Akhil Gupta - K. Sivaramakrishnan Reflection

Akhil Gupta
University of California, Los Angeles

I first got to know Shivi when I was a fellow in Agrarian Studies in 1993-94. He was not there when I first reached New Haven but came back from fieldwork later in the semester and by then I had already heard the faculty and staff at Agrarian Studies praise him for the wonderful job that he had done administering the program in his spare time as a graduate student. I don’t think that people at Yale knew what it meant to be a member of the IAS and how much Shivi had given up to pursue an academic career mid-stream as it were, because he was not just starting his career when he came to Yale as a graduate student. He asked for my advice when he was writing his dissertation, but frankly I knew that he was already a peer, and there was little I could do to guide him, but I certainly gave him feedback as I would to any other colleague. After that, we were in regular touch and I was very happy when he landed a job at the University of Washington. I saw Shivi go from strength to strength intellectually and academically, and was extremely happy to see him elected as President of the Association for Asian Studies in 2010.

I worked with Shivi most closely when we were organizing the conference that led to the book, “The State in India after Liberalization.” Because the conference was held at Stanford, I did most of the groundwork that Shivi actually knew how to do better, and I remember when I shared with him a detailed breakdown of the logistics for the workshop, he expressed astonishment at the detailed and thorough list, because he had probably assumed that I would bungle the organizing like any good head-in-the-clouds academic and then he would have to come and clean it up. We had a wonderful few days at the workshop, and thanks to Shivi, the volume came out in time as well.

Shivi’s defining features are of intellectual and personal generosity and a seriousness of purpose that benefited the institutions he worked for and led, the students he mentored, and the conversations and discussions which he organized or in which he participated. Always respectful of contrary positions, always generous towards contrary people, always open to new ideas and suggestions, he has modeled in his career how an open-ness to others creates spaces of growth, learning, engagement, and respect. Nobody who asked him for help was disappointed, even when Shivi was overworked (which was always). You could rely on him for letters, for support, for advice, for comments, for help of any kind, and it never came begrudgingly or beyond deadline.

I can understand why he might want to retire, but his students and colleagues at Yale will surely miss him. But perhaps the rest of us might see more of him when he is freed of administrative burdens and the routines of teaching!