King’s India Institute
Annual Report 2015
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 1
Introduction: from the Director
During 2014, the India Institute has built on its range of research, policy and
teaching activities, and has furthered its work across King’s to deepen the
College’s engagement with India, while contributing to London and the UK’s
understanding of India’s fast-changing realities. This report covers the
main activities and achievements of the Institute in our third full year
of operations.
Introduction:
from the Director ...................... 3
Faculty .................................... 6
Students ................................ 18
Student Internships &
Professional Development .... 19
Tagore Centre for
Global Thought .................... 20
Visiting Fellows
& Annual Lectures ............... 21
Partnerships & Support ........ 25
Executive Education ............. 28
Events ................................... 30
Associate Faculty .................. 36
Senior Advisory Council ...... 37
2 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
Our range of partnerships and collaborations continue to expand. The
India Institute launched two new programmes, both supported by the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The Chevening Gurukul
programme brought 14 Indian mid-career professionals, selected for their
leadership potential, to the India Institute for a 12-week programme.
The Chevening Parliamentarians programme enabled us to host nine
Indian Members of Parliament, identified as rising leaders within their
respective political parties, for a week of intensive briefings, seminars,
and site visits. Both were demanding programmes, whose success was
built on cooperation with colleagues across King’s, and we are grateful
to all involved. We have also continued to deliver FCO training courses
for serving UK diplomats and government officials, and both the five-day
and one-day courses ran several times during the year.
The Tagore Centre for Global Thought, supported by the Indian Ministry
of Culture and assisted by the High Commission of India in London,
hosted a number of lectures as well as a film series – more details on its
activities are available in the Centre’s separate 2015 Annual Report. We
had a visit by a senior team from the Government of India’s Department
of Personnel and Training, and our collaboration with them enables 12
officers of the Indian Administrative Services to come to King’s to study
for their Master’s degrees. Our partnership with the investment firm Baillie
Gifford offers a Prize Fellowship worth £32,000 for study on our Masters
of Research degree programme. The annual Fellowship we run with the
Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI)
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 3
resumes in 2015, when we welcome Dr SY Quraishi, India’s former
Chief Election Commissioner, as our third FICCI-India Institute Fellow.
The Institute hosted a number of distinguished Fellows, scholars and
speakers during the year, including Professors Arjun Appadurai, Jonardon
Ganeri and Uday Singh Mehta, and India’s former Foreign Secretary
and Ambassador to Washington, Nirupama Rao. We were particularly
delighted to have Professor Niraja Gopal Jayal with us as our ICCR
Visiting Professor. Professor Deepa Ollapally and Dr Kenmei Tsubota
joined us as Visiting Fellows, and we hosted a number of other postdoctoral Fellows. Our weekly research seminar has continued to flourish,
with a wide range of speakers, and is now an essential venue for current
research on contemporary India. In conjunction with the Jawaharlal Nehru
Memorial Trust, we hosted lectures by Neil MacGregor, Director of the
British Museum, and by Shivshankar Menon, India’s former National
Security Advisor. Overall, the India Institute organised 61 lectures,
seminars and events during 2014 – a sign of the Institute’s engagement
with new scholarship and public debate.
The 2014 Indian elections and change of government meant that our
Faculty were in demand as commentators and analysts: we figured widely
in the media, with nearly 100 newspaper articles and columns published
by India Institute faculty, as well as several books and a good number
of academic articles. We welcomed a new member of Faculty – Dr
Adnan Naseemullah, Lecturer in International Relations and South Asia,
jointly appointed with the Department of War Studies, and Dr Sandipto
Dasgupta, our Royal Society Newton Fellow began his two-year tenure
with us. Our Associate Faculty has also grown, and offers an invaluable
expansion of our core in-house expertise.
During 2014 five students graduated from our MA Contemporary India
and nine from our MA South Asia & Global Security, run jointly with the
4 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
Department of War Studies. Our PhD students have continued to make
progress in their research, and some are due to submit their dissertations
during 2015. We admitted several new students to our PhD programme,
and the size of our PhD cohort now stands at 31 in just its fourth year of
intake. The growth of our PhD community and the diversity of research
topics, as well as our increasing number of post-doctoral Fellows, have
helped create a stimulating and I think quite unique inter-disciplinary
research environment for the study of contemporary India.
At King’s, the tenure of our new President and Principal, Ed Byrne, began
in September, and the India Institute greatly looks forward to working with
him to expand College-wide engagement with India and to deepen the
India Institute’s own capacities to contribute to the UK-India relationship.
The wider environment remained often a challenging one for the India
Institute. The numbers of students coming to the UK from India, which
halved during the first two years of the India Institute’s existence, continued
to fall – an effect of UK Government policies. Internal administrative
changes within King’s introduced some uncertainties, hopefully now
resolved so that the India Institute can continue forward with its mission:
to develop innovative types of interdisciplinary research and policy ideas
across the range of the social sciences, humanities and cultural fields.
We hope you will enjoy reading about our progress during 2014. As always,
that progress depends on our faculty, our students, and our supporters and
friends. And we are grateful to all of you for your interest and support.
We are particularly grateful to the members of our distinguished Senior
Advisory Council, who have been ever generous with their counsel, support
and friendship. We look to all of you for advice on how we can improve
our activities and connect our research and teaching to wider audiences.
We particularly welcome your comments on this report and the activities
it notes.
Sunil Khilnani
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 5
Faculty
Professor Sunil Khilnani
Dr Louise Tillin
Sunil Khilnani is Avantha Professor and Director of the
King’s India Institute. Formerly Starr Foundation Professor
and Founder-Director of South Asia Studies at the Johns
Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in
Washington DC, he teaches on MA Contemporary India
and supervises PhD students at the India Institute.
Dr Louise Tillin is Lecturer in Politics and Deputy Director
of the King’s India Institute. She is Programme Director
of the MA and MRes Contemporary India, and supervises
seven PhD students. Her research focuses on comparing
sub-national political regimes and on the politics and
policy outcomes of regional and federal dynamics in India.
During 2014, in addition to his usual directorial duties, he oversaw the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office programmes run by the India Institute
and delivered several international lectures – in Belgium, Berlin and New
Delhi, as well as participating in and chairing sessions at international
business and political meetings. He contributed the concluding chapter,
‘India’s Rise: The Search for Wealth and Power in the 21st Century’, to
the Oxford Handbook on Indian Foreign Policy, edited by Srinath Raghavan
and colleagues, and he was also at work on a major radio series for BBC
Radio 4 and the BBC World Service, which is due to begin broadcast in
May 2015. Entitled ‘Incarnations: 50 Indian Lives and Afterlives’, the
50-part series will be published as a book of essays by Penguin in 2015.
Louise’s book Remapping India: New States and their Political Origins
was published in India in 2014 and has continued to receive positive
reviews and media attention. In new publications, she has compared
federal restructuring in India and Nepal (Modern Asian Studies 2015),
and the historical admission of new states into the American Federation
with India’s processes of state creation (Political Studies forthcoming).
