Abstract
This article focuses on the developments and shifts in the study of the Americas at the School of International Studies (SIS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). It traces the growth of Area Studies at JNU since India’s independence, when the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru wanted India to engage with the world while remaining autonomous. The Centre for the Study of the Americas at SIS has achieved this by creating a unique Indian academic tradition of studying the Americas through the lens of India’s national interest. It has provided generations of academics, policymakers and diplomats with an understanding of the region that has arguably been used to move from a position of distance during the Cold War to that of strategic partnership. The Centre, since its birth as a part of the Indian School of International Studies in the 1950s, has emerged as an institutional force in promoting sustainable academic relations between India and the Americas.
Introduction
Universities in India have been at the forefront when it comes to the generation of ideas, the exploration of other cultures and the training of the next generation. At the same time, programmes like Area Studies, which focus on relations between two nations or regions, have served as spaces where scholars can explore and share knowledge and insights, exchange information, debate contested beliefs and ideologies, and often engender a common understanding to help decipher and shape diplomatic postures. In particular, the School of International Studies (SIS) at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) became India’s first specialized institution for International Relations and Area Studies.
This article focuses on the developments and shifts in the study of the Americas at SIS, JNU. It traces the growth of Area Studies at JNU since India’s independence, when the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru wanted India to engage with the world while remaining autonomous. The Centre for the Study of the Americas (CSA) at SIS achieved this by creating a unique Indian academic tradition of studying the Americas through the lens of India’s national interest and providing generations of academics, policymakers and diplomats with an understanding of the region that has arguably been used to move from a position of distance during the Cold War to that of strategic partnership.
The Centre, since its birth as a part of the Indian School of International Studies (ISIS) (Paul, 2010) in the 1950s, evolved as an institutional force in creating sustainable academic relations between India and the Americas. Professor M. S. Venkataramani laid the groundwork for a structured study of US-related affairs and inspired other Area Studies programmes, including Latin American and later Canadian studies. The Centre thus expanded to focus on three specialized programmes on the US, Latin America and Canada.
Growth of US Studies in India
The introduction of US Studies programmes in India was accompanied with a debate over whether the programmes were a tool of cultural imperialism or a genuine avenue for mutual understanding and independent scholarly inquiry. Since its inception, the discipline has faced challenges, with scholars who were pursuing US Studies being seen as ‘agents of CIA’ or ‘sycophants of the US power’ (Jaidka, 2004), especially because, during the initial growth of the discipline, it was dependent on funding from the US government. Boewe’s (2004) personal memoir provides a peek into the administrative and political side of this funding and how the American public diplomacy mechanism was dependent on congressional approval and susceptible to diplomatic tensions.
The funds, visiting professors and library resources created a dependency that many viewed as a form of intellectual imperialism (Jaidka, 2004). Some others criticized this ecosystem by arguing that US Studies was an area whose aims and methods were largely borrowed, and which had an inability to develop an Indian perspective. As per this view, US Studies scholars should essentially look for a ‘trans-civilizational’ approach that engages with the US from a position of self-confidence (Paranjape, 1997). Notwithstanding the scepticism, the popularity of the field grew, as many colleges and educational institutions within India began offering courses on American literature, history, politics and society. As encapsulated by Shrivastava (1987), a former Dean and Professor of American Studies at SIS:
Strictly American Studies in India started in 1921, when the University of Lucknow introduced a course in American history. This, however, did not last long. It was only in the 1950s that American history and literature formed part of the courses offered in the Banaras Hindu University and in Baroda, Delhi, Guwahati and Osmania Universities. By 1967 as many as thirty-eight institutions of higher learning offered courses in American history and literature; seventeen offered courses either in American history or in American literature. The status of American Studies in 146 institutions of higher learning continued to improve. (Shrivastava, 1987, p. 42)
In his considered view, ‘the teaching of courses in American history, literature and government and politics, and the progress achieved by American Studies during its first three decades of existence was indeed remarkable’ (Shrivastava, 1987).
The US Studies programme at SIS, JNU, was one of the School’s earliest Area Studies initiatives. Unlike other US Studies programmes within India, the programme at JNU developed a different model. Situated within a university that was created with a specific mandate to develop a niche foreign policy expertise, it had the necessary stimulus to play a leading role in shaping the understanding of the complex policy processes that governed American actions within a rigorous framework of analysis.
