Outreach

The South Asia Institute provides a range of resources and activities to serve elementary and secondary schools and college teachers. As a National Resource Center, we organize a number of teacher training events annually, featuring faculty and advanced graduate students from Columbia and other area universities.

If you are an educator, and would like to receive email notification of upcoming teacher training activities, please send the following information to William Carrick at wac2112@columbia.edu: name, title, school affiliation, courses and grade levels of students taught. Non-teaching educators should include name, title, school affiliation, grade levels at your institution, and a brief description of your role within the institution. You may unsubscribe at any time by sending a request via email.

The South Asia Institute provides other outreach activities for business, media, and local community organizations. Most of the conferences and lectures, workshops, and other events listed on our Upcoming Events page are open to the public.

(Photos (above, left to right): Badahur Shah II;Muhammad Ali Jinnah; Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohandas K. Gandhi; Indira Gandhi; and Mujibur Rahman)
Three partitions and the making of the Subcontinent
taught by Columbia University Professors
Janaki Bakhle and S. Akbar Zaidi

Dates: Thursdays, April 12 - April 26, 2010
Time: 5:30pm - 7:30pm
Location: Room 207 Knox Hall, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont

"Three partitions and the making of the Subcontinent" has been organized for elementary, middle, high school and college teachers. It will feature three lectures and to be co-taught by Visiting Professor S. Akbar Zaidi and Janaki Bakhle, Associate Professor of Modern Indian History and South Asia Institute Director. There are no registration fees to enroll, and all readings and materials for the course will be provided by Columbia University at no charge to registered participants. K-12 educators, two year college educators, and graduate students in education degree programs are eligible to enroll.

Thursday, April 12: The Subcontinent Transformed, 1757-1857
The Battle of Plassey (1757) marks the first major military victory of the East India Company on Indian soil. From 1757-1857, the EIC slowly but inexorably asserted near sovereignty over one million square miles of territory, through direct annexation and through privileges to collect revenue and administer justice granted to them by an increasingly decentralized Moghul Empire. The first major rebellion against the EIC in 1857 would be narrated as a "Sepoy Mutiny" by English historiographers, and resulted in the dissolution of the EIC and the inauguration of the British Raj. How does a trading company became a near sovereign state with a handful of bureaucrats from halfway across the world? What were the nature of the social, economic, and political changes that transformed India under British rule?

Thursday, April 19: The Durand Line/India and Pakistan Divided, 1857-1947
1857-1900: After the failed Mutiny of 1857, the fiction that a Mughal Emperor ruled India was finally put to rest. The British ruled in India and Queen Victoria became the Empress of India. While all those who now became subjects were affected, Muslim ruling groups lost lands, privileges, and status. Former nobles were reduced to mere subjects, and to a minority in the colonial census that enumerated and designated identities, usually based on religion. The Muslim elite dealt with colonialism in different ways, with some groups turning toward self-reflection and a return to Islam. Another group of Muslims began to use British education to seek legitimacy and entrance into the new British administrative structures of power. Other Indians found expression of their new identities through Hindu revivalists movements, and through politics, at first local, and then in the guise of the Indian National Congress, at an all-India level.

1900-1947: Movements for greater self-rule began to take shape at the beginning of the 20th century, when political organizations of Muslims, Hindus, and multi-religious groups demanded the British cede more rights. A Muslim and a Hindu identity began to emerge and consolidate, often under the guise of communal politics, despite key moments and events of unity. A stronger sense of a politics that represented different religious communities began to dominate the politics of colonial India. India was granted freedom by the British in 1947, but not before united India was divided between a Muslim Pakistan, East and West, and a secular India.

Thursday, April 26: The Birth of Bangladesh, 1947-1971
The independence of Pakistan into West (present-day Pakistan) and East (present-day Bangladesh), highlighted the problems of creating a country based on perceived religious identities. The hegemony of West Pakistan over the then East Pakistan, has been referred to by scholars as "internal colonialism." Many politicians who played a role in achieving the independence of Pakistan from the British failed to acknowledge or recognize the rights of Pakistan's majority province. East Pakistanis were denied the recognition of Bengali as a national language, and they were exploited economically, socially and culturally by West Pakistan. Such discrimination and hostility led to a movement for greater rights in East Pakistan, that ended in a bloody war of independence from Pakistan in 1971. The third partition of South Asia occurred 25 years after the second, undermining, in many ways, the logic and basis of 1947.

