Third South Asian Border Studies Conference
Third South Asian Border Studies Conference
DAY-2, 18 th April 2023
Day two (18 th April) of the Third South Asian Border Studies Conference,
organized by MMV, BHU in collaboration with SAU & jointly sponsored by
ICSSR, SRICC, IESB- BHU, and BIG was successfully conducted at the Seminar
Complex, Institute of Science, BHU, Varanasi. Technical sessions for the day
began at 9 A.M., in total there were about three technical sessions parallelly
conducted in four different halls of the seminar complex to cover around 67
presentations by the participants in both offline & online modes. Immediately after
the first technical session, the second plenary session of the conference was
conducted on the topic ‘Reimagining India’s Internal Boundaries’. The chair for
the session, Dr. Paul Fryer (University of Eastern, Finland) had a discussion with
the esteemed speaker for the session, retd. IAS Mr. Sanjeev Chopra (former
director, LBSNAA).
Sir began by taking ideas from his book titled ‘We the People of the States of
Bharat — The Making and Remaking of India's Internal Boundaries’ to speak on
how the National boundaries of India came into existence and evolved, how China
entered India’s cartographic imaginations and how Tibet disappeared and re-
emerged, by analyzing a number of maps issued by both British India and
Independent India. And then how provinces were reorganized on the basis of
language, ethnicity, etc. from union territories to state over the period of years
from 1954 to 2014 & influences of politics on this reorganization. Following
technical session three for the day, the chair Dr. Seema Tiwari, MMV, for the book
discussion session on the book titled ‘Nakshanama’, had a discussion with the
author Dr. Sarfaraz Alam, BHU.
To conclude all sessions for day-2 of the conference, the convener, Dr. Vaishali
Raghuvanshi presented the conference report, followed by the presentation of the
Lifetime Achievement Award to Prof. Paula Banerjee for her exceptional
contribution to the discipline of border studies.
