Sunday Onsite Presentation Session 3

Indian and South Asian Studies

Session Chair: Wing-Cheuk Chan

13:40-14:05

70805 | On the Sidelines: The Bystander in the 2002 Gujarat Riots

Suyesha Dutta, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, Canada

Communal violence informs post-independent India’s socio-political history in a way that master narratives surrounding any violent event focus mainly on perpetrators and victims. Then, how must one tackle the challenge of discerning microhistories from within these master narratives? I examine the role of bystanders as an analytical category to reconstruct the memory of communal riots in India. For this, I look to the 2002 Gujarat Riots as a case study as they represented collective forms of violence and victimization, and raised complex questions about the links between individual responsibility, collective behaviour, and state-sanctioned violence. The memory of political violence in India has been shaped by the people and groups who are at the helm and possess the power to establish the truth. With this hierarchical characterization of society and resulting national histories, I have utilized local and alternative testimonies that provide a lens to view human experiences ostensibly different from our own and create a historical understanding of violent political events as they have unfolded in India. As the research was mainly undertaken during the pandemic, much of my sources look at the testimonies presented in the Times of India, the Human Rights Watch Report on 2002 Gujarat, monthly journal Communalism Combat, and the book Gujarat Files by journalist Rana Ayyub. This paper aims to place the bystander in its geographical, historical, and to an extent its sociological setting, to understand bystander behaviour and their socio-historical role in the making of the 2002 Gujarat Riots.

14:05-14:30

70553 | Drinking Water Supply in Disadvantaged Areas in Bangladesh: Case Study of Salt-Affected Area in the Southwest Coast Region

Shota Yamada, Rikkyo University, Japan

Government and non-governmental organisations have been installing water supply facilities to solve the drinking water crisis in Bangladesh. However, the facilities are distributed unevenly. Therefore, this study examined the reasons of bias in water supply facility locations. Field surveys were conducted in 2023 in a village comprising four settlements (North, South, West and East) on the southwest coast of Shyamnagar Upazila; these settlements are facing saline intrusion into groundwater and surface water. The survey found that eight water supply facilities have been constructed in the village. Five facilities are located in South Settlement, which has the largest population and borders surrounding villages where there are schools, markets and crab farms (the main industry in the region), although one is under construction and four have been abandoned. North and East Settlements, which are situated along a river and frequently affected by floods, contain three facilities, two of which has been broken because of the cyclone in 2009. West Settlement, which has the fewest inhabitants and is also vulnerable to flooding, has never had a facility. This study suggests that the location and population of settlements and villages are significant factors in the establishment of water supply facilities and those in disadvantaged areas are often left without potable water. Therefore, this study concludes that a universal drinking water supply is required to ensure all people have access to clean drinking water, regardless of location.

14:30-14:55

70052 | In Search of Institutional Logics Behind the Management Practices of South Asia

Kumudinei Dissanayake, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka

Historical records claim that South Asian countries had a rich civilization, used advanced technologies (e.g., in irrigation systems, monument construction, etc.), and were self-sufficient with their-own practice-driven knowledge. In recent times, South Asian management practices have proven to be having multiple grounds, thus most of such practices claim a traditional route combined with the adoption or incorporation of Western-bound practices. The co-existence of rich cultural heritages and colonial influences have shaped the practices in the South Asian region. However, the clear ground routes of current organizational management practices in this region are yet to be uncovered. The present study aims to demonstrate the institutional logic behind the formation of contemporary management practices in South Asia. Drawing from the neo-institutional theory, and adopting the institutional logic perspective, this study explains the grounds on which the individual, organizational, and state-level institutions have been derived from both traditional (indigenous) as well as colonial institutional logic. Applying the document search as the method of data collection, and content analysis as the method of analysis, the study explores these logics in five selected South Asian countries, namely, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The results of this study present a conceptual model of the interactive institutional logic and resultant individual, organizational and state-level actors in the institutional environment.

14:55-15:20

68256 | Dharmakīrti’s Sahopalambhaniyama – A Phenomenological Interpretation

Wing-cheuk Chan, Brock University, Canada & Academia Sinica, Taiwan

In recent years, Dharmakīrti’s Sahopalambhaniyama has become a focus in the research on Buddhist epistemology. However, despite several scholarly investigations on this topic, its proper significance has remained in darkness. The goal of this paper is to clarify the true nature of Dharmakīrti’s sahopalambhaniyama. This involves two major tasks. First, to argue that Dharmakīrti’s sahopalambhaniyama is not a “logical” argument. In this context, it will start with a critique of the interpretations of Shiro Matsumoto, Takashi Iwata, Birgit Kellner, and John Taber. Secondly, to develop a phenomenological reading of Dharmakīrti’s sahopalambhaniyama. Specifically, Dharmakīrti’s sahopalambhaniyama will be compared to Sartre’s axiom in phenomenology. All this will show that it is incorrect to understand Dharmakīrti’s sahopalambhaniyama as a so-called “Proof for Idealism” (Franco). As a consequence, it will also confirm my general thesis that both Dignāga and Dharmakīrti are neither Sautrantikas nor Yogācāra idealists. Rather, their Buddhist epistemology is basically an "epistemology without ontology."