[csaa-forum] Seminar by Ranabir Samaddar on THURSDAY 10TH JULY 5:30 PM

[Devleena Ghosh]

Dear friends

Please come to this presentation by Professor Samaddar (Calcutta  
Research Group) hosted by the South Asia Seminar Group/Transforming  
Cultures Research Centre.

I would also be grateful if you could pass it along through your  
networks

Thanks
Devleena

PLEASE NOTE THE DEVIATION FROM OUR NORMAL DAY AND TIME TO THURSDAY  
AND 5:30 PM

Day THURSDAY
Date 10 JULY
Time 5:30 pm
Venue UTS Bldg3, rm210, enter via 755 Harris St


“The ‘Fanatic’ Wahabis and Colonial Rule in India”

Through a series of historical illustrations relating to nineteenth  
century colonial India around the Wahabi Movement and British  
measures to suppress it, Ranabir Samaddar's talk will focus on how  
the colonial rule was based on a mix what is now currently described  
as "exceptional methods" and the routine methods of administration  
and supervision. Analysing intelligence reports on the Wahabis and  
the official accounts of the Wahabi Trials, the talk will attempt to  
bring to light the features of colonial thinking on its own violence  
of occupation and the violence of resistance. Analysing what  
constituted the idea of fanaticism in the emerging framework of rule  
of law and constitutionalism, the talk will aim to locate the larger  
issue of terror and fanaticism in the perspective of collective  
politics of the colonised. Wahabi movement in this talk has less to  
do with a trans-national ideology called "Wahabism" than with a range  
of anti-colonial practices. In the process, the talk will reflect on  
current debates on exceptional powers and governmentality. It will  
argue that the histories of the technologies of rule and the  
emergence of the political subject must be studied in a new way.


Prof. Ranabir SAMADDAR, a founder of the Calcutta Research Group and  
its journal, Refugee Watch, was earlier a professor of South Asia  
Studies, and subsequently the founder-Director of the Peace Studies  
Programme at the South Asia Forum for Human Rights, Kathmandu. He is  
visiting Australia as the Distinguished South Asia Lecturer,  
sponsored by the Australia-India Council and SASA. His recently  
published study of dialogues as part of war and peace politics,  
titled The Politics of Dialogue (Ashgate, 2004) is a product of his  
four-year research on war and peace in South Asia. Before that he had  
completed a three-volume study of Indian nationalism, the final one  
titled as, A Biography of the Indian Nation, 1947-1997 (2001).  
Besides being the editor of three well-known volumes on issues of  
identity and rights in contemporary politics, Refugees and the State  
(2003), Space, Territory, and the State (2002), and Reflections on  
Partition in the East (1997), he is also the editor-in-chief of the  
South Asian Peace Studies Series. He is currently working on themes  
related to the materiality of politics.

(Dr) Devleena Ghosh
Associate Professor, Social Inquiry Program
Bon Marche (Bldg 3), room 550 (enter via Harris St)

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Technology, Sydney
Australia

Postal address: PO Box 123, Broadway, NSW 2007, Australia
Phone and Voice Mail: +61-2-95141963
Fax: +61-2-95142332
www.transforming.cultures.uts.edu.au
http://research.hss.uts.edu.au/IndianOcean/

"A few hours’ mountain climbing turns a rogue and a saint into two  
roughly equal creatures. Weariness is the shortest path to equality  
and fraternity — and liberty is finally added by sleep." (Nietzsche)





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