̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - South Asia

Professor Joya Chatterji awarded Wolfson History Prize 2024

Anonymous — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 12:51:06 +0000

This year’s Wolfson History Prize has been awarded to Joya Chatterji, Emeritus Professor of South Asian History and Fellow of Trinity College, for her book Shadows At Noon: ̽��ֱ��South Asian Twentieth Century, first published in 2023.

̽��ֱ��book charts the story of the subcontinent from the British Raj through independence and partition to the forging of the modern nations of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Chatterji’s history pushes back against standard narratives that emphasise differences between the 3 countries, and instead seeks to highlight what unites these nations and their peoples.

Interwoven with Chatterji’s personal reflections on growing up in India, this distinctive academic work uses a conversational writing style and takes a thematic rather than chronological approach. It adds to the discussions of politics and nationhood typical of other histories of the region by weaving in everyday experiences of food, cinema, and domestic life.

As a result, the cultural vibrancy of South Asia shines through the research, according to the Wolfson History Prize judges, allowing readers a more nuanced understanding of South Asian history.

A judging panel that included fellow Cambridge historians Professors Mary Beard and Richard Evans, and headed by panel chair Professor David Cannadine, described Chatterji’s book as “written with verve and energy”, and said that it “beautifully blends the personal and the historical”.

“Shadows at Noon is a highly ambitious history of 20th-century South Asia that defies easy categorisation, combining rigorous historical research with personal reminiscence and family anecdotes,” said Cannadine.

“Chatterji writes with wit and perception, shining a light on themes that have shaped the subcontinent during this period. We extend our warmest congratulations to Joya Chatterji on her Wolfson History Prize win.”

“For over 50 years, the Wolfson History Prize has celebrated exceptional history writing that is rooted in meticulous research with engaging and accessible prose,” said Paul Ramsbottom, Chief Executive of the Wolfson Foundation.

“Shadows at Noon is a remarkable example of this, and Joya Chatterji captivates readers with her compelling storytelling of modern South Asian history.”

Shadows at Noon was also longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2024 and shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize 2024.

Now in its 52nd year, the Wolfson History Prize celebrates books that combine excellence in research with readability for a general audience.

Recent winners have included other Cambridge historians: Clare Jackson, Honorary Professor of Early Modern History, for Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688 (2022) and David Abulafia, Professor Emeritus of Mediterranean History, for ̽��ֱ��Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans (2020). Helen McCarthy, Professor of Modern and Contemporary British History, was shortlisted for Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood in 2021.

Chatterji wins for Shadows at Noon, her genre-defying history of South Asia during the 20th century.

Wolfson Foundation

Joya Chatterji at the award ceremony for the Wolfson History Prize 2024

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Yes

Arcadia awards over £10 million for 2 major archaeology projects

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 14:57:42 +0000

̽��ֱ��McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Department of Archaeology and ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Development and Alumni Relations are pleased to announce that the Arcadia charitable foundation has awarded grants totalling £10.3 million to continue the work of the Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments (MAEASaM) project and the Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia (MAHSA) project.

Archaeological sites and monuments around the world are increasingly threatened by human activities and the impacts of climate change. These pressures are especially severe in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where local heritage agencies are often short-staffed and under-resourced; where existing sites and monuments registers are often incompletely digitised; and where many sites are not yet documented and large areas remain archaeologically under-studied. Alongside the intensity of natural and human threats, these factors combine to make the implementation of planning controls, impact assessments, mitigation measures and long-term monitoring especially challenging.

