Jallianwala Bagh Massacre: Punjab Under Siege Exhibition
21 November 2019
EKTA and New Zealand India Research Institute launched of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre: Punjab Under Siege Exhibition by Partition Museum, Amritsar, India.
2019 events
View presentations and access resources from lectures and seminars held in 2019.
Anatomy of a Protest: The Abolition of Indian Indentured Labour in the British Empire
8 December 2019
Presented by Professor Mrinalini Sinha
Kunti, a dalit (“untouchable” caste) woman, became the poster child for the nation-wide movement in India against the abolition of the system of indentured labour in 1917. The system, managed by the colonial government in India, had supplied approximately 1.3 million workers from India to plantations overseas in the aftermath of the abolition of Atlantic slavery in the 1830s.
This paper explores how a woman at the very bottom of the caste hierarchy in India became the face for an empire-wide change. It will argue that Kunti’s role in the movement illustrates an important dimension of the abolitionist movement: the construction of the “people” (or the demos) as the subject of a new kind of politics in late colonial India.
The question that animates the presentation is precisely this: what is a people? The question has acquired particular urgency in our times with the resurgence, both globally and in India, of a politics in the name of the people (often referred to pejoratively as “populism”). What might the politics of the people in Indian abolitionism have to offer to our times?
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Remembering Mahatma Gandhi: Politics, history and myth
1 October 2019
Victoria University of Wellington’s Professor Sekhar Bandyopadhyay discusses Gandhi’s philosophy and actions, refers to the political debates and critical scholarship, and shows why, despite all those controversies, Gandhi’s legacy is still important in the rapidly changing world of the twenty-first century.
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Balancing and Hegemony in Ancient India
6 September 2019
The balance-of-power versus hegemony debate is one of the core debates in International Relations theory. Did ancient India display a propensity towards balance-of-power or hegemony?
In the nine centuries (~550 BCE—320 CE) since the emergence of the sixteen Mahajanapada-states in ancient India (~550 BCE), this region witnessed a hegemonic order dominated by a single polity/empire for only a few decades (~260 BCE— 205 BCE), under the Magadha-centered Mauryan Empire. In other words, (Mauryan) hegemony/domination was short-lived in ancient India. However, the absence of hegemony/domination did not imply the creation of a balance-of-power system.
The aim of this article was to explain the emergence of Mauryan hegemony/domination, and to further interrogate the nature of international order in the absence of hegemony (as it enriches the balance-of-power versus hegemony debate by showing the existence of other types of international orders). The paper concluded with a comparison of ancient India and ancient China where hegemonic transformation did occur (under the Qin-Han dynasties) and was relatively long-lasting (~221 BCE—220 CE).
About the lecturer
Manjeet S. Pardesi is Senior Lecturer in the Political Science and International Relations Programme and Asia Research Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington.
He obtained his PhD in Political Science from Indiana University, Bloomington (IUB). His research interests include international relations in global history, great power politics, strategic rivalries, Asian security, and Indian foreign policy. He has an MSc in Strategic Studies from the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (now the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies or RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He obtained his BEng (Electrical & Electronic) from NTU as well.
He is currently the Managing Editor of the journal Asian Security (June 2018—May 2021). He is a co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of India’s National Security (Oxford, 2018) and India’s Military Modernization: Challenges and Prospects (Oxford, 2014). His articles have appeared in European Journal of International Relations, Security Studies, Survival, Asian Security, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, International Studies Perspectives, Nonproliferation Review, Air & Space Power Journal (of the United States Air Force), The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, World Policy Journal, India Review, Defense and Security Analysis, and in several edited book volumes.
Everyday violence and post-Partition Dalit peasant migration in Bengal, 1950-57
2 August 2019
Professor Sekhar Bandyopadhyay's talk on 'Everyday violence and post-Partition Dalit peasant migration in Bengal, 1950–57', 2 August 2019, History Staff Seminar.
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New Engagements: China, India, and the South Pacific
17 May 2019
An academic workshop hosted by the New Zealand India Research Institute and New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre.
As China and India respectively become the world’s largest and third-largest economies within a decade, how are they seeking influence and partnerships beyond their home regions in East and South Asia? What does the rise of China and India mean for the South Pacific? What is the prognosis for the regional order as China’s Belt and Road Initiative and India’s Act East policy extend to the South Pacific? What has been the reception of these Chinese and Indian initiatives in the Pacific, and what does it mean for Australia and New Zealand, the region’s traditional security, economic, and developmental partners?
In an attempt to answer these questions, the New Zealand India Research Institute and the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre organised a one-day academic workshop on 17 May 2019, bringing together leading and upcoming academics and analysts from around the world.
The discussions were organised along three broad themes:
- politics, diplomacy, and security
- economics and development
- non-traditional security issues.
The aim was to understand the intentions of Asia’s rising powers in the Pacific and the prospects for great power cooperation and competition in the region.
