13th HIP Workshop: Dec 12, 2014
Dec 12, 2014
Department of South Asian Studies
Institute of Asian and African Studies
Invalidenstr. 118, Room 217
2:00-7:00 pm
13th HIP Workshop
HIP brings together Berlin’s academic competence on South Asia
- 2:15-3:15 pm Elijah Horn, IAAW, HU Berlin/ Universität Hildesheim:
Tagore and Geheeb - the Myth of a Friendship.
- 3:15-4:15 pm Julten Abdelhalim, IAAW, HU Berlin:
An Indian Spring Versus an Arab Autumn? The Impact of Global Networks
of Political Islamism between the Arab World and India.
- 4:15-4:45 pm Coffee/Tea Break
- 4:45-5:45 pm Tanja Herklotz, IAAW, HU Berlin:
Women's Rights Activism and the Supreme Court in India.
- 5:45-6:45 pm Suraj Beri, JNU, Delhi / IAAW, HU Berlin:
Democracy and Inequality: Dynamics of Indian Elites.
- 6:45 onwards Drinks and Snacks
Abstracts:
Tagore and Geheeb - the Myth of a friendship
Elijah Horn
IAAW, HU Berlin / Universität Hildesheim
In his 2011 "Eros & Herschaft", Jürgen Oelkers analyses strategies of power and (sexual) violence among representatives of German Reformpädagogik (new education), one of them being Paul Geheeb, the founder of the Odenwaldschule. From my analyses of the reception of India and its cultural tradition at the Odenwaldschule during the 1920s and 30s, I argue that Geheeb strategically used the personal contact to a number of Indians for positioning his institut on the competitive market of private schools. I will show that these strategies worked out and function until today: In the very same work, Oelkers reports on the friendship of Rabindranath Tagore and Paul Geheeb. Referring to original documents, their relationship should rather not be classified as such.
An Indian Spring versus an Arab Autumn?
The impact of global networks of political Islamism between the Arab World and India
Dr. Julten Abdelhalim
IAAW, HU Berlin
This presentation tackles my post-doctoral project concerning the dynamics of migration flows from Kerala to the Persian Gulf and their impact on the consolidation of revivalist Islamist politics. The intricate methods with which migration has created parallel organizations in the Gulf attracting moral and financial support of both the relatively wealthier Non Resident Indians and Egyptians is the impetus of these dynamics to be studied, in addition to the different manifestations of the new political setups in the Arab World.
Women's Rights Activism
and the Supreme Court in India
Tanja Herklotz
IAAW, HU Berlin
This interdisciplinary PhD Project seeks to answer the question to which degree the Indian women's movement has influenced Indian Supreme Court decisions regarding the religious "personal laws." It shows that the Indian women's movement, which has long argued that the various religious customary family laws are discriminatory against women, has functioned as a "support structure" in order to push for a judicial re-interpretation of religious laws. Due to its own fragmentation and the lack of a uniform and coherent voice it has, however, not realised this aim to its full potential.
Democracy and Inequality:
Dynamics of Indian Elites
Suraj Beri
JNU, New Delhi / IAAW, HU Berlin
Social theory has been concerned with the dynamics of social inequalities. One of the major concept-ualizations, to make sense of processes of inequalities, has been of the elite studies. Studies on elites in India have focused on certain sections of elites such as political elites, intellectual elites and also business elites. This work aims to study empirically the dynamics between these various elites in the context of small town. On the one hand, it focuses on institutional context and material characteristics i.e. organizational capacity, structural factors of family, nature of the power exercised etc., while on the other it also brings the significance of symbolic aspects of classification and their vision of social world.