̽��ֱ��five-year funding of £5.7 million to the MAEASaM project supports the continuation of its mission to identify and document endangered archaeological heritage sites across Africa, building on the work accomplished thus far with our in-country partners in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Sudan, Senegal, Mali, Kenya, Ethiopia and Botswana. ̽��ֱ��funding will also allow the project to expand its collaborations with other national heritage agencies in Africa, including Mozambique, Gambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and to develop innovative approaches to better integrate heritage concerns into national planning and development control activities

During Phase 1 of the project, the MAEASaM team managed to assess a total area of 1,024,656 square kilometres using a combination of historical maps, Google Earth and medium-resolution satellite imagery, resulting in digital documentation of some 67,748 sites and monuments. Concurrent with this work, the team created digital records of 31,461 legacy sites, from unique information sets spanning almost a century of archaeological fieldwork on the continent. ̽��ֱ��accuracy of a sample of these records were also assessed via 11 field verification campaigns, helping establish the current status of these sites and levels of endangerment from anthropogenic and natural processes, while also locating many previously undocumented sites. Training, skills enhancement and knowledge transfer activities were also delivered via both in-person and online events, often in collaboration with MAHSA, and team members presented their work at 15 international meetings and via numerous social media and website posts.

Professor Paul Lane, Principal Investigator of the MAEASaM project, said: “I am truly delighted by the news of this award and would like to take this opportunity to thank Arcadia for their continuing support. As well as allowing expansion of the project to cover other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, this further 5 years of funding will enable the creation of a repository of digital assets and a sustainable system for more rapidly and easily assessing, researching, monitoring and managing archaeological heritage, accessible to heritage professionals, researchers and students across the continent.”

Similarly, the five-year grant of £4.6 million to the MAHSA project supports its continuing mission to document endangered archaeological heritage in Pakistan and India, working alongside collaborators in both countries to support their efforts to protect and manage the rich heritage of the region. Over the next 5 years, MAHSA will continue to develop and populate its Arches database, creating a resource to make heritage data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. MAHSA will consolidate the work it has begun in the Indus River Basin and surrounding areas, and will also expand its documentation efforts to include the coastline areas of both India and Pakistan, Baluchistan in Pakistan and the Ganges River Basin in north India.

During Phase 1, the MAHSA team georeferenced in excess of 1,300 historic Survey of India map sheets, covering over 890,000 square kilometres, and have reconstructed over 192,696 square kilometres of ancient hydrological networks. This groundwork has made it possible to digitise over 10000 legacy data records, and many of those records have been enriched. In addition, they carried out 5 collaborative archaeological surveys both as part of their training programme, and as part of new collaborative research with stakeholders in both India and Pakistan. They have engaged in policy-level dialogue with different government organisations in Pakistan and India, with an aim of working towards the development of a sustainable solution for the inclusion of heritage in urban and agricultural development strategies.

Professor Cameron Petrie, Principal Investigator of the MAHSA project, said: “I am extremely proud of what the collaborative MAHSA team have achieved during Phase 1, and the support from Arcadia for Phase 2 will allow us to continue making a transformational contribution to the documentation and understanding of the archaeological heritage of Pakistan and India. We are clarifying existing archaeological site locations datasets and collecting new ones at a scale never before attempted in South Asia.”

About Arcadia

Arcadia is a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge. Since 2002 Arcadia has awarded more than $1.2 billion (£900 million) to organisations around the world.

About Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments (MAEASaM)

About Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia (MAHSA)

̽��ֱ��charitable foundation awards £10.3 million for the continuation of 2 Cambridge projects mapping endangered archaeological heritage in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Image from the MAEASaM Project

Yes

Opinion: Imposing an arbitrary national language would only divide Pakistan further

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 10:17:17 +0000

For a country seven decades old, Pakistan is dealing with a surprisingly fundamental political and cultural problem: a struggle over what language to use for government.

̽��ֱ��Supreme Court has ordered the government to use the constitutionally-mandated national language, Urdu, in place of English in the many contexts where English is currently used. (Ironically, the court’s order was itself written in English.) Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has declared his enthusiasm for the transition to Urdu, and a committee was constituted to monitor its progress.

But is imposed monolingualism a good fit for South Asia – or does it in fact follow a very Eurocentric idea of how a nation-state should work?

This discussion has been rumbling on and off ever since India and Pakistan achieved independence. Both of their post-colonial constitutions required that after 15 years, English should be officially replaced by Urdu and Hindi respectively, but both countries eventually side-stepped the requirement. Pakistan continued to use English without comment alongside Urdu; India declared it a “subsidiary official language”, symbolically inferior to Hindi but nonetheless still recognised.

