CASI History

About CASI

Founded in 1992, the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania is the first research institution in the United States dedicated to the study of contemporary India. A national resource, it fills an urgent need for objective knowledge of India’s politics, rapidly changing economy, and social transformations.

CASI seeks to enrich our understanding of contemporary India by conducting data-driven, policy-oriented research on India’s most pressing challenges, convening discussions with scholars, policymakers, and practitioners on key issues, hosting distinguished and new voices from India at Penn, and providing opportunities for new generations of students and scholars to conduct research and hold internships in India.

Our History

Founded in 1992 by Prof. Francine R. Frankel, CASI was born a year after India launched its historic economic reforms. Now under the direction of Prof. Tariq Thachil, CASI further expands the University of Pennsylvania’s leadership on South Asian studies through its focus on high-quality empirical research and analyses, rigorous and innovative data sets, and long-term collaborations with academics, policymakers, and practitioners working in India and the US.
 

"In 1959, when I first went to India on a student Fulbright fellowship, I realized that it was unique as a civilization, social order and polity and needed to be understood holistically. As a political scientist, this was very difficult to do because of the break between the Sanskritists studying the ancient culture and social science scholars of modern India. Penn, with its strengths in South Asia studies, was the best university to understand a rising India on its own terms." 
-Francine R. Frankel (CASI’s Founding Director)
 

CASI was established in a context of complex and wide-ranging transitions. With the end of the Cold War, both India and the US recognized new potential for cooperation: economic, technological, and political. CASI’s focus on India represented the new realities of the international environment in which Asia would play a significantly greater role in global issues affecting the US. CASI’s founding also coincided with a moment of extraordinary internal dynamism and flux within India and a period of unprecedented social transformation. These rapidly evolving contexts, shaped by intensifying globalization and interdependence, demanded new intellectual approaches and a reassessment of the role of area studies in international programs, a challenge CASI both anticipated and was uniquely positioned to address.

This foresight led to the establishment of the University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India (UPIASI), CASI’s counterpart institution in New Delhi in 1997. UPIASI has developed a strong research program and presence of its own under the leadership of Dr. E. Sridharan (GR’89) and plays a key role in facilitating CASI’s deep and distinctive research partnerships and student programs in India.

In 2003, championed by CASI’s International Advisory Board, the Madan Lal Sobti Chair for the Study of Contemporary India was established to secure CASI’s long-term future at Penn. This led to additional endowed funds and term gifts for further developing CASI programs.

In support of CASI’s key goals, our endowed Nand & Jeet Khemka Distinguished Lecture Series (founded in 2007) and Saluja Global Fellows Program (founded in 2022) bring leading India voices to Penn’s campus. These public programs extend the dialogue on India across the University and in the greater Philadelphia community.

As part of our commitment to young scholars and future leaders, CASI offers year-round Student Programs opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students through research assistantships, summer internships in India, research travel grants, and the Sobti Family Doctoral Fellowship. Our Visiting Scholars/Fellows Program allows Penn students to interact directly with academics, journalists, policymakers, and NGO leaders from India in-residence at CASI.

India in Transition (IiT)—our in-house publication—presents brief, analytical perspectives to a wide and diverse audience on innovative ideas and ongoing transformations in contemporary India. IiT articles are carried in leading Indian newspapers and translated into multiple Indian languages.
 

“India, home to over 1.4 billion people, is four times more literate than it was at independence. Its per capita GDP has increased sevenfold in six decades. Yet, it is also a country that still struggles to combat child malnourishment or produce formal sector employment. As India’s future is inevitably marked by further transformations, CASI is committed to studying and understanding these challenges.” 
-Tariq Thachil (Director of CASI, Professor of Political Science, and Madan Lal Sobti Professor for the Study of Contemporary India at Penn)
 

On October 13, 2022, CASI celebrated its 30th anniversary with a symposium, “India at 75, CASI at 30," on Penn’s campus. The event featured panels discussing India’s economy, domestic politics, and place in the world.

Penn has been at the forefront of area studies since 1942 when Prof. W. Norman Brown pioneered the study of modern India, a full fifteen years before area studies appeared on any other US campus. That legacy continues at the School of Arts and Sciences through the Department of South Asian Studies and its South Asia Center, the stellar holdings of the South Asian Studies Collection at the Van Pelt Library, and most vibrantly, we believe, through CASI.
 

"How can Americans who have never met India in their educational experience be expected to live intelligently in such a world?" 
-W. Norman Brown, Founder of the first department of South Asian Studies in the U.S. at Penn