US Studies in India was not confined to a single institution. Universities such as Banaras Hindu University, Delhi University, Osmania University and Baroda University introduced courses on American history and literature during the 1950s and 1960s, while institutions such as the American Studies Research Centre (ASRC) in Hyderabad later strengthened research support for scholars working on the US. Challenges relating to faculty funding and resources for research, among others, overlaid the consolidation efforts by scholars. Yet, the discipline provided opportunities that went beyond the boundaries imposed by past colonial rule and opened new opportunities for Indian academia. By the mid-1990s, as the US funds started to decline due to a variety of factors, the vulnerabilities of a discipline dependent on external funding were laid bare.
Cold War Diplomacy and Indian Academic Enquiry
The journey of US Studies in India cannot be understood without contextualizing the foreign policy of India during the Cold War era. After gaining independence in 1947, India wanted to chart its own course on the global stage. This approach contradicted the bipolar nature of the Cold War world and created an environment characterized by a lack of cooperation and even mistrust between India and the US (Boaz, 1976). As leading voices in the field pointed out, as a newly independent nation, India was clear that ‘until her economic resources were developed, and her men are trained, her capacity to defend herself against an attack by a major power, or to help actively in a major war is limited’ (Appadorai, 1949). This led to the rise of the non-alignment policy, whose major objective was to keep away from the power politics of nations that were aligned against each other (Appadorai, 1949).
Washington, however, saw India’s non-alignment through the lens of scepticism. During the initial stages of the Cold War, assuming a neutral stance was seen as being aligned with the Soviet Union. The US foreign policy establishment could not understand India’s need for non-alignment. This disconnect was evident when it came to the US acting against India’s vital national interests in South Asia (Subrahmanyam, 1972). According to K. Subrahmanyam, US actions against India were not driven solely by an anti-communist ideology. The US tilt towards Pakistan in the late 1940s and President Nixon’s justification of military aid to Pakistan clearly pointed to the fact that the US was perturbed by India’s non-aligned stance in a bipolar world. This policy approach became a major irritant between the two countries.
While India’s primary objective was to gain economic and technological assistance for national development, it was wary of the political strings attached. In many quarters, US aid was also viewed as a tool to increase American influence in the country. India was aware of the reluctance of the Western powers to help with its industrialization process due to its non-alignment (Appadorai, 1949). It was in this tense atmosphere that US Studies was introduced as a field of academic enquiry in India.
Institutional Beginnings of US Studies
The introduction of US Studies in India was a fallout of academic curiosity and American cultural diplomacy. Though the University of Lucknow was the first to introduce a postgraduate paper on American history in 1938, it was only in the 1950s that the discipline gained momentum. During the peak of the Cold War (Boaz, 1976), the US sought to increase its sphere of influence by promoting American values abroad. The first step in this direction was the creation of the Fulbright Programme. Based on the Fulbright Act of 1946, an agreement was signed by India in 1950, which led to the exchange of scholars and professors between the two countries. The programme was administered by the United States Educational Foundation in India (USEFI) and entailed American professors teaching Indian students US history and literature (Jaidka, 2004). Simultaneously, USEFI supported the training of Indian academicians in the US who, on their return, became part of US Studies departments in their respective institutions.
The number of institutions teaching US Studies rose with the establishment of the ASRC in Hyderabad in 1964 (Muthyala, 2003). The ASRC was designed to act as a central library for all things pertaining to the US while providing support to research scholars across India (Boewe, 2004), thus playing an important role in the promotion of American Studies in India (Jaidka, 2004; Shrivastava, 1987). Financial aid to the Centre came from the US State Department, which provided resources for American Studies outside the US (Jaidka, 2004). Thus, the ASRC, despite being an ‘Indian institution’, was totally dependent on US funding. When the PL-480 funds ran out, the US government ceased its financial support. The consequent rebranding efforts and search for alternatives, however, illustrated that the field remained important.