The Combined Impact of Trade Wars and 'Make in India' on the Indian Economy
16 May 2019
Lecture by Dr Rahul Sen at Victoria University of Wellington.
'Make in India' has been a flagship program for the current government in India. This has two broad types of features: one type that is business-friendly to reduce transaction costs and improve doing business in India and another that involves protectionism against imports.
The combined effect of these two is ambiguous, as these effects are captured by a slew of policy measures and announcements over a period of the past five years, not very clearly laid out in one document. Some of them have been proactive while others have been reactive to global policies. The reactive policies have been mainly shaped in the last couple of years, in response to the global trade wars being triggered by the US tariff hikes in several commodities. Therefore, we may observe a link between the global trade wars and Make in India, though both of them have their own effects separately on Indian economy.
The ongoing global trade war, that mainly involves US and China, has the potential to affect India's trade positively or negatively because of the combination of adverse global supply shocks and trade diversions that may positively favour India. Concomitantly, Make in India program's positive measures may have a favourable effect on the industries and people at large, while its protectionist measures may have an ambiguous effect. The combined effect of both of these are yet ambiguous, and has not yet been explored in the empirical literature.
Our study therefore explores the economy wide and specific sectoral impacts of global trade war and Make in India utilizing a global computable general equilibrium model. This is a unique attempt on two counts; first, we put together the details relevant for global trade wars and Make in India, which in itself is a fresh attempt; second, this is the first time to capture all these contemporary policies in an economy wide global modelling framework.
About the lecturer
Dr Rahul Sen is a Senior Lecturer at the AUT Business School, Faculty of Business Economics and Law, besides being a Fellow at NZIRI and an Adjunct Research fellow at the Auckland based New Zealand-India Trade Alliance (NZITA). He was previously a Research Fellow with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore from 2003-2007, prior to joining AUT University in Auckland in 2008.
A graduate of National University of Singapore (NUS), Dr Sen is an applied trade economist focussing on economic integration in the Asia-Pacific, that relates to Empirical and Policy Analysis of Bilateral and Regional Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), having published numerous papers, articles, books and book chapters on the subject. In recognition of his expertise, his paper on FTAs involving the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) member countries was included at the 2006 IMF-World Bank Annual Program of Seminars in Singapore.
More recently, in recognition of his expertise in this area, He was invited to be an Advisory Committee Member for the ILO funded project “Improving worker rights in globalising economies: Assessment of labour provisions in trade and investment arrangements” involving the International Institute for Labour Studies, Employment and Social Development, Canada and State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, Switzerland over 2013-2016. Rahul was the only trade economist in the committee and his inputs were included in their project papers as well as in the ILO (2016) report titled Assessment of labour provisions in trade and investment arrangements. This report was presented for policy discussion among ILO members at their bi-annual governing body meetings that year.
Rahul’s research findings have been widely cited by researchers working on Asian economic integration. His most recently publication is a UNESCAP ARTNet Working paper on Tariff liberalization in the RCEP trade agreement and impact on India`s automobile industry.
In 2018, Rahul was appointed as one of the international team of advisors at Infinite Sum Modelling (ISM), which is a global economic and management consulting firm with branches in USA, Canada, China and India, that is involved in training, research and consulting projects utilizing economic modelling techniques worldwide. He is presently working on research projects involving the use of the recently launched multi-country GTAP 8 and 9 databases, related to India, New Zealand and other Asia-Pacific economies, impact of trade war, Brexit, technological disruptions, and labour provisions on bilateral and regional trade and investment flows are the subject of his current research.
At AUT, Rahul has successfully supervised several Honors and Masters Dissertation to completion on topics related to New Zealand-China Intra-Industry Trade, and Investment flows in the New-Zealand China Free Trade Agreement. He supervised to completion, a postgraduate student dissertation on Impact Assessment of Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) on bilateral exports of Lao PDR and EU in 2017. He is presently co-supervising a dissertation on Trade Agreements and Climate change in the New Zealand context.
The Emergence of Modern Hinduism: Religion on the Margins of Colonialism
29 March 2019
Lecture by Dr Rick Weiss at Victoria University of Wellington
This talk will presents the central arguments of Dr Weiss's book The Emergence of Modern Hinduism, which argues for the importance of regional, vernacular innovation in processes of Hindu modernisation.
Scholars usually trace the emergence of modern Hinduism to cosmopolitan reform movements, producing accounts that overemphasise the centrality of elite religion and the influence of Western ideas and models. In this study, Dr Weiss considers religious change on the margins of colonialism by looking at an important local figure, the Tamil Shaiva poet and mystic Ramalinga Swami (1823–1874). The book narrates a history of Hindu modernization that demonstrates the transformative role of Hindu ideas, models, and institutions.
About the lecturer
Dr. Rick Weiss is associate professor of South Asian religions at Victoria University. His book Recipes for Immortality (OUP, 2009) examines traditional medicine in South India. His second book, on the emergence of modern Hinduism, was published in July 2019 by the University of California Press. His newest project examines the impact of print technology on religion in nineteenth-century India.