Sastri has been a companion, sometimes the only one, when things around have crumbled spectacularly. So, bittersweet to see it end. But its the most I have ever enjoyed researching and writing anything. Tons of people and institutions to thank — most are in acknowledgements.
Dutch academia is really strange.
@NWO_SSH
reviewer report objected that I call apartheid South Africa an instance of ‘colonialism’. Its just a PC term, the reviewer insisted, since Zulus too colonised and SA Indians weren’t as oppressed.
Like everything else today, established Delhi think tanks are really just branding and event management arms of the MEA. Which is such a shame because we produce some really, really fine young researchers whose careers are being ruined by them.
Karen Smith and I have edited a sp. issue on the Multiple Births of IR.
Contributions from
@DrAlexEDavis
(Australia),
@tiekutom
(Ghana), Jay Hwang (Taiwan/China), Jungmin Seo and Young Chul Cho (S. Korea) and Carlos Milani (Brazil).
@RISjnl
I've had my share of being bullied in academia. But I also want to say that, among innumerable acts of everyday kindness, my postdoc supervisor paid for my wedding. He still messages me every week to ask how I'm. Kindness is the most important inspiration that you can give anyone
When I objected that there is tons of academic material on why SA is a case of colonialism, the committee now finds my tone ‘accusatory’ and insists that ‘colonialism’ is open to interpretation.
Still a couple of more years to go (if I am optimist) for this to become a reality, but this morning I finished the first draft, wrote up the front page, and what hit me was a massive feeling of vacuum.
Just published this which may be of interest to those working on theorising non-alignment, Realism and how caste is the 'norm against noticing' in India IR.
'Brahmins and Balance of Power: Re-Reading A.P. Rana's Imperatives of Non-Alignment'
B.S. Chimni scholarship on MA in refugee protection and forced migration studies by distance-learning.
Named after a truly outstanding scholar and the greatest of teachers!
Beyond thrilled to have won the prize that
@petervale1947
and I are still learning to properly pronounce! :-)
Supremely grateful to every1 who helped with this book, and the brilliant scholarship on race in IR and South Africa from which we continue to learn and be inspired.
The winners of our Best Book prize are Vineet Thakur &
@petervale1947
for South Africa, Race and the Making of International Relations! 2nd place goes to
@ManchandaNivi
for Imagining Afghanistan: The History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge (3/7)
So here it is, Caste and IR. Listen to four smashing young scholars on why caste doesn't figure in IR and what to do about it. Global South Adda with
@pavanjnu
, Ankit Kawade, Kalathmika Natarajan, and Medha.
@contactniice
We touched our
#25
sessions milestone today with a very special event - a candid conversation with Dr.
@vineet1232
on his work and beyond 🌸
One of the most existing discussions we have ever had, this event saw participation from IR enthusiasts all over Delhi.
This came out a few weeks ago, where I follow Sastri and Bajpai as they travel across oceans as India's diplomats. Massive thanks to
@PaliwalAvi
and
@pallaviraghava1
for being such wonderfully generous editors.
Since no one ever asks scholars from the Global South scholars how they feel about the Decolonizing IR agenda, we sat down to chat about it. Six brilliant early scholar scholars discussed the specific issues they face.
I am glad that the University of Delhi rejected the proposal to teach the casteist, anti-women Manusmriti to students of Faculty of Law.
If such a thing had not happened, I would have followed Babasaheb’s footsteps, gone to Delhi and burned a copy of Manusmriti in front of
📢CALL FOR PROPOSALS: CASTE & DIPLOMACY
We are pleased to announce our upcoming special issue on the role of
#Caste
as a conceptual and empirical category within
#diplomacy
and international relations.
For more details and guidelines, visit this link:
Out in less than two weeks; hardback is damn expensive (hopefully there will be a paperback in due course) but please consider ordering for your libraries!
A diplomatic biography of V.S Srinivasa Sastri during his time as India’s roving ambassador in the 1920s. Despite being hailed as the ‘very voice of international conscience’, he is now a largely forgotten figure.
#India
#History
@vineet1232
While NET is a bad criteria for jobs and PhD admission, the alternative wasn't so great either. If you weren't good at networking or pleasing professors, you could very well just be discriminated against at the outset. Not to mention how much caste, class, gender etc play a role
'VS Srinivasa Sastri: A Liberal Life' is out today. Indian edition will follow. The book is a critical intellectual biography of Sastri's liberalism. Chuffed that it is part of the Pathfinders series, spearheaded by Dilip Menon and
@aakashron
.
Sankaran Krishna is our chief diagnostician; of an ironically mediocre discipline actually. But every word he writes has such ferocious elegance that it is sometimes worthy to be in the discipline to just be able to reads critiques like these.