US Studies at the School of International Studies
US Studies in India received its biggest impetus at ISIS. Affiliated with the University of Delhi, ISIS was established in 1955, and the US Studies programme was one of its earliest Area Studies initiatives. The programme was founded and moulded by Professor M. S. Venkataramani, a beacon of light in the field. What set the US Studies programme at ISIS apart from other American Studies programmes was that while other programmes were located in English departments, with a strong focus on literature, the programme at ISIS was firmly grounded in history, political science and International Relations. Its policy-oriented approach ensured that the programme closely aligned with the strategic needs of the Indian state.
The institutional growth of ISIS reached its zenith in 1970 when it merged with JNU to become SIS, bringing together the research-focused culture of the erstwhile ISIS and the broader, interdisciplinary vision of JNU. In particular, the emphasis on archival research became a cornerstone of the Centre’s contributions. The Centre was later named the Centre for American and West European Studies (CAWES) and housed West European Studies and Latin American Studies as well. By the early 2000s, the Centre had produced more than 200 doctoral theses and several hundred MPhil dissertations. In the process, the Centre became one of the most influential places for studying American foreign policy, domestic politics, history and society, and a hub for generating original Indian scholarship and expertise on the US.
The US Studies programme at SIS distinguishes itself in two ways: first, it maintains high academic standards, and second, it produces research relevant to India’s diplomatic and strategic concerns. A decadal analysis shows how the programme has focused on and contributed to the growing understanding of the US across different historical periods.
During the 1960s–1970s period, the programme was under the intellectual tutelage of Professor M. S. Venkataramani, whose scholarship drew extensively from American archives to challenge prevailing narratives. His works, such as The American Role in Pakistan (Venkataramani, 1982) and Quit India: The American Response to the 1942 Struggle (co-authored with B. K. Shrivastava) (Venkataramani & Shrivastava, 1979), established a tradition of critical thinking aimed at uncovering the drivers of US foreign policy. This period witnessed the lowest point in Indo–US relations. US military aid and tilt towards Pakistan, especially during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, coupled with India’s signing of the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation in the same year, created a climate of mistrust (Subrahmanyam, 1972). The US Studies programme at SIS, mired in the context of this reality, provided an academic foundation that trained scholars, like the author (Vijayalakshmi, 2017), to examine Indo–US relations analytically.
During the Cold War years, the US and Western Europe were studied together within SIS at CAWES. This reflected the geopolitical reality of the bipolar world of the time as well as the prevailing strategic view and national sentiment, when both regions were generally viewed as part of a broader ‘Western’ political and strategic bloc, while Eastern Europe was studied at the Centre for Soviet and East European Studies. The trans-Atlantic alliance under the banner of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) strengthened the rationale for clubbing academic focus on North America with Western Europe. Several studies were carried out at the Centre on the trans-Atlantic relationship, and in the mid-1980s, a faculty member was appointed to focus particularly on trans-Atlantic relations.
The end of the Cold War and India’s quest for economic liberalization in 1991 fundamentally changed the scope and nature of Indo–US relations. The collapse of the Soviet Union eliminated a major source of tension between the two nations, and India’s opening of its economy provided the Americans with new opportunities for trade and investment. The US Studies programme at JNU adapted to these changes by moving from the traditional confines of history, foreign policy, politics and security. Mentored by Professor Venkataramani, the next generation of scholars, including professors like B. K. Shrivastava, R. P. Kaushik (Kaushik, 1972) , Chintamani Mahapatra (Mahapatra, 2000), and the author, began to carry out research in new areas like the political economy of Indo–US relations, the role of the Indo–American diaspora and the intricacies of Indo–US trade policies. Educational exchanges continued to grow as many of the Centre’s faculty members became Fulbright fellows and gained first-hand experience in US academic institutions, which they then integrated into their teaching and research pedagogy.
Even with the end of the Cold War, the demise of the Soviet Socialist bloc and the emergence of new global dynamics, the framing of Area Studies at SIS persisted for some years, although it underwent intense deliberation and debate. The consolidation of European Studies as a distinct field, alongside growing interest in the Americas as a hemispheric space encompassing the US, Canada and Latin America, led to a reconfiguration of programmes within the School. The Centre underwent restructuring—along with other Area Studies centres at SIS—when the S. D. Muni Committee Report was implemented. West European Studies was merged with East European Studies to form a new Centre for European Studies. Previously, Latin American Studies had not found a reflection in the Centre’s nomenclature. This omission was now rectified, although the word ‘Caribbean’ was dropped as it was assumed to be included in the term ‘Latin America’. The inclusion of a programme related to the study of Canada led to a more comparative and multilateral approach within the Centre. Studying the US in India was now seen from a broader hemispheric and global context and reflected India’s own growing goals pertaining to foreign policy. While several alternative names for the Centre were considered, they were turned down as reflective of a US hegemonic bias. CAWES was then renamed the Centre for Canadian, US and Latin American Studies (CCUS&LAS) in order to fully reflect the scope and ambit of its focus.
