Australian Research on Asia by Region

SOUTH ASIA

Australian-based research on South Asia has been internationally noteworthy since the mid-1960s (the 1950s, if one notes the work of the geographer O. H. K. Spate) when the research of a group of scholars at the ANU began to be published. Soundings in Modern South Asian History, edited by Anthony Low, brought together the work of these scholars. Its publication in 1968 made a worldwide mark and led aspiring scholars with an interest in India to seek out Low and other members of the "Soundings" group with whom to do postgraduate study. Members of the "Soundings" group employed in Australian universities led the establishment of the South Asian Studies Association of Australia in 1970 and creation of the journal South Asia in 1972. Today, South Asia has grown to become an internationally refereed and circulated quarterly. For example, its three annual thematic special-issues from 2001-2003 contained 43 articles, 25 from overseas contributors (58%) and 18 from Australian-based scholars (42%).³

South Asianists began producing a monograph series in 1978, "Monographs on South Asia" from the ANU, and this was succeeded by the ASAA's "South Asian Publications Series" in 1985. Together, more than two dozen titles have been published in the past 25 years, most by Australian-based scholars of South Asia.

The "subaltern studies" collective, which has made an enormous impact on the study of history in the past 20 years, found its institutional base at the ANU in the 1980s, from where Ranajit Guha edited the first volume published in 1982. Members of the subaltern studies group, and their associates, now occupy chairs all over the world, though the history of South Asia is no longer a strong presence at the ANU.

At the beginning of the 1980s, there were eight chairs occupied by scholars of South Asia.⁴ In 2004, there are four such chairs. In 1989, 15 out of 19 universities researched and taught about India and South Asia; in 2004, five out 38 did.⁵

The fruits of this research have been seen in internationally used teaching books - Masselos' Indian Nationalism (1st published 1972 and many later editions from various publishers), the SASA collective's Rebellion to Republic (1st published 1990 by Stirling, New Delhi) and Robert W. Stern's Changing India (1st published 1993 by Cambridge UP).

Recent ARC-funded research activity relating to India takes place at Curtin, Adelaide, Flinders, La Trobe, Monash, Deakin, ANU, UNE and Sydney. Noteworthy projects include research on fisheries, banking and Hindu politics based at Curtin University, AIDS inquiry at Monash, economic analysis at ANU, colonial official publications and their implications, supported by an ARC LIEF grant, based at La Trobe, suicide at Adelaide and nutrition at Flinders.

Two recent appointments of research-active younger scholars indicate some renewal of faculty. Kate Brittlebank, appointed to History at the University of Tasmania, is the author of Tipu Sultan's Search for Legitimacy Islam and Kingship in a Hindu Domain (Oxford UP, 1998) and a number of journal articles on the 18th and 19th century imperial contact. Kama Maclean, appointed to History at UNSW in 2003, published "Making the colonial state work for you: the modern beginnings of the ancient Kumbh Mela in Allahabad" in the Journal of Asian Studies (vol. LXII, no. 3, August 2003). It is worth noting, to emphasize the breadth of Australian engagement, that a book entitled The Roots of Tantra is reviewed by Geoffrey Samuel of Newcastle University in the same number.

In spite of the fact that India in the past two or three years has attracted growing attention from economists, business and defence analysts, Australia's research capacity on South Asia, though remarkably vigorous given the small cadre of scholars, is small and has been contracting since the early 1990s. Moreover, except for history, there are fewer than half a dozen scholars of South Asian politics, society and economics still in salaried employment in Australia.

In terms of research planning, especially given the growing importance of South Asia, this suggests the need to renew and extend existing expertise and to make it more widely known and available. Exposure to the problems and potential of the region might be expected to stimulate the interest of other researchers, of potential postgraduate students and of professionals working in South Asia.

³ South Asia, vol. XXIV (2001) and XXV, nos 2 and 3 (2002).
⁴ D. P. Singhal at UQ, Ravinder Kumar at UNSW, A. L. Basham and Anthony Low at ANU, Robin Moore at Flinders, Marjorie Jacobs at Sydney, S. Arasaratnam at UNE and Peter Reeves at UWA. In addition, S. N. Ray held a readership and head the Department of Indian Studies at Melbourne.
⁵ Raghabendra Jha at ANU, Robin Jeffrey at La Trobe, John McGuire at Curtin and Marika Vicziany at Monash.