Spring Symposium: De-Romanticizing India

Tuesday, March 2^nd

Keynote Address: “The New U.S-India Relationship: Setting the Stage” by Ambassador Karl F. Inderfurth

4:30pm, Dana Auditorium

Just the Facts:

• Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs from 1997 to 2001
• U.S. Representative for Special Political Affairs to the U.N. and Deputy U.S. Representative on the U.N. Security Council (1993-1997)
• Correspondent for ABC News and received an Emmy Award in 1983
• Co-authored Fateful Decisions: Inside the National Security Council (2004).

Opening Reception: Meeting Keynote Speaker and Viewing Photo Gallery

6pm, 51 Main Street

Goal: to explore the juncture between art and our symposium themes, relating to politics, religion, culture and an evolving society in India.

Wednesday, March 3^rd

Lecture: “Piety, Performance and Politics: Repositioning India’s Ramayana Epic” by Professor Cynthia Packert

12:30pm, BiHall 216

Just the Facts:

• Head of the South Asian Studies department, professor of Asian Art History at Middlebury College.
• Wrote Studies in Asian Art and Archaeology: The Sculpture of Earl Medieval Rajastan, will publish The Art of Loving Krishna: Ornamentation and Devotion in June, 2010.

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Tour at the Museum: Viewing Artifacts and Paintings of India

3pm, Middlebury College Museum of Art

The Middlebury Museum of Art has a significant collection of artifacts and art pieces related to Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. Professor Packert’s talk focuses on a painted piece on the two main characters of the Ramayan entering the forest. After her talk concludes, two student volunteers will guide interested students and guests through the Museum to view and explain the art pieces.

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“Career Conversation on Indian Economy and Businesses” by Mr. David Good, Tata Group, Washington, D.C

4:30pm, Axinn 229

Just the Facts:

• Head of the Tata Group corporate office in the United States. (Tata Group is India’s largest private group and multinational conglomerate.)
• US embassy official in New Delhi, then State Department officer for thirty-four years, Consul General in Mumbai, India.
• Current responsibilities include representing Tata to the U.S. federal and state government officials, U.S. industry, and the American people.

Thursday, March 4^th

Film Lecture and Discussion: “Runaway Grooms” by Ali Kazimi, York University

12:15pm, Axinn Theatre

Just the Facts:

• Award-winning filmmaker with films broadcast on Channel 4, PBS, Discovery Times, and at numerous film festivals.
• 2006: joined the Department of Film, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University, as a full time professor.

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Panel on Indian Foreign Policy and Global Outlook : featuring Lisa Curtis, Walter Andersen, Moderated by Professor Jeffrey Lunstead, Political Science

4:30pm, Hillcrest Orchard

Lisa Curtis:

• Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and focuses on US-India security and political issues along with India’s relationship with greater South Asia.
• Contributed to The Washington Times, National Review Online and FoxNews.com; also appeared on CNN, CBS, CNBC, MSNBC.
• Served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as Senior Advisor to the State Department’s South Asia Bureau and worked as an analyst to the CIA in the early 1990s.

Walter Andersen:

• Associate Director of the South Asia Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University.
• Served on State Department’s South Asia Division.
• Published Brotherhood in Saffron on Hindu revival movements in politics.

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Jeffrey Lunstead (Moderator):

• Middlebury Diplomat-in-Residence and served in the U.S Foreign Service for 29 years.
• Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Maldives from 2003-2006.

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Friday, March 5^th

Panel on Domestic Issues and Challenges in Contemporary India: featuring Saleem Ali, Walter Andersen, Moderated by Professor Ian Barrow, History

12:15pm, Hillcrest Orchard

Saleem Ali:

• Focuses on environmental conflict resolution, specifically in South Asia.
• Recent book: Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed and a Sustainable Future (2009).
• His current project is on oil and gas pipelines in South Asia as a source of conflict versus cooperation.
• Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont.

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Walter Andersen:

• Associate Director of the South Asia Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University.
• Served on State Department’s South Asia Division.
• Published Brotherhood in Saffron on Hindu revival movements in politics.

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Safa Khan:

• Student at Middlebury College from India.

