The Indian Predicament:South Asia in WWII

June 5-6, 2016

Beit Maiersdorf Faculty Club, room 405

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Mount Scopus Campus

Sunday, June 5

9:30-10:00 Opening Remarks
Dan Diner, Principal Investigator, ERC Project
“JudgingHistories”
Rotem Geva, Postdoctoral Fellow, ERC Project
“JudgingHistories”

10:00-12:30 The War’s Indian Legacy
Chair: Samir Ben-Layashi, The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem

10:00-10:45 – Indivar Kamtekar, Jawaharlal Nehru
University
The Foundations of State Expansion: War and
Government in India, 1939-1950

10:45-11:30 – Aditya Balasubramanian, University of
Cambridge
Evading the Enlarging State: The Control Economy and
Illegality in India, c. 1940-1945

11:30-11:45 – Coee break

11:45-12:30 – Bérénice Guyot-Réchard, King’s College
London
Bound by War: World War Two’s Legacies on the
Assam-Burma Border

12:30-14:00 – Lunch

14:00-15:30 Asia’s Indian Diaspora
Chair: Iris Nachum, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

14:00-14:45 – Jialin Christina Wu, Université catholique
de Louvain
Fast Friends – Sudden Foes: Echoing India in Colonial
Malaya, 1939-1945

14:45-15:30 – Nirmola Sharma, University of Delhi
Residing in China: The Indian National Army and the
Indian Independence League

15:30-15:45 – Coee break

15:45-17:15 Wartime Logistics and Propaganda
Chair: Maja Šcrbacic, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

15:45-16:30 – Santosh Hasnu, University of Delhi
Air Transport from India: Diplomacy and Business in

16:30-17:15 – Chandrika Kaul, University of
St. Andrews
India on the Airwaves: Mediating War,
Propaganda and the BBC

Monday, June 6

9:30-11:00 The Indian Military
Chair: Lutz Fiedler, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

9:30-10:15 – Tarak Barkawi, London School of Economics and
Political Science
Soldiers of Empire: Rethinking Army, Society and Battle with the
British Indian Army in the Asia-Pacic Wars

10:15-11:00 – Steven Wilkinson, Yale University
Veterans in Conict: Indian Soldiers after WWII

11:00-11:15 – Coee break

11:15-12:45 The Bengal Famine Represented
Chair: Kobi Kabalek, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

11:15-12:00 – Sharmistha Saha, Freie Universität Berlin
Performing Hungry Lives: The Indian People’s Theatre
Association’s Central Squad and the Bengal Famine

12:00-12:45 – Rochona Majumdar, University of Chicago
A Cinema of Hunger: The Famine of 1943 in Postcolonial India

12:45-14:00 – Lunch

14:00-16:30 Poetics of War
Chair: Rotem Geva, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

14:00-14:45 – Vikas Rathee, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Qissa Subhash Bose: A Soldier-Poet’s Reections on the War

14:45-15:30 – Gregory Goulding, Loyola University Chicago
Burning Reections on the Rivers of India: The Imagination of
WWII in Hindi Literature

15:30-15:45 – Coee break

15:45-16:30 – Milinda Banerjee, Presidency University
Empire, Sovereign Violence and Messianic Advent: Two Bengali
Poets on WWII

16:30-17:30 Concluding Remarks and Discussion
Michael Geyer, University of Chicago