The Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia is based at the Thomas J. Watson Jr. School of International and Public Affairs. The Saxena Center supports faculty, graduate and undergraduate research and teaching on the region and is home to the South Asian Studies concentration. The Saxena Center functions within the larger framework of the Watson School, which is seeking to define a new approach to regional studies for the 21st century. Anchored in the social sciences, this new approach is problem driven, comparative and multidisciplinary. Our multidiciplinarity includes sustained interaction of social scientists with the humanities on the one hand and the disciplines such as medicine and public health on the other.
Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia
About
The Saxena Center supports faculty, graduate and undergraduate research and teaching on the region and is home to the South Asian Studies concentration
About
The Saxena Center supports faculty, graduate and undergraduate research and teaching on the region and is home to the South Asian Studies concentration
Mission
The Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia promotes research, teaching and public engagement on key issues of modern South Asia in an interdisciplinary framework and in a historically and culturally grounded manner.
Programs
At this time, the Center’s programmatic and research themes focused on inequalities, development, urbanization, democracy and pluralism and diversities.
Partnerships
The Saxena Center collaborates with institutions and departments across Brown University and beyond. Learn more at our partnerships page.
Spotlight
Yamini Aiyar is a Visiting Professor of Practice at Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University.
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In The Discovery of India, Jawaharlal Nehru made an observation about MK Gandhi, capturing a feeling that was experienced widely but never articulated as sharply. To slightly paraphrase Nehru: “The dominant impulse in India under British rule was that of fear; pervasive, oppressive, strangling fear; fear of… the police; fear of the official class; fear of the laws meant to suppress and of prison… And then Gandhi came… Suddenly, as it were, the black pall of fear was lifted from the people’s shoulders.”
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Federalism is not just about institutional arrangements; it is about accommodating India's many identities. The erosion of that principle of accommodation helps explain many of the institutional problems we see today.
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