Her latest research focuses on how politics across India’s states shape their
emergent welfare regimes, and she has concluded a three-year British
Academy International Partnership between the India Institute and the
Lokniti network entitled ‘Comparative State Politics and Public Policy
in India’. An edited volume Politics of Welfare: Comparisons across Indian
States will be published in 2015.
In 2014, she commented frequently on the Indian general elections,
appearing on BBC TV and radio, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg TV, and El
Globo amongst others, and was a regular columnist for Indian Express.
She led an election workshop at the India Institute in
June 2014, and was invited to guest edit a special issue
of the journal Contemporary South Asia on the election,
to publish in June 2015. She has been on maternity
leave for much of the academic year 2014-15.
6 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 7
Dr Rudra Chaudhuri
Dr Rudra Chaudhuri is jointly appointed as Senior Lecturer
at the India Institute and the Department of War Studies,
and is Programme Director of MA South Asia & Global
Security. The 2014 cohort included officers from the Indian
Administrative Services and the Indian Army, staff from
the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the
Department of International Development (DFID), Afghan diplomats, risk
analysts, entrepreneurs, and journalists. Winner of a King’s Teaching
Excellence Award in 2013, Rudra was again nominated in 2014. Rudra is
also the Programme Director of a number of short courses tailored for
the FCO and the Chevening Parliamentary Leadership Programme.
Rudra’s research focuses on the diplomatic history of South Asia since
1947 and on processes of political reconciliation in Afghanistan. His
interest in history and archival-based research is founded on the belief that
there is an urgent need to recover post-1947 Indian international history,
in order to better appreciate current policy challenges.
Rudra’s latest book, Forged in Crisis: India and the United States Since 1947,
(New York: Oxford University Press; London: Hurst; New Delhi: Harper
Collins) received excellent reviews, including in leading
newspapers such as the Financial Times, The Hindu,
Business Standard and The Asian Age. He is currently
working on a biography of Indian diplomat VK Krishna
Menon and a history of the 1965 war in South Asia.
Dr Sandipto Dasgupta
Dr Sandipto Dasgupta joined the India Institute in 2014
as the Newton International Fellow of the Royal Society
and the British Academy, from Harvard University
where he was a lecturer in Social Studies.
Sandipto’s scholarly interests lie in the theory and
practice of law and politics in India. He received
his PhD in Political Science from Columbia University in 2014.
His doctoral dissertation, which he is now revising for publication as
a book, reconstructs a distinct theory of constitutionalism for the 20th
century through the study of the Indian Constitution. This year, he
published an article based on his research and was invited to present
his work at seminars and conferences in the UK, United States, and India.
He also started research and fieldwork for his next project, focusing on
the judicial activism of the Supreme Court of India.
In addition, Sandipto published an article in Foreign Policy on Indian
party politics, and appeared on Al Jazeera as an expert commentator
on the topic. Sandipto is leading the India Institute’s activities in law,
constitutionalism and politics.
A columnist for The Telegraph, he also contributes
to other newspapers including The Asian Age, Indian
Express, Business Line, and The Hindu. He is a regular
media commentator, and in 2014 appeared on BBC Newsnight, BBC
Radio 4, Channel 4 News, and Radio Monocle.
8 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 9
Ian Jack
Professor Christophe Jaffrelot
Ian Jack is one of Britain’s most respected investigative
reporters and columnists, and a former editor of the
literary magazine, Granta. He began his career in Scotland
in the 1960s and moved to London to join The Sunday Times
in 1970. From 1977 to 1986 he reported from India and
South Asia lived for long stretches in Delhi and Kolkata –
a period that included both Mrs Gandhi’s Emergency and her assassination.
He now writes a weekly column for The Guardian and less regularly for
The Telegraph in Kolkata.
Christophe Jaffrelot is Professor of Indian Politics and
Sociology at the King’s India Institute. He is also Professor
at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
and teaches South Asian politics and history at Sciences
Po in Paris. Internationally recognized as one of the
leading scholars on Indian politics, Christophe’s wideranging research encompasses theories of nationalism and democracy,
the mobilization of lower castes and untouchables in India, the Hindu
nationalist movement, and ethnic conflicts in Pakistan.
One of the leading practitioners in his field, Ian teaches the course
‘Reporting India’ on the MA Contemporary India at King’s India
Institute, and provides our PhD and Masters students with guidance on
investigative techniques, writing skills and long-form narrative writing.
Christophe spent the autumn of 2014 at Princeton University as a
Princeton Global Scholar. He also co-taught the course ‘Religion and
Politics in the Middle East and South Asia’ at Columbia University.
In 2014 he was awarded the Prix Brienne (French Ministry of Defence)
and the Prix de l’Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques for his book
Le syndrome pakistanais, and a Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence
in Journalism, in the Commentary and Interpretative Writing category.
In 2014 Ian wrote an extended essay on Britishness, published in
The Guardian just before the referendum on Scottish independence
(September 18). He also published a piece in The London Review of Books
on the defence writer Chapman Pincher and two pieces in The New York
Review of Books – one a review of a biography of the Urdu story writer
Saadat Hasan Manto, and another on the political outlook for postreferendum Scotland. He commissioned and edited a special India issue
of Granta magazine (published in January 2015), which launched at the
Jaipur Literary Festival.
10 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
This year he also edited L’Inde contemporaine. De 1990 à aujourd’hui
and co-edited a special issue of Modern Asian Studies, entitled Networks
of Religious Learning and the Dissemination of Religious Knowledge across
Asia, and published a number of journal and other academic articles.
He writes a regular column for The Indian Express on Indian and
Pakistani affairs, and contributes commentary and interviews to
other Indian newspapers such as Business Standard, DNA and Economic
Times, magazines such as Outlook, and websites such as Scroll.in.
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 11
Dr Kriti Kapila
Dr Kriti Kapila is Lecturer in Social Anthropology
and Law at the India Institute. Kriti’s research focuses
on the work of law and regimes of evidence around
cultural difference. This work examines the politics
of recognition, looking at overlaps and disjunctures
between official, popular and academic understandings
of the category ‘tribe’ in contemporary India.
Kriti teaches the MA course ‘Law, Politics and Social Change’. As
Convenor of the PhD Contemporary India Programme, she developed
two new team-taught courses in research methodology. She continues
to convene the weekly research seminar series ‘India@King’s’, which is
now a premier platform for research on contemporary India in the London
area. Kriti also convened the third annual MN Srinivas Memorial Lecture
hosted by the India Institute in partnership with the Royal Anthropological
Institute. The 2014 lecture was delivered by Professor Arjun Appadurai
(New York University) and was attended by upwards of 200 people.
After successfully leading the bid in 2013, this year Kriti created and
directed the first King’s Chevening Gurukul Leadership Programme. The
12-week programme funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
was launched by the India Institute in September 2014. The participants
were 14 specially selected early to mid-career professionals from India, all
of whom successfully graduated from the programme in December 2014.
