THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Leilah Vevaina
To Hong Kong and Back Again: Building Bombay and Rebuilding Mumbai
Friday 16 October 2020, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Please note that due to the COVID-19 pandemic there will be special seating arrangements for the talk limiting the number of seats to 100 and you MUST RSVP by filling out this online form (one reserved seat per email address).
Parsis (Indian Zoroastrians), a micro-minority, are well-known in Mumbai for their philanthropic giving. The community in the city, through its ties to shipbuilding, and the tea trade, has had a sustained relationship with Hong Kong. This paper wishes to show how these nineteenth-century trade profits were invested in urban real estate and in recent years have seen a resurgence of funds transferred from Parsi charitable trusts in Hong Kong back to Mumbai, helping to connect the two cities.
Leilah Vevaina is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She received her PhD in Social Anthropology from the New School for Social Research in 2015. She has an MA in Anthropology from The New School (2007) as well as an MA in Social Thought from New York University (2005). Her research lies in the intersection of urban property and religious life within the legal regimes of contemporary India. She has conducted fieldwork in Mumbai, India, and Hong Kong, with specific focus on the Indian Zoroastrian, or Parsi community.
The HKAS is a member of the World Council of Anthropological Associations