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CHS organises a seminar by Prof. Madhavan K. Palat

CHS organises a seminar by Prof. Madhavan K. Palat

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CHS organises a seminar by Prof. Madhavan K. Palat
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CHS SEMINAR

 

TITLE: NEHRU AS A HISTORIAN

 

SPEAKER: PROFESSOR MADHAVAN K. PALAT

 

TIME AND VENUE: WEDNESDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2023, 3:00 P.M., ROOM 326, SSS-III, JNU

 

Abstract

 

Nehru composed four books of history to argue the following theses: 1) We may decide our future only if we could satisfy ourselves that the past has made it possible; the future he pursued was a united humanity, not one splintered into warring nations; his Glimpses of World History was accordingly of all of humanity, not of its civilizational or national segments; 2) the future he dreamed of for India was democratic, harmonious, and united, which, he claimed in his Discovery of India, was enabled by ancient democratic panchayats, a composite culture, and civilizational continuity from the Indus age to his day; 3) the past taught lessons on the nature of civilizational decline, with which he was obsessed, and he explained it through the closing of the mind and the consequent loss of creativity; 4) anti-colonial nationalism would unite and liberate India, but must thereafter be transcended to forge a common future for humanity through the United Nations, including within it a now non-imperialist West.

 

About the Speaker:

 

Madhavan K. Palat was born in 1947 and read history at the Universities of Delhi and Cambridge. Thereafter he specialized in late Imperial Russian history and took the D.Phil. degree at the University of Oxford. He taught history at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University from 1974 to 2004, was Visiting Professor in Imperial Russian History at the University of Chicago in 2006, National Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla 2010-2011, and has been Editor of the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru from 2011, seeing the project to completion in 2019.

 

His publications have been mainly on Russian and Soviet history, on workers, peasants, Eurasianism, Dostoevskii, Solzhenitsyn, Nikolai Roerich, Mironov, nationalities policies, and Central Asia; on Europe they are essays on Hobsbawm, History and Memory, and Geopolitics; on India, they areThe Spiritual in Nehru’s Secular Imagination, the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture, New Delhi, 14 November 2019; Nehru’s Democratic Dilemmas, the Nehru Memorial lecture at King’s College, London, on 3 March 2023, available on their website; and “Socialism in India”, in The Cambridge History of Socialism, 2022, vol. 2, pp. 413-434.

 

A selection of his publications may be accessed at www.madhavanpalat.academia.edu

A warm welcome to the modified and updated website of the Centre for East Asian Studies. The East Asian region has been at the forefront of several path-breaking changes since 1970s beginning with the redefining the development architecture with its State-led development model besides emerging as a major region in the global politics and a key hub of the sophisticated technologies. The Centre is one of the thirteen Centres of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi that provides a holistic understanding of the region.

Initially, established as a Centre for Chinese and Japanese Studies, it subsequently grew to include Korean Studies as well. At present there are eight faculty members in the Centre. Several distinguished faculty who have now retired include the late Prof. Gargi Dutt, Prof. P.A.N. Murthy, Prof. G.P. Deshpande, Dr. Nranarayan Das, Prof. R.R. Krishnan and Prof. K.V. Kesavan. Besides, Dr. Madhu Bhalla served at the Centre in Chinese Studies Programme during 1994-2006. In addition, Ms. Kamlesh Jain and Dr. M. M. Kunju served the Centre as the Documentation Officers in Chinese and Japanese Studies respectively.

The academic curriculum covers both modern and contemporary facets of East Asia as each scholar specializes in an area of his/her interest in the region. The integrated course involves two semesters of classes at the M. Phil programme and a dissertation for the M. Phil and a thesis for Ph. D programme respectively. The central objective is to impart an interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding of history, foreign policy, government and politics, society and culture and political economy of the respective areas. Students can explore new and emerging themes such as East Asian regionalism, the evolving East Asian Community, the rise of China, resurgence of Japan and the prospects for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Additionally, the Centre lays great emphasis on the building of language skills. The background of scholars includes mostly from the social science disciplines; History, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, International Relations and language.

Several students of the centre have been recipients of prestigious research fellowships awarded by Japan Foundation, Mombusho (Ministry of Education, Government of Japan), Saburo Okita Memorial Fellowship, Nippon Foundation, Korea Foundation, Nehru Memorial Fellowship, and Fellowship from the Chinese and Taiwanese Governments. Besides, students from Japan receive fellowship from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations.