Conveners: Ravinder Kaur and Nayanika Mathur
Speakers: Srirupa Roy, Gyan Prakash, Ornit Shani, Rohit De, Nusrat Chowdhury, Sharika Thiranagama, Lars Bo Kaspersen, Thomas Blom Hansen, Lawrence Cohen, Nayanika Mathur, Aradhana Sharma, Ravinder Kaur
The People’s State
Rethinking Popular Politics in the early Twenty-First Century
18-19th March 2019 – University of Copenhagen
Programme
Monday, 18th March
9.30 – 9.45 Tea
9.45 – 10.00 Welcome and Introductions by Ravinder Kaur and Nayanika Mathur
I Revisiting Populism
10.00 – 12.00
Lineages of Populism: Outsider Politics and the Long 1970s in India
Srirupa Roy, Göttingen University
State, democracy, and populism: Indira Gandhi’s Emergency and its afterlife
Gyan Prakash, Princeton University
12.00 – 13.00 Lunch
II Who are ‘the people’?
13.00 – 15.00
The Becoming of the People’s State in India, 1946-1952
Ornit Shani, Haifa University
Litigous Citizens: Bazaar Regulation and Constitutional Rights in Nehruvian India
Rohit De, Yale University
15.00 – 15.15 Tea Break
III Disaggregating the People – “Crowds” and “Peasants”
15.15 – 17.15
Paradoxes of the Popular: Some Thoughts on Crowd Politics in Bangladesh
Nusrat Chowdhury, Amherst College
Who Tills the Land? Caste, Communism and the Peasant in Kerala
Sharika Thiranagama, Stanford University
18.30 Dinner
Tuesday, 19th March
IV Liberalism/Illiberalism
10.00 – 12.00
The State as a survival unit: Or, why the world (most likely) will stay as a pluriverse
Lars Bo Kaspersen, Copenhagen University
Democracy against the law: Reflections on India’s illiberal democracy
Thomas Blom Hansen, Stanford University
12.00 – 13.00 Lunch
V The Nonhumans in the Indian State
13.00 – 15.00
Aadhaar, the janata, and the Impossibility of Failure
Lawrence Cohen, University of Berkeley
Beastly Identification: the government of big cats in India
Nayanika Mathur, University of Oxford
15.00 – 15.15 Tea Break
VI The Politics of the Common Man
15.15 – 17.15
Building a “Common” Ground? Tinkering with Technomoral Politics, Lawfare, and the State in India
Aradhana Sharma, Wesleyan University
“I Swear”: The public ritual of “Oath-Eating” and the making of the Common Man
Ravinder Kaur, Copenhagen University
17.15 – 18.15 What Next?
19.00 Dinner
