CANCELLED: South Asian Perspectives on the War in Ukraine

Update, Sept. 19: This event has been cancelled.

In a conversation with Dr. C. Christine Fair, David Devadas will unpack the nuanced positions that South Asian countries like India and Pakistan have adopted on the war in Ukraine, giving a South Asian perspective on geopolitical factors that shaped those responses.

He will describe how the US exit from Afghanistan unsettled Asia’s geopolitical balance, freeing strategic space for Iran, Russia, and China. He will focus on threat perceptions arising from this in Central and South Asia, and problematize the issue of sovereignty in light of the experience of that region. Finally, he will describe factors ranging from debt crises to regional war clouds that color South Asian perspectives on the war in Europe.

About the Speaker

David Devadas has written three books on Kashmir and has been described by Oxford University Press as an authority on the subject. Living with families in rural, urban, and suburban Kashmir for long periods over the past quarter-century, Devadas has objectively revealed new facts about the region, and his predictions have proved consistently accurate.

Devadas has presented critically acclaimed papers at international conferences at the University of Heidelberg, Zurich University, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, and been published in a peer-reviewed journal of Humboldt University in Berlin.

He wrote a fortnightly column on Security Matters for Newslaundry in 2020, and has been published in India Today, Indian Express, Business Standard, The Tribune, Gulf News, Firstpost, The Wire, Quint, Rediff.com, The New Indian, Scroll, The Hindustan Times, and The Economic Times.

A Distinguished Fellow of the Institute for Social Sciences, he has been a Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, a Visiting Professor at Jamia Millia Islamia, and Writer in Residence at St Stephen’s College and the Sanskriti Foundation.