Today, the problem comes in how narrowly Urdu and Hindi are defined by the bodies tasked with monitoring and developing the official languages.

Pakistan’s National Language Promotion Department (formerly the National Language Authority) and India’s Department of Official Language both have a reputation for filling their respective languages with clunky neologisms. These are used to avoid common English loanwords; Hindi ones are drawn largely from Sanskrit, and Urdu’s largely from Arabic and Persian.

̽��ֱ��people who complain about the language policy aren’t necessarily trying to maintain their English-speaking privilege; there really are genuine questions about the character of the official language. If its speakers commonly use words that aren’t recognised by governmental language bodies, is it right to have a two-track system in which there is a governmental variety of a language and very different one that normal people use?

Taking a hard line against English as a colonial language makes little sense decades after independence, especially when it has become the language of international business and when English loanwords have become embedded in people’s everyday usage in other South Asian languages. And looking back over history, this is a very recent argument anyway.

̽��ֱ��scorched-earth cultural politics of imposing a national language never took hold in the subcontinent before modern India and Pakistan came into being. Persian was the apex language during Mughal times and well into the era of British colonial rule, but it never overwhelmed the subcontinent’s longstanding linguistic diversity.

Many modern historians never think to question the colonial line that Persian was “thoroughly debasing and worthless” in India, but this is a fiction; I myself wrote an entire book arguing against the idea that Persian was a foreign imposition that patriotic Indians never really embraced. In reality, people used the languages available to them, making allowances for difference and freely taking words from other languages.

It was recognised, as the old Hindi saying has it, that in South Asia “kos kos par bhasha badle, do kos par pani” or “the language changes every mile, and the taste of the water every two miles”.

Overridden and overwhelmed

In Europe, where national languages are largely a foregone conclusion, we tend to forget how brutal and undemocratic their imposition was.

Languages other than English, notably Irish and Welsh, were repressed across the British Isles in early modern times. ̽��ֱ��1536 Welsh Act of Union, for example, excluded Welsh speakers from all government posts.

Across the English Channel, the adoption of standard French involved centuries of violent confrontation with Occitan and Breton speakers. ̽��ֱ��1539 Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, which replaced Latin with French in legal documents, has often been read as an act of popular liberation from the dead hand of Latin, but from the minority-language perspective it was a disaster; whereas all linguistic communities had previously used the same Latin documents, now only one community was represented.

But while Europe’s worst battles over minority and non-standard languages have been largely swept under the rug in recent centuries, radically multilingual India and Pakistan simply don’t have enough rug to do the same. An unintended consequence of decolonisation has been an almost colonial imposition of artificial, non-colloquial registers of Hindi and Urdu by Indian and Pakistani elites, who are concerned that without a unifying national language their nations will face devastating social and political disintegration.

This is misguided. Instead of repeating some of the unsavoury linguistic nationalism of early modern Europe, these elites should celebrate the wide variation in usage. They should acknowledge the ways Hindi and Urdu mix with languages like English and Punjabi, and make allowances for the complexity of language in society.

Far too little attention is routinely paid to how the citizens themselves might wish to speak. Nothing illustrates this more poignantly than a 1951 speech by the Aga Khan, in which he argued that the only possible national language for the new Islamic Republic of Pakistan could be Arabic. While he addressed the point that Urdu was the mother tongue of a tiny minority of Pakistanis and thus apparently unsuitable as a national language, he did not acknowledge the undeniable fact that Arabic was the mother tongue of precisely 0% of Pakistanis.

And of course, he gave the speech in English.

Arthur Dudney, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Arthur Dudney (Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies) discusses Pakistan's struggle over what language to use for government.

