MANY of you may be familiar with the Fulbright scholarship, a prestigious one that enables people to study in the United States of America. Did you know that you can apply for the Fulbright-Nehru Scholarship for research work in India or other South Asian countries? Asim Rafiqui and Elizabeth Herman did just that. Asim has been focusing on issues related to the aftermath of conflicts. Elizabeth wanted to explore how three South Asian nations with a shared past were able to carve out unique identities for themselves. They applied for the Fulbright to work in India and Bangladesh respectively. Meet the scholars...
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 Asim's interest: Recording development
A photographer, based in Sweden, Asim is technically from Pakistan and a Kashmiri by origin. He lived outside South Asia for over thirty years. The Fulbright is a research fellowship not technically directed towards photographers, however, Asim was aware that a few talented photographers had designed projects with a strong academic/ research component to them and received support of the Fulbright foundation. He came up with a photo project idea that required extensive immersion into history and politics of South Asia.w He looked to the Fulbright as a natural place for funding.
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 Elizabeth's interest: Documenting education
Elizabeth graduated in 2010 from Tufts University with a double major in Political Science and Economics. Here, she completed a senior honours thesis in Political Science, examining political dimensions of emerging representations of September 11, 2001 in secondary school social studies textbooks worldwide.Her research sparked her interest in South Asian historiography. She became interested in understanding how Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh had carved their own identity from their shared past, and to understand how education had shaped in aiding this process. After reading an interesting article on textbook politics in Bangladesh, she decided to apply to Fulbright to explore the issue further.
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Q. What are the research projects that you are pursuing now?
Asim: I am working on a project that explores India’s living heritage of pluralism and syncretism, and uses this heritage to explore her history and the constructions of sectarian and nationalist narratives that underline South Asia’s regional and domestic conflicts. That sounds complex but that is what I am trying to do here.
Elizabeth: I am currently residing in Dhaka, Bangladesh as a Fulbright Fellow researching political and social influences of narrative construction, focusing specifically on accounts of the country’s War of Liberation in 1971. The work has basically developed into two projects - the first is an examination of the ways in which current political agendas have influenced retelling of the war within national history textbooks over time, and the second, a photography and oral history project documenting the lives of women who fought in the Liberation War, examining the ways that conflict has shaped their outlook as the mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of Bangladesh.
Q. How has been your experience in this part of the world? Especially food, any Delhi-belly syndrome?
Asim: I am from ‘this part of the world’. I love being in India and photographing here. I am at home here.
Elizabeth: I had travelled to India for three weeks in the summer of 2009. I had never before visited Bangladesh, and actually never lived outside the greater Boston area. The greatest adjustment was figuring out the language barrier. First month in Dhaka was a frustrating period due to my inability to express myself and communicate with people. I spent my first three months in Dhaka studying Bangla. As my language skills progressed, I found myself settling into the city and feeling more connected to it. Research work has been fascinating, leading me to people I never would have found via research online, or through a short work trip to the country. Six months in, I am meeting new people who are vital to my work. Living here has allowed me to pick up on the nuances on my research questions, overturning a number of the ideas I thought true in the first place.
Q. What are some of the challenges/problems you have faced in your research?
Asim: I can’t think of any major challenges. Photographically, India is not the easiest place to work in terms of what I’m used to. Clichés about India are so overwhelming that it takes a lot of effort to break past them. We are used to seeing India in a certain way - trapped-in-some-past-age exotism selling the country (as do most all other post-colonial states, mind you!). I am trying to break past all that and this can be hard. The things I want to write about, issues I want to explore are not the easiest to discuss as they touch on difficult contemporary issues.
Elizabeth: The biggest shift has been adjusting to the perception of women, specifically of independent women, in Bangladesh. I come from a world where most of my role models were female - professors, aunts, my mother - highly driven and intelligent women who often outperformed their male counterparts. I was raised to believe and act in a way that reflected these examples. So, arriving in Bangladesh, where the majority of power positions are held by men and where you interact with one woman for every thirty men took a great deal of adjusting to. I faced a number of situations where I was seen as too bold or straight forward, eliciting unwanted personal attention from professional contacts.
I found myself becoming frustrated that I needed to edit myself and the way I acted - how much I smiled or nodded along at a meeting, how enthused I appeared to be over certain ideas - in order to not to be misread. That said, I have a number of male colleagues who have not only been highly professional, but a joy to work with. It’s been about finding the right balance - and the right people - with whom to work, and as I’ve continued to navigate this process it has encouraged me to think more critically about gender issues and rights than I ever did in the US - an unintended, but welcome by-product of this experience.
Q. How long will it take to complete your research? Which universities are you associated with?
Asim: I have nine months through the Fulbright grant. I am currently affiliated with Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi. I am a freelancer and am not associated with any academic institutions abroad.
Elizabeth: The grant is for a year - three months of language training at the Bangla Language Institute and nine months of independent research. My affiliate is the Power and Participation Research Centre in Dhanmondi, Dhaka, directed by Dr. Hossain Zillur Rahman. I have been working with a number of other organisations and universities, including Mahila Parishad, Dhaka University’s Mass Communications and Media Department, and the National Curriculum and Textbook Board.
Q. What is your personal experience of the Fulbright?
Asim: It’s a fellowship. It’s generous. It’s liberating. It’s what I have needed.
Elizabeth: Fulbright offers a unique opportunity to really immerse yourself in a country and its cultures, working on a project of your own design. I have never been given so much independence to work before. Daunting in many ways, it is also exhilarating to be able to take your work in any direction, to be able to pursue interesting side projects and tangents that emerge during the course of exploration.
Q. What is your advice to students applying for Fulbright?
Asim: You should have a damn good idea and find a way to articulate it in the most creative, passionate way that you can think of.
Elizabeth: I strongly recommend this scholarship to anyone interested in pursing highly independent research. One should make sure that the project is of great interest to them. It is the self motivator that will encourage you to go out and work everyday.