IU Professor receives top award from Indian government for citizen living abroad

Professor Sumit Ganguly has a lot on his plate.

Along with directing the IU India Studies Program, he teaches, writes periodically for Newsweek and India’s largest circulating newspaper, The Times of India, consults for the U.S. government about international affairs and is the research director for the Center on American and Global Security at IU.

“Amongst these things, I am lucky to get a full eight hours of sleep at night,” Ganguly said.

All those sleepless nights seem to have paid off. Ganguly was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award, which is one of the highest honors the government of India gives to members of the Indian community living abroad.

“It was an extremely pleasant surprise,” Ganguly said. “I feel I am in charmed company.”

Ganguly said he believes his scholarship and involvement in public affairs and in the defense of the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Deal, a bill lifting the ban on nuclear trade between India and the U.S., led to what he called a “great honor.”

Ganguly has lived in the United States since he was 18. He said life in India before he came here was much different than it is now.

“India was a lot less prosperous,” Ganguly said. “It was much more difficult to travel abroad in those days. India was much less exposed to the rest of the world in those days. Opportunities for people to move up in the world were a lot more limited.”

These limitations spurred Ganguly on.

“It made me terribly curious of what was going on in the outside world,” he said. “It filled me with this desire to see the world because it was so inaccessible ... It gave me a real hunger and a craving to see what was out there.”

Coming to the United States was a major culture shock to Ganguly, he said.
Even the little things, such as water fountains and Coca-Cola, were astounding to him.

“A can of Coca-Cola was 15 cents, but after playing a game of tennis, I would think twice about spending 15 cents because I would convert it into rupees, the unit of currency in India. I would be shocked by how much it would cost, so I would think twice about putting 15 cents into a Coke machine.”

After attaining his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ganguly wrote extensively on topics ranging from politics of South Asia to the Israeli and Pakistani pursuit of nuclear weapons. He taught at the University of Texas at Austin for four years prior to coming to IU in 2003. He has taught courses on South Asian politics, war, international conflict and many other subjects.

Ganguly has also been a mentor for many doctoral students in their pursuits of publishing and dissertations.

Brian Shoup, a doctoral student who worked with Ganguly on his dissertation, said Ganguly was “instrumental” in helping him publish his book, “Conflict and Cooperation in Multi-Ethnic States: Institutional Incentives, Myths, and Counterbalancing.”

“Sumit is a very good adviser,” Shoup said. “He’s relentless in trying to help his students get good research contacts in the field and will do his best to help them get jobs afterwards.”

Ganguly’s colleagues also said they hold him in high esteem.

Elliot Sperling, a professor of Central Eurasian Studies at IU, worked with Ganguly in the past. He met Ganguly for the first time at a conference at Harvard University regarding Tibetan affairs.

Sperling said Ganguly doesn’t “mince words” regarding international and academic affairs, of which Sperling said Ganguly is a well-regarded expert both nationally and internationally.

“You know exactly what his opinion is,” Sperling said. “He’s not wishy-washy. He’s very direct in his analysis of things, and he’s not very coy about stating his opinion.”

Ganguly said he believes this direct attitude is necessary when trying to attain
success in life.

“Find something that you are really, absolutely passionate about and pursue it with all the energy you can muster,” he said. “Pursue it as if your life depended on it.”