DFID - UK Department for International Development

Getting girls into school in Pakistan's Punjab region

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Cambridge and India

lw355 — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 10:34:45 +0000

India is the world’s largest democracy. By 2028, it will have overtaken China to become the world’s most populous nation. India currently has the fastest-growing economy among the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries. It combines ancient cultural and religious traditions with cutting-edge technological innovation and a commitment to scholarship and learning across all fields and disciplines. India is the major regional power in South Asia, and a rising power on the world stage. If the 21st century is the ‘Asian century’, it also looks set to be India’s century.

In short, India matters.

There has never been a better, nor a more compelling, time to engage with India – with its culture, its knowledge, science and technology, its world-view and, above all, the talents of its people. Indeed, we cannot hope to understand the contemporary world without understanding India. We cannot hope to address the major global challenges without an Indian perspective and Indian involvement.

For a university such as Cambridge, whose mission is ‘to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence’, engagement with India is not merely desirable, it is essential.

Enhancing engagement with India is a strategic priority for the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, building on broad, deep and enduring links. For over 150 years, Cambridge has enjoyed a particularly close relationship with India. From the mid-19th century, when the first students from India arrived in Cambridge, scholarship and lasting friendship have been the foundation of academic partnership. Three Indian Prime Ministers were educated at Cambridge, and in turn the ̽��ֱ�� is now home to distinguished academics from India across all fields of the arts, humanities, social, physical, biological and medical sciences.

Partnership between Cambridge and India is both relationship- and research-led, with a large number of individual collaborations. Cambridge researchers are working with colleagues in India’s leading research institutes and universities, corporations, government departments and civil society organisations, to solve challenges which face not just India, but the whole world in the 21st century.

In the biomedical sciences, collaborations are tackling the most pressing issues affecting global health, from antimicrobial-resistant tuberculosis to novel cancer therapies. With a growing middle class, India, like the West, faces an epidemic of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes; large-scale partnerships in public health between India and Cambridge offer the prospect of better interventions and treatments.

India has a strong tradition in the physical sciences and technology; recognising this complementary expertise, Cambridge researchers are working with colleagues in India to drive forward developments in solar energy, fuel cells and nanoscience. As an emerging economy, India has had to pioneer the art of frugal innovation, producing devices for a fraction of their cost in the West. As the UK and other advanced economies cope with austerity, India has much to teach the rest of the world about doing more with less. Here, the Centre for Indian and Global Business at the Cambridge Judge Business School leads the way in engaging with Indian companies and entrepreneurs, for mutual learning.

India faces significant environment and development challenges, for the provision of energy, water and food security to its people, and ensuring safe, sustainable and dignified livelihoods in the context of environmental and climatic changes. Research led by the Department of Geography, and in the ̽��ֱ��’s Strategic Research Initiatives on Biodiversity Conservation, Energy and Global Food Security, is providing insights into ways in which policies can be implemented across this difficult nexus, and is engaging with state and national level government agencies and research institutions in India to explore solutions.

̽��ֱ��British government has recently expressed its wish for the UK to be India’s ‘partner of choice’ in the 21st century, building on the shared history between the two nations. Partnerships in research and education are leading the way in forging this contemporary alliance.

To strengthen the established UK–India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI), where Cambridge academics have had notable success, in 2014 the two governments launched the Newton–Bhabha Fund (named after two great scientists, one English, one Indian, both educated at Cambridge). Cambridge research teams are at the forefront of the collaborations being supported by this new scheme.

While science and technology dominate the inter-governmental research agenda, Cambridge has rich traditions of scholarship in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and wishes to deepen its partnership with India in these fields. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Centre of South Asian Studies; within the Centre and across the ̽��ֱ��, scholars are working on all aspects of Indian history, society and culture, from democracy and migration to religion and identity. Cambridge has an unrivalled opportunity, and a major responsibility, to work with Indian colleagues to demonstrate the importance of the humanities and social sciences at the heart of scholarly enquiry and of the ‘grand challenges’ agenda.

Looking to the future, the partnership between Cambridge and India is being progressively strengthened, by enhancing existing collaborations and launching new ones. There are exciting prospects for a major UK–India initiative in crop science, with Cambridge as a core partner through its Global Food Security Strategic Research Initiative; while the role of education in the development of India and the global South is the focus of a new centre for international education, based in the Faculty of Education.