Also in 2014, Kriti recorded a podcast for International Women’s Day on
social change in India in the wake of the 2012 rape incident in New Delhi,
and lectured at the National Institute of Biogenomic Medicine in Kolkata.
She was also commissioned by The Times to write an article on the multiple
deaths in sterilisation camps in central India, and was interviewed on the
topic by The Wall Street Journal.
12 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
Dr Sunil Mitra Kumar
Dr Sunil Mitra Kumar is Lecturer in Economics at the
India Institute. His research interests focus on the
processes and problems of economic development,
the use of household surveys in addressing these
questions, and the notions of causation that are usually
inherent in these. He is currently researching the role
of randomised controlled trials in assessing policies for public systems
in developing countries.
Together with Paul Segal of the International Development Institute at
King’s, Sunil is developing an undergraduate curriculum for Introductory
Microeconomics relevant to emerging economies, and incorporating
insights from behavioural economics. As part of a UKIERI-supported
partnership between King’s, the Institute for Social and Economic
Change, and Azim Premji University focused on private schools in India,
Sunil is also developing teaching content on quantitative approaches to
comparing private and government schools: this will be offered as a taught
module in 2015. In collaboration with colleagues at the University of East
Anglia, Sunil has developed a very successful short course on impact
evaluation for mid-career professionals, which he taught this year for the
fourth year running.
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 13
Dr Adnan Naseemullah
Dr Adnan Naseemullah was appointed in September 2014
as Lecturer in International Relations and South Asia,
jointly at the India Institute and the Department of War
Studies. His research interests include the political
economy of industrial development, state formation and
political order, all in relation to the South Asian region.
Before joining King’s, Adnan was Scharf Fellow in Political Economy at
Johns Hopkins University and has previously taught in the Government
Department at the London School of Economics. He received his MA
and PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley
and BA in Political Science and Economics at Swarthmore College.
He is currently co-teaching the core course on the MA South Asia &
Global Security, and will be teaching India’s Political Economy in the
spring of 2015. In 2014, he published articles on explaining political order
and disorder in Pakistan’s tribal areas and on the politics of developmental
state institutions in Pakistan and Turkey, both in Studies in Comparative
International Development. He also published an article on types of indirect
rule arrangements in colonial and post-colonial South Asia in Governance,
and a piece for The Washington Post on the Pakistani Taliban.
14 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
Professor Harsh V Pant
Harsh V Pant holds a joint appointment with the
Department of Defence Studies and the India Institute
as Professor of International Relations. He teaches
on the core modules of the MA Contemporary India,
offers a module on Indian foreign and security policy,
and is the convenor of the ‘Introduction to South Asia’
course, offered by India Institute as part of the BA International Relations
programme in the War Studies Department from 2015.
He is an Adjunct Fellow (non-resident) with the Wadhwani Chair in
US-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, Washington DC, a Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research
Foundation, New Delhi, and held a Leverhulme Fellowship in 2013-14.
He is presently leading a trilateral project entitled ‘Afghanistan beyond
2014’ involving King’s, Johns Hopkins University and Jadavpur
University, funded by the UK-India Education Research Initiative
(UKIERI), and is the principal investigator of a US Army War Collegefunded project on the future trajectory of Indian nuclear posture, and
a project on the US ‘pivot’ towards the Asia-Pacific. His recent books
include two co-edited volumes, India’s Foreign Policy: A Reader and
India’s National Security: A Reader, and an authored book, India’s Afghan
Muddle. He is a columnist and commentator for a number of media outlets
including The Wall Street Journal, The Japan Times, The National (UAE),
The Diplomat, The
New Indian Express,
Deccan Herald, Daily
News and Analysis
and The Tribune.
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 15
Dr Jahnavi Phalkey
Dr Jahnavi Phalkey is Lecturer in History of Science and
Technology and Convenor of Post Graduate Teaching at the
India Institute. This year saw the completion of two major
projects. A co-edited volume, Key Concepts in Modern Indian
Studies published by Oxford University Press and New York
University Press is in press; and the inaugural issue of the
British Journal for History of Science – Themes will carry papers from
research collaboration on twentieth century China and India, which Jahnavi
has led over the last four years.
Jahnavi became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK in
May 2014. She was also elected President of the Science and Empires
Commission (2013-17) of the International Union for the History and
Philosophy of Science and Technology, UNESCO, and was awarded a
grant-in-aid by the American Institute of Physics towards the completion
of her first documentary film.
She continues to develop the Institute’s Indian collaborations: she
co-organised, with Jon Wilson (History) and Neeladri Bhattacharya
(Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi) a workshop on ‘State Power in
Modern India’ (December 2014). Jahnavi is also mentoring two
postdoctoral candidates on the Max Weber Foundationfunded project ‘Poverty and Education in India’. She is
at work as External Curator on a major exhibition on the
history of modern Indian Science, to open at the
Science Museum in London in 2017.
16 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
Dr Srinath Raghavan
Dr Srinath Raghavan is a Senior Research Fellow at the
King’s India Institute and the Centre for Policy Research
in Delhi. Based between London and New Delhi, he jointly
convenes with Dr Rudra Chaudhuri the core teaching for the
MA South Asia & Global Security, which is run by the India
Institute and the Department of War Studies. Before joining
academia, he spent six years as an infantry officer in the Indian army.
Srinath’s research interests are in the contemporary history of India,
international politics of South Asia, Indian military history, and India’s foreign
and defence policies since 1947. He is the author of War and Peace in Modern
India: A Strategic History of the Nehru Years (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), and
1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh (Harvard, 2013), which
received outstanding reviews during the year. The editor of Imperialists,
Nationalists, Democrats: Collected Essays of Sarvepalli Gopal (Permanent
Black, 2013), he is also one of the authors of Non-Alignment 2.0: A Foreign
and Strategic Policy for India in the Twenty First Century (Penguin, 2013).
He is a regular commentator in leading Indian newspapers and magazines
including The Hindu, The Economic Times and Economic & Political Weekly,
and frequently appears on Indian television. He has recently completed his
two-year tenure as a member of the National Security Advisory Board
constituted by the Prime Minister of India.
Srinath’s major study on India and the Second World War will be published
in 2015 (Allen Lane, UK; Basic Books, USA). He has also co-edited the
Oxford Handbook on Indian Foreign Policy which will be published in July
2015. He is now writing a book on American involvement in South Asia
from 1939 to the present, while also researching a history of India in the
long 1970s. In December 2014, he was appointed Official Historian of the
Kargil War by the Government of India.
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 17
Students
October 2014 marked the fourth intake of PhD students to the India
Institute. We now have a total of 31 PhD candidates, in fields that encompass
India’s foreign policy, global media, international relations, political science
and political economy, public policy, migration and history. During 2014, 6 MA
and MRes students graduated from our taught postgraduate programmes,
and 7 MA and MRes students joined us and are due to graduate in 2015.
The annual Graduate Forum, organised and led by our PhD students,
has established itself as a lively arena for the presentation of research
in progress. This 2014 Graduate Forum on the theme ‘Re-thinking
‘Contemporary’ India’ was attended by young researchers from the
UK, India, the USA and Canada.
