Papers by rashmi doraiswamy
MGIMO Review of International Relations
The article examines the cultural relationships between Russia and India, which have existed for ... more The article examines the cultural relationships between Russia and India, which have existed for several centuries, and their impact on the development of political relations between the two countries, particularly in the twentieth century. Culture has played an important role in the multi-layered bilateral relations between India and the Soviet Union. However, with the fall of the Soviet Union and geopolitical reorientations, Russia had to focus on rebuilding its economy before engaging with soft power. Similarly, India liberalized its economy in the 1990s and adapted to changing political equations in the international order.Soft power, as defined by Joseph Nye, includes cultural resources, political values, and foreign policies that can be used to influence others. This article examines all three aspects of soft power and notes that Russia and India have channelized their cultural resources into public diplomacy since the 2000s, setting up institutions and bodies to deal with it....
Economic and political weekly
Routledge eBooks, Jul 26, 2022
Routledge eBooks, Jul 26, 2022
This article deals with the literature of perestroika and focuses on the post-Soviet period. From... more This article deals with the literature of perestroika and focuses on the post-Soviet period. From the period of perestroika onwards, Russian literature, in its three avatars as official Soviet literature, dissident literature in the samizdat and Russian literature published abroad, came under the single category of ‘Russian Literature’. However, many diverse voices continue to exist in this now ‘unified ’ literary scenario. The article identifies major movements, themes, critical positions and styles in contemporary Russian literature. It analyses works by major contemporary writers and also examines critical voices in the contemporary literary scene. Sometimes the end of a century is also the end of the epoch. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist bloc in 1991 changed the political face of the world as it had been known for the better part of the last century. A large part of the Second World disappeared and the countries that now formed part of the Co...
Ideas and Ideals
This article examines religions in which the life of the spiritual leader is as important as the ... more This article examines religions in which the life of the spiritual leader is as important as the death, and where the narratives of death (and not just of life) enter the image cycles in art. The Buddha willed himself to die when he was eighty at Kushinagara. Buddhism is one of the rare world religions where there is a huge repertoire of mahaparinairvana images. Buddhism values the release from the cycle of rebirths and deaths. The sets and cycles of images that make up the representation of the death of the Buddha in sculpture and paintings in caves spread across Eurasia are described in detail. The death images are important spatially, materially and culturally. These images began to be made in Mathura, were perfected at Gandhara and travelled all the way across Central Asia to China and beyond. The relics left behind after cremation were enshrined in stupas. They represented a continuation of dharma, of the presence of the Buddha even after he had passed on. The article analyses ...
The distance was very specific: it was distinct from, for example, the gesture of critique of the... more The distance was very specific: it was distinct from, for example, the gesture of critique of the revolu tionary democrat Herzen, or that of Turgenev, equally at home and equally detached from the west and Russia. The latter's posture is echoed in his literary images, paradoxically fine and indistinct. Even Tolstoy, maintained an 'internal distance' of sorts within Russia, ensconced in the landed security of Yasnaya Polyana. For Dostoevsky there were no islands of financial or spatial security, as also no ideological moorings. Living abroad, Dostoevsky was fraught with an alienation born of his non-relation to the western ethos and milieu. Unlike the
India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs
Professor Vasudevan taught Russian and European history at Calcutta University, was Director of M... more Professor Vasudevan taught Russian and European history at Calcutta University, was Director of MAKAIAS (2007–2012), was UGC Emeritus Professor and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata. He was member of many committees set up by the Government of India and was Chairperson of the Textbook Development Committee for the Social Sciences at the NCERT. He had teaching assignments in many foreign universities, including Cornell, King’s College, Kiev, Uppsala and Dagon University. He was appointed as Professor in 2002/2003 in the newly set up Central Asian Studies unit at the Academy of Third World Studies (renamed in 2011 as the Academy of International Studies) in Jamia Millia Islamia. This Central Asia Studies unit was set up by Mr Shahid Mehdi (then Vice Chancellor, Jamia Millia Isalmia) and Prof Mushirul Hasan (then Director of the Academy). Prof Vasudevan was Director of the Academy from 2004–2005. He left Jamia Millia Islamia in 2005 and returned to Calcutta University, although he remained close to us at the Academy and came whenever invited to participate in the numerous conferences and workshops we organise.
Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genu ineness, but by the style in which... more Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genu ineness, but by the style in which they are imagined... .The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encom passing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elas tic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imag ines itself coterminous with mankind....It is imagined as sover eign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlighten ment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the di vinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm.... Finally, it's imag ined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.2
... explore the other. r International festivals, alas, still remain the main forum for cinephile... more ... explore the other. r International festivals, alas, still remain the main forum for cinephiles to view cinemas from other countries.'Ihe proliferation of festivals in ... The auteurs of die commercial cinema like Guru Dutt and Mani Ratnam from India had tributes paid to them ...
Contemporary Perspectives
Shyam Benegal, in his inaugural speech at the seminar, recalled the occasion when Nehru had addre... more Shyam Benegal, in his inaugural speech at the seminar, recalled the occasion when Nehru had addressed a youth festival, in which, surprisingly for a politician and Prime Minister, he had spoken of subliminal forms of communication which could be far more persuasive than didactic sermons. This speech of Nehru’s, made to a three thousand strong gathering of young people, had been so rousing that it had impelled Benegal into a career in advertising, and subsequently, filmmaking. KapilaVatsayan, referred to Nehru’s ‘excess ability’ as Prime Minister, recalling an incident when Nehru had personally instructed a group of young people at the airport on how to hold banners and greet the cavalcade which accompanied Zhou En Lai’s journey from the airport on a visit to India. Mridula Mukherjee argued that the new Centre should not study Nehru merely as a grand figure, isolated from the era of which he was a part. He was, according to her, the greatest figure after Gandhi and should be studied in active relationship with his contemporaries. T. K. Oomen also reiterated the need to situate Nehru critically in a larger historical context, since he had the advantage of the euphoria created by Independence. Kapila Vatsayan pointed out that it was necessary to write a history of India from the point of view of those who worked with Nehru. Rajen Harshe held that “few of Nehru’s contemporaries including Stalin, Mao, Sukarno, Nkrumah, Nasser and Khrushchev could match up to his stature in building and promoting Contemporary Perspectives Vol. 1, No. 1, January – June 2007, 155 – 170
... The news from the neighbour hood, the local happenings and celebrities, not big enough to hit... more ... The news from the neighbour hood, the local happenings and celebrities, not big enough to hit national or international headlines, can now make it to ... extended their roles of the loving, squabbling couple from the popular TV serial of the eighties, Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi, shown on ...
India International Centre Quarterly, 1996
... The news from the neighbour hood, the local happenings and celebrities, not big enough to hit... more ... The news from the neighbour hood, the local happenings and celebrities, not big enough to hit national or international headlines, can now make it to ... extended their roles of the loving, squabbling couple from the popular TV serial of the eighties, Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi, shown on ...
AMIC 7th Annual Conference: Asia's Information …, 1998
... explore the other. r International festivals, alas, still remain the main forum for cinephile... more ... explore the other. r International festivals, alas, still remain the main forum for cinephiles to view cinemas from other countries.'Ihe proliferation of festivals in ... The auteurs of die commercial cinema like Guru Dutt and Mani Ratnam from India had tributes paid to them ...
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Papers by rashmi doraiswamy