Day 1 3^rd April

Concurrent Sessions

A. ( Auditorium 1)

B. ( Lecture Hall 1 )

C. ( Lecture Hall 3 )

D. ( Committee Hall )

8.45 a.m.-9.30 a.m.

Registration

9.30 a.m.-11.15 a.m.

“Authoritarian Politics in S. Asia, 1^st panel: The Question of Fascism”

Chair: Mukul Mangalik

Dilip Simeon, ‘Understanding Indian fascism’; 

Subhash Gatade, ‘Communal fascism in action’;

Jairus Banaji, ‘Arthur Rosenberg’s essay Fascism as a Mass Movement and its relevance to us in India’

“Love and Oppression: Socialist/Feminist p rspectives”

Chair: Mary John

Trina Banerjee, ‘Utpal Dutt: labour, revolutionary organization and the  question of “love”’;

Albeena Shakil, ‘“Honour” killings in contemporary rural and urban India’;

Rohini Raman, ‘Resisting violence against choice marriages: Will it establish an alternate family in India?’  

Coffee break

11.30 a.m.-1.15 p.m.

“Marxist Philosophy: ontology, dialectics, materialism”

Chair: Alberto Toscano

Giovanni Zanotti, ‘Dialectics, materialism and objectivity: On Adorno’s Marxism’;

Rory Dufficy, ‘“It Is Not”: Guy Debord & the materialist avant-garde’ ;

Maria Escurra & Mario Duayer, ‘Lukacs’ ontology & the restoration of the ontological critique in Marx’

“The Other Crisis: Capitalism as a Logic of Destruction”

Chair: Praful Bidwai

John Neelsen,‘Systemic self-destruction: Late capitalism’s war against man and nature’;

Vidyadhar Date, ‘Human mobility in a Marxist perspective: capitalism & the traffic jam’;

Ananth Aiyer, ‘“Water is life”: Marx, “nature” and responses to the environmental crisis’

“Ten Years After the Genocide: Lessons from Gujarat”

(Session organised by Communalism Combat)

Chair: Manoj Mitta 

Teesta Setalvad &

Harsh Mander

“Plebeian History/Labour History: Reframing Working-Class Histories in India”

(Session organised by the the Association of Indian Labour Historians (AILH))

Chair: Jan Breman

Chitra Joshi, ‘Charting the terrain: New frontiers of labour history in India’;

Dilip Simeon, ‘Politics in the mirror of labour history’;

Prabhu Mohapatra, ‘The centre and the margin: The shifting focus of labour history’

Lunch

2.00 p.m.-3.45 p.m.

Book Launch

Vivek Chibber’s “Postcolonial Theory & the Specter of Capital”

Chair:  Vijay Prashad

Vivek Chibber;

Achin Vanaik;

Kamal Chenoy;

“Red & Green: An Integration of Perspectives?”

Chair: Praful Bidwai

Daniel Taghioff, ‘Red & Green: An integration of perspectives’;

Pritam Singh, ‘An Eco-socialist perspective on the global crisis’;

Ishay Landa, ‘Prometheus Insulted: A re-examination of Red-Green politics’

“The National Question Revisited”

Chair: Subhash Gatade

Tanveer Fazal, ‘Conflict resolution through “Ethnic Homelands”: Lessons from Bodoland’;

Nirmala Rajasingam, ‘Revisiting national self-determination: Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka’;

Nagesh Rao, ‘In defence of Azaadi: Kashmiri self-determination as a lever of Left renewal’

“Radical Counter-cultures: Sufism, Queer Dissent, Music”

Chair: Brinda Bose

Amen Jaffer, ‘Subaltern Sufism’;

Tara Atluri, ‘Marxism’s a drag: Hijras, performance and embodied solidarities of dissent’;

Sumangala Damodaran, ‘The Radical Impulse: Explorations between music & politics’

Tea break

4.00 p.m.-5.45 p.m.