I chose the MRes in Contemporary India degree because
it’s a one-of-a-kind programme that combines exceptional
academic expertise on India with a vibrant and intellectually
rich academic setting in the heart of London. My research will
focus on understanding the interplay between technology policy
and global technology control regimes, and their influence on
India’s semiconductor industry and economic/cyber security.
Ramesh Balakrishnan, MRes Contemporary India, 2014 cohort
I elected to pursue a PhD after working in the think tank
industry for about seven years. The King’s India Institute
was an obvious choice because of the mixture of contemporary
policy-oriented research on India and academic rigour
provided by a high-calibre faculty. Here I have had the
opportunity to engage with academics and students working
on a multitude of topics and issues facing South Asia, which has already
benefited my PhD research project.
Rosheen Kabraji, PhD Contemporary India Research, 2014 cohort
18 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
Student Internships
& Professional Development
The India Institute is committed to guiding our students in their employment
and professional career needs, and we run active professional development
and internship programmes. We offer support to all students who wish to take
an internship in the period between completing their studies in September
and graduating the following January. Our graduating cohort of students from
the MA Contemporary India (2013-2014) have been placed in a range of
internships with organisations in the UK and India including New Delhi
Television Limited, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, CGNet based in Bhopal,
and the ABC Trust.
To further build the employability of our graduates, we run a Professional
Development and Careers Network, led by Dr Sunil Mitra Kumar.
Students are able to interact with invited visitors from a range of fields
to discuss potential careers. During 2014, students heard presentations
from distinguished speakers such as Dalip Pathak, Former Managing
Director of the investment firm Warburg Pincus, and from staff at the UK
Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The India Institute also collaborated
with the Brazil Institute and the International Development Institute
on a scenario-based professional development workshop. The one-day
exercise presented the dilemmas faced by high-level decision-makers by
simulating a government situation at which the 2014 budget is discussed.
I interned with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation from September to December
2014, where I worked on two projects: one looking at sustainable solutions to the
housing needs of the Roma and Traveller communities in the UK, and another
on the impact of Universal Credit on the social housing sector. The internship
allowed me to engage deeply with the policy process in the UK, and I found a
number of parallels between the UK and India on issues such as social housing,
poverty, and migration. This played a huge role in consolidating a lot of what
I had learnt during my Masters.
Kunal Joshi, MA Contemporary India, 2013 cohort
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 19
Tagore Centre for Global Thought
Visiting Fellows & Annual Lectures
Officially inaugurated in 2013 by the Indian Minister of Culture, the India
Institute’s Tagore Centre for Global Thought has had an active year of
events, seminars and film screenings. Through its programmes and its PhD
scholarships, the first of which were awarded in 2014, the Centre continues
to expand and fulfil its mission of fostering original research on India’s
intellectual traditions and their relationship to global debates, and to
connect renowned scholars with the wider community, creating a forum
for debating India’s intellectual riches.
Every year, the India Institute is host to a number of visiting Fellows
and Scholars, and during 2014 we were delighted to have with us a number
of distinguished Visiting Fellows as well as younger scholars.
Over the past twelve months, the Tagore Centre has welcomed
distinguished scholars and speakers from across the world. Speakers
at the Centre in 2014 included Professor Tansen Sen, Dr Prasenjit Saha,
Professor Uday Mehta, Ambassador Nirupama Rao, Professor Chandak
Sengoopta, Professor Jonardon Ganeri, Dr Molly Emma Aitken, Dr Allison
Busch, and Dr Katherine Butler Schofield. The Centre also hosted a
successful film series, ‘Avant-Garde Tagore: Thinking Through Cinema’.
In 2014 the Tagore Centre welcomed its first PhD students, Ankita
Banerjee and Prerna Bhardwaj. It also hosted Anushka Singh from the
Department of Political Science, University of Delhi as part of its Visiting
PhD Scholars programme from April to June 2014.
A separate Annual Report 2015 for the Tagore Centre’s activities is
available and can be found on the Tagore Centre section of the India
Institute webpage.
20 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
Professor Arjun Appadurai
Professor MN Srinivas Annual Memorial Lecture, March 2014
Professor Arjun Appadurai of New York University visited
the India Institute in March 2014 to deliver the third
MN Srinivas Memorial Lecture. The lecture was entitled
‘The Ecology of Failure: Reflections on Democracy,
Participation and Development’, and it examined how
and why development projects in the post-war period
often failed to achieve their desired aims. The MN Srinivas Lecture
was created in 2012 in honour of the pioneering anthropologist who was
best known for his work on social change, democracy and caste mobility
in India. Each year, the India Institute in association with the Royal
Anthropological Institute invites a scholar who has made the world
think differently about social change and stability in India.
Ms Anushka Singh
University of Delhi, April – June 2014
Ms Anushka Singh of the University of Delhi came to the
India Institute as our first PhD Visiting Scholar supported
by the Tagore Centre for Global Thought. Commenting
on her fellowship tenure at the India Institute, Anushka
said: “My research is on the concept of sedition within liberal
democracies, where England features prominently as an
illustration of liberal democracy. I could get in touch with people working
around the field I’m interested in, and I had meetings and interviews with
journalists, activists and a Member of Parliament.”
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 21
Ambassador Nirupama Rao
Professor Niraja Gopal Jayal
Dr S Gopal Annual Memorial Lecture, May 2014
The third Dr S Gopal Memorial Lecture was given
at the Tagore Centre for Global Thought by Ambassador
Nirupama Rao, India’s former Foreign Secretary, former
Indian Ambassador to China and the United States of
America, and High Commissioner to Sri Lanka. The
lecture, entitled ‘The Politics of History: India and China,
1949-62’, considered this critical period in relations between the two
countries, which culminated in the Sino-Indian War in 1962. The Dr S
Gopal Annual Lecture was established in 2012 to honour Dr Sarvepalli
Gopal, one of modern India’s foremost historians and intellectuals, and
to encourage the type of public engagement that we associate with
Dr Gopal’s career.
Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), September – December 2014
Niraja Gopal Jayal is Professor at the Centre for the
Study of Law and Governance, JNU, New Delhi and is
one of India’s most respected political scientists. She was
appointed Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR)
Visiting Professor in Contemporary India at the India
Institute in 2014. While here, she taught Masters and PhD
students, gave a well-attended talk entitled ‘Contending Representative
Claims in Indian Democracy’, and led a day-long workshop on her
recent book Citizenship and its Discontents: An Indian History. Professor
Jayal commented: “It has been wonderful to participate in the energetic
intellectual life of the India Institute, to engage with its faculty and students,
and to have the opportunity to meet a range of colleagues from fields as diverse
as political philosophy, law and education policy. I return home intellectually
rejuvenated.”
Dr Adam Auerbach
American University, May – June 2014
Dr Adam Auerbach is Assistant Professor at American
University in Washington DC. In 2014 he was Visiting
Postdoctoral Fellow at the India Institute, under a trilateral
research project on India’s political economy in partnership
with the University of California (Berkeley) and the Indira
Gandhi Institute of Development Research in Mumbai,
funded by the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI).
