South Asia Research recent issues

Puranic Texts from Kashmir: Vitasta and River Ceremonials in the Nilamata Purana

Sharma, M. — 2008-07-15

Focusing on the western Himalayan provinces of Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, this article argues that the Indian hagiographic texts of the Puranas should be understood as a nuanced literature that sought to effect a paradigm shift in liturgy and praxis, fusing polity and religion, largely in contravention to the earlier Vedic–Upanishadic texts and their commentaries, but also building on them. Emphasis on local Sanskrit literature, specifically the Nilamata Purana, which uses popular iconographies of river goddesses, served many centuries ago to reconstruct the geography of the area within the wider context of the subcontinental sacred geography.

Keeping within the Puranic tradition, the article focuses on the rituals and ceremonials associated with rivers, while also charting the process by which regional pilgrim centres were formed on their banks, devising a sacred space parallel to the subcontinental cosmos. This reinforces the logic of the sacred river, the worshipped deity, as a process by which brahmanic dominance was asserted in the peripheral areas of early India, or ideologically and politically contested regions such as Kashmir. In the sacrality of the river Vitasta, Brahmanism as an ideology reasserts itself by restating the tradition in relation to its sacral past, creating a new sacred space and devising a sacred icon to reclaim this particular geography for the devout Brahmanas.

Hungry for Change: The World Bank in India

Sridhar, D. — 2008-07-15

The World Bank has become the largest financial contributor to health-related and nutrition projects, committing more than $1 billion annually towards the health, nutrition and population sector. This article examines how the World Bank addressed malnutrition in Tamil Nadu and discusses the consequences of this approach for the Bank's projects and target communities. Using the case study of the Tamil Nadu Integrated Nutrition Project (TINP), it is argued that the World Bank nutrition package, now implemented in several countries, might not be effective in extremely poor and destitute communities because it does not address the underlying social causes of malnutrition. The final section of the article goes ‘inside’ the Bank to examine two institutional drivers that could explain the promotion of the TINP approach to undernutrition.

Demarginalisation and History: Dalit Re-Invention of the Past

Narayan, B. — 2008-07-15

The article demonstrates how the ongoing demarginalisation of Dalits in India today works on a variety of levels. Through creating new narratives and virtually inventing a new alternative history and language, this movement for demarginalisation uses a particular style of popular and widely circulated booklets, vigorously read and disseminated by the neo-literate Dalit population. The construction of this alternative history through such new texts, seen as an existential necessity for the Dalits, works by weaving together stories found in religious Brahminical popular texts about dissenting lower caste characters, glorified as Dalit heroes who fought against upper caste oppression and injustice. It also includes stories of unsung Dalit freedom fighters, transformed into local myths. Importantly, the language used is different from Standard Hindi, since folk proverbs, idioms and symbols, as well as the grammar and vocabulary of local dialects, are used. The article demonstrates in some detail how these processes of