 | Professor Ranabir Samaddar (left) with CAPSTRANS researcher Dr Ruchir... Professor Ranabir Samaddar (left) with CAPSTRANS researcher Dr Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase. |
Leading Asian human rights scholar visits UOW
15 Jul 2008 | Kate McIlwain
One of Asia’s most important human rights experts recently visited the Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS) at UOW to present a paper on Terror, Law and the Colonial State.
Professor Ranabir Samaddar is a founder of the Calcutta Research Group and its journal, Refugee Watch. He was previously Professor of South Asia Studies, and subsequently the founder-Director of the Peace Studies Programme at the South Asia Forum for Human Rights, Kathmandu.
He visited Australia as the Distinguished South Asia Lecturer, sponsored by the Australia-India Council and CAPSTRANS.
His talk at UOW was presented to researchers and other staff from the Faculty of Law and Graduate School of Management. According to Dr Tim Scrase, Deputy Director of CAPSTRANS the talk focused on the relationship between terror and law and spoke specifically about the Indian colonial experience.
Dr Scrase said that Professor Sammadar’s talk showed that this relationship is not a simple question of relating violence to law, but goes to the very process of constitution making itself.
“[Professor Sammadar] focused on intelligence gathering in colonial India, and demonstrated how it occupies a key place in this relationship,” Dr Scrase said.
“Significantly, he made the key point that intelligence gathering has no mention in the constitutions of countries almost anywhere in the world, despite its key role today in defining the legality or “illegality” of citizens and their political actions.”
Professor Samaddar is known for his important studies on contemporary issues of justice, human rights, and popular democracy in the context of post-colonial nationalism as well as trans-border migration, community history, and technological restructuring in South Asia.
He has served on various commissions and study groups focussing on issues such as partitions, globalisation, patterns of forced displacement and the institutional practices of refugee care and protection in India. He regularly advises the United Nations Human Rights Commission on refugee issues in South Asia, and each year his centre holds international training workshops on human rights and migration.
Besides being the editor of three well-known volumes on issues of identity and rights in contemporary politics, Refugees and the State (2003), Space, Territory, and the State (2002), and Reflections on Partition in the East (1997), he is also the editor-in-chief of the South Asian Peace Studies Series. His latest publication is The Materiality of Politics (London, Anthem Press, 2007).
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