I know, academics feel happy at journal acceptance or a book coming out. But, have you ever walked into a South African embassy and be told in the first go that all your visa documents are in order! That’s once in a lifetime achievement.😊
Perhaps the second biggest con in academia is that we have been convinced that this big-tent academic conferences are necessary. All we do is contribute to the tourist economy of already rich countries.
Journal publishing remains the first.
If you're born in a poor country with a weak passport and work in academia, don't dream of attending conferences abroad. Obtaining a visa appointment is impossible, causing immense stress. The policy discriminates against developing countries. Accept your fate, cease your efforts
As if anyone needed to watch more online content, I have started a series of chats on the theme of Global South in IR. The first of these was a chat with
@petervale1947
on his life and work, and doing IR from South Africa.
Somehow in all the frustrations that one has with JNU and where it is going, these pictures are heartwarmingly soothing. Nehru in the background and some of the nicest teachers in the foreground.
Teaching is cathartic, has been for me in this whole period of deep sorrow and anger. We don’t give our students enough credit for helping us survive in these white spaces and process the sheathed racism that comes from colleagues.
I taught an article on Palestine's efforts to gain admission to the Olympics in my global sport history class today. I was proud of my students for their engagement and civility, and recognition of Palestinians' long struggle for dignity and humanity amid crushing oppression. 🇵🇸
#Ukraine
strongly condemns the ongoing terrorist attacks against Israel, including rocket attacks against the civilian population in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. We express our support for
#Israel
in its right to defend itself and its people.
Exactly. Even in Indian universities, intl relations, international history/politics is studied, taught via a western construct. The study matter, the books in the library, the curriculum has very little to offer in terms of India/Asian perspective
If you would like Indian news TV to do better than have netas shout at each other from their predetermined positions, do consider tuning into the
#Newstrack
‘Think Tank’ roundtable at 8 pm on
@IndiaToday
Sharp really sharp foreign policy wonks are joining me on the show tonight.
Still a bit of a time for this to be out. But glad this has a page! This book looks at inter-war Indian liberalism through Sastri's politics and thought. It'll have a South Asian edition, so all those with pdfs of previous books are expected to buy! :-)
This position paper on 'Knowledge of India' aggressively canvasses the agenda to re-assert Brahmanical ethos, intellectual currents and social order as the only "authentic" Indian knowledge system. | Shivasundar
Powerful call by PM
@narendramodi
on social discipline. As always, raised national morale and motivated India. Also characteristically gave practical suggestions to the youth.
Follow protocols, stay safe.
India will come through.
We're proud to announce thirty-one researchers from across the humanities and social sciences have been awarded an Individual Fellowship for the year-group 2019/20. The remaining thirty places will be filled by co-sponsored fellows and theme-group members
This counting has now gone for longer than JNU election counting. We are now in an uncharted territory! Also, mail-in ballots is basically what happens when SSS opens after Science Schools have been counted.
A really excellent piece by
@atulm01
on Savarkar's conception of the international, which reveals the masculinist, casteist, and violent imaginary of Hindutva's IR theory.
A Kashmiri friend cudn’t make it to interview cz the letter arrvd late. He called up the CIPOD HoD, Prof Murthy, who asked him to come to Delhi n arranged a special interview for him during the summer. That interview changed my friend’s life. CIPOD is ❤️!
When I joined JNU over a decade ago, a senior prof once told me during admission interviews to patiently listen to those from smaller towns & be nice 2 them: they're often diamonds in the rough, he'd say.
Don't be impressed by the English-speaking crowd, he'd add!
@PushpeshPant
Read Buzan's 50 page introduction. Only cites 3 or 4 non-white scholars, not surprising for English School. But then out of curiosity, looked at his end references. Buzan cites 52 of his own publications. Surely, that is a world record! And why not just append CV?
Does Barry Buzan's latest book *Making Global Society* replicate race and gender hierarchies of the past rather than challenging them? Brilliant reflections from
@hannahforsyth
to continue the forum on this new text
@CambridgeUP
Have always wondered how research cultures affect how you make arguments. At least in my training at JNU, there was so much focus on super extensive lit. review and being very humble and circumspect in what you can claim. In the West, one has to always exaggerate their argument.
The scholarly expectation that you make an original contribution to an existing field of study really incentivizes overselling the newness of whatever you're doing. It would be refreshing to read a piece of scholarship that says, "This is more of the same, but it's still good!"
If you are in or around Leiden, please join us for discussions on IR and 'merit' with Sankaran Krishna, Gajendran Ayyathurai, Crystal Ennis (
@Crystal_Ennis
), Hitomi Koyama (
@hitomikoyamaIR
) and Hannah Graham-Brown on 22 May, 5:30 pm, Lipsius 0.28.
