‘Engagements with Tradition in the Gujarati World’

‘Engagements with Tradition in the Gujarati World’May 14, 2004School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Session 1: Perspectives on Kutch?

  • ‘What is Kutch?’Edward SimpsonLondon School of Economics
  • ‘Infrastructure as Exclusion: Distributed Electricity Generation in Kutch’Christopher JoshiDPhil Candidate, University of Oxford
  • ‘Exploring the Gulf of Kutch in the Middle of the 18th Century’GA NadriPhD Candidate, University of Leiden
  • ‘The Gujarati Seafaring Tradition: Its Beginning in the Third Millennium BC’Gregory PossehlUniversity of Pennsylvania
  • Session 2: Histories and Imagined Identities

‘The Gujarati Identity and Parsis in the Late Nineteenth Century’Riho IsakaUniversity of Tokyo

  • ‘(Re)imagining the Gujarati Ismaili ‘community’ on the East African Coast (c 1900)’Zulfikar HirjiWolfson College, University of Oxford and The Institute of Ismaili Studies
  • ‘A Medical Mission to the Bhils of Northeast Gujarat’David HardimanUniversity of Warwick
  • ‘Rapacious Ministers versus Masked Saviours: Bombay Cinema, the Princely States and the Nation, 1921- 1928’Kaushik BhaumikOpen University

Session 3: Belonging and Boundaries in Gujarat and Beyond

  • ‘‘Sanskar Through the Rituals of Childhood – Gujarati Hindu and Jain Practices in Harrow’Alison SpiroHarrow Primary Care Trust
  • ‘‘Case Study of a Multi-Cultural Slum in Ahmedabad: Redefining Identities through Cultural Exchange’Laila HalaniDPhil Candidate, University of Oxford
  • ‘ “There are no non-Gujaratis in this Village” / “We can Recognise a Waghri from his Chaal”: Constructing and Contesting a Gujarati-Hindu Identity’Nikita SudDPhil Candidate, University of Oxford
  • ‘A Darshan on the Trading Floor’Pierre LachaierEcole française d'Extrême-orient, Paris

Session 4: Religion, culture and identity

  • ‘The Bhajana Culture of Religious Gujarat: The Textual Transmission and Thematic Convergence’Françoise MallisonEcole Practique des Hautes Etudes
  • ‘Dress and Identity among the Rabaris of Kachchh’Eiluned EdwardsPractice, Research and Advancement in South Asian Design and Architecture, De Montfort University
  • ‘Praying and Drumming – Sidi at the Junction of African Spirit Possession and Sufism in Gujarat’Helene BasuUniversity of Berlin