading expert on Bhutan, the refugee situation in the region, and more generally about the political and economic cooperation in South Asia. In 1999 he published the book ”Bhutan in SAARC: Role of a Small State in a Regional Alliance”.

• SASNET lecture on South Asian regional stability. Professor Bhupinder Brar from Dept of Political Science, University of Punjab, Chandigarh, India, was invited by SASNET to lecture at the Dept of Sociology, Lund University, on ”Stability and Security in South Asia: Towards a Post-Nationalist Perspective”, on Wednesday 9 October, 2002. To the right: Prof Brar together with the SASNET Director, Prof Staffan Lindberg.

• Dr Prakash Nelliyat, environmental economist from Madras School of Economics, Chennai, India, held a SASNET lecture at Lund University, on ”Environmental cost of T-shirts. The case of Tirupur, India”, on Wednesday 2 October, 2002, at the Dept of Human Ecology. Prakash Nelliyat is working on a thesis on ”Economic Assessment of Industrial Water Pollution – A Case Study of Textile Processiong Units in Tiruppur”, and has been invited to Linköping University for two months during the Fall of 2002, on a World Bank Scholarship. Photo to the left.

• Professor Dipak Malik from the Faculty of Commerce, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, was invited by SASNET to lecture on ”Hindutva then and now: A profile of Pundit Madan Mohan Malaviya”, at Lund University, on Friday 20 September 2002. The lecture was held at the Dept of History of Religions. (Photo to the right).

• Dr Tilak R Kem, Additional Secretary at the University Grants Commission of India, visited SASNET and Lund University on Tuesday 4 June, 2002. Dr Kem, previously connected to the Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, had come to Sweden as an invited guest to Högskolan Kristianstad, in his capacity of being an expert on distance education. SASNET arranged for a fruitful meeting with Lennart Badersten, Head of the Office for Continuing and Distance Education at Lund University, and discussions took place on possible Indo-Swedish cooperation in this field. A proposal was made to arrange a workshop in India later this year.

• SASNET hosted the Indian ambassador Ms Chitra Narayanan and the Counsellor Mr Sachdeva when they visited Lund University on 21 May, 2002. (Photo to the left). Read the report from the visit.

• The SASNET director Professor Staffan Lindberg, and deputy director/webmaster Lars Eklund, made a contact journey to South Asia the Spring, 2002, in order to link up the SASNET activities with universities and research institutions in different countries of the region. They visited the Maldives (Male) 26–27 February, Sri Lanka 28 February–5 March, India (New Delhi, Varanasi, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Shantiniketan) 6–19 March; and finally Bangladesh 20–22 March. (Photo from Kolkata street to the right). Read their reports from the journey.

• Sutapa Chattopadhyay, research fellow at the Institute of Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore, India, held a lecture and seminar on ”Development Projects and Resettlement: A Study of Health and Living Conditions of the Displaced Population”, at Lund University on Thursday 18 April 2002. It was organised by the Development Studies Seminar at the Dept of Sociology. The paper Ms Chattopadhyay presented is available as a pdf-file.

• A lecture and seminar with Dr. A. Rajagopal, Research Coordinator, South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies (SaciWaters) at Hyderabad, India, was arranged at Dept. of Sociology, Lund University, on Friday 8 February 2002, jointly by SASNET and the Development Studies Seminar. The title of the lecture was ”Water Rights and Rural Development in India”.

• The second SASNET Open House seminar was held at Lund University on Monday 4 February 2002, 14.00–16.00, with Mr Shahid A Kamal, Pakistan ambassador to Sweden, as invited guest. Mr Kamal led a seminar on ”Possible themes for Pakistan–Sweden co-operation in the fields of research and education”, at the Dept of Sociology. An introduction about higher education and research in Sweden that might be of relevance to future research co-operation, was given by SASNET director Staffan Lindberg.
In the evening Mr Shahid A Kamal held a public lecture on ”The conflict in Afghanistan, and the Pakistan–India relations”, an arrangement in collaboration with the Lund Association of Foreign Affairs.
More information about the ambassador’s visit.

