The South Asian Studies Colloquium is a forum to connect Harvard’s South Asia specialists and enthusiasts, across disciplines and departments. The colloquium is a two-part program, with in-house graduate and faculty research presentations and also a guest lecture series.

Graduate and Faculty Presentations

In every session, a graduate student, faculty member, or visiting fellow from a different department shares their current research focused on South Asia. The audience then asks questions and offers feedback. This is a space for South Asianists at Harvard to engage with each other’s intellectual work in a non-hierarchical manner–and over delicious food! These sessions are open to anyone in the Harvard community.

Past Events

April 16th, 2025 Pariroo Rattan

Exercising State Power through the Private Sector: The Digital Economy and Nation-building in Contemporary India

Digital India is a flagship government policy to improve governance and economic opportunities especially for the poor, distinct for its emphasis on “economic growth combined with social inclusion.” Central to the Digital India policy is biometric identification, Aadhaar, now distributed to 1.3 billion Indians and real time mobile payment technology, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which has become a key alternative to cash transactions. I track the development of Digital Public Infrastructures and National Information Utilities (NICs) touted to be “private companies with a public purpose” for their legal composition, competitiveness and scope of public accountability. Conventional arguments on neoliberalism have focussed on how the state enables the private sector or creates the background conditions, legal rules, property rights, moral landscape to aid the private sector. I show how the state is using the private sector to further its governance capacity, while reducing the scope for public accountability. This particular public-private nexus is turning public services into “products” without market competition or bureaucratic oversight.

March 26th 2024: CJ Passarella

“Poetics as a Way of Life in Rajasekhara’s Kavyamimamsa”

March 5th 2024: Keith Cantù

Musical Language Worlds of Bengali Bāuls and Fakirs

Synopsis: This presentation focuses on the author’s forthcoming book project on the “musical language worlds” of Bāul and Fakiri songs. While these songs are composed in early modern Bengali, their language is not bounded but is intertwined with a wide variety of symbolic and religious worlds or milieus that are expressed musically in the form of discrete songs that are sung according to a given melody or accompanied by instruments. These songs are themselves texts in that they serve as the main vehicle for Bāul and Fakiri teachings in place of any single unifying religious text. This research therefore uses the model of translation to bring the wider musical language worlds of these songs to life, not just by means of detailed philological and ethnographic analysis but by treating these songs’ mode of musical expression not as secondary to the text but as inextricably intertwined with the text itself. This perspective on studying Bāul and Fakiri songs has the potential to encourage scholars in a wide variety of fields to more deeply reflect on the musical contexts within many religious or philosophical teachings have originally circulated, especially since they show how teachings are adapted to new contexts not only through translation but also through simultaneous integration into songs or music.

Nov. 18th 2024: Sri Sathvik Rayala

Nov. 4th: John Weaver and Imaan Mirza

Oct. 7th 2024: Kalpana Mohanty

Body Politics: Disability and the Indian Sepoy during the First World War

This chapter positions the Great War as a turning point in understanding how disability and able-bodiedness functioned within the British Empire through the case study of India. I explore how fears of nascent Indian nationalism, coupled with a profound reliance on Indian military labour and a fundamental distrust of the Indian population following the Revolt of 1857 heightened the surveillance of disabled Indian soldiers at every level. Disability in the wake of the Great War became an issue of imperial governance through the creation of disability pensions, the distribution and creation of prosthetic technologies and in response, the ever-present suspicion of malingering. As welfare and money became more readily available for Indian soldiers with disabilities, so too did the desire to define and separate the worthy from the unworthy disabled.

Sept. 23, 2024: Jiya Pandya

April 15, 2024: Pariroo Rattan

April 1st, 2024: Manjari Mukherjee

March 18th, 2024: Cicely Bonnin

March 4th, 2024: Lee Ling Ting

Feb. 20th, 2024: Patrick Cummins

Sept. 14, 2023: South Asian Religions Colloquium Welcome Reception

Meet with faculty, students, and visiting scholars interested in the many religions of South Asia. And learn about our fall series of guest lectures and graduate presentations over food and drink.

Guest Lecture Series

Every semester, the colloquium invites one or two scholars from outside Harvard to give a lecture based on their latest research. The invited speakers work across a number of disciplines, languages, regions, and time periods, reflecting the wide interests of South Asia scholars at this university. Past invitees have presented work in the fields of literature, history, religion, philosophy, and gender studies.

(Past) Oct. 23rd 2024: Translation: Experience and Epistemology w/ Prof. Rita Kothari

(Past) Oct 3rd, 2024: Bhāsarvajña on Cārvāka Anti-Rationalism w/ Prof. Nilanjan Das

(Past) April 25th 2024: Childhood, Early Learning and Muslim Women’s Activism in India w/ Dr. Asiya Alam

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(Past) April 3rd, 2024: Priya Sen film screening of No Stranger At All

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(Past) March 21st, 2024: Sundardās and Sant Devotion in Early Modern Rajasthan

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