News
Chakra Student Paper Prize
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The Rutgers South Asian Studies Program holds a yearly student paper prize competition. Undergraduate papers are expected to be approximately ten to twenty-five double-spaced pages in length, and graduate papers should be approximately twenty to forty pages in length. Submissions may include term papers, chapters from honors theses, or sections of dissertations. The paper can be on any topic in any discipline (or combination of disciplines) related to one or more countries in South Asia or the South Asian diaspora. For example, appropriate topics could include:
- contemporary women’s movements in Sri Lanka;
- religion in ancient India;
- comparative South Asian literatures;
- politics and economics throughout South Asia;
- the Maoist insurgency in Nepal;
- a comparison of language policies in Bangladesh and Pakistan;
- identity among youths in the South Asian diaspora;
- or other subjects related to South Asia.
Students interested in submitting a paper for consideration in the Spring 2023 should download the
document
appropriate form
(19 KB)
and send the form electronically, along with the paper, to
We are deeply grateful to the generous anonymous donors who have established the Chakra Endowed Fund to support the Rutgers South Asian Studies Program and to fund this student paper prize.
Click here to view past award winners
2022-23 Research/Travel Awards
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Please download the application here to apply.
Research Travel Awards
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2022-23 Research/Travel Awards
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Events for Fall 2021
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South Asian Studies Minors win second place at Yale Hindi Debate
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At this year’s Yale Hindi Debate Nationals, held on April 19, Rutgers student Riya Sutariya won 2nd best speaker in the Heritage category, while Dr. Asher Ghertner won 2nd best speaker in the Native category at the Yale Hindi Debate, 2019.
SASP Faculty Affiliate Julia Stephens’ book published
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Professor Julia Stephens, Assistant Professor in the Department of History, recently published her book, Governing Islam: Law, Empire, and Secularism in South Asia. The book traces the colonial roots of contemporary struggles between Islam and secularism in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The book uncovers the paradoxical workings of colonial laws that promised to separate secular and religious spheres, but instead fostered their vexed entanglement. It shows how religious laws governing families became embroiled with secular laws governing markets, and how calls to protect religious liberties clashed with freedom of the press. By following these interactions, Stephens asks us to reconsider where law is and what it is. Her narrative weaves between state courts, Islamic fatwas on ritual performance, and intimate marital disputes to reveal how deeply law penetrates everyday life. In her hands, law also serves many masters - from British officials to Islamic jurists to aggrieved Muslim wives. The resulting study shows how the neglected field of Muslim law in South Asia is essential to understanding current crises in global secularism.
For more information, visit the publisher’s website:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/governing-islam/121E3A30882B9323758BB30F37118875
South Asian Studies Minors takes top prize at Yale Hindi Debate, 2018
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At this year’s Yale Hindi Debate Nationals, held on January 30, Rutgers student Neil Shah won first place in the Native speaker category. Neil is a sophomore SAS Honors Student majoring in Genetics with a minor in South Asian Studies.
Dr. Shaheen Parveen (L), Assistant Teaching Professor of Hindi/Urdu at Rutgers, meeting with student participants at the 2018 Yale Hindi Debate.
New book on Delhi by SASP Director is out
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Asher Ghertner, the director of the South Asian Studies Program, has just published a new book based on his research on Delhi, titled Rule by Aesthetics: World-Class City Making in Delhi, by Oxford University Press.
Rule by Aesthetics offers a powerful examination of the process and experience of mass demolition in the world's second largest city of Delhi, India. Using Delhi's millennial effort to become a 'world-class city,' the book shows how aesthetic norms can replace the procedures of mapping and surveying typically considered necessary to administer space. This practice of evaluating territory based on its adherence to aesthetic norms - what Ghertner calls 'rule by aesthetics' - allowed the state in Delhi to intervene in the once ungovernable space of slums, overcoming its historical reliance on inaccurate maps and statistics. Slums hence were declared illegal because they looked illegal, an arrangement that led to the displacement of a million slum residents in the first decade of the 21st century.
Drawing on close ethnographic engagement with the slum residents targeted for removal, as well as the planners, judges, and politicians who targeted them, the book demonstrates how easily plans, laws, and democratic procedures can be subverted once the subjects of democracy are seen as visually out of place. Slum dwellers' creative appropriation of dominant aesthetic norms shows, however, that aesthetic rule does not mark the end of democratic claims making. Rather, it signals a new relationship between the mechanism of government and the practice of politics, one in which struggles for a more inclusive city rely more than ever on urban aesthetics, in Delhi as in aspiring world-class cities the world over.
For further details on the book, visit the publisher's website.