New models, too, are being developed to strengthen the India–Cambridge partnership. ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� has created five new postdoctoral fellowships, jointly funded by the Government of India’s Department of Biotechnology, which will enable early career researchers to work on collaborative research projects between Cambridge and partner institutions in India; each fellow will spend 60% of their time based in India. ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� is establishing a wholly owned, not-for-profit subsidiary in India, which will make it easier for Indian businesses, institutional and individual funders to support the growing volume of joint activity in India.

Cambridge’s engagement with India has evolved from scholars working on India to scholars working with, and increasingly, in India – on shared priorities, to mutual advantage. For the ̽��ֱ��, the commitment ‘to contribute to society’ carries a global responsibility. Partnership with India – the rising power of the 21st century – is both a demonstration and affirmation of that commitment.

Professor Joya Chatterji is Director of the Centre of South Asian Studies; Dr Toby Wilkinson is Head of the International Strategy Office; Dr Bhaskar Vira is Director of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute and a Reader in the Department of Geography

Cambridge’s engagement with India has evolved from scholars working on India to scholars working with, and increasingly, in India – on shared priorities, to mutual advantage. Joya Chatterji, Toby Wilkinson and Bhaskar Vira explain why this is, as we begin a month-long focus on some of our India-related research.

We cannot hope to address the major global challenges without an Indian perspective and Indian involvement

Joya Chatterji, Toby Wilkinson and Bhaskar Vira

Centre of South Asian Studies archive

Mid-19th-century map with a line linking Britain to India

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Yes

Cambridge gets REAL about overcoming obstacles to global education

pbh25 — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 13:32:58 +0000

A new centre that will focus on understanding the barriers to education among disadvantaged children, and on identifying solutions to overcome those barriers, was officially launched in Cambridge on Tuesday 16 June.

̽��ֱ��Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, based within the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education, aims to promote education as an engine for sustainable development, and to pioneer research into overcoming obstacles to education including poverty, gender, ethnicity, language and disability.

̽��ֱ��launch event at Corpus Christi College’s McCrum Lecture Theatre brought together speakers including Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia and current Chair of the Global Partnership for Education, and Dr Hans Brattskar, State Secretary of Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to discuss the subject of “Achieving social transformation through education”.

Welcoming the keynote speakers, the Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, said: “ ̽��ֱ��launch of the REAL centre is an opportunity to celebrate education, and girls’ education in particular, and to underline the importance of education as a key to social transformation.”

He reminded the audience that “the REAL centre builds on the Faculty of Education’s strong expertise in research of the highest quality that aims to address real problems and influence policy on the ground. It will focus on the challenges of the most marginalised –including girls from poor households, or those with disabilities—in the poorest countries, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.”

Addressing a packed auditorium, Julia Gillard spoke of the 121 million children of primary and lower-secondary school age who are not in school –at least 60 million of whom are girls. At current rates of enrolment, she said, it will be at least another century before the gap in learning outcomes is bridged between developed and developing countries. “Unsurprisingly,” she noted, “girls will get there last.”

̽��ֱ��benefits of all girls in developing countries being educated to secondary level would be immediate and long-lasting –a significant decrease in child marriages and a fall in child deaths being only two of the most obvious. “ ̽��ֱ��education of girls is transformative. It is a moral duty and also an economic imperative. Business as usual is nowhere near good enough. By not acting we fail the children and deny ourselves the best possible future.”

She called for “more research, more resources and more innovation” to ensure that all countries are committed to inclusive and equitable quality education. “It is a mammoth undertaking”, she said, before adding: “ ̽��ֱ��need for the REAL centre is pressing. It will make a difference in helping us to understand what works to make education more equitable. It will generate much light to educate every child, including every girl. ̽��ֱ��REAL centre will be one of real achievement.”

