Wednesday, June 19, 2019
CANADIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION REVIVED
Indian Association for Canadian Studies has more than one thousand members from India, Canada, United States, and other countries. Established in 1985 by Professor Om Prakash Juneja and others at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, it is the largest Canadian Association among thirty such associations all over the world. It has created a sizable body of knowledge on issues common to India and Canada by building bridges of understanding between two countries during the last two decades by holding conferences, seminars, and workshops, exchange of teachers and students and publishing books. More recently, it was inactive because of a dispute regarding its trusteeship, which was settled by the Charity Commissioner in favour of the Founding Trustees from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda a few months ago.
The Association had its 24th Annual Conference at H. M. Patel Institute of English, Vallabh Vidyanagar 0n 10-11 April 2010. It elected its new office bearers with Professor Om Juneja as President, Professor Ranjana Harish as Vice President, Dr. Vimal Dhawan, as Secretary and Dr. Dinkar Nayak as Treasurer, while Dr. Alice Anugraham, Professor Adesh Pal and Dr. P. Selvam were elected as members of the Executive Committee.
Assuming the Presidency of the Association, Professor Juneja stated that with the revival of Indian Association for Canadian Studies after a period of three years, the hopes of its members are high, particularly because the relations between Canada and India are on upturn. There have been 11 Canadian ministerial visits to India over the past two and a half years, including five in the last year alone. Kamal Nath, India’s Commerce minister visited Canada recently and the Prime Minister of India is scheduled to visit Canada soon.
India’s emergence as a major global actor in the economic sphere, asserted Juneja, has attracted such companies as Bombardier to build metros in Delhi and other cities. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s visit to India in November 2009 has resolved the nuclear issue between the two countries. Canada hosts the largest Indian Diaspora community of any Western country relative to the size of its overall population. This human bridge between India and Canada is the most solid foundation of the bilateral relationship, asserted Juneja who plans to study particularly the contribution of the Gujarati diaspora in Canada.
Published in SouthAsiaMail.com on 15 April 2010 in Community News.