Adam’s research focuses on informal governance, clientelism, and public
goods provision in India. At King’s, Adam carried out archival research
for a project on distributive politics and development in the tribal areas
of central India. He also delivered a research seminar on patterns of party
networks and resource distribution in India’s urban slums, and spoke
at a workshop on the Indian general election.
22 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
Dr Surbhi Dayal
University of Rajasthan, September – December 2014
Dr Surbhi Dayal is a Senior Lecturer at Government
Arts College, University of Rajasthan, India. She is an
ethnographer and her research interests involve study
of sex-workers, dance bar girls and denotified tribes.
Her PhD at Jawaharlal Nehru University was a multi-sited
ethnography on the community of traditional entertainers,
the Kanjar. Surbhi is engaged in developing an education model for
children of sex-workers in association with two NGOs, and also serves
as a consultant at Indira Gandhi Open University, India. During her term
at the India Institute on a Commonwealth Academic Fellowship, she
worked on creativity in primary education and explored the primary
education system of the UK.
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 23
Partnerships & Support
Dr Deepa M Ollapally
George Washington University, October 2014 – August 2015
Dr Deepa M Ollapally is Research Professor of
International Affairs and Director of the Rising Powers
Initiative at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, George
Washington University. She is a leading expert on
domestic sources of India’s strategic policy, the role of
identity in South Asian regional security, and the
comparative policy discourse of aspiring powers. Her wide-ranging
publications include Worldviews of Aspiring Powers: Domestic Foreign
Policy Debates in China, India, Iran, Japan and Russia (co-editor and
author) in 2012, and articles on India’s national identity contestation and
on India-China relations in 2014. At the India Institute she is completing
a manuscript for an edited volume, Nuclear Debates in Asia: The Role of
Geopolitics and Domestic Processes, based on research work sponsored by
the MacArthur Foundation. She is also working on a project assessing
economic interdependence and strategic rivalry in India’s foreign policy
towards China.
Dr Kenmei Tsubota
Japan External Trade Organization, October 2014 – October 2015
Dr Kenmei Tsubota is a Research Fellow at the
Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External
Trade Organization (IDE-JETRO). He has held this
position since 2010, and is an expert on spatial economics,
urban economics and development economics. He is
currently leading a project looking into economic
division in colonial India, whilst also conducting other projects on the
interdisciplinary study of human trafficking and geographical simulation
analysis on physical and institutional infrastructure improvements
in Asian countries. He intends to develop this work further at the
India Institute.
24 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
It is part of the India Institute’s mission to build partnerships and
collaborations with government, business and individuals in India,
the UK and elsewhere. We have already established a number of such
relationships, all of which have contributed to academic research,
teaching, policy interventions, and wider public debate concerning
India and its global context.
The Avantha Group
One of India’s leading global business organisations, The Avantha Group
has a strong record of supporting work on social issues. In November 2011,
Avantha made a generous gift to the India Institute to establish the Avantha
Chair accompanying the Institute’s Directorship. Professor Sunil Khilnani
was appointed as the first holder of this prestigious new position. This gift
has provided essential support in the Institute’s aim to establish itself as a
globally recognised leader in research and policy analysis on India.
Baillie Gifford Prize Fellowship
Since September 2013 the India Institute has partnered with the
Edinburgh-based investment firm Baillie Gifford & Co to offer an annual
Fellowship for a student on the MRes Contemporary India programme.
The Fellowship is open both to graduate candidates and professionals
seeking a one-year academic sabbatical, and covers tuition fees and
a stipend for living costs. The 2014 Baillie Gifford Prize was awarded
to Ramesh Balakrishnan.
Charles Wallace Visiting Fellowship
From the academic year 2014-5, the Charles Wallace India Trust will
sponsor a biennial three-month Visiting Fellowship at the India Institute,
based around the arts, humanities or history. The Visiting Fellow will
engage with students and staff at the India Institute, and participate in
a variety of public interactions. He/she will also produce a piece of high
quality research during the Fellowship.
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 25
Department of Personnel and Training, Ministry of Human Resources
Development, Government of India
The India Institute has established a scheme with the Government
of India’s Department of Personnel and Training which enables up to
12 nominated Indian Administrative Service officers to study for their
Masters degrees at King’s College London. Currently two programmes are
eligible: the India Institute – Department of War Studies joint MA South
Asia & Global Security, and the MA Public Policy & Management. From
2015, the India Institute’s MA Contemporary India will also be available
under this scheme.
Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI)
FICCI sponsors an annual Visiting Fellowship at King’s India Institute of
up to three months by a person of eminence and recognized achievement in
India in the field of business, public policy, government or the media. The
FICCI-India Institute Fellow gives lectures, mentors students, interacts with
policy and business networks in the UK, and works on a policy research
paper published at the end of his/her tenure. After a one-year break in 2014,
in 2015 King’s India Institute will welcome Dr SY Quraishi, the former
Chief Election Commissioner of India as our FICCI-India Institute Fellow.
Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR)
ICCR was established by the Government of India in 1950 to foster
mutual understanding between India and other countries. Furthering
this aim, each year ICCR sponsors a Visiting Professor at King’s College
London, who helps to develop research and teaching at King’s and at his/
her own home institution. The Visiting Professor in 2014, Professor Niraja
Gopal Jayal of Jawaharlal Nehru University, was based at the India
Institute from September to December.
26 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
Indian & European Advanced Research Network (IEARN)
IEARN is an informal network of research institutions which fosters
cooperation between European and Indian scholars through common
interests. The India Institute has strong links with IEARN though Sunil
Khilnani, who was one of its founders and is Chairman of the Steering
Committee. During 2014, a workshop was held jointly with the Victoria
and Albert Museum, whose Director Martin Roth is also a member of
IEARN’s Steering Committee.
Mazumdar Studentship
Dr Dipak Mazumdar and Professor Pauline Mazumdar have generously
founded the Mazumdar Studentship for Indian Studies in the Social
Sciences, which provides support to a student from India for three years
of his or her PhD studies at the India Institute. The first Mazumdar
Studentship was awarded to Aasim Khan.
Ministry of Culture, Government of India
King’s India Institute signed an agreement with the Ministry of Culture,
Government of India in the 150th birth anniversary year of the poet and
Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. This partnership established the
Tagore Centre for Global Thought at the Institute, dedicated to exploring
India’s intellectual traditions through a wide range of research and
public-facing activities.
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 27
Executive Education
The India Institute hosts a number of programmes of executive
education, which are developed with partners in order to meet their
specific educational needs.
Training for UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office staff
King’s delivers training courses for Foreign and Commonwealth Office
and other UK government staff whose work is related to South Asia. The
programme is directed by Dr Rudra Chaudhuri, and managed by Rosheen
Kabraji. It is taught by Faculty staff of the King’s India Institute and the
Department of War Studies, with contributions from external experts and
practitioners. The training courses range in length from 1 to 5 days, and
a total of two 1-day courses and two 5-day courses were delivered in 2014.