Speaking about Norway’s efforts to ensure global equality of education, ahead of the Oslo Summit for Education and Development in July, Dr Hans Brattskar said: “Equality of education means education for all, including children with disabilities. It also means ensuring education for the 36% of children currently living in areas of armed conflict or caught in humanitarian crises.” To provide equitable education “we have to ensure research is applied in a way that leads to concrete policy and learning”, he said. “REAL will be key to strengthening this evidence-base.”.

Professor Pauline Rose, director of the REAL, spoke about the new centre on a panel following the keynote presentations: “ ̽��ֱ��three words that describe REAL are rigour, partnership and impact. We have to deliver high-quality research that is accessible to policy-makers. We can’t do this on our own, and so partnerships are essential.”

She announced a new partnership with the Campaign for Female Education (Camfed), the Cambridge-based international non-profit organisation that aims to tackle poverty and inequality by supporting girls to go to school and develop leadership qualities across countries in sub-Saharan Africa. “It is difficult to find evidence for what works in education,” Professor Rose said. “Camfed’s work is an important exception. We look forward to working together with Camfed, drawing on their experience on the ground, and working together to provide a strong evidence-base on girls’ education.”

Sharing the panel with her was Camfed’s Chief Executive Officer, Lucy Lake, who remarked: “We have to be insistent on girls’ rights to education. That has to be our starting point. But we must go beyond and make explicit the link between girls’ education and economic opportunity. That’s where evidence-based research is essential.”

Also on the panel was Fiona Mavhinga, a founding member of the CAMA, the pan-African network of young women leaders for girls’ education supported by Camfed, who spoke movingly about her own experience of achieving education despite challenging circumstances. “I am sitting her today as a lawyer because of the support I got from Camfed. I was a seventeen-year old girl from a disadvantaged Zimbabwean family and they encouraged me to study law.”

Today, Ms Mavhinga supports young women engaging with government authorities to prevent gender-based violence and discrimination. ̽��ֱ��child-protection guidance she developed has been recognised as best practice and adopted by the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative.

Earlier in the day, Professor Rose, Julia Gillard and Fiona Mavhinga had joined the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, at the Mulberry School in London for the announcement of a new UK-US initiative to promote access to education for girls worldwide, in which REAL will be a partner alongside Camfed, the UK’s Department of International Development (DFID), USAID, and Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security.

̽��ֱ��Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre aims to promote education as an engine for sustainable development.

̽��ֱ��REAL centre builds on the Faculty of Education’s strong expertise in research of the highest quality that aims to address real problems and influence policy on the ground

Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz

DFID - UK

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Yes

‘Light skin’ gene mirrors socio-cultural boundaries in Indian population

fpjl2 — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 10:43:27 +0000

̽��ֱ��genetic mutation in SLC24A5 is known to be pivotal in the evolution of light skin, and is responsible for a significant part of the skin colour differences between Europeans and Africans.

Now, a new study has examined for the first time a large, uniform genetic sample collected directly in south India, and suggests that natural selection is not the sole factor in skin tone variation across the Indian sub-continent, and that cultural and linguistic traits still delineate this skin pigment genetic mutation.

̽��ֱ��results show that the gene is found with much higher frequency in Indo-European speaking groups that are more prevalent in the north-west of the country.

But the mutation is also high in populations groups known to have migrated north to south, such as the Saurashtrians, who - while native to Gujarat in north-west India - are now predominantly found in the Madurai district in its southernmost tip.

Researchers say that the study, published last week in the journal PLoS Genetics, shows that the genetic mutation in SLC24A5 has a common origin between Europeans and Indians.

But while the complete dominance of the gene in Europeans is likely to be solely down to natural selection, they say, the rich diversity of this genetic variant in India - high in some populations while non-existent in others, even neighbouring ones - has some correlation with factors of language, ancestral migration and distinct social practices such as limiting marriage partners to those with specific criteria.

̽��ֱ��researchers say the findings display an “intriguing interplay” between natural selection and the “unique history and structure” of populations inhabiting the Indian subcontinent.

“In India, this genetic variant doesn’t just follow a ‘classical’ theory of natural selection - that it’s lower in the south where darker skin protects against fiercer sunlight,” said study co-author Mircea Iliescu from Cambridge’s Biological Anthropology Division.

