William Freivogel 
SIU Foundation 
Professor Rita Kothari of St. Xavier's College in Ahmedabad, India is a Fulbright Visiting Researcher with the Global Media Research Center specializing in translation studies. She will be at the Center from September 1st through November 27th 2006.
On Thursday, November 2nd, 2006, Professor Kothari will present "The Burden of Refuge: Hardening Identities After Partition" from 4:30-6:30 in Communications 1046. This is the last of three scheduled presentations she will give while in Carbondale. This is a free event and all are welcome.
The partition of India in 1947 into the two nation-states of India and Pakistan has been the most gruesome episode in the history of the subcontinent, and its ramifications continue to form identity politics and contemporary concerns even today. Kothari's talk is about a community that did not undergo physical violence during Partition, but which is grappling with (or rather denying) its forms of psychological and linguistic violence. Focusing (for the first time in Partition studies) on the Sindhis of India, Kothari argues that in its post-partition adjustment the atypical 'Hinduness' of the Sindhis (especially the amalgamation of Islam and Sikhism) gets redefined as mainstream Hinduism, sometimes teetering on fundamentalism. How and what are the prices Sindhis paid for assimilation into India after Partition is the central question in this talk.
In addition to teaching at St. Xavier's College, Professor Kothari also runs a translation research centre. She is an accomplished translator from Gujarati, having published six books in English translation. Kothari also writes extensively on translation studies, social history and communalism in Gujarat. Her most recent work is "The Burden of Refuge: The Sindhi Hindus of Gujarat" (forthcoming, Orient Longman), a study of the Sindhi community in Gujarat and how their post-partition adjustment has led to their shedding of a pluralistic and Sufi identity. Kothari is currently on an ICWT grant from University of California and is working on a collection of Partition stories by Sindhis in India and Pakistan.
For more information about this presentation, to get in contact with Prof. Kothari while she is here, or to borrow books written by her which are at the Center, please contact Laura Germann at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
or 618-453-6876.