The curriculum examines the key political and strategic issues around
South Asia and Afghanistan. 180 FCO diplomats and analysts from
across the UK government have graduated from this course since 2012,
including the present Political Director of the FCO, the former Special
Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Foreign Secretary,
British Deputy High Commissioners to India, Bangladesh and Pakistan,
and the present High Commissioner to Sri Lanka.
I was very impressed by the range of speakers, from former political advisers
to academics to legal practitioners. I think this made each lecture interesting
and contextualised the issues.
Course participant
Chevening Gurukul Leadership programme
In September 2014 the India Institute welcomed our first cohort of
Chevening Gurukul Fellows. The King’s Chevening Gurukul Leadership
Programme, developed by the India Institute and directed by Dr Kriti
Kapila, is aimed at early to mid-career professionals with demonstrable
leadership potential, and is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s
flagship fellowship scheme for India. This year’s cohort included civil
servants, economists, civil society activists, social and investment
28 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
entrepreneurs and healthcare professionals from across India. The
programme ran over 12 weeks, with seminars, lectures and site visits,
including a visit to Edinburgh during the Scottish referendum, a trip to
Geneva, and visits to Tata Steel, BAE Systems and the BBC newsroom.
A highlight was the inaugural King’s Chevening Gurukul Distinguished
Lecture, given by Shami Chakrabarti CBE, Director of Liberty.
The visit to BAE offered a unique opportunity to witness manufacturing
of high end defence aerospace components. It gave a glimpse of the fiercely
tech-savvy precision and finest feats of UK aerospace engineering. A truly
unforgettable experience! Dr Shefali Juneja, Director, Ministry of Civil Aviation
(International Cooperation)
Chevening Parliamentary Leadership Programme
In November 2014 we also welcomed nine of India’s rising
parliamentarians for the Chevening Parliamentary Leadership
Programme. The programme is funded by the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office and was developed by King’s India Institute
together with the Professional & Executive Development team. Directed
by Dr Rudra Chaudhuri, it is designed to give Indian MPs the opportunity
to engage in discussions regarding key international issues impacting the
world, Europe and the UK today. During their stay the participants met
UK opinion formers and decision makers within academia, government,
politics, industry and civil society, visiting the House of Commons, the
House of Lords, 10 Downing Street, the Royal College of Defence
Studies, and the British Library. They also spent time with Faculty staff
at the India Institute and other departments across King’s, and attended
a lively interactive session with students from across the country.
The course was excellent! Perfect content, perfect duration, perfect chance
to bond with experts here. And also a great opportunity to bond amongst
ourselves – this will help us to address some common issues in future. Vandana Chavan MP
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 29
Events
The India Institute runs an extensive and lively programme of events, and
hosted a total of 61 in 2014. These included lectures, workshops, panel
discussions, film showings and artistic performances, and encompassed
a wide array of different topics. The Institute’s events draw in diverse
audiences, and we make our events available to a wider audience through
video and audio recordings, which are available in the Events Archive on the
India Institute webpage.
January
22 January 2014, Dr Shailaja
Fennell, University of Cambridge,
‘Private-Public Partnerships and
the Implications for Educating
Youth from Poor Communities’
29 January 2014, Dr Karuna
Mantena, Yale University, ‘Affect &
Escalation: The Sources of Violence
in Gandhi’s Theory of Politics’
February
5 February 2014, Dr Santanu Das,
King’s College London, ‘The
Indian Sepoy in the First World
War: Image, Music, Words’
12 February 2014, Dr Liz Chatterjee,
University of Oxford, ‘PowerSteering: The State and the
Troubled Transition in Indian
Electricity’
30 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
14 February 2014, Prof C Raj
Kumar, Jindal Global University,
Sonepat, ‘Excellence in Higher
Education In India: Institution
Building in Nation Building’
14 February 2014, Dr Anna
Morcom, Royal Holloway, ‘The
Illicit Worlds of Indian Dance’ (in
collaboration with the Department
of Music, King’s College London)
26 February 2014, Dr Ranjani
Mazumdar, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, ‘The Railways,
Mobility and Colour in 1960s
Bombay Cinema’
28 February 2014, Mr Prasenjit
Saha, Independent Scholar, ‘The
Formative Years of Tagore: Social,
Cultural and Literary Influences
during the Early 19th Century’
March
5 March 2014, Dr Bhrigupati Singh,
King’s College London, ‘Caste &
Conflict in Contemporary Central
India: Thoughts on the Political
Theology of the Neighbour’
6 March 2014, Prof Mahesh
Rangarajan, Nehru Memorial
Museum & Library, New Delhi,
‘Nature without Borders:
Ecology, Space and Society
in Contemporary India’
6 March 2014, Dr Louise Tillin,
King’s College London, ‘Indian
Elections 2014: Trends, prospects
– And a Few Predictions’ (panel
including Christophe Jaffrelot, James
Manor, Sunil Khilnani)
10 March 2014, Dr Tansen Sen,
City University of New York,
‘The End of Pan-Asianism? India,
China and the Asian Relations
Conference since 1947’
10 March 2014, Film Screening,
Tagore Centre For Global
Thought, ‘Chitrangada: Eroticism
and Body Politics’ (Discussant
Debanjali Biswas)
12 March 2014, Dr Ravi Sundaram,
Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies, Delhi, ‘Information,
Transparency and the Urban Turn
in India’
17 March 2014, Film Screening,
Tagore Centre for Global Thought,
‘Kabuliwala: Tagore and the
Ambivalence of Otherness’
(Discussant Prof Daya Thussu)
19 March 2014, Prof Bina Agarwal,
University of Manchester, ‘When
Women Govern Forests: From a
History of Absence to the Impact
of Presence’
20 March 2014, Prof Gary Bass,
Princeton University, ‘The Blood
Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger and
a Forgotten Genocide’
24 March 2014, Neil MacGregor,
Director, British Museum ‘Through
Art and Artefacts’
This was a Jawaharlal Nehru
Memorial Trust Annual Lecture
25 March 2014, Film Screening,
Tagore Centre for Global Thought,
‘Ghare Baire: Tagore and the
Subversion of the Political’
(Discussants Dr Kriti Kapila and
Dr Bhrigupati Singh)
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 31
27 March 2014, Prof Arjun
Appadurai, New York University,
‘The Ecology of Failure:
Reflections on Democracy,
Participation and Development’
This was the third M N Srinivas
Memorial Lecture
April
28 April 2014, Dr Manjari Chatterjee
Miller, Boston University and
Harvard Kennedy School,
‘Wronged by Empire: Colonial
Memories & Victimhood in India’s
and China’s Foreign Policy Today’
May
6 May 2014, Film Screening,
Tagore Centre for Global Thought,
‘Charulata Dir: On the Threshold
of the Personal and the Political’
(Discussant Kunal Joshi)
12 May 2014, ‘Knowledge-intensive
Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs
in the UK and Internationalisation
to Emerging Economies: Drivers,
Strategies and Prospects’ (The event
was organised by the Department
of Management and King’s India
Institute at King’s College London,
and The Confederation of Indian
Industry (CII))
32 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
12 May 2014, Prof Pranab Bardhan,
UC Berkeley, ‘Analysis of the Left
Defeat in West Bengal: Results
of a Large-Scale Village Society’
13 May 2014, Dr Sripad Motiram,
Indira Gandhi Institute of
Development Research, Mumbai,
‘Indian Inequalities in the Age of
Economic Reforms: Trends and
Debates’
13 May 2014, Ambassador Nirupama
Rao, Brown University, ‘The
Politics of History: India and
China, 1949-62’
This was the third S Gopal Annual
Memorial Lecture
15 May 2014, Prof Simon Denyer,
The Washington Post, ‘Harnessing
the Power of India’s Unruly
Democracy’
15 May 2014, Ambassador
Nirupama Rao, Brown University,
‘Geo-Civilisations: India and
China in Tagore’s Century’
16 May 2014, Film Screening,
Tagore Centre for Global Thought,
‘Tasher Desh: Who Owns Tagore?’
