Institute for South Asia Studies

Today, April 24 at 4 pm: A panel discussion on the politics of minoritization in South Asia. Drawing on perspectives from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and India, the panel will examine how state power, law, and social hierarchies facilitate the creation of national majorities and minorities.

The discussion will feature Aanmona Priyadarshini (Lecturer of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University), Sadia Saeed (Associate Professor of Sociology, University of San Francisco), Sharika Thiranagama (Associate Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University), and Vinayak Chaturvedi (Professor of History, University of California, Irvine).

Ussama Makdisi, Professor of History and Chancellor’s Chair and Sai Balakrishnan, Associate Professor of City & Regional Planning will serve as discussants.

Event will be livestreamed on the Institute's FB page: https://www.facebook.com/ISASatUCBerkeley

More about the event at https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/313772-the-politics-of-minoritization-in-south-asia

Today, April 16 @ 5 pm:
A talk by Nadeem Zaman, author of the novels "The Inheritors" (Hachette India, 2023) and "In the Time of the Others" (Picador India, 2018), and the short story collection "Up in the Main House & Other Stories" (Unnamed Press, 2019). Zaman will discuss the craft and challenges of fictionalizing historical events and characters, with a particular focus on his novel about Bangladesh’s 1971 War of Liberation. Drawing on his doctoral research into the roots of the conflict, he will reflect on the conceptual and stylistic choices that led him to write about the events of that year as fiction rather than history.

Apr 16, 2026 | 5 pm | 10 Stephens Hall