“ ̽��ֱ��distribution of the SLC24A5 genetic variant in India follows patterns very much influenced by population. Understanding the genetic architecture behind the remarkable skin colour variation found today in the populations of India has the potential to shed light on the wider mechanisms responsible for creating diversity throughout human evolution,” Iliescu said.

In the 1950s it was proposed that there was a massive wave of European migration into northern India a few thousand years ago, described as the ‘Aryan invasion’, which led to the collapse of the Harrapan Civilisation - a Bronze-Age Civilisation.

This theory, now considered widely discredited by many researchers due to the lack of archaeological evidence, is still a hugely debated issue in contemporary Indian politics - invoked by political parties in the southern states of India who claim that the southern populations, described by some as the ‘Dravidians’, are the truly indigenous people of India.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that, while speculative, they find it “hard to imagine” a large-scale population migration at a single point in history based on this study – since the presence of this genetic mutation is too widespread, with an average frequency of 53%, including the Austroasiatic language groups thought to have originated in southeast Asia.

They say the wide variation and complex pattern hints at the possibility of multiple “gene flows” into the sub-continent over a much longer period of time, some of which might be linked to the spread of agriculture; although the study does show higher frequencies of SLC24A5 in Indo-European speaking groups compared to so-called Dravidian populations.

̽��ֱ��researchers suggest that aspects of ‘social selection’, such as high levels of ‘endogamy’ - marriage within a particular group in accordance with custom - as a result of the caste system, has created a “mosaic pattern” for this skin pigmentation mutation across Indian populations.

“This study helps us to understand various other mechanisms that could have contributed or shaped the existing biological spectrum of human skin colour besides natural selection - driven by ultraviolet rays - and further understanding of this complex phenotypic trait,” said Chandana Basu Mallick, a co-author on the study from the ̽��ֱ�� of Tartu in Estonia.

“We are taking gradual steps towards understanding the evolutionary history of this adaptive trait, and the journey of our ancestors from fur to the diverse skin tones of the present day.”

“Our work addresses human diversity, diversity which should be celebrated,” added Iliescu. “It tries to explain the origins and history of this diversity - opening up a window into a different kind of history, not just a history of places and objects, but a living history which helps us to better understand ourselves.”

“Studies on Indian populations have been under-represented in the genomic era, and the understanding of Indian genetics is still at a very early stage. With this study, we hope we’ve brought valuable new understanding to the evolutionary genetics of Indian populations.”

Latest research shows that the presence of the genetic mutation for lighter skin - found in “almost 100%” of Europeans - broadly conforms to many cultural and linguistic differences, as well as ancestral, in the wider Indian population.

In India, this genetic variant doesn’t just follow a ‘classical’ theory of natural selection

Mircea Iliescu

Prasanth Chandran

“Where you are going is more important than how fast you are going”

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Until lions write their own history…

amb94 — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 09:47:35 +0000

Through kimonos, wall hangings, mats, soft sculptures and paintings, artist Deanna Tyson tells her political tales and weaves her social comments through stitched and painted works.

“Textiles, their application, their colours, their very threads and stitches reveal a great deal about the social history of differing cultures,” says Tyson. “Like a spider, I hope to lure the spectator in through a pretty and frivolous web of threads towards a political punch. Many of the pieces employ African wax cloth, the lineage of which is steeped in meaning and metaphor, legacies of colonialism, trade routes and exploitation.”

̽��ֱ��exhibition space in the atrium of the Alison Richard Building (ARB) nestled among the Faculties of English, History, Divinity and Music is creating a reputation as one of Cambridge’s best-kept secrets, and a leading venue for contemporary international art.

Since the building’s opening last year, the ARB’s Public Art Committee has welcomed a series of exhibitions as part of its ‘ART at the ARB’ initiative, including installation, photography, ceramic and textile work. ̽��ֱ��bright open space of the building’s atrium, arranged over three floors, lends itself to large and colourful pieces and offers a flexible approach to displaying three-dimensional works.

