South Asia Global Forum

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Established in 2016, CAPI’s South Asia Global Forum promotes academic research, teaching and public engagement with South Asia and multi-faceted South Asian diasporic populations as a link to globally-situated questions and conversations.

The forum sponsors a regular lecture series and other events of academic interest, such as book launches, film screenings and roundtable discussions about issues of historical and contemporary concern. Additionally, the forum serves as an informational clearinghouse for faculty, students and UVic community members interested in South Asia and related topics in Victoria and beyond.

Associated faculty include scholars who centre South Asia and/or South Asian diasporas within their research questions and agendas. Spread across many units of the university, the forum is led by a committee of about a dozen faculty members who specialize in art history and visual culture, business, gender studies, history, law, and political science.

Associated UVic Faculty

Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute

The forum also serves as the institutional hub for UVic’s membership in the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, an organization that sponsors academic activities bridging India and Canada. South Asia Global Forum member and UVic History professor currently serves as our liaison with the Shastri Institute.

Visiting Scholars

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Tiasa Basu Roy

  • Home institution:
    MPhil in History, University of Calcutta, India
  • Duration of visit at UVic: 
    June to August 2019
  • Additional sponsor(s) / host(s):
    Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute

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Tiasa's dissertation deals with the Christianisation of the Saoras of Ganjam district (Orissa, India): Contributions of the Canadian Baptist Mission 1870-1970. The main focus of this project is to trace the history of conversion movement among the tribal group (First Nation people, a term used by the Candian missionaries) 'Saoras' who reside in the frontier zones of the Ganjam district. With the advent of the Canadian Baptist missionaries like John Glendinning, Dr West, Amos Sutton and others in the region, Christianity takes a ground in the heathen land, bringing a new life to these people. This research will also try to show the various methods used by the missionaries to evangelise, the response of the Saoras and their neighbouring communities like the Panos, Paidis and Bissoyis, and most importantly, the conflicts and contradictions among the non-converts and mainly the Hindu Mahasabha who try to push away the missionaries from India, socially ostracize the Christian converts fearing a growing majority of the Christian community.


 

Ramesh Bairy

Ramesh Bairy T.S.

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Ramesh Bairy's research focuses on structure of contemporary caste, inequalities, the region of Karnataka (south India), and the unfolding forms of Hindu-ness. During his visit, Ramesh focused his efforts on a) compiling a descriptive account of the life of the Hindu monastic institution - the 'matha' - in the state of Karnataka (south India) since the late 19th Century in order to get at why it emerges as a central mediator in enabling access to modern resources for its community of adherents; b) working on an analysis of caste and its stabilities written by BR Ambedkar to ask whether his questions (offered as they were in the 1930s) must remain ours too. He is author of Being Brahmin, Being Modern: Exploring the Lives of Caste Today.


 

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Yashomati Ghosh

  • Home institution:
    Associate Professor at the National Law School of India University
  • Duration of visit at UVic: 
    September to October 2017
  • Additional sponsor(s) / host(s):
    Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute

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Dr. Ghosh was awarded the Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral and Professional Research Fellowship for the year 2010-2011. She was also awarded a doctoral fellowship at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, Boston, as a Berkman Fellow. She was also an awardee of the SUN Scholarship by the Central European University and was invited to attend the program on Teaching Human Rights and Legal Ethics, Budapest (2009). She qualified for the UGC-NET for Lectureship in 2006 and was awarded the UGC-Junior Research Fellowship.

Her teaching areas and specializations include Administrative Law, Legal Ethics, Law of Good Governance and Digital Copyright Law. She has published text books on Administrative Law (Textbook on Administrative Law, LexisNexis, 2016) and on Legal Ethics (Legal Ethics and the Profession of Law, LexisNexis, 2014). She has also published several articles. She is presently working on a Government of India sponsored research project on the Right to Timely Delivery of Service Laws in India and Litigation Policy in India.


