Secretary: - Michael Gillan (University of Western Australia)
Hon Treasurer: - Tikky Wattanapenpaiboon (Monash University)
Administrative Officer: - Vivien Seyler (Monash University)
Executive Committee: Greg Bailey, Sekhar Bandyopadhyay. Richard Barz, Mark Briskey, Kate Brittlebank, Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase, Douglas Hill, Kama Maclean, Andrew
McGarrity, Jim Masselos, Peter Mayer, Bob Pokrant, Nayantara Pothen, Kalpana Ram, Tim Scrase and Auriol Weigold
Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) 18th Biennial Conference 2010 The University of Adelaide 5 - 8 July 2010 Crises and Opportunities: Past, Present and Future (click link for conf. website)
The
18th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia
(ASAA), will be held at the University of Adelaide as a collaboration
between the University of Adelaide and Flinders University.
SOUTH ASIA KEYNOTE SPEAKERS FOR ASAA CONFERENCE IN ADELAIDE
KEYNOTE SPEAKER 1: Sponsored by the
Australia India Council (Canberra) and SASA
Dr. Asghar Ali
Engineer Chairman
Centre for Study of
Society and Secularism 602 & 603,
Silver Star, Behind BEST Bus Depot Santacruz (E),
Mumbai:- 400 055. Website: www.csss-isla.com
ABSTRACT: MUSLIMS IN MODERN
INDIA: MASS PREJUDICE, GOVERNMENT APATHY AND POOR LEADERSHIP.
Indian Muslims are
the largest religious minority in India numbering 150 million, second only to
the number of Muslims in Indonesia. But sadly it is one of the most backward
minorities, economically as well as educationally. According to the Sachar
Committee Report (this committee was appointed by the Government of India)
Muslims are slipping below even Dalits (untouchables) on both these measures.
More than one-third of Muslims live below the poverty line. What is worse they
are the victims of strong religious prejudice. Most of the majority community
thinks they were responsible for Partition and the creation of Pakistan in
1947. As well they face repeated communal riots (sometimes even Gujrat-like
genocide). Terrorist attacks have deepened these prejudices. Consequently they
feel insecure. However this is not the whole story, though an important part of
it. On the positive side, Indian Muslims benefit from living in the world's largest
secular democracy and so enjoy fundamental rights and freedoms which Muslims in
other Islamic countries do not.
But the tragedy is
that the Muslim leadership is quite backward and even opportunistic. It has
done hardly anything to launch educational and economic projects for Muslim
uplift. Instead the conservative Ulemas find it more lucrative to bring in Arab
money to open more and more madrassas. Thus Indian Muslims are the victims of
government apathy on one hand, and of their own leadership's vested interests
and orthodoxy on the other.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER 2: Sponsored by the
Australia India Institute (A consortium consisting of the universities of
Melbourne, La Trobe and New South Wales)
Dr Atreyee Sen Research Council
United Kingdom (RCUK) Fellow CIDRA, Samuel
Alexander Building, University of
Manchester, Oxford Road,
Manchester M13 9PL United Kingdom
ABSTRACT:
SURVIVING VIOLENCE,
CONTESTING VICTIMHOOD: COMMUNAL POLITICS AND THE CREATION OF CHILD-MEN IN URBAN
INDIAN SLUMS.
This paper explores
the effects of communal tensions and poverty on child identity politics in an
urban slum. My ethnographic landscape is Sultanpur, a communally sensitive
Muslim-dominated ghetto in the northern quarters of Hyderabad (a city in
southern India), which witnessed the emergence of armed vigilantism among male
children. Large sections of the local boys (aged between 9 and 14 years) conspired
and coordinated themselves into child squads (bacchon kefauj) to patrol the
slum edges and borders, and also to establish a disciplinary control over
certain aspects of ghetto life. For example, the child squads not only
prevented members of other communities (nationalistic Hindus, professional
mediators of peace, Hindu NGO workers, secular Hindus desiring access to the
local dargahs, etc), from entering or passing through the slum, they also acted
as deliverers of social justice (the boys organized public beatings of Muslim
women accused of 'love-alliances' with non-Muslims). In my paper I show how the
power, presence and practices of the child squads substantially upturned
traditional structures of male and female authority, and contested conventional
notions of male childhood in a marginalized, volatile urban space. I argue that
the emasculation of defeated Muslim men, unrelenting social, sexual and
physical attacks on the 'male-ness' of a poor Muslim community, and the
everyday deprivations faced by ghetto children impacted the boys in Sultanpur, and
the latter adopted violent collective identities to compensate for the loss of
male pride in the adult-child world. I show how these nascent masculinities,
created and sustained within the moral and social economy of impoverished male
children, enabled the latter to triumph over experiences of violence and
victimhood.
A Special Issue of South Asian Diaspora will be published in 2011 on:
"Religion and Caste in the South Asian Diaspora "
Guest Editors: Rajesh Rai and Chitra Sankaran
This Special Issue of South Asian Diaspora invites interdisciplinary
contributions in the humanities and social sciences that critically
examine the negotiation of religious and caste-based identities in the
South Asian diaspora.
Religious and caste-based identities constitute key elements in the
formation, development and sustenance of South Asian diasporic
communities. Given their salience, the special issue seeks to understand
the role of these identities in the formation of social and political
organizations in the diaspora. We will explore the factors that underlie
the modification of ritual practice in the process of resettlement, and
consider how multicultural policies in the adopted state,
trans-generational changes and the proliferation of transnational media
has impacted the development of these identities in the diaspora. Also
crucial are questions that deal with the gender dimension in terms of
how religion and caste affect women's position and roles in the South
Asian diaspora.
All invited and contributed manuscripts to this special issue will be
peer reviewed. For guidelines of how to prepare the manuscript, please
visit the journal website: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/19438192.asp
Manuscripts for the Special Issue should be submitted no later than 31
July 2010. Submission of manuscripts through electronic mail (preferably
as MS Word attachment) to Rajesh Rai (sasrr@nus.edu.sg) and Chitra
Sankaran (ellcs@nus.edu.sg) is especially encouraged. Alternatively,
please submit three printed copies and an electronic version (MS Word
format on a floppydisk or a CD) of the manuscript to:
Dr Rajesh Rai
South Asian Studies Programme
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
National University of Singapore
AS7 #04-08, 5 Arts Link
Singapore 117570