̽��ֱ��ARB, home to the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) is not just an elegant space, but also has art running through its veins. Last year award-winning contemporary ceramicist Edmund de Waal embedded his porcelain works into the very ground on which the building stands for his piece, A Local History. ̽��ֱ��three glass-covered, underfoot cabinets, or vitrines, that contain his collections of ceramic fragments echo the meticulous work of archivists at the Centre of African Studies, the Centre of South Asian Studies and Centre of Latin American Studies. ̽��ֱ��thrill of walking over these unmarked cabinets for the first time is well worth a visit.

Deanna Tyson’s exhibition of textile work, ‘Until lions write their own history the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter’, will be open until 3 January 2014. Entry is free.

To find out more about ‘ART at the ARB’, and to propose a new exhibition, visit: https://arbart.crassh.cam.ac.uk/

An exhibition of contemporary textile art by Deanna Tyson has opened at the Alison Richard Building in response to the unique materials held there collected from all corners of the globe.

Deanna Tyson

Karnu Warrior

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Attribution

PsyWar during the Malayan Emergency

tdk25 — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 12:34:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��Malayan Emergency of 1948-1960 is widely regarded as having involved the most successful British counter-insurgency (COIN) campaign in history. Similarly, it also included one of the most successful British psychological warfare operations ever undertaken. This important aspect of the COIN campaign, however, has only been examined in a handful of studies – something which remains true more broadly of British psychological warfare efforts throughout the period of imperial decolonisation and the Cold War.

In this seminar paper (originally given on Friday, 22 February, 2013), Thomas J. Maguire provides an insight into how psychological warfare played an increasingly important part in the largest British counter-insurgency operation of the decolonisation era.

Psychological warfare was conceived as a potential “force multiplier” which would reinforce other counter-insurgency strategies and tactics employed against the communist Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA). It targeted the insurgents’ morale and sought to induce surrenders and defections, while creating dissent, division and instability in their ranks. It was, therefore, intended to both remove insurgents from the battlefield and hasten a greater supply of intelligence.

Maguire explains how, after a relatively ineffective start, the Federation Government psychological warfare strategy became more systematic and refined from about 1950 onwards, eventually playing an important part in the insurgents’ defeat. ̽��ֱ��talk shows how ‘psychological intelligence’ was collected, analysed and disseminated – in particular through the careful interrogation of surrendering enemy personnel. Using this intelligence, the Government information services constructed a number of influential propaganda themes and utilised a variety of techniques to disseminate finished productions, most notably by dropping over 400 million leaflets over the jungle during the course of the conflict.

̽��ֱ��paper also highlights the broader political and cultural context in which psychological operations took place, showing how they influenced British strategy and contributed to the Emergency’s outcome.

̽��ֱ��seminar is part of the regular Cambridge Intelligence Seminar organised through the Faculty of History and the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. It is chaired by Prof. Christopher Andrew (Corpus Christi), an expert in the international relations sub-field of intelligence and security studies. Prof. Andrew’s extensive list of publications include the recent and much-vaunted ̽��ֱ��Defence of the Realm: the Authorized History of MI5 (2009).

Thomas J. Maguire (Gonville & Caius) is a PhD candidate in POLIS. This paper forms part of a chapter on interrogation and psychological warfare in the forthcoming publication, Simona Tobia & Christopher Andrew (eds), Interrogation in War and Conflict. ̽��ֱ��principal focus of his research is British and American psychological warfare and counter-subversion in early Cold War Southeast Asia. His broader research interests lie within the fields of intelligence and security studies, psychological warfare, and the Cold War.

As part of the Intelligence seminars run by the Faculty of History, Thomas J. Maguire examines how psychological warfare contributed to Britain's counter-insurgency campaign in Malaya from 1948 to 1960.

Intelligence on kills would be supplied for follow-up operations publicising insurgent losses

Thomas Maguire

Credit: UK Department of Information.

Leaflet dropped on Malayan insurgents, urging them to come forward with a Bren gun and receive a $1,000 reward.

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