142234 UE Political Geography in South Asia (2022W)

Rationale of the Course:
Political Geography is an offshoot of Human Geography that primarily deals with the spatial and geographical interface of Politics at large. It provides a perspective to analyse the world. The themes that constitute the scholarship of Political Geography are disparate and cover a wide spectrum. Political Geography as a discipline is well grounded in the concepts and tenets of Politics such as Territoriality, Sovereignty, Nationstate, Nationality, Govern-mentality and the likes and is also deeply rooted in the aspects of spaces and places. Recent and Contemporary interventions and developments in the discipline stands as a testimony that Political Geography assumes a bottom-up approach. The interplay of politics and power is grappled by studying its ramifications on the people.

Course Objectives:
The course comprises of two aspects. The first part of the course will briefly create consciousness of the existing theories and concepts that are basic to the discipline while the second part shall be focussing on the issues of South Asia. The course is structured to enable the pupils to not just understand the concepts of Political Geography but also be able to analyse the issues of South Asia from a pragmatic and nuanced stance.

Course Structure - 14 Sessions:
1. Introduction to Political Geography
2. Colonialism, Partition and post coloniality: A Historical perspective of South Asia
3. Territoriality
4. Nation, Nationalism and the emotional geographies in the region
5. Frontier, Boundary, Border and Borderland
6. Region & Regionalism
7. The Political Geography of the Indian Ocean Region
8. Religious identities: A contested space in the South Asian
Region
9. Politics, Perspective & Performance
10. Power dynamics: The Politics of conflict and cooperation in
the South Asian Region.
11. Democracy in South Asia
12. History and its impacts of Female Leadership in South Asia
13. Cinema and South Asia
14. Presentation of the students