“Nationalisms & the Nation State”

Chair: Nagesh Rao

Gilbert Achcar, ‘The dialectics of Arab & Palestinian collective consciousness’;

Ahilan Kadirgamar, ‘Rethinking the “National Question” in Sri Lanka’; Satya Sivaraman, ‘Reimagining the nation-state in South Asia’

“Communist Histories (A LeftWord Books Panel)”

Chair: Sudhanva Deshpande 

Vijay Prashad (discussant);

Elisabeth Armstrong, ‘Communist internationalism & the anti-imperialist women’s movement in Asia’;

Suchetana Chattopadhyay, ‘The myth of the outsider: colonial surveillance, racial stereotyping & early Communism in colonial Calcutta’;

Archana Prasad, ‘Autobiographies of Communist-led struggles: Godavari Parulekar, Sundarayya and Abini Lahiri’s construction of agrarian struggles, 1940–1955’

“The Dynamics of Global Capitalism Today”

Chair: C P. Chandrashekhar

Tom Bramble, ‘China, the US and Rising Imperialist Competition in the Asia-Pacific Region’;

Thomas Barnes, ‘Can uneven and combined development explain global capitalism?’;

Wendy Matsumura, ‘Post-war agrarian land reform, the “symbolic” emperor system and the case of Okinawa’

“New Perspectives on Marxian Theories of Crisis and Wages”

Chair: Gautam Mody

6.15 p.m.-8.15 p.m.

Plenary on “The Arab Uprising & its Aftermath”

Chair: Kamal Chenoy;  Gilbert Achcar and Marieme Helie Lucas

Day 2

 4^th April

A. ( Auditorium 1)

B. ( Lecture Hall 1 )

C. ( Lecture Hall 3 )

D. ( Committee Hall )

8.45 a.m.-9.30 a.m.

Further Registration

9.30 a.m.-11.15 a.m.

“Caste and Class: Identities and Struggle”

Chair: Prabhu Mohapatra

Ravi Vaitheespara, ‘Beyond identity politics: the Left and the politics of caste and language in South India’;

G. Chandraiah, ‘The debate on caste-class praxis: Dalits and Communists in Andhra Pradesh’

Anand Teltumbde, ‘The political economy of caste in contemporary times’

“Working-Class Radicalism in the Contemporary World: Decline or Resurgence?”

Chair: Gautam Mody

Ezgi Pinar, ‘What to see in the Tekel workers’ resistance?’;

N. Vasudevan, ‘New unionism in India: Learning Lessons from History’;

Maruti Sukuzi Workers’ Union, ‘The struggle for an independent union at the Maruti plants’

“Urban and Rural Dispossession and the Struggle for Land”

Chair: Usman Javed;

P.K.Anand, ‘Illegal land acquisitions & forced evictions in China’  

Javed Iqbal, ‘Accumulation by dispossession: from Bastar to the streets of Bombay’

 “Bolshevik Models: the Party and the International”

Chair: Feyzi Ismail

Martyn Hudson, ‘Rethinking the Congress of the Peoples of the East’;

Soma Marik,‘Rosa Luxemburg and the party: past debates & present-day lessons’;

Dhruv Jain,‘From Althusser to Badiou: an aleatory account of the party’

Coffee break

11.30 a.m.-1.15 p.m.

“The Crisis of the Indian Left”

Chair: Kamal Chenoy

Ishwar Singh Dost, ‘Rituals, rhetoric and obsessions of the Indian Left’;

Kumar Rana, ‘The Left in Bihar and Bengal’;

Apoorvanand, ‘Violence and revolution’

“Postcolonial Theory”

Chair: A.K. Ramakrishnan

Pranav Jani, ‘The materialist turn: Marxism & new directions in postcolonial studies’;

Nivedita Majumdar, ‘What’s left of postcolonial theory?’;

Aruna Krishnamurthy, ‘Literary modernism in the era of the progressive writers’

“Within & Against the Global University”

Chair: Dhruv Jain

Stefano Harney, ‘Liberal management education: just liberalism?’;

Amitabh Rai, ‘Study as event, threshold & everyday practice; or why the global university has no time for study’

“The New Capitalist Reality of Adivasi Lives”

Chair: M.J.Pandey
Jan Breman, ‘The proletarianisation of adivasi identity’;
Javed Iqbal, 'The new Thekedaar class: beyond the romanticism of the Adivasi'

Lunch

2.00 p.m.-3.45 p.m.

“Whither Nepal’s Revolution? Capitalist Development or a New Movement against Capitalism?”

