The previous chapters probed how Rabindranath Tagore, Kalidas Nag, Benoy Kumar Sarkar and a wider range of scholars affiliated with the GIS turned the research paradigm of Greater India into a political discourse during the interwar period. It became apparent that the appeal of the Greater India idea was not limited to its utility as an historical argument that could expose and correct the biased and often racist accounts of British historians. Greater India was a historical canvas on which Indian intellectuals projected contesting visions of India’s civilizational self. Alternative visions of a historical Greater India were, in turn, evoked to match different ideological imperatives and visions of world order. In the process, Greater India became a tool for both nation-building and transnational alliance formation in the interwar period, and reconfigured the very “idea of India.”

In this introductory chapter we begin by discussing the importance of perspective taking both in real life and in the context of reading fictional narratives. We assume that reading fiction promotes perspective taking during and beyond the completion of the narrative. We argue that until we have a solid grasp of the cognitive mechanisms of perspective taking, we cannot make strong claims about how reading fiction can change society or behavior. We end by describing our anticipated goals and contributions.

For a decade, the Faculty of Education of the University of Cambridge worked with colleagues in the newly established Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education (NUGSE) in a programme designed to build research capacity. Though this involved some research training in the early stages, it functioned mainly by bringing research teams from the two institutions together into a research collaboration focused on the progress of educational reform in Kazakhstan. This chapter considers some of the issues raised by a somewhat asymmetrical international collaboration, the ‘translation’ of ‘international’ practice into this new environment and the development of what might be understood as a ‘research culture’. It considers the impact of the structural hierarchies built into the foundation of Nazarbayev University and, in particular, our research collaboration, with some reference to knowledge hierarchies (academic research, teachers’ professional knowledge as reflected in action research and lesson studies), the problematic nature of the discourse of the ‘international’ and ‘world class’ in educational research and the charge of neocolonialism levelled against the whole enterprise.

“Coalescence” takes readers to 1921 Shanghai, site of the Fifth Far Eastern Championship Games. At the Games, athletes from China, Japan, and the Philippines gathered to compete in team sports, such as volleyball, soccer, baseball, and basketball; individual sports, such as tennis and swimming; and track and field events. This chapter follows not only the athletes and coaches who participated in the competitions on the fields, but also the pundits and observers who used those performances to create new meanings and spin new narratives. For instance, it highlights how pundits and observers used the lenses of race and gender to explain away defeat, account for victory, and claim ownership of civilization and modernity. It focuses in particular on how the male gaze dissected women’s dress and comportment in athletic demonstrations and carnival competitions alike. 1921 was a year of coalescence, and this chapter also treats the Far Eastern Championship Games as a window into a broader world of Sino–Philippine interaction. This chapter traces, for example, the concomitant study tours of Gan Bun Cho and Camilo Osias, the campaign against the Bookkeeping Act, and anti-Japanese politicking – all topics explored in earlier chapters.

The Conclusion, The Ghosts of the Present, bucks the trend of earlier chapters by focusing on only one theoretical framework – historical memory. It positions the exploration of the connected history of China and the Philippines as a means to dispel the ghosts of the present.

This chapter reconstructs how Tagore and Nag’s agenda for a global humanism, inspired by the template of Greater India, was put to the test at Visva-Bharati university, a space closely monitored by the colonial authorities as a potential breeding ground for sedition. Tagore’s peculiar blend of Orientalism and internationalism resonated with an international group of intellectuals, including Romain Rolland, Carlo Formichi, Sylvain Lévi and Yone Noguchi, but ultimately lost traction amidst the ideological turmoil and political developments that marked the 1920s and 30s. As Tagore’s controversial visit to Fascist Italy painfully revealed, a vision of world order premised on the cooperation of cultural ambassadors from the East and West sharing the same humanist ideals, became increasingly untenable. Furthermore, the Indian exceptionalism and cultural essentialism that energized Tagore’s vision turned out to be unpalatable for figures such as Lévi, who supported the GIS but dismissed any notion of an Eastern mission to ‘redeem the West’. Japan’s geopolitical ascendency altered the East for good and shattered the dream of a united Asian front inspired by the legacies of ‘Greater India’.

Our chapter focuses on a three-year project called ‘Teacher Leadership in Kazakhstan’ (TLK). In three years, the project grew to a nationwide initiative and had 500 active participants from thirty-five urban and rural schools. We adopted a narrative approach to explain the policy context for teacher leadership development, and we have reported the introduction of the TLK initiative in a sequential manner and summarised the key lessons that we learned throughout the project’s implementation.

This chapter presents the results of monitoring research conducted by the Center of Excellence in 2018–2021. The focus of the research was the professional potential of leading schools established in each region of Kazakhstan as a mechanism for testing innovative ideas and further large-scale translation, taking into account the accumulated experience and the optimal strategy of action. The theoretical and practical basis of the research consists of analytical materials and empirical research data, confirming the dominant role of professional capital. On this contextual basis, the methodology and criteria-evaluation framework were defined, research and interpretation of the data obtained were carried out and conclusions were formulated. The database was formed on the basis of self-evaluation of professional potential by managers and teachers of all leading schools and the evaluative opinion of partner schools, which were methodologically supported. The multiplicity of studies, the representative sample and the triangulation method used have provided sufficient qualitative and quantitative data for the formulation of objective findings and timely decision-making.

“Disintegration” bounces back and forth between the boardroom, where negotiators discussed the future of the Far Eastern Championship Games, and the fields, where athletes fought for victory under the sweltering Manila summer sun. The boardroom bouts and athletic competitions both produced controversies, but the former ended up outweighing all the animosity, camaraderie, and complexity of the latter. Boardroom negotiators from the Philippines and Japan, including several who had studied at Springfield College, ended up dissolving the Far Eastern Athletic Association, which had up until that time governed the Games, replacing it with a new organizational entity that included the puppet state of Manchukuo. Chinese negotiators, who were unable to attend the final meeting, vented their frustration upon arriving back in China. The conflict on the field, which centered on a series of basketball competitions, as well as the drama of the boardroom negotiations, set the stage for the actual conflict that would take place when Japan invaded China and the Philippines in World War II. This chapter concludes the story of the monograph by tracing how things began to fall apart as the world sped toward conflict.

The introduction outlines, in broad brushstrokes, the different dimensions of the scholarly and nationalist quest to find India in Asia. In the 1920s and 1930s, Rabindranath Tagore and Greater India Society (GIS) members such as Kalidas Nag and Suniti Kumar Chatterjee toured Southeast Asia to look for ancient India’s Hindu-Buddhist cultural and artistic legacies abroad. But although this quest focused on Java, Bali and Cambodia, the GIS also charted India’s historical influence and cultural imprints in Central and East Asia, as well as Europe, the Pacific world and Indian Ocean realm. Drawing on the travelogues of GIS members and figures loosely affiliated with the society such as the Bengali sannyasin Swami Sadananda, this introduction explores the interwar politics of Greater India. It is argued that the Greater India movement’s quest to rewrite ancient history reconfigured the “idea of India” and became central to anti-colonial, nationalist and internationalist political agendas. Finally, the introduction reflects on the language dynamics of the knowledge networks of Greater India, and outlines the main methodological and historiographical stakes of the book.

This chapter is a critical reflection on the reform and its implementation. It looks at the challenges in the past, present and future and some key lessons learned along the way. It examines the changes in the context and the importance of cultural and political factors and what can be learned about implementing large-scale reform, and speculates on the next steps.