Lydia Walker - Beyond States-in-Waiting: Rights, Recognition, and Sovereignty in South Asia and the World

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=””] About the Lecture What does it mean to claim rights without recognition? And what happens to sovereignty when statehood remains perpetually deferred? States in Waiting traced how political movements in South Asia and beyond navigated a twentieth‑century international order in which external recognition, rather than territorial control alone, determined access to statehood. Highlighting Northeast India—a region characterized by porous borders, insurgent movements, and overlapping claims to authority—the book showed how nationalist movements collaborated with advocacy networks to articulate claims to rights, autonomy, and self‑determination. In doing so, these struggles reveal a persistent tension between aspirations towards universal rights and an international system that privileges recognized sovereignty. This lecture moves beyond that framework by returning to the unresolved questions at the heart of the book’s conclusion. If recognition remains uneven, delayed, or denied, what alternative forms of political belonging emerge? If sovereignty can be suspended, fragmented, or deferred, how should we understand the temporalities of the international order itself?