Chair: Manoranjan Mohanty

Saroj Giri, ‘The soft power of “bourgeois democracy”: Maoists in Nepal’;

Feyzi Ismail, ‘A revolution half-made: Mainstreaming the Nepali Maoists’;

“The Global Economic Crisis & the Response of the Global South”

Chair: Mritiunjoy Mohanty;

Sushil Khanna, ‘The global financial crisis: the view from the South’;

 Chirashree Dasgupta, ‘The response of the Indian bourgeoisie to the global economic crisis’

“What is to be Undone? On Political Art in India”

Chair: Amar Kanwar

Prasanta Chakravarty, ‘Poesis and politics: the materialist sense of Binoy Majumdar’;

Moinak Biswas, ‘The political film in crisis: Is there a future for the alternative?’;

Rajarshi Dasgupta, ‘A taste for haunting: Two ways of looking at political art’

“Revolutionary Thinkers: Tagore, Ambedkar & Alvaro Cunhal”

Chair: Anand Teltumbde

Himani Banerjee, ‘Marx, Tagore & the problem of alienation’;

João Arsénio Nunes, ‘The revolutionary thought of Alvaro Cunhal’;

Nachiket Kulkarni, ‘Ethical aspects of the socialist project in India: Dr Ambedkar’s interpretation of Buddha Dhamma’

Tea break

4.00 p.m.-5.45 p.m.

“State, Censorship and Sedition: Curbs on freedom of expression in India”

Chair: Geeta Seshu 

Seema Azad, ‘Sedition & the right to dissent’;

Sukumar Muralidharan, ‘The right to publish: Impunity, offence and the limitations of free speech’;

Shivam Vij, ‘Internet censorship in India: We don’t even know what we don’t know’

“The Making of Property: Techniques of Ownership/Inscribing Property”

Chair: Anil Chaudhary

Brenna Bhandar, ‘Property, race, repetition’;

Dwijen Rangnekar, ‘Simplifying geographical indications: an audit account’;

Rajshree Chandra, ‘Rethinking ownership of biological property’

“Crisis and Change in Higher Education: Universities under Current Capitalism”

(Session organised by New Socialist Intiative)

Chair: Naveen Chander

Mukul Mangalik, ‘Delhi University under siege, or why everything is at stake’;

Sanjay Kumar, ‘Death of the university: The education industry under neoliberalism’;

Satish Deshpande, ‘Credential capital and the Indian university in the 21^st century’

“Authoritarian Politics in S.Asia, 2^nd panel: Communal Notions of Nationhood’

Chair: Dilip Simeon

Javed Anand, ‘The Muslim Right in India and Pakistan’;

B. Skanthakumar, ‘Authoritarianism and militarism in postwar Sri Lanka’;

6.15 –8.15 p.m.

Plenary on “The Global Crisis, Austerity and Responses from the Left”

Chair: Himani Banerjee; Lutz Achenbach; Gautam Mody; Praful Bidwai

9.30 p.m

Film Screening in Auditorium 1

Moinak Biswas & Arjun Gourisaria, Sthaniya Sambaad

(Spring in the Colony) (2009)

Day Three 

5^th April

A. ( Auditorium 1)

B. ( Lecture Hall 1 )

C. ( Lecture Hall 3 )

D. ( Committee Hall )

9.30 a.m.-11.15 a.m.

 “Hazare, Ramdev & the Anti-corruption Mass Mobilisations”

Chair: Kamal Chenoy

Apoorvanand, ‘Reading Ur-fascism in our times’; 

Ishwar Singh Dost, ‘New urban activism, civil society and the state in India’;

Aditi Agrawal, ‘Mass mobilisation strategies: The common strand between Gandhi and Gramsci’

“Capitalism & Marginalised Forms of  Labour”

Chair: Meena Gopal

Apoorva Kaiwar & Sujata Gothoskar, ‘Who Says We Don’t Work?’;

Meera Velayudhan, ‘Craft labour and contending development dialogues in Kutch’;

Leena Kumarappan, ‘Rights of migrant workers: Exploring illegal/irregular/undocumented migration’

“A Revolutionary Marxist Party & Programme for the 21^st Century: For a S.Asian & Internationalist Perspective”

Chair: Soma Marik

Kunal Chattopadhyay, ‘The legacy of Popular Frontism & Indian Left politics’;

Bodhisatwa Ray, ‘The Leninist Party today’;

Rohit Prajapati, ‘Environment & climate change as class struggle issues’

“Neo-Liberalism, the Mass Media and the Reshaping of Urban Space”

Chair: Bharat Bhushan 

M. J. Pandey, ‘The Indian mass media & capitalist control: notes on ownership, content & profitability’;

Asefeh Esfahlani, ‘Farsi neoliberal media and the illusion of radicalism’;

Saayan Chattopadhyay, ‘Lifestyle journalism and the economy of desire in India’;

Harini Narayanan, ‘Sites of middle-class retreat: the vacuum-sealed worlds of India’s new shopping malls’
 

Coffee break

11.30 a.m.-1.15 p.m.

