Bulletin

Issue: November/December 2005

The International Dimension

LIISA: new focus on India and South Asia

La Trobe University's new Institute for India and South Asia (LIISA) was launched late in October by the High Commissioner for India, Mr P. P. Shukla.

Highlighting the significance of growing economic ties between Australia and India, Mr Shukla stressed that co-operation in intellectual endeavour was also very important.

'La Trobe University has done some great pioneering work in this field, and it is a pleasure to join you in your efforts to try and help achieve what we have set as a common goal.'

Mr Shukla said since the end of the cold war, India has been looking further eastward, without diluting its relations with Europe and the USA. As a result, relations with Australia had developed more 'texture and depth' and, in that context, the La Trobe Institute was a 'wonderful and welcome initiative'.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research, Professor Brian Stoddart, said the Institute brings together long-standing efforts in studies of India and its neighbours. It will also initiate and support new programs to deepen La Trobe University's connections with the region. To help achieve this, an 18 member La Trobe delegation visited India late last year.

La Trobe University has researched and taught about India and South Asia since the late 1960s with regular academic exchanges. Its library today holds one of Australia's finest collections dealing with the region.

Professor of Politics, Robin Jeffrey, who helped develop the field at La Trobe, and who serves as Interim Director of the new Institute, said one of the earliest distinguished visitors to the University was former Indian Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi in 1968.

'Since then, hundreds of students have studied in these areas and La Trobe researchers have written scores of books and papers about India and South Asia.'

He said fields of studies range widely, from India's media industries and Hindi language-teaching, to research into the classical Sanskrit Ganesh Purana, a text containing myths about the popular elephant-headed god, Ganesh, that have never been translated into a European language.

Other LIISA activities include a University exchange agreement with Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi (named the best college in India in 2005 by India Today magazine), the Martell-DK essay Prize, and a project digitising for the world-wide-web rare 19th century Indian reports and documents influential in the formation of nation, state and culture during the colonial period.

As part of the inauguration, University of Chicago's Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty spoke on The Legacies of Bandung: Decolonisation and the Politics of Culture.

The largest Indian feature film shot in Australia, Salaam Namaste, starring Preity Zinta and Saif Ali Khan, was partly filmed on l ocation at La Trobe University's main Melbourne campus at Bundoora earlier this year.

One of India's top box office successes, the film is helping promote the State of Victoria, and La Trobe University, to an estimated Indian audience of 300 million.

See also: La Trobe role in global Sanskrit program.