Professor Partha Chatterjee is working on a series of historical-anthropological studies entitled "Empire Against Terror." His book, A Princely Impostor? The Strange and Universal History of the Kumar of Bhawal, was published in 2003. It is a book on a court proceeding in Bengal in 1934-36 on establishing the identity of a person. The case offers several interesting problems regarding colonial assumptions on Indian identity, popular beliefs on political authority and personal morality and finally the techniques of the modern state to establish identity.

Raghuram Rajan is the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business.

Prior to resuming teaching, Dr. Rajan was the Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund between 2003 and 2006.

Justice Ruma Pal is a former judge of the Supreme Court of India who served on the bench from January 2000 to June 2006. The Honorable Mrs. Pal received her B.C.L. degree at Oxford University and started her practice in 1968 in Civil, Revenue, Labour and Constitutional matters in the Kolkata High Court.

His Excellency Ronen Sen is India’s Ambassador to the United States. A career diplomat, Ambassador Sen joined the Indian Foreign Service in July 1966. From 1968 to 1984, he served in Indian Missions/Posts in Moscow, San Francisco, Dhaka, and the Ministry of External Affairs. From 1984 to 1985, Ambassador Sen was Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs. He was subsequently Joint Secretary to the Prime Minister of India from January 1986 to July 1991, responsible for Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Science and Technology.

Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns is Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Atlantic Council, the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress and the Appeal of Conscience Foundation. In summer 2008, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington D.C. Ambassador Burns served in the United States Foreign Service for twenty-seven years until his retirement in April 2008.

This Khemka Distinguished Lecture is also the Opening Keynote Address of the Dalit Studies Conference, a Penn School of Arts and Sciences conference organized by The Center for the Advanced Study of India, the Department of South Asia Studies, the South Asia Center, and the center for Africana Studies, December 3-5, 2008