South Africa and India

Isabel Hofmeyr is Professor of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.Michelle Williams is an editor and an associate professor of sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Her books include Labour in the Global South: Challenges and Alternatives for Workers; The Roots of Participatory Democracy: Democratic Communists in South Africa and Kerala, India; and South Africa and India: Shaping the Global South.

• Historical connections : Gandhi's printing press: Indian Ocean print cultures and Cosmopolitanisms; steamship empire - Asian, African and British sailors in the Merchant Marine c. 1880-1945; the interlocking worlds of the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa and India Pradip; the disquieting of history - Portuguese (De)colonisation and Goan Migration in the Indian Ocean; Monty ... Meets Gandhi ... Meets Mandela - the dilemma of non-violent resisters in South Africa, 1940-60. Socio-political comparisons: Renaissances, African and modern - Gandhi as a resource?; Democratic deepening in India and South Africa; local democracy in Indian and South African cities - a comparative literature review; reimagining socialist futures in South Africa and Kerala, India; labour, migrancy and urbanisation in South Africa and India, 1900-60.

... makes a significant and innovative contribution by establishing a new field of research. -Preben Kaarsholm, Roskilde University, Denmark In recent years, relations between South Africa and India have burgeoned in bilateral and multilateral contexts, but comparative analyses of their histories, visions and developmental trajectories have barely started. ... Hofmeyr and Williams have assembled an impressive interdisciplinary group of scholars to lend insights into various historical and contemporary facets of India-South Africa relations in ways that enrich the comparative enterprise. -Gilbert M. Khadiagala. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg