EVENTS

Both India and China are emerging as important global political and economic powers within the contemporary landscape of Asia, and the world at large. China watchers are meticulously engaged in mapping the possible nature of future India-China bilateral engagements, deliberating whether it would be marked by contestation, cooperation, or both. Further, scholars are also engaged in finding ways through which a balanced power structure could eventually emerge in Asia. While fully acknowledging the need for such explorations, it is also necessary to re-evaluate and revisit the research tools, approaches, and methods that have so far been employed in comprehending and predicting the nature of India-China bilateral relations. This seminar seeks to interrogate the efficacy of the existing Westphalian theoretical model, which is the dominant frame for the study of international relations in general, and inter-state relations in particular. It shall attempt to explore alternative research methods, tools, approaches and perspectives in the academic treatment of the bilateral relations of non-Western polities like India and China, given that they have existed as millennia-old geo-civilisational spaces, and not as mere geopolitical units or nation states of contemporary times. Above all, both have a long-standing, multi-layered interaction with each other, as much as with the neighbouring regions.

Speaker

Dhriti Roy is Associate Professor and Head, at the Department of Chinese, School of Languages and Literature, Sikkim University, Gangtok. Roy received her Doctoral Degree in 2013 in Chinese from Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan. She studied at Beijing Normal University as an Advanced Language Student under the Chinese Government Scholarship Scheme from 2008-2009, and as UGC NET Senior Research Fellow, received specialised training in Classical Chinese, Sinological Studies, Buddhist Studies and Manuscriptology as Senior Visiting Scholar at Peking University from 2009-2010. Her areas of research interest include Chinese Philosophy, China’s Social, Cultural and Intellectual History, India-China Civilisational Interactions, and Ancient and Pre-modern Sino-Indian Relations. She was the recipient of the Institute of Chinese Studies, Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea Award for the year 2013, and also represented India at the Second Interdisciplinary Symposium for Emerging Scholars on India-China Studies at New School, New York in 2013. Alongside modern Mandarin, Roy has received Two Years of proficiency training in Japanese and Tibetan languages, each. Roy’s academic writings have featured in over thirty research papers in refereed journals. She has authored numerous book chapters and has a book in translation under the auspices of the Sahitya Akademi.

Chair

Madhavi Thampi is an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, and former editor of its journal China Report. She was an Associate Professor at the Department of East Asian Studies at Delhi University, where she taught Chinese History. Her publications include the monograph Indians in China, 1800-1949(2005). She has also co-authored (with Brij Tankha) Narratives of Asia from India, Japan and China (2005), as well as a book titled, China and the Making of Bombay (with Shalini Saksena, 2009). She edited the volume India and China in the Colonial World (2005). She has coordinated a project to catalogue materials related to modern China in the National Archives of India and is working on the history of relations between India and China during World War II based on archival materials.

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