In March 2024, we look forward to welcoming Tanika Sarkar as the AAS 2024 Annual Conference keynote speaker. With support from the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Dr. Sarkar will join us in Seattle for her talk, “Between State and Faith: Colonial...
In March 2024, we look forward to welcoming Tanika Sarkar as the AAS 2024 Annual Conference keynote speaker. With support from the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Dr. Sarkar will join us in Seattle for her talk, “Between State and Faith: Colonial Personal Laws and the Triumph of Indian Cultural Nationalism,” on Thursday, March 14 at 5:00pm at the Sheraton Grand Hotel, Grand Ballroom, Second Floor.
A historian of modern India, Dr. Sarkar received her PhD from the University of Delhi and taught for many years at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her work includes studies of protest, gender, the Hindu right, caste, and nationalism, and among her major publications are Bengal 1928-34: The Politics of Protest (1987), Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism (2001), and Hindu Nationalism in India (2021), in addition to numerous edited volumes and journal articles. Currently on the faculty of Ashoka University, Dr. Sarkar has also held visiting professorships and fellowships at institutions around the world.
The AAS looks forward to welcoming Dr. Tanika Sarkar to the Annual Conference as our 2024 keynote speaker. Please enjoy this short interview with her, conducted via email, and make sure to pencil in the Keynote Address to your conference schedule.
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham: Your scholarship has encompassed a wide range of topics—gender, protest, politics, religion, culture, caste, literature, etc. Given your far-flung interests, what might the AAS audience expect to hear at your keynote address in Seattle next March? On what topic do you plan to focus your talk?
Tanika Sarkar: Thank you for your question—it helps me to focus my thoughts on the final shape of my address.
I am going to discuss the changing trajectory of Hindu cultural nationalism in colonial India. The sequel will track how cultural nationalism slowly morphed into Hindu political nationalism in late and post colonial times.
I will begin with the vast world of the early modern Hindu-social, and its its minutely stratified castes. Colonial modernity introduced a new and difficult imperative: that of integrating the scattered fragments into a singular Hindu community. In late- and post-colonial times, moreover, Hindu communitarian ideologues sought to obliterate the difference between Hindu and Indian, and to transform a multicultural, multi community India into a Hindu one. I want to focus particularly on the caste and gender aspects of this history and recover some of the discursive tropes with which the enterprises have worked.
MEC: While you are a historian of India, AAS members come from a multitude of disciplines and work on various countries, cultures, time periods, and so forth. In what ways do you anticipate your research will be of interest to the broader Asian Studies community attending our conference?
TS: That is, indeed, a difficult task. I hope that given the increasingly combative nationalisms in different Asian regions, scholars will be interested in the specifics of the Indian case. I will refer very briefly to analogous developments in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well.
MEC: I expect that you’re familiar with Seattle, as you’ve previously spent time as a visiting scholar at the University of Washington Is there anything special you hope to do, see, or eat during your trip there?
TS: I spent a happy time at Seattle in 2006. I loved the urban landscape, which is so beautifully framed by mountains and lakes and I am very excited about going back to those views, however briefly. If time permits, I would love to visit its wonderful cafes and bookshops and revisit the University of Washington campus.
MEC: In addition to preparing for your AAS 2024 keynote address, what else are you working on right now?
TS: I am a Visiting Professor at Ashoka University this term and that keeps me very busy. I am about to finalize a manuscript on faith and gender in colonial and post-colonial India which will be co-published by SUNY Press and Permanent Black early next year. I am simultaneously writing a monograph on the colonial Personal Laws in the nineteenth century. It, too, is nearly ready for publication.
For quite some time now, I have also been interested in an altogether different theme: changing urban ecology of colonial Calcutta and the lives and protests of its “untouchable” caste (dalit) municipal sanitary workers and street sweepers. I have occasionally researched and written about aspects of this history and I hope to turn my full attention to it from the middle of next year.
The post AsiaNow Speaks with AAS 2024 Keynote Speaker Tanika Sarkar appeared first on Association for Asian Studies.