Apart from research publications and doctoral training, the Centre has remained actively engaged in teaching and academic outreach. Courses offered over the years have covered themes such as US foreign policy, national security, American political institutions, dynamics of American society, political economy of the US, Latin American political economy, foreign policies of major Latin American countries, Canadian foreign policy, and multiculturalism and regionalism in Canada. Faculty members regularly organize seminars, conferences and distinguished lectures featuring scholars, visiting scholars and policy practitioners from the Americas. These academic interactions have played an important role in sustaining dialogue between Indian scholars and their counterparts in the US, Canada and Latin America.
The 21st century has seen immense changes in the world order, which have had an impact on the US Studies programme. Amidst shifts in geopolitics due to the Indian nuclear tests, the 9/11 attacks and the War on Terror, the Centre continues to be vitally engaged in the study of the US in a changed global and academic environment. The current Indo-US strategic partnership, described by the Government of India as one which ‘no relationship … can today match [in] range, depth, quality and intensity’ (Indian Embassy USA, n.d.), has increased the need for expertise on the US. The US Studies programme, with its focus on US foreign policy, national security and domestic politics, is poised to meet this demand, with its ability to analyze the domestic and political drivers of US foreign policy that characterize the complexities of Washington’s decision-making. The debates around the rise of a multipolar world, increasingly complex transnational challenges and the need to re-evaluate the pedagogy of Area Studies present both opportunities and challenges for the programme’s future.
Growth of Latin American Studies in India
Introduction of Latin American-Caribbean (LAC) Studies at the Centre was an attempt to capture the soul of the region as an academic programme at a time when awareness about the region was very limited in India. The roots of LAC Studies go back to the 1960s—the Department of American History and Institutions was a full-fledged programme at ISIS (Sahni, 2009). There was a discernible interest in the Department in studying the history of American diplomacy and foreign policy towards its southern neighbours. The LAC region had borne the brunt of the Cold War in the 1960s. American interventionism in the name of fighting ‘International Communism’ in British Guiana (1953), Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1961) and the Dominican Republic (1965) drew the attention of scholars and policymakers worldwide. These interventions catapulted the Organization of American States (OAS), a regional arrangement under the UN Charter, to the fore of global academic interest. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 enthused certain intellectual circles in India. There was the other side too—the rise of American multinational corporations, foreign direct investment flows, and the US aid programmes in the 1950s and 1960s had a huge impact on the import substitution industrialization (ISI) model of development in the LAC region.
It was against this backdrop that Professor R. Narayanan, a forward-looking faculty member of the School and the Department of American History and Institutions, felt the imperative need to focus on the LAC region rigorously and systematically (Narayanan, 1983). A fortuitous event in 1966 was the arrival of Professor Harold Eugene Davis, as a Fulbright scholar, to the Department of American History and Institutions (Narayanan, 1983). Professor Davis was a historian of ideas—quintessentially, a pensador. He was an authority on the social and political philosophy of Latin America and a pioneer in the field of the diplomatic history of Latin America. He gave a series of special lectures at ISIS on Latin American diplomatic thought and foreign policy practices. His active participation in teaching and research encouraged the School to consider the feasibility of a Latin American Studies programme. The intense discussions and deliberation that followed led to the setting up of the programme on Latin America in 1966, with a full-time dedicated lecturer in Professor Narayanan, who was entrusted with the responsibility to offer elective courses on the region. Some of the scholars who joined the programme underwent 1–3 years of training in the Spanish language. There was no funding and, ironically, no assurance of any funding from any quarter in the future.