“The Communist Intellectual: Lessons from some Italian Debates”

Chair: Jairus Banaji

Alberto Toscano, ‘In & against workerism: Franco Fortini on industry, poetics & the “third world”’;

Andreas Merkens, ‘Who educates the educator? Counterhegemony, political education and pedagogy in Antonio Gramsci’;

“Work, Workers and Unions in India Today”

Chair: Gautam Mody 

Vaskar Nandy, ‘Caste & ethnicity in tea plantations in Northeast India ’;

Saumyajit Bhattacharya, ‘Is labour still a relevant category for praxis? Some contemporary discourses on work & labour in capitalism’;

Mohan Mani, ‘The global supply chain & the labour process’

“The Arab Uprising & its Background”

Chair Gilbert Achcar

Jeff Goodwin, ‘How kings survived the Arab Spring’;

Raza Naeem, ‘Arab Jacobins? Rebirth of hope in Arabia Felix’;

Marieme Helie-Lucas, ‘New forms of resistance of youth and women in Tunisia and Egypt’

“The Left in India: Feminism, Memory & Social Determination”

Chair: Rohini Hensman

Vahida Nainar, ‘Feminisms and the Indian Left’;

Nalini Taneja,‘Erasure of Left memory and the idea of India’;

Aaron Schneider, ‘Determinants of Left politics in Brazil and India’

Lunch

2.00 p.m.-3.45 p.m.

“Rural Impoverishment, Displacement and Political Responses”

(Session organised by New Socialist Intiative)

Chair: Ramesh Dadhich

Manoranjan Mohanty, ‘Resistance in contemporary India: Insights from land struggles’; 

Sudha Vasan, ‘Chained to Development’s cross: Livelihood crises and displacement in India’; 

Jaya Mehta, ‘The feminine face of Indian agriculture’

Chair: Tara Atluri

Shankar Ramaswami, ‘Chakravyuh: accumulation anxieties, discord and intimacy in proletarian Delhi’;

Brinda Bose, ‘Queer matriarchies: hijra intimacies and inheritances’; 

Sanjay Srivastava, ‘Sudden selves: “Personality development”, tupperware and the ‘chain of confidence’

“Communalism & the Struggle Against It”

Chair: Javed Anand

Manisha Sethi, ‘Anatomy of the terrorism trials’;

Ram Puniyani, ‘The struggle against communalism: experiences of an activist’;

Bhumika Rajan, ‘Cultures of fascism: the story of a coastal town in Karnataka’

Tea break

4.00 p.m.-5.45 p.m.

“Socialism & Anarchism in the 21st Century”

Chair: Alberto Toscano

Jean Dreze, ‘Anarchist thought and the future of the Left’;

Subhanil Chowdhury & Srinivasan Ramani, ‘Towards 21^st century socialism in India: a perspective’

Rohini Hensman, ‘Reimagining socialist revolution’;

“The State, Militarism, Class Formation and Gender”

Chair:  Elisabeth Armstrong

Axel Gehring, ‘Military guardianship under pressure? Analyzing leftist interpretations of class formation & state genesis in Turkey since the 1980 military coup’;

Sartaj Khan, ‘The role of remittances in the rise of the middle classes & its implications for war & violence in Pashtun society’;

Savita Singh, ‘Indispensability of peace: issues of gender and militarism’

“Capital Accumulation & Informal Labour: Studies from India”

Chair: Lucia Pradella

Meena Gopal, ‘Political economy of the beedi industry in South Tamilnadu’;

Matilde Adduci, ‘Neoliberal politics in the mining sector and labour in Orissa’;

Rahul Menon, ‘Reconceptualising the reserve army of labour’

6.15–8.15 p.m.

Plenary on “Should Democracy and Human Rights Matter to Socialists?”

Chair: Dilip Simeon; Nirmala Rajasingam; Vrinda Grover; Arundhati Roy