• The first in a series of Open House seminars was arranged on Friday 9 November, 2001. SASNET co-ordinator Staffan Lindberg, who recently returned from sociological field work in Zanzibar, reported about how the war on terrorism in Afghanistan was interpreted in Tanzania, and also gave his assessment of the political implications for South Asia.

• On Monday 29 October, 2001, SASNET arranged a concert with classical North Indian music, at Magasinet (above the bookshop Arken), Kungsgatan, Lund. The renowned vocalist Sandipan Samajpati from Kolkata, who was on a European tour (Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and England) presented a programme along with the accompanying tablaist Amit Chatterjee. The concert was co-arranged by the local singing choir Svart på Vitt and was a part of the Lund Music Festival 2001.

• Dr Suman Khanna Aggarwal, Peace Researcher, expert on the Theories of Mahatma Gandhi, and professor of philosophy at Delhi University, held a SASNET lecture on Wednesday 24 October 2001, on the subject ”Terrorism – a Gandhian Perspective”. Venue: Conference room, International Secretariat, Gamla Kirurgen. Dr Aggarwal has worked with Gandhian philosophy and theories for a long time. She was on a Swedish tour, where she also conducted a workshop at Padrigu, Göteborg University.

• Dr J B Prajapati, Associate Professor in Dairy Microbiology at Anand Agricultural University, Gujarat, India, gave a SASNET seminar on 27 September 2001 at Lund University, on ”Probiotics, Fermented Foods and their Beneficial Role”, dealing with dahi, idlis and dosas. The seminar took place at the Center for Chemistry & Chemical Engineering in Lund.

• Dr Sudhir Kakar, internationally renowned psychoanalyst and writer, based in Delhi, India (Center for the Study of Developing Societies), but presently visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) at Harvard Divinity school, USA, (where he studies the mythology of spiritual healing in the Christian, Sufi, and Hindu traditions) visited Lund 1–5 October 2001, for a Symposium on ”Mysticism and Psychology”, at the Divison of Psychology of Religion. On 1 October he gave a public lecture on ”Globalisation and Hindu Nationalism”, at the Dept of Theology.

• SASNET was partly involved in the Symposium and workshop on: ”Managing Common Resources – What is the solution?”, which took place 10-11 September, 2001, at Lund University. The symposium was jointly organised by the Programme on Population and Development (PROP), Department of Sociology, and Department of Economics. Key speakers were Prof. Elinor Ostrom (photo to the left), Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Government, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA, and Prof. Jean-Philippe Platteau, Department of Economics, University of Namur, Belgium. Read the research papers from the symposium.

• SASNET arranged a Workshop on Global Networking 27–28 August, 2001, with a lot of prominent guests discussing the future for SASNET. About 40 persons attended the workshop and gave a good start for SASNET’s global networking. Full report with all the papers read at the workshop.
The final discussion round at the last day of SASNET’s workshop on global networking in August, 2001, a discussion which summed up the whole workshop, is transcribed and available on the SASNET gateway. Go straight to it.

• In connection with a planning conference between representatives of Lund, Copenhagen and Roskilde Universities, concerning the development process of Ørsa – Øresund Network of South Asian Studies, on Wednesday 25 April 2001, SASNET organised a Cultural programme with Indian cooking and a classical vocal concert with Prof Laksmisree Banerjee from Jamshedpur, India (but during the Spring 2001 guest professor at the Faculty of Humanities, department of literature, Växjö University). Her well-attended musical programme was named: ”Melodies of Soul & Sense”.

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SASNET - Swedish South Asian Studies Network/Lund University
Address: Scheelevägen 15 D, SE-223 70 Lund, Sweden
Phone: +46 46 222 73 40
Webmaster: Lars Eklund
Last updated 2011-09-01

SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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