A visiting faculty, against the Brazilian Studies Chair, which had been provided in the India-Brazil Cultural Exchange Agreement of 1970, joined the Latin American Studies in 1971 after the merger of ISIS with JNU. A career diplomat, Dr Jose Leal Ferreira had worked for 17 years in the Brazilian foreign service. He joined the Latin American Studies programme to teach ‘Brazilian History and Civilization’ besides the Portuguese language. While he was initially placed in the School of Languages, his specialization in Medieval Portuguese benefited scores of scholars in the Centre of Historical Studies who worked on the maritime history of India during the medieval period. In March 1984, the Academic Council of JNU accepted the proposal of the Brazilian government to create a ‘Lectureship’ in the Latin American Studies Division of CAWES. The post was an arrangement against the Brazilian Studies Chair which was provided in the India-Brazil Cultural Exchange Agreement. It was resolved to accept the nomenclature of ‘Assistant Professor in Brazilian History and Civilization’ in order to make it compatible with the rest of the School. The Brazilian government maintained and funded the Chair until 2012. Another faculty position, at the level of Assistant Professor, was created and filled in 1990 with the appointment of one of the present authors—Professor Abdul Nafey.
Indian Academic Enquiry in the 20th Century
Dependencia had swept the intellectual world of Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s. As circumstances would have it, Professor R. Narayanan’s disciplinary background in Economics enabled him to decipher and explain the dependencia framework in the Indian context. Several studies were published, focusing on the ISI strategy of development, liberation theology, the Cuban Revolution, bureaucratic authoritarianism and internal security states. As per an Indian scholar of Latin America, ‘the necessity and indispensability of close relations between India and Latin America assume a new urgency in the context of prevailing economic realities among the developed economies of USA, Western Europe and Japan’ (Chawla, 1988, p. 112). Focused study of significant countries—importantly, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Cuba—gained traction, as faculty and scholars evinced a keen interest in the way these countries leveraged their foreign policy for domestic economic development and foreign policy autonomy (Jadeja, 1988). A discernible expansion of scholarly interest took place in the early 1970s; the independence of English-speaking and other countries in the Caribbean led to the faculty and students writing research articles and chapters on the Indian diaspora in the Caribbean (Narayanan, 1978). As was claimed by a well-known Indian parliamentarian at the time, ‘given the exigencies of the contemporary world, we certainly cannot afford to remain uninvolved in each other’s lives’ (Jadeja, 1988, p. i).
In terms of size, resource endowment, economic development level and ethnic/racial pluralism, parallels were drawn between Brazil and India. A dedicated Brazilian faculty in the form of Professor Leal Ferreira was timely, as students and scholars showed great interest in Brazil, with many going on to learn the Portuguese language. Not surprisingly, Brazilian Studies accounts for about one-third of the research output by the faculty and research scholars of the programme.
When ISIS merged with JNU to become SIS, the Latin American Studies programme became one of the three divisions in the newly minted CAWES. The expanded scope and resources of JNU helped launch a full-fledged MPhil/PhD programme at CAWES. Students at the Master’s level were introduced to the region through two popular courses on the political economy of the region and the foreign policies of the major countries. The course on political economy remained particularly popular as it introduced the students to the theories of dependency and underdevelopment. At the MPhil/PhD level, scholars were familiarized with the history, polity, economy and society of the region through courses on government and politics, contemporary economic problems and cultural history. Over the years, a number of elective courses came to be offered on Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Chile. The academic culture within JNU provided a good deal of flexibility: some visiting faculty members, who came in the mid-1990s from countries such as Argentina and Chile, offered specific courses on their respective countries for one or two semesters.
Nonetheless, until the dawn of the Information Technology revolution, writing a quality dissertation/thesis on Latin America entailed long and painstaking efforts to collect the requisite material. Primary sources were difficult to access except for reports of the United Nations and other institutions, such as the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNECLAC) or the Inter-American Development Bank. MPhil/PhD scholars would have to visit several libraries in Delhi and occasionally even those located outside to access books and journals. Although SIS has a field study travel grant for PhD scholars, it is quite modest and often insufficient to cover long-distance travel to the Americas.
