18th European Conference
on Modern South Asian Studies
held at Lund, Sweden, 6–9 July 2004
Conference impressions and
expressions!
Wednesday
7 July
– 12 Panels, Unique Ideas
The 18th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies was
continued on Wednesday 7th July with 12 panels.
The panels were held on issues of democracy, languages, literature,
cinema, politics in Gujarat, villages of India, ecology, education,
health and demographic changes, empires nationalisms and the containment
of labour, economic liberalization, Tamil speaking areas in India
and Sri Lanka, spirit and power of sacred places and preservation
of cultural heritage, and gender and the local state.
The panel
on education, health and demographic changes in South Asia having
22 presentations was the host of scholars from Sweden, India, United
Kingdom, Finland and the United States.
Sixteen papers were presented on India which discussed the issues
of health care utilization, familial power relations, private health
sector, female infanticide, reproductive and child health, public
hospital reforms, declining child sex ratios, gender differences,
immunization, barriers to medical education, rural communities,
female autonomy, mental health, education, joint families and son
preference as well as child marriage.
There were also papers presented on “Degree and Determinants
of Men’s Contraceptive Knowledge in Bangladesh”,
“The Effectiveness of Private and Public Schools in Bangladesh
and Pakistan”, and “Changing Profile of Education,
Health and Demographic Sectors in South Asia” in this
panel.
There
were six papers presented in the panel 18 entitled Empires, Nationalisms
and the Containment of Labour in South Asia. The participants in
this panel were representing universities from United Kingdom, India,
Germany and Canada. The scholars discussed the issues of railway
labourers and the politics of strikes in colonial Bihar, mobility
and containment, politics of Indian labour immigrants in British
Colombia, labour rights, wages and welfare, economic liberalization,
as well as movements and workers in the World Social Forum.
The discussions in panel 18 were mostly focused on India. One of
the discussions that were being followed in this panel was politics
of immigrant farm labour and problems of workers.
The
panel 38, the Tamil Panel, was one of the most interesting panels.
There were nine papers presented in the panel. The issues of female
political leaders in Asia, life styles of the Madrasis, and different
aspects of caste system were being discussed.
Torsten
Tschacher presented his paper entitled ”How to
die before dying? Sharia and Sufism in a 19th century Arabic Tamil
Poem”. He discusses the Islamic literature in Tamil in
this paper. Tschacher described the contents of a 19th century poem
in Arabic-Tamil (Tamil written in Arabic script), the Hadya
Malai by Imam al-Arus. Nuances of Islam and
Islamic texts were discussed and followed in the panel.
Many of the participants joined a guided tour to old Lund that
was arranged by Lund University for the guests as a final programme
on the second day of the 18th Conference.
Behnoosh
Payvar, (text and photo)
Masters student of South Asian Studies, Lund University
SASNET - Swedish South Asian Studies Network/Lund
University
Address: Scheelevägen 15 D, SE-223 63 Lund, Sweden
Phone: +46 46 222 73 40
Webmaster: Lars Eklund
Last updated
2005-03-02