South Asia &amp; the Institute

Title

South Asia & the Institute

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT - EDUCATIONAL USE PERMITTED

Creator

South Asia and the Institute: Transformative Connections

Description

The very first student from what was then British-ruled India attended MIT in 1882, just two decades after the founding of the Institute. For Indians aspiring to freedom, technical education and skills were the need-of-the-hour to alleviate the poverty and underdevelopment facing their country after more than a century of colonization. Then, as now, South Asians looked to MIT as a model institute where they could acquire this knowledge. After independence in 1947, the Institute served as a guide and partner in the challenging work of decolonization and nation-building that South Asians embarked upon. At the same time, with the reform of discriminatory anti-Asian US immigration policies in the mid-20th century, a growing diaspora of South Asian Americans found a home in MIT. Since then, thousands of MIT’s South Asian alumni, dozens of South Asian faculty, and a large number of academics with a research interest in South Asia have been an active and large presence in all five of MIT’s schools.

The Institute’s past and present has been enriched as much by these South Asian students and faculty as their lives have been shaped by the Institute. Perched at the forefront of technological revolutions across the globe, MIT’s South Asians have negotiated a changing world of race and immigration in America, and decolonization and nation-building in South Asia. South Asia and the Institute makes these transformative connections visible.

director

Avani Batra

editor

Pradip Patil