The Latin American region has been in an intense intellectual ferment, more so since the second half of the 20th century. The ‘domination-subordination-resistance triad’, to some extent, captured this essence of the ‘Latin American episteme’. Faculty and scholars have continued to show interest in these theories, as well as in the region’s myriad experimentations with industrialization strategies, regional integration processes and mechanisms, revolutions and revolutionary ideologies, liberation theology, land reforms and state regulations, including incidences of nationalization, the rise of bureaucratic authoritarianism and security states besides Cuba-Soviet relations and Cuba and Brazil in Lusophone Africa.
The 1980s saw a great spurt of interest in the political and economic ‘restructuring’ in the region. The scholarly lens shifted its focus to debt management strategies, transition to the neoliberal model of development, consolidation of democratic processes, indigenous rights and governance, environmental movements, gender and justice, besides Latin America’s interface with Africa and the dynamic economies of Asia including China and India, and the region’s growing profile and role in the post-Cold War era. The Caribbean region, especially Indian diasporic studies, gained further traction in the 1980s with several dissertations and theses being produced around this theme. Growing interest in the Caribbean also brought to light the importance and place of small and micro-states in the evolving world order. As the axis of global geo-economics began to shift towards the Asia-Pacific, Latin America interfaced with the dynamic economies of Asia, including India. Economic liberalization and the subsequent spurt in economic growth also made India take an active interest in Latin America in terms of procuring resources for its economic growth and export market (Nafey & Gupta, 2000). Several MPhil/PhD level studies focused on trade and bilateral relations with the larger countries of the region, such as Brazil and Mexico.
The last 25 years have seen the diversification of the research agenda to include non-traditional issues related to security, gender, environment and sustainability. Latin America is the proverbial ‘graveyard’ of Western theories and development models. For instance, the gender issue intersects with class, colour, ethnicity and the urban–rural dyad. With China and other Asian economies having arrived in Latin America, it has shed some of its ‘western’ trappings to explore Asia, the Arab world and Africa in a meaningful way (Nafey et al., 2000).
The Latin American Studies programme of SIS continues to attract scholars who desire to explore an otherwise complex region—complex in its structures and thought processes. Often, it is the unique characteristics of Latin American polity, society and economy that attract research on foreign policies, domestic developmental processes and comparative studies of issues in Latin America and India. Visits by prominent scholars, statesmen and diplomats from the region have increased in number over the last decade, with special lectures, book-launch functions and panel discussions being organized on a regular basis. The faculty of the programme has been invited to speak on Latin America to Latin American audiences as keynote speakers on several occasions in the LAC region, and many Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) have been signed with universities in the region.
The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) had, in 1987, established a Centre for Latin America to promote cultural exchanges with the countries of the region. This was followed by the setting up of the UGC Centre for Latin American Studies at Goa University in 1988. As there was uncertainty surrounding the mandate and scope of this newly-instituted Centre, the Latin American Studies programme of SIS—more particularly, Professor R. Narayanan—was asked to help in setting up this Centre. The present author, then a Reader in a college, was entrusted with this responsibility, and he spent 15 months preparing vision documents, MA and MPhil courses and language training components, as well as teaching postgraduate courses and organizing talks and seminars. In subsequent years, the Latin American Studies programme continued to mentor the Centre at Goa University, also providing the manpower for its teaching faculty.
In more recent years, Jindal University in Sonipat, Kerala University in Thiruvananthapuram and Amity University in Noida have taken measures such as organizing seminars and courses on contemporary Latin America. The UGC Centre for Latin American Studies at Goa University has since been subsumed in the larger School of International and Area Studies of the University. SIS, JNU, thus remains the pioneer in the Area Studies programme on Latin America and the Caribbean. Despite the constraints of resources and geographical distance, the Latin American Studies academic programme is robust and is expanding its outreach, and it remains the only one of its kind in India.
Growth of Canadian Studies in India
The Department of Commonwealth Studies in ISIS, it is believed, focused on, among others, Canada’s engagements with the British Commonwealth, including with India, namely the Colombo Plan and India–Canada nuclear cooperation. Canada fell off the academic radar after the merger of ISIS with JNU, in the absence of an independent Department of Commonwealth Studies in a restructured SIS. The strain in India–Canada relations in the context of India’s peaceful nuclear explosion in 1974 further contributed to the loss of interest in Canadian Studies (Raj & Nafey, 2007).
