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CHS organises a lecture by Dr Nebojsa Blanusa

CHS organises a lecture by Dr Nebojsa Blanusa

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CHS organises a lecture by Dr Nebojsa Blanusa
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                  Centre for Historical Studies, CAS Programme, JNU invites you to a 

   Special Lecture

      on

                            Politics of Memory, Historical Revisionism and the Hate Speech in Croatia

     by

Dr Nebojša Blanuša

University of Zagreb, Croatia

(CHS CAS Visiting Fellow, JNU)

On

25th February 2019

At  

12:15 pm, room 447, SSS 3  

 

Twentieth century history of Croatia was permeated by violent conflicts, atrocities and their afterlives. Belonging to the overlapping geopolitical regions of the Central Europe and the Balkans, on the crossroad between capitalist West and socialist East, Croatia has produced more history than it can bear and consume. A such, it was usually perceived as Europe’s inner Other, the bloodiest part of “Restern” Europe, or an intermediate area, permeated by political instability, struggles, wars, changes of borders and “spheres of influence” between imperial powers and emerging nation-states, with the climax in the dissolution of Socialist Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. Rocky road of problematic political consolidation and accession to the EU, together with several other Balkan countries was perceived as its normalization, permeated by internal turmoils, conflicts and international frictions in the last two decades. Moreover, Croatia is still troubled by its violent past from the Second World War, the postwar socialist period, and recent wars.

 

This lecture will try to deal with those specters of the past which still haunt Croatian politics and citizens. These problems are expressed through the politics of memory and historical revisionism, which include double process of “normalizing” the neo-fascist tendencies from the Second World War together with simultaneous demonizing the anti-fascist tradition, which is often repressed and considered as historical vacuum. In that sense, constant diminishing of fascist war crimes during the Second World War, tolerance of neo-fascist hate speech, together with other political decisionstried to produce ideological continuity of today’s Republic of Croatia with the fascist puppet state Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945), installed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Consequences of such political discourse are discernable today at the level of public opinion in terms of citizens’ support of public usage of local fascist symbols, legal ban on antifascist symbols, as well as attitudes toward commemorating different political traditions through the street names and monuments which celebrate contentious persons, symbols and slogans.What bothers even more is an ideological profile of those citizens who would like to preserve fascist and remove antifascist insignia.

-- 

Dr Jyoti Atwal
Associate Professor
Centre for Historical Studies
School of Social Sciences -III
Jawaharlal Nehru University 
New Delhi 110067

A warm welcome to the modified and updated website of the Centre for East Asian Studies. The East Asian region has been at the forefront of several path-breaking changes since 1970s beginning with the redefining the development architecture with its State-led development model besides emerging as a major region in the global politics and a key hub of the sophisticated technologies. The Centre is one of the thirteen Centres of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi that provides a holistic understanding of the region.

Initially, established as a Centre for Chinese and Japanese Studies, it subsequently grew to include Korean Studies as well. At present there are eight faculty members in the Centre. Several distinguished faculty who have now retired include the late Prof. Gargi Dutt, Prof. P.A.N. Murthy, Prof. G.P. Deshpande, Dr. Nranarayan Das, Prof. R.R. Krishnan and Prof. K.V. Kesavan. Besides, Dr. Madhu Bhalla served at the Centre in Chinese Studies Programme during 1994-2006. In addition, Ms. Kamlesh Jain and Dr. M. M. Kunju served the Centre as the Documentation Officers in Chinese and Japanese Studies respectively.

The academic curriculum covers both modern and contemporary facets of East Asia as each scholar specializes in an area of his/her interest in the region. The integrated course involves two semesters of classes at the M. Phil programme and a dissertation for the M. Phil and a thesis for Ph. D programme respectively. The central objective is to impart an interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding of history, foreign policy, government and politics, society and culture and political economy of the respective areas. Students can explore new and emerging themes such as East Asian regionalism, the evolving East Asian Community, the rise of China, resurgence of Japan and the prospects for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Additionally, the Centre lays great emphasis on the building of language skills. The background of scholars includes mostly from the social science disciplines; History, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, International Relations and language.

Several students of the centre have been recipients of prestigious research fellowships awarded by Japan Foundation, Mombusho (Ministry of Education, Government of Japan), Saburo Okita Memorial Fellowship, Nippon Foundation, Korea Foundation, Nehru Memorial Fellowship, and Fellowship from the Chinese and Taiwanese Governments. Besides, students from Japan receive fellowship from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations.