The Mittal Institute, Harvard University

Over 80% of Nepal's population identifies as Hindu — a religion that been practiced in the nation for hundreds of years. In this podcast, Axel Michaels from Heidelberg University gives a fascinating lecture on Hindu ritual in Nepal, entitled "The Meaning of the Meaninglessness of Rituals."

We sat down with Sneha Shrestha, Arts Program Manager at the Mittal Institute, to learn more about the meaning behind her Nepali-inspired work, the most exciting art piece she's ever worked on, and the Visiting Artist Fellowship, which brings artists from South Asia to the Mittal Institute to perform research and utilize Harvard's resources. The deadline to apply for the Fall 2019 and Spring 2020...

Devaki Jain is an Indian economist and writer, whose long and distinguished career has been dedicated to the economic empowerment of women. Here, introduced by Harvard Professors Tarun Khanna and Diana Eck, Devaki Jain delivers the 2018/19 Mahindra Lecture, an annual event in honor of the late Harish C. Mahindra, a distinguished alumnus of Harvard College and a visionary leader of business and ind...

Pakistani musician and author Ali Sethi, AB '06, returned to Harvard to talk to his longtime friend and mentor Ali Asani, Professor of Indo-Muslim Religion and Cultures, about sufi poetry, his own artistic journey and life as a perpetual student of the arts, and his days as a Harvard undergraduate.

In the last episode, we heard a rousing talk by UC Berkeley's Professor Ashok Gadgil, from the Mittal Institute’s annual symposium in May, 2018. Here’s the subsequent, fascinating conversation between Professor Gadgil, Professor Tarun Khanna (Director, The Mittal Institute; Harvard Business School)and Professor Asim Khwaja (Harvard Kennedy School) - they talk about how difficult it is to solve lar...

Professor Ashok Gadgil (UC Berkeley)was originally a theoretical physicist, but during his distinguished career he has had a huge impact on thousands of lives with inventions that supply clean water to the poorest people in South Asia. At our Annual Symposium in May 2018, he explained how he has moved from abstract theory to such impressive and important practice. Image credit: Lawrence Berkeley N...

In the developing world, 95% of people with a clinically significant mental illness receive no treatment at all, and it costs the global economy an estimated trillion dollars a year. Vikram Patel is a distinguished Indian psychiatrist and The Pershing Square Professor of Global Health at Harvard Medical School. The Mittal Institute's Hasit Shah caught up with him a few days before our 2018 Symposi...

Dr Emmerich Davies is a political scientist who has a long-term academic interest in India. He is now based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and with funding from SAI, he's studying the current New delhi government’s attempts to reform education in the city.

Harvard doctoral student Cresa Pugh has devoted much of her academic career to understanding Myanmar’s complex, unstable social dynamics, and has personally witnessed the destruction and impacts of the recent violence in Rakhine, home of the Rohingya.

Extracts from a talk given by prominent Indian student activist Shehla Rashid Shora at Harvard last Fall, followed by the fascinating perspectives of three Harvard College freshmen, also from India.

Sugata Bose is the Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard University. He’s also a member of India’s Parliament. On behalf of SAI, he’s speaking at the Dhaka Art Summit, a huge South Asian cultural event that takes place from Feb 2-10.

There aren’t many people who combine two distinct careers, both at the very highest level. But Rahul Mehrotra manages to runs a successful architecture firm in India and is also senior faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In this episode, the first in our series of short interviews with South Asia-focused Harvard faculty, Professor Mehrotra talks about an exhibition of his architectur...

For this latest podcast, we dip into a fascinating conversation between three of the faculty who are leading Harvard's research into Partition.

Arun Jaitley, India’s Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, delivers the annual Mahindra Lecture for 2017/18, in honor of the late Harish C. Mahindra, a distinguished alumnus of Harvard College and a major industrialist in India.

On the 70th anniversary of the Partition of British India, here is the final podcast in our special series. Here is Part II of DR Martha Chen's extraordinary story - she was a child in India in 1947 but as an adult, she also happened to be based in the city of Dhaka as it became the capital of Bangladesh, following South Asia’s second Partition in 1971.

In Part 1 of her extraordinary and unusual story, the Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Martha Chen - who was in India in 1947 and later, witnessed the creation of Bangladesh from Dhaka in 1971 - explains her family’s deep and continuing connections to South Asia and reads from letters written by her grandmother in the months leading up to Partition.

In part 2 of Dr Lucy Chester’s compelling lecture about cartography and conflict, we hear about the Radcliffe Boundary Commission's deeply politicised role in drafting the map of India and Pakistan - 70 years later, the border remains an unresolved issue and source of violent tension.

We hear from Lucy Chester, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at the University of Colorado and the author of 'Borders and Conflict in South Asia'. Here's the first part of her fascinating lecture from Spring, 2017.

Nearly 70 years ago, British India was partitioned along mostly religious lines - Muslims in the newly-created East and West Pakistan; Hindus, Sikhs and others in what remained of India. But, of course, it was never that simple. Here, Professor Ali Asani talks about the distinctiveness of South Asian Islam and the way in which political narratives emerged in the period leading up to Partition.

Tens of thousands of women were abducted, raped and killed during Partition. Catherine Warner, who is a College Fellow in the Department of South Asian Studies and the Department of History at Harvard, talks about what happened to many of them during - and long after - the intense violence they experienced.

Jennifer Leaning is the François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. In this extract, Professor Leaning talks about the violence that erupted during the traumatic migration caused by Partition.

Sunil Amrith is the Mehra family professor of South Asian Studies at Harvard.