Speakers

Janaki Bakhle is Associate Professor of Modern Indian History and Director of the South Asia Institute. She earned her PhD at Columbia University. Her areas of specialization include Indian political history, Indian feminist history, nationalism, gender and culture. Her first book, Two Men and Music: Nationalism, Colonialism and the Making of an Indian Classical Tradition was published in 2005. She is currently working on her second book project about Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, known as the chief ideologue of Hindu fundamentalism, and is writing about sedition, colonial surveillance, and the emergence of Hindu fundamentalism in late nineteenth century India.

S. Akbar Zaidi is a Visiting Professor at Columbia University, with a joint appointment at the School of International and Public Affairs, and the Graduate School of Arts & Science Department of Middle East, South Asia, and African Studies through May 2012. Zaidi holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He taught at Karachi University for thirteen years, and was a visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University in 2004-05. He is one of Pakistan's best known and most prolific political economists. Apart from his interest in political economy, he has research interests in development, the social sciences, and history. His most recent of twelve books is Political Economy and Development in Pakistan, published in 2010. His other books include The New Development Paradigm: Papers on Institutions, NGOs, Gender and Local Government (1999), and Issues in Pakistan's Economy (2005).

Readings (to be provided by Columbia):

Shuja Nawaz. Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2008.

Thomas R. Trautmann. India: Brief History of a Civilization. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011.

REGISTRATION: Participants must be K-12 teachers, two-year college instructors or students enrolled in education degree programs. Attendees may register for all three meetings or register for individual sessions. If you would like to register, or have questions, please contact William Carrick at wac2112@columbia.edu or at (212) 854-4565. To register, please include your name, school affiliation, level of students taught, and subjects taught. Students should include their school and degree program, anticipated graduation date, and a brief statement of career goals.

For additional information, please contact William Carrick at wac2112@columbia.edu or by phone at (212) 854-4565.

After School Professional Development programs are funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Visit our webstite at http://www.sai.columbia.edu/outreach.html.

To unsubscribe from this listserv, contact William Carrick at wac2112@columbia.edu.

SAI Pod-Courses
from the archives of the After-School Professional Development Workshops

Web Resources for Teachers:

A weblinks directory to South Asian history, cultures and literatures from Frances Pritchett's website on South Asia, compiled by Professor Frances Pritchett, Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures. It features links to general resources; timelines; maps of South Asia: historical, political, topographic, demographic; art and architecture; Islam in general and Islam in South Asia; South Asian literature; Hindi and Urdu language and literature; calligraphy, and the life of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00fwp

Portal Site for the National Resource Center for Language, Area, and International and Area Studies portal site: 125 National Resource Centers (NRCs) throughout the United States have been established at colleges and universities with funding from the U.S. Department of Education to establish, strengthen, and operate language and area or international studies centers that will be national resources for teaching any modern foreign language. Find an NRC near you, upcoming K-12 teacher training workshops, and resources for the classroom.
http://www.nrcweb.org

Portal Site for Outreach world: a comprehensive resource for teaching international and area studies and foreign languages in the precollegiate classroom (all world regions including South Asia, Africa, Middle East, East Asia, etc).
http://www.outreachworld.org/index.asp

Aamir Mufti
Teach-In on Thirty Years of Indian and Pakistani History: A Tryst with Destiny; from the Midnight's Children Humanities Festival.
http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/broadcast/ramfiles/mchf2003/03_06_b.ram

Gyan Pandey
Teach-In on Thirty Years of Indian and Pakistani History: A Tryst with Destiny; from the Midnight’s Children Humanities Festival.
http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/broadcast/ramfiles/mchf2003/03_06_b.ram

Gowher Rizvi and Tariq Banuri
Teach-In on Thirty Years of Indian and Pakistani History: Bangladesh; from the Midnight’s Children Humanities Festival
http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/broadcast/midnightschildren