Willem van Schendel is Professor of Modern Asian History at the University of Amsterdam and head of the Asia Department of the International Institute of Social History. His publications include The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia.Itty Abraham is Director of the South Asia Institute and Associate Professor of Government and Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He is author of The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy, and the Postcolonial State and co-editor of Southeast Asian Diasporas.