(Discussant Debanjali Biswas)
19 May 2014, Dr Adam Auerbach,
University of Wisconsin-Madison,
‘Clients and Communities:
The Political Economy of Party
& Network Organisation &
Development in India’s Urban
Slums’
22 May 2014, Dr Ananya Jahanara
Kabir, King’s College London,
‘Chutney, Soca, Saga: African and
Indian Transoceanic Rhythm
Encounters’ (in collaboration with
Dept of English)
27 May 2014, Film Screening,
Tagore Centre for Global Thought,
‘Jiban Smriti: The Elusive Poet’
(Discussant Sangeeta Datta)
June
6 June 2014, Dr Humeira Iqtidar,
King’s College London, ‘Tolerance
& Secularisation in South Asia’
(panel discussion including Sudipta
Kaviraj, Tanika Sarkar and
Jonathan Spencer)
11 June 2014, Dr Louise Tillin,
King’s College London ‘Indian
Elections 2014: Outcomes and
Implications’ (panel discussion
including Sudipta Kaviraj, James
Manor, Suhas Palshikar and
Christophe Jaffrelot)
12 June 2014, King’s India Institute
Graduate Forum: ‘Rethinking
Contemporary India’ (Convenors
Debanjali Biswas, Karthik
Nachiappan, Sarayu Natarajan)
25 June 2014, Baroness Shirley
Williams, Lord Karan Bilimoria,
Lord Dholakia, Sir Mark Tully
and Ajay Mehta, panel discussion:
‘Shouldn’t India be taking care
of its own poor?’
July
11 Jul 2014, Ambassador Shyam
Saran, ‘Indian Foreign Policy
under Prime Minister Narendra
Modi: An Early Assessment’
18 July 2014 Performance:
‘We All Live in Bhopal’
September
11 September 2014, Dr Joshua
T White, Stimson Centre, ‘State
and Caliphate: The Future of
Islamist Advocacy in Pakistan’
(in collaboration with the
Department of War Studies)
October
1 October 2014, Dr Sandipto
Dasgupta, King’s College London,
‘Words Are Magic Things: The
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 33
Imagination and the Text of the
Indian Constitution’
6 October 2014, Dr Chandak
Sengoopta, Birkbeck College,
University College London, ‘India’s
Best Known Filmmaker and the
Least Understood’
8 October 2014, Prof Anna-Maria
Misra, Oxford University, ‘The
Indian Machiavelli: the Arthasastra,
Pragmatism, and Politics in 20th
Century India’
13 October 2014, Dr Christine Fair,
Georgetown University, ‘Fighting
to the End: the Pakistani Army’s
Way of War’
15 October 2014, Dr Amrita Dhillon,
King’s College London, ‘The
Natural Resources Curse Revisited:
Theory and Evidence from India’
17 October 2014, Dr Rahul Mukherji,
National University of Singapore,
‘The Roots of Citizen Concern and
Welfare in India: The National
Rural Employment Guarantee
Scheme in Andhra Pradesh’
22 October 2014, Prof Tim Dyson,
London School of Economics,
‘The Demographic Basis of
Democratisation’
23 October 2014, Molly Emma
Aitken (City University of New
34 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
York), Allison Busch (Columbia
University), Katherine Butler
Schofield (King’s College
London), ‘Modernity’s Challenge
to India’s Aesthetic Traditions:
Rajput Painting, Hindi Poetry and
Hindustani Music’ (Tagore Centre
for Global Thought Lecture in
collaboration with the Department
of Music)
29 October 2014, Prashant Jha,
Hindustan Times, ‘Battles of the
New Republic: A Contemporary
History of Nepal’
November
5 November 2014, Dr Jayaraj
Sundaresan, London School of
Economics, ‘Urban Planning in
Vernacular Governance: Land
Use Planning and Violations
in Bangalore, India’
10 November 2014, Arnab Goswami,
Times Now, ‘Changes in Indian
Journalism in Recent Years and
Their Impact on the Society’
10 November 2014, Prof Uday Singh
Mehta, City University of New
York, ‘Putting Courage at the
Centre: Gandhi on Civility and
Society’ (Tagore Centre for Global
Thought Lecture)
12 November 2014, Dr Anush
Kapadia, City University, London,
‘India’s Fiscal-Monetary Machine:
Construction and Overheating,
c.1966-1991’
19 November 2014, Prof Niraja Gopal
Jayal, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
‘Contending Representative Claims
in Indian Democracy’
21 November 2014, Prof Anatol
Lieven, Georgetown University,
Qatar and King’s College London,
‘Pakistan Today’ (in collaboration
with the Department of War Studies)
24 November 2014, Shami
Chakrabarti, Director, Liberty,
‘On Liberty’
This was King’s Chevening
Distinguished Lecture 2014
25 November 2014, Shivshankar
Menon, ‘Jawaharlal Nehru and
World Order’ (in collaboration with
Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Trust)
This was a Jawaharlal Nehru
Memorial Trust Lecture
26 November 2014, Niraja Gopal
Jayal (Jawaharlal Nehru University),
Mukulika Banerjee (London School
of Economics), Eleanor Newbiggin
(School of Oriental and African
Studies), Sandipto Dasgupta, Sunil
Khilnani, Jahnavi Phalkey, Adnan
Naseemullah, and Jon Wilson
(King’s College London), panel
discussion: ‘Citizenship & Its
Discontents. An Indian History’
(in collaboration with the Department
of History)
26 November 2014, Dr Hugo
Gorringe, University of Edinburgh,
‘More Than Just ‘Identity Politics’?
