The Origins And History Of SASA:
The South Asian Studies Association Of Australia
The South Asian Studies Association of Australia was formed in the late 1960s and has worked as a network of scholars in Australia and New Zealand who specialise on South Asia. According to an editorial note in the first issue (1971) of the Association’s journal, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, SASA was 'formed to foster South Asian Studies both here and overseas at a conference in 1969 at the ANU hosted by Professor Ravinder Kumar'.
The priority activity of SASA is the production of the internationally-renowned journal South Asia. In 2010, South Asia was classified by the ERA (Excellence in Research in Australia) as an A* journal—this is the top ranking available to any journal in the world under the ERA classifications.
Since its foundation in 1969, SASA has undertaken other activities including:
- regular participation in, and organisation of, the panels on South Asia for the biennial conference held by the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) (http://asaa.asn.au/).
- regular publishing of conference papers given at the biennial conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia— for example in 2008 the biennial ASAA Conference was hosted by Monash University with the support of SASA (See http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/mai/asaa/proceedings.php)
- funding and hosting keynote international speakers to various events and conferences with the support of the Australia India Council and other organisations ( http://www.dfat.gov.au/aic/ )
- various seminars and conferences focussing on the South Asian region (See the forthcoming 2011 conference in Perth under current events)
- the promotion of special projects—for example in the 1990s SASA set up SouthAsiaNet which linked the international community of South Asia scholars to various libraries and projects (http://arts.monash.edu.au/mai/southasianet/)
- the promotion of special research initiatives to promote South Asian studies in schools and universities in Australia—for example in 1993 SASA persuaded the Commonwealth Government of Australia to set up a National Centre for South Asian Studies, a consortium of 7 Australian universities (http://arts.monash.edu.au/mai/ncsas/ ). A key objective of the Centre was to develop new teaching materials for Australian schools—for example Into India was published as a textbook for Australian secondary colleges. It was accompanied by 5 thirty-minute documentaries about modern India (http://former.asiaeducation.edu.au/india/index.htm)
- the promotion of teacher and student exchanges between Australia and South Asia
- consultancies for Australian governments—for example contributions to the Commonwealth Government of Australia's study of the rise of India in 1993/1994, India's Economy at the Midnight Hour http://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/catalogue/india.pdf); and contributions to the Australian government’s reassessment of India in November 2001 (http://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/india_new_old_economy/index.html)
- submissions to Australian government inquiries, for example the parliamentary inquiry into the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in May 1998 (See ‘Australia’s Response to Nuclear Tests in South Asia’, in The 1998 Indian and Pakistani Nuclear Test, (Commonwealth of Australia, 1990), Chapter 6, © Commonwealth of Australia 2008 ISBN 0 642 71024 4 at (http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/fadt_ctte/completed_inquiries/1999-02/nuclear/report/c06.pdf )