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Ian Barrow (Moderator):

• Historian on South Asia and focuses on the history of colonialism in India.
• Taught multiple courses that address domestic issues of science, literature and women and gender in India.
• Currently working on a manuscript about assassinations in South Asia.

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Interactive Cooking Class: by Gunit Gill ‘12

4:30pm, Coffrin Kitchen

Friday Film: Rang de Basanti

7:30 Axinn Theatre

“Rang de Basanti” (English: “Paint it Saffron”) was chosen as India’s entry into the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category. The story is about a British documentary filmmaker who is determined to make a film on Indian freedom fighters based on diary entries by her grandfather, a former officer of the British Army in India.

Saturday, March 6^th

Holi “Festival of Colors” Brunch

12pm, Coltrane Lounge

Holi is a popular Hindu spring festival that celebrates not only the new season but also a reinvigorated devotion to living morally and performing good deeds. The brunch will include a variety of Indian dishes, traditional and popular Indian music, and a presentation of the ways this holiday is celebrated in the diverse regions of the Indian subcontinent.

Sports and India: Cricket Match and Kabaddi Game

2pm, Battell Beach

Sports in India have both a recreational purpose and have historically coincided with the political and economical issues in society. Cricket is India’s most popular sport and was introduced to India by England during the British Raj. Even in contemporary times, cricket is associated with Indian nationalism. Kabaddi is a sport that originated in India’s villages. It involves a combination of wrestling, ‘team-tag’ and holding your breath during a part of play. Kabaddi has evolved into a competitor sport internationally and India won the Kabaddi World Championships in 2007 against Iran.

India’s Performing Arts Concert

9pm, McCullough

India’s musical and dance traditions have evolved but are still widely admired and practiced in contemporary society. We have broken up the show into five acts, each representing a facet (and, in many cases, a region of India) of Indian performing arts.

Dance Party

11pm, Coltrane Lounge

This dance party will act as a way to end the events of the symposium and provide a social gathering for the visiting teams and symposium participants. We will have a large selection of Hindi songs and also of other Indian languages.

ONGOING EVENTS

Art Exhibition at 51 Main and McCullough (outside social space)

Support for Pratham:

Pratham is the largest non-governmental organization in India working to provide quality education to underprivileged children. Their starting goal was to provide pre-school education to the children in the slums of Mumbai city and now has widened its scope to help create policy changes in India’s education legislation.

Background: There is a momentum on campus to understand and analyze India. Middlebury College students have started studying abroad in India, Indian festivals such as Diwali are celebrated on campus, and classes associated with India are offered in multiple departments. However, there has been no comprehensive academic discussion outside of the classroom about India and its rapidly changing nature. There is still a romanticized impression of India as the land of mystic spirituality and Bollywood. While these are important aspects that shape contemporary India, there are multiple aspects of India’s rise on the global stage that we have overlooked.

Our Goal: To start a dialogue about India as a growing, competitive global power and its changing domestic identity. We have identified TWO major themes of the symposium.

• The first is a series of discussions about India’s global standing and the political-economic decisions it is making. Goldman Sachs has predicted that India will be the world’s third largest economy by 2050; it has earned a reputation as Asia’s most populous democracy.
• The second is less frequently discussed: the domestic nature of India, mainly the issues and concerns of over 1.1 billion citizens. This includes addressing the issue of race relations between Hindus and Muslims, the caste system, and how rapid development is affecting the environment, poverty, and traditional practices. India’s recent development is both unprecedented and unique–India travels on its own planetary orbit, so to speak–and it is worthwhile to analyze why and what greater implications this has for the United States and for us as students.

The administration has already started responding to the student body’s interest in India. We hope this symposium will encourage it to further promote India studies, within the South Asia program, and to continue the dialogue on India–similar to its initiatives on China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the EU, and the Middle East. Further support could include institutionalizing a South Asia major, offering Hindi in the curriculum, introducing Hindi language tables, funding more colloquiums and speakers on India, and, as a larger goal, establishing a study abroad program in India run by Middlebury College.

Header photo courtesy of Jamie Conkling.