Re-assessing the Use of Symbolic
Means in Tamil Dalit Assertion and
Caste Politics’
December
1 December 2014, Prof Jonardon
Ganeri, New York University,
‘Between Reverence and Reserve:
The Cosmopolitan Philosophy
of K C Bhattacharya (1875–1949)’
(Tagore Centre for Global Thought
Lecture)
3 December 2014, Ed Simpson,
School of Oriental and African
Studies, ‘Earthquake Politics:
Making and Forgetting in Gujarat’
4 December 2014, Dr Arthur
Dudney, University of Oxford,
‘Who Pays for Scholarship?
Patronage and Indo-Persian
Intellectuals in 18th century Delhi’
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 35
Associate Faculty
Senior Advisory Council
Academic staff with research interests and expertise relating to India and
South Asia are spread across King’s. While based in their home departments,
they are also members of the India Institute’s Associate Faculty, and extend
subject coverage over a broad range. Associate Faculty are able to jointly
supervise PhD research with faculty members of the India Institute. They
also participate regularly in our events, develop collaborative projects, and
offer joint teaching and courses on our programmes.
Sir Michael Arthur
Former UK High Commissioner to
India, and Ambassador to Germany
Sir Michael Arthur is a British
diplomat and has been the UK’s
Ambassador to Germany since
2007. He was the UK’s Head of
Mission in New Delhi between
2003 and 2007, and has held a
number of senior positions at the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Professor Raman Bedi
Institute of Dentistry
Dr Santanu Das
Department of English
Dr Amrita Dhillon
Department of Political Economy
Dr Alex Faulkner
Department of Political Economy
Dr Charlotte Goodburn
Lau China Institute
Dr Anup Grewal
Department of Comparative
Literature
Dr Humeira Iqtidar
Department of Political Economy
Professor Satvinder Juss
The Dickinson Poon School
of Law
Professor Ananya Jahanara Kabir
Department of English
Dr Prabha Kotiswaran
The Dickinson Poon School of Law
Professor Anatol Lieven
Department of War Studies
36 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
Professor Javed Majeed
Department of Comparative
Literature
Dr Susan Murray
International Development
Institute
Professor Martin J Prince
Department of Psychiatry
Dr Sarika Pruthi
Department of Management
Professor Arnie Purushotham
Department of Oncology
Dr Ruvani Ranasinha
Department of English
Dr Will Rasmussen
Department of Philosophy
Dr Katherine Schofield
Department of Music
Professor Richard Sullivan
King’s Centre for Global Health
Dr Jon Wilson
Department of History
Ms Shobhana Bhartia
CEO, Hindustan Times Group
Mrs Bhartia is the Chairperson
and Editorial Director of the
Hindustan Times Group, where
she has worked since 1986.
In February 2006 she was also
nominated Member of India’s
Upper House in Parliament,
the Rajya Sabha.
Ms Katherine Boo
The New Yorker Magazine
Ms Boo is a staff writer for
The New Yorker, and a winner
of the Pulitzer Prize and the
National Book Award. A stage
adaption of her book, Behind
the Beautiful Forevers, opened
at the National Theatre in 2014.
Ms Nandita Das
Film Actress and Director
Ms Das has acted in over 30
feature films including Fire, Earth,
Bawandar, and Four Women. Her
2008 directorial debut Firaaq won
more than 10 international awards.
She also works on a range of social
issues, including women’s rights
and children’s access to media.
Ms Jane Hamlyn
Director, Frith Street Gallery
Ms Hamlyn founded the Frith
Street Gallery in 1989 and has
since been its Director. She has also
served as Chair of the Paul Hamlyn
Foundation since 2004, and is an
Arts graduate of the City and
Guilds School of Art in London.
Ms Leila Janah
CEO, SamaSource
Ms Janah is Founder and CEO
of SamaSource, a non-profit
organisation providing dignified,
computer-based work to
disadvantaged groups. She has
held Visiting Fellowships at
Stanford and Australian National
University, and co-founded
Incentives for Global Health.
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 37
Sir Anish Kapoor
Sculptor
Sir Anish Kapoor is a sculptor
whose works are displayed all over
the world, exploring matter and
non-matter and evoking duality
and void in form and space. He is
the first living artist invited to have
a solo exhibition at the Royal
Academy in London.
Professor Rahul Mehrotra
Architect and Professor
of Urban Design and Planning,
Harvard University
Rahul Mehrotra is a practicing
architect and Professor of Urban
Design and Planning at Harvard
University, where he sits on the
Steering Committee of the South
Asia Initiative. His firm RMA
Architects has designed and
executed many high-profile
projects in Mumbai.
Mr Vikram Mehta
Executive Chairman, Brookings
India
Mr Mehta is Executive Chairman
of Brookings India, and was for
12 years Chairman of Shell
Companies in India. He is a
38 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE
member of the National Council
of the Confederation of Indian
Industries (CII), and sits on the
boards of several industry and
educational organisations.
Mr David Miliband
President and CEO, International
Rescue Committee and Former
Foreign Secretary
Mr Miliband is the President
and CEO of the International
Rescue Committee. Previously,
he was Labour MP for South
Shields from 2001 to 2013, and
held a number of ministerial posts.
These included Environment
Secretary, and from 2007 to 2010,
Foreign Secretary.
Professor George Perkovich
Vice President of Research, Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace
Dr Perkovich is Vice President for
Studies and Director of the Nuclear
Policy Program at the Carnegie
Endowment for International
Peace. His research is on nuclear
strategy and non-proliferation,
and he has advised on foreign
policy at the highest levels
of US government.
Mr Manish Sabharwal
Chairman, TeamLease Services
Manish Sabharwal is Co-founder
and Chairman of TeamLease
Services (India), India’s largest
HR services company. Since its
inception in 2002, TeamLease
has placed more than half a million
people in temporary and permanent
jobs across India.
Mr Aveek Sarkar
CEO and Publisher, Anand Bazaar
Patrika
Mr Sarkar is CEO of the publishing
and media corporation Anand
Bazaar Group. He is also Chairman
of Media Content Communications
Services India Pvt Ltd, and a board
member of the Press Trust of India,
the country’s top news agency.
Professor Amartya Sen
Economist
Professor Sen was awarded the
1998 Nobel Prize in Economic
Sciences for his work in welfare
economics and social choice, and
is best known for his work on the
causes of famine. He has taught
Economics at Harvard, Oxford, the
LSE and the University of Delhi.
Mr Martin Sorrell
CEO, WPP
Sir Martin Sorrell founded
WPP in 1985, and has since been
its CEO. He serves on many
boards, including the International
Business Council of the World
Economic Forum, the UK’s
Business Advisory Group, the
London Business School, and
Indian School of Business.
Mr Gautam Thapar
CEO, Avantha Group
Mr Thapar is Chairman and
CEO of the Avantha Group.
He also serves on the boards of
several professional, educational
and cultural organisations. In
2011, his company endowed the
Avantha Chair at King’s India
Institute, which Professor Sunil
Khilnani now holds.
ANNUAL REPORT 2015 • 39
King’s India Institute
King’s College London
Strand
London WC2R 2LS UK
Tel +44 (0)20 7848 1432
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Front cover photo courtesy of Dayanita Singh
40 • KING’S INDIA INSTITUTE