Feb 07 2025 to Feb 07 2025 6:30 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Crucial battles of World War II fought in India’s northeast; followed soon after by India’s Independence and Partition; had a critical impact on the making of modern Assam. In the three decades following 1947, the state of Assam underwent massive political turmoil, geographical instability, and social and demographic upheaval, among others. Later, the truncated state suffered widespread unrest as various groups believed their cultural identity and political leverage were under threat. New social energies and political forces were unleashed and came to the fore.

This session draws from Arupjyoti Saikia’s The Quest for Modern Assam: A History, 1942-2000 exploring the interconnected layers of political, environmental, economic, and cultural processes that shaped the development of Assam since the 1940s.  Arupjyoti Saikia will be in conversation with historian Anjum Hasan deliberating on the  questions which played a key role in the making of modern Assam and also that of the Republic of India.

A Q&A session with the audience will follow.
Speakers
Arupjyoti Saikia
Author

Arupjyoti Saikia teaches history in the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. Saikia is the author of The Quest for Modern Assam: A History, 1942 to 2000 (Penguin Random House, 2023); Forests and Ecological History of Assam, 1826-2000 (Oxford University Press, 2011); A Century of Protests: Peasant Politics in Assam since 1900 (Rutledge, 2014) and The Unquiet River: An Environmental History of the Brahmaputra (Oxford University Press, 2019). The Unquiet River was short-listed for the Kamala Devi Chattopadhayay Book Award in 2020, long listed for the Atta Galatta–Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize in 2020 and got ‘Honorable Mention’ for the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize in 2021 given by the Association of Asian Studies based in USA. Presently he is writing an economic history of Assam for the period 1947 to 2000 to be published by the Cambridge University Press.
Anjum Hasan
Author

Anjum Hasan’s latest novel is History’s Angel. She is the author of The Cosmopolitans, Neti, Neti: Not This, Not This, Lunatic in my Head, Difficult Pleasures, and a book of poems, Street on the Hill. She has been a Homi Bhabha Fellow, a Charles Wallace Writer-in-Residence and is currently a New India Foundation Fellow.