The absence of a Canadian Studies Programme (CSP) was felt and expressed during discussions and deliberations among the faculty members about the future course of the Centre. The present author, along with Professor Christopher Raj, undertook preparatory work around 1996 in the form of workshops and discussions on the idea of a CSP in the Centre. The award of a short-term fellowship by the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (SICI) to two faculty members in 1998 to visit McGill University and Waterloo University proved to be a shot in the arm for the idea. The first elective course at the Master’s level on ‘Canada in World Affairs’ was introduced in the academic year 1999–2000. The course elicited positive responses not only from the MA students of SIS but equally from the students of the School of Languages and the School of Social Sciences at JNU.
This was followed by the introduction of a full-fledged MPhil/PhD programme in Canadian Studies, starting in the academic year 2001–2002. The first and only one of its kind in India, CSP was introduced at the Master’s and Doctoral levels. Elective courses on foreign policy, government and politics, political economy, and multiculturalism, regionalism and diasporic aspects of Canadian society were offered. ‘The timing of the CSP was important and somewhat fortuitous. Both Canada and India were engaged in evaluating their past foreign policy priorities and assessing new roles and functions for themselves in the post-Cold War international order’ (Nafey & Raj, 2007, p. ix). The inclusion of Canadian Studies in SIS was acknowledged when CAWES was re-organized and rechristened as the Centre for Canadian, US and Latin American Studies (CCUS&LAS) in 2005.
In consolidating and expanding Canadian Studies, the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (SICI), of which JNU became an institutional member, proved extremely helpful. Over the years, SICI donated books and leading journals on Canadian foreign policy, politics and humanities to the JNU Library. A number of research scholars of the Centre also won fellowships offered by the Institute in an open competition. The institutional bonds with Canadian universities became stronger as visiting Canadian scholars came to India to deliver lectures and presentations at the Centre. Two MoUs—one with Waterloo University and the second with the University of Montreal—proved beneficial in the early years. These efforts resulted in the publication of two books—one each in collaboration with Waterloo and Montreal (Raj & McAndrew, 2009; Raj & Nafey, 2007). A number of well-known foreign policy experts from Waterloo University visited and collaborated in research and publications. The MoU with the University of Montreal proved to be a landmark development; a social anthropologist-cum-sociologist, Professor Marie McAndrew (now Professor Emeritus at the University of Montreal), spent a semester at the Centre and delivered a series of special lectures on Quebec. Professor McAndrew has returned to the Centre several times, and her association has resulted in the formation of a robust cluster on Quebec within CSP.
The identified areas of research at CSP are both academic and policy-oriented. Some of the broad themes and areas of teaching and research interest over the past 25 years have been: Canada’s liberal internationalism and middle powermanship; human security, peacekeeping and peacebuilding; Canada–US defence and security cooperation; geopolitics and economics of the Canadian Arctic; free trade agreements; North Americanization of the Canadian economy; political parties and the workings of Canadian parliamentary democracy; indigenous communities and governance issues; identity, environment and gender in Canadian liberal democracy; Indian diaspora in Canada and Canada–India bilateral relations. A faculty position at the level of Assistant Professor was granted to the programme in 2006. In sum, Canadian Studies came somewhat late but established itself with pace and confidence. India and Canada remain on a braided path, as Canada, a federal, parliamentary plural democracy, anchored in middle power syndrome, continues to elicit interest in India—both at the academic and policy levels.
Conclusion
The three programmes of the Centre do not work in isolation but also speak to each other through their work. Several PhD theses completed in Latin American Studies have covered subjects that cover the inter-American system and relations—US intervention in the Dominican Republic, US intervention in Grenada, US–Mexico relations, US investments and working of American multinational corporations (MNCs) in the region, Cuba–US relations, Brazil–US relations and OAS as a regional security organization. The establishment of Canadian Studies has resulted in doctoral research on Canada and Mexico in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Canadian mining companies in Latin America, Canada and the OAS, Canada and its free trade agreements with Latin American countries, and others.
Rooted in the academic traditions of SIS and the evolving global order, the Centre was re-christened yet again as the Centre for the Study of the Americas in July 2025. Despite the fact that the term ‘the Americas’ reflects an established Area Studies framework with North America, Latin America and the Caribbean as an interconnected hemisphere, the three programmes exhibit unique identities, differing developmental trajectories and the diversity of the region.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflict of Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.