The Annual Solanki Lecture

The Solanki Lecture is the only endowed annual lecture series about South Asia and the South Asian diaspora in the United States. The lecture is held each spring and draws a large and diverse audience of high school and college students, faculty, staff, and members of the local South Asian community. Some of our previous speakers include Pico Iyer, Saeed Mirza, William Dalrymple, Ramachandra Guha, and most recently Rukmini Banerji, Anand Giridharadas, and Farhad Manjoo. A full list of speakers is available here.

Links to our latest lectures are available below:

19th Annual Solanki Lecture:

18th Annual Solanki Lecture:

17th Annual Solanki Lecture:

Rukmini Banerji is Chief Executive Officer of the Pratham Education Foundation. Dr. Banerji is a leading researcher of education in India, and she led Pratham’s important Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) through 2014.  Dr. Banerji has extensive experience working directly with rural and urban communities as well as in designing and implementing large scale partnerships with governments.

16th Annual Solanki Lecture: 

“Bending Like Bandung: India, China and the Reshaping of Asian & International Order” Featuring Amitav Acharya present at the Pointe in the Walter Pyramid on the campus of CSULB

15th Annual Solanki Lecture: 

Ananya Vajpeyi is an Associate Professor and Fellow with the Centre for Developing Societies in New Delhi as well as a current Fellow with the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs. Dr. Vajpeyi writes regularly for The Hindu newspaper and contributes to Foreign Affairs, World Policy Journal, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is currently working on a biography of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956).

For any inquiries email us at: indiastudies@csulb.edu