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Karen-Anne Coleman, a student enrolled in the B Art Theory/Arts program at the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, has won the prestigious Hugh Owen Prize for 2006.
The prize is presented annually by the South Asian Studies Association of Australia (SASA), in memory of Professor Hugh Owen, for the best undergraduate essay written on a South Asian topic in Australia. Entries are submitted from universities all over Australia and the panel of judges is constituted of experienced academics specialising in the study of South Asia.
Karen’s essay, “Biography or Billboard? A historical evaluation of Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi (1982) and its portrayal of Jinnah”, was submitted for assessment in Modern India: British Raj to Bollywood, in 2006. Karen devised her own essay topic after watching a portion of the Academy Award-winning film in a lecture. In her essay, Karen deconstructed the way in which Attenborough conceived of and devised the film with the aid of the Indian Government, She concluded, represents ‘Indian history as progress to partition, and promotion of an anti-Pakistan agenda’, and has ‘serious implications in international relations today.’
The essay was a timely intervention. As India is set to rise as a global power, its tumultuous relationship with Pakistan over Kashmir makes the region one of the world’s nuclear ‘hot spots’ and disseminating a naive view of Gandhi, of over-simplifying the processes that underlay India’s partition and the creation of Pakistan.
The prize was also timely, as it was announced just as Karen returned from three months in India as a volunteer under the Australian Volunteers International (AVI) Youth Program, where she was billeted with a family in the village of Kundachappai in the Nilgiris ‘Blue Mountains’ of Tamil Nadu.
As part of a team of twenty other Australians, Karen contributed to the construction of sustainable waste disposal and health schemes, as part of a community project aimed at eliminating preventable diseases such as malaria and cholera. After hours, the team taught young teenagers art and karate.
The President of SASA, Dr Tim Scrase, will present Karen with her $250 prize and certificate on the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Award Night, on April 19.
Modern India: British Raj to Bollywood (HIST 2055) is taught in second semester.
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Last Updated: February 26, 2008