Vivek Chibber is an associate professor of sociology and director of graduate studies at New York University. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin, his M.A. in sociology in 1991 from the University of Wisconsin and his B.A. in political science in 1987 from Northwestern University.

His recent publications include: "The Good Empire," The Boston Review, February/March 2005; "From Class Compromise to Class Accommodation: Labor's Incorporation into the Indian Political Economy", Social Movements and Poverty in India, Mary Katzenstein and Raka Ray eds. (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005); "The Return of Imperialism to Social Science", Archives de Europeenes de Sociologie-The European Journal of Sociology, December, 2004; "Reviving the Developmental State? The Myth of the 'National Bourgeoisie'," Socialist Register 2005.

His research focuses on economic sociology; sociology of development; Marxian theory; political sociology; comparative-historical sociology; social theory.

Dr. Chibber's talk is the fifth seminar of the winter quarter South Asia Colloquium Series.

Rajmohan Gandhi, the author of Mohandas, a major new biography on his grandfather the Mahatma, is currently a visiting professor in the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and faculty director of Global Crossroads, a learning and living community at the University of Illinois.

He is a jury member for the Nuremberg International Human Rights Award, and co-chair, Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation, Gurgaon, India. A former member of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of the Indian Parliament), he led the Indian delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission in 1990. He is a commentator in the Indian media, and the author of several books. In 2002 he received the Sahitya Akademi (India's National Academy of Letters) Award for his Rajaji: A Life, a biography of Chakravarti Rajagoplachari (1878-1972), leading figure in India's freedom movement and Governor General of free India, 1948-50.

In 2004 he received the International Humanitarian Award (Human Rights) from the City of Champaign and in 1997 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of law from the University of Calgary and an honorary doctorate of philosophy from Obirin University, Tokyo.

His new book, Mohandas: a True Story of a Man, his People and an Empire, has just been published by Viking/Penguin India. Other books by Gandhi include Ghaffar Khan: Nonviolent Badshah of the Pakhtuns (Penguin 2004); Revenge & Reconciliation: Understanding South Asian History (Penguin, 1999); The Good Boatman: A Portrait of Gandhi (Penguin, 1995); Patel: A Life, a Biography of Vallabhbhai Patel (1875-1950), Deputy Prime Minister of India, 1947-50 (Navajivan, Ahmedabad, 1990); and Eight Lives: A Study of the Hindu-Muslim Encounter (SUNY, 1987).

Dr. Gandhi's talk is the fourth seminar of the winter quarter South Asia Colloquium Series.

This seminar is co-sponsored by Stanford's new Center for South Asia, which is part

of the School of Humanities Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies.

There was nothing inherently unified about the diverse cultures, religions and languages that comprised the Indian subcontinent under colonialism. The European model of nationalism, which took for granted the existence of one religion, one language or one ethnicity was doomed to failure. It was for this impossibility that the British argued that India was not fit to rule itself. It was on behalf of this sense of identity that, beginning in the nineteenth century, Indian writers of literature began to imagine cultural unity through their fictional and poetic works.

By the 1920s and 1930s, literature had come to occupy a central role in the Indian nationalist movement. Yet literary texts not only reflected the politics of Indias leaders (increasingly represented by the Indian National Congress,) but questioned some of their assumptions about the path India's future should take. For instance, the Hindi novelist Premchand set his stories primarily in rural India and satirized the machinations of the urban elite, emphasizing the rural-urban divide that was increasingly visible in mainstream nationalist politics. Likewise, the English-language author Mulk Raj Anand located his stories among the urban poor, disempowered not only by colonialism, but also by the kind of heavy industrialization supported by congress.

Authors affected by partition, such as Saadat Hasan Manto, painted a poignant picture of the injustices perpetrated on displaced families on both sides of the India-Pakistan border. Attention to the details and artistry of these and other fictional writings can add to our understanding of these hugely significant decades in sub-continental history.

Ulka Anjaria is a Ph.D. candidate in the Program of Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University. Her dissertation, entitled "Novel Forms: Literary Realism and the Politics of Modernity in India, 1920-1947," discusses the works of Premchand, Mulk Raj Anand, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Raja Rao, Manik Bandopadhyay and Ahmed Ali, relating innovations these authors make on the novel form to larger political developments of the pre-Independence period. She has published articles in Sarai Reader and Economic and Political Weekly.

Ms. Anjaria's talk is the third seminar of the winter quarter South Asia Colloquium Series.

Professor Dittmer received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1971. His scholarly expertise is the study of contemporary China. He teaches courses on contemporary China, Northeast Asia, and the Pacific Rim.

His current research interests include a study of the impact of reform on Chinese communist authority, a survey of patterns of informal politics in East Asia, and a project on the China-Taiwan-US triangle in the context of East Asian regional politics. Professor Dittmer's recently published books and monographs include Sino-Soviet Normalization and Its International Implications (University of Washington Press, 1992), China's Quest for National Identity (with Samuel Kim, Cornell University Press, 1993), China Under Modernization (Westview Press, 1994), and South Asia's Nuclear Crisis (M. E. Sharpe, 2005.)

Dr. Dittmer's talk is the second seminar of the winter quarter South Asia Colloquium Series.