 


Past South Asia Global Forum Events

Film screening and discussion: “The World Before Her”

4 November 2019
Sikata Banerjee (UVic Gender Studies) and Jyoti Ahlawat (Post Doc, UVic Gender Studies)

Unmooring the Komagata Maru: Charting Colonial Trajectories [Book Launch]

10 October 2019
Rita Dhamoon (UVic Political Science) and Davina Bhandar (Athabasca University)

Learning to ‘see’ today’s caste

18 April 2019
Ramesh Bairy (Indian Institute of Technology)

Amma’s Daughters - A memoir

10 January 2019
Meenal Shrivastava (Athabasca University)
in conversation with Sikata Banerjee (UVic Gender Studies)

South Asia Global Forum reception

20 September 2018
with a presentation by Supriya Routh (UVic Law)

Right to Good Governance in India: Towards a Model of Citizen Centric Accountability

12 October 2017
Yashomati Ghosh (National Law School of India University)

Academic Freedom and its Discontents in India

28 February 2017
Niraja Gopal Jayal (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

Invisibility of Women and Failure of Social Policy

21 February 2017
Meenal Shrivastava (Athabasaca University)

Related CAPI events

Authoritarian Patriarchy and its Populism

12 November 2020
Inderpal Grewal (Yale, Emerita)

Dispersed Resistance in Jammu and Kashmir: When Art is the Weapon

29 October 2020
Zehra Abrar (UVic Law grad student) and Namitha George (UVic Political Science PhD student)

Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas

23 January 2020
Radhika Govindrajan (University of Washington)

Article 370 of the Indian Constitution and revocation of Kashmir’s autonomy

3 October 2019
Reeta Tremblay (UVic Political Science) and Zhera Abrar (UVic Law)

A Theory of Imperialism

29 March 2019
Prabhat Patnaik (Jawaharlal Nehru University); respondents: Jutta Gutberlet (UVic Geography), and William Carrol (UVic Sociology)

Growth and Poverty Under Neo-liberalism

28 March 2019
Prabhat Patnaik (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

The Collection of Indian paintings at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France

6 March 2019
Dhir Sarangi (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

Green Consumption: The role of Life Events and Communities of Trust

4 July 2018
Sunayana Ganguly (Azim Premji University)

Forest and Wildfire Management in Nepal

14 March 2017
Ivan G. Somlai (Director, Ethnobureaucratica)


Related Publications

South Asian Migrations in Global History: Labor, Law, and Wayward Lives

edited by Neilesh Bose (UVic History)
Bloomsbury, 2020

South Asian Migrations in Global History

Religion and Politics in Jammu and Kashmir

co-edited by Reeta Tremblay (UVic Political Science)
Routledge, 2020

Religion and Politics in Jammu and Kashmir

 

Amartya Sen and Law

co-edited by Victor V. Ramraj (CAPI / UVic Law) and Supriya Routh (UVic Law)
Routledge, 2019

Amartya Sen and Law

 

Unmooring the Komagata Maru: Charting Colonial Trajectories

co-edited by Rita Dhamoon (UVic Political Science) et al.
UBC Press, 2019

Unmooring the Komagata Maru

 

Gender, Nation and Popular Film in India: Globalizing Muscular Nationalism

by Sikata Banerjee (UVic Gender Studies)
Routledge, 2017

Gender, Nation and Popular Film in India

 


Related video

"Racism, Rights, and Empire in the Dominion of Canada: The Case of the Komagata Maru," a UVic Dean's Lecture featuring South Asia Global Forum member and UVic Law Associate Professor Pooja Parmar (May 2021)
"The Razor’s Edge: Gender Politics Structural Violence in the Work of Artist Tayeba Begum Lipi," a UVic Dean's Lecture featuring South Asia Global Forum member and UVic Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Studies Melia Belli Bose (April 2021)
"Covid-19 crisis in India," a panel discussion hosted by CAPI and chaired by South Asia Global Forum member and UVic Political Science professor Reeta Tremblay (May 2021)

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The Global South Colloquium provides a forum for regular interdisciplinary exchange and intellectual exploration on the history and politics of globalization. The colloquium focuses its attention on the “Global South,” traditionally referring to parts of the world whose states emerged out of the embers of European imperialism.