None of these. First generation reader, so I only started reading books in MPhil. Felt so inadequate with peers, so forced myself to read -- and, I am still not sure when I am reading for pleasure and when I am forcing myself to read! 😐
An amazing day of conferencing on ‘A Global History of Repatriation’ organised by
@KalathmikaN
; so much to learn from all the scholars here.
Here, Prof. Gajendran Ayyathurai delivering a tour de force.
I hope
@iaisofficial
would also speak up in defence of a fellow IR scholar. Hopes aren’t high frankly, but if Indian IR community can’t speak up for one of our own, then why do we need an association?
I know it’s a fucking joke but I was wondering that if I would ever say something like this about South Africa — a country I ‘specialise’ in! No, that would be mindbogglingly stupid even as a joke. But American academics watch too much of Jack Ryan shit.
Save the date! LUCIR Annual Lecture
We are super excited to host Prof Sankaran Krishna for our LUCIR Annual Lecture. He will speak on 'Three Modes of Anarchy'. 24 May, 5-7pm, Wijnhaven, The Hague.
I have organised three such talks, and each of these has been such a learning experience. If like me you are sick of the alienating abstractness of debates and token Global-South-ism in IR, please give us a listen/watch. Next up will be 'Caste and IR'.
Thank you
@vineet1232
for inviting us alongside Karen Smith to speak on your Global South Adda podcast 'Is there a Western Dominance in IR?'🎙️! We discussed whether the assumption about 'western dominance' in IR could itself be Eurocentric & IR in 🇮🇳🇧🇷🇿🇦.
If these RW folks spend even half the time reading Nehru than they spend on writing about him, the world will be a better place. And no, Nehru did not ‘gift’ China a seat. There was no realistic chance of India securing a seat either.
I'm usually bad at book talks, but excitedly looking forward to this one. In conversation with Ian Sanjay Patel whose recent book on immigration at the end of empire is one of the best I have read recently:12 July, 6:30 pm (IST)/3 pm (CEST)
@BrisUniPress
There is a special place in hell for journals who keep your work for over 8 months and give you a reject without sharing reviews, despite repeated requests. A student from a 'third world' university is often not even considered worth a response. The journal: Modern Asian Studies
This
@europeanisa
podcast series 'What is ...' is primarily meant as a teaching companion for Intro to IR or Advanced IR theory courses. So, if you are teaching/reading 'ontological security', listen to the very brilliant
@beste_isleyen
interview Prof. Bahar Rumelili.
In the latest episode of
#EISAVoices
, Professor Bahar Rumelili discusses the relationship between identity and security, and her work on identity construction through difference.
#EISAVoices
is available on all major podcast platforms. Subscribe today:
The funniest thing about IR as an academic discipline is that even on the ‘postcolonial’ side, people will only circulate/cite/network fellow in-groupies based in the West (Mbembe will be the exception proving the rule) and think they are ‘decolonial’.
So much appreciated the non jargonised, no-hiding-behind-abstract-articulation approach of our excellent panelists. Names were named, regimes of privilege were laid bare. Provocative, sharp, insightful, exhilarating.
Fantastic round table on the idea of merit in international relations research put together by
@vineet1232
. Great insights on positionality, power relations, biases, and representation in IR research conducted at Leiden University.
Was super fun interviewing Krishna for this! We chatted abt pocolonial approaches to IR, their critiques, including the dangers of right-wing approriation, and of course, JNU! 😊
'All the hue and cry around decolonisation that is happening in India, within the academia, within the critical thinking circle, and within ‘liberal’ networks, are all based on a ridiculous defence of the Brahmanical framework of Hindutva....' great piece by
@Datta_msca
The replacement of the British crown by Hindu temples at the altars of mosques and shrines is not
#Decolonisation
. India needs to creolise the Hindu sacred and consider debrahmanisation if any decolonisation is to take place.
A short review of
@KiraHuju
's dazzling scholarship on the IFS, with Kira's response. Thanks
@ameyaprataps
for the invite.
Round Table Series on India’s International Relations: Saffronising Foreign Policy
#Statecraft
It's intellectually dishonest, morally untenable & outright stupid to compare India's freedom struggle against colonial Britain to what Hamas does to Israel.
Can’t recommend this piece enough! It is a major addition to Indian diplomatic history, and should easily go into every IFP or diplomatic history course syllabi. Thanks
@narayani_basu
for writing this.
Big grants, as anyone knows, is a badly run and structurally skewed lottery system. Everyone participates in it, b’coz it is now the only way to get promoted. Squid games had better principles.
When did academia lose sight of the fact that pursuing grants should happen bc you have a research idea that requires funding to carry out, rather than trying to come up with potentially fundable ideas bc you need to get grants?
Thirty years ago, in December 1993, Foreign Affairs published a piece by Mandela which stated that human rights will be 'the guiding light' of SA's foreign policy. Post-apartheid SA hasn't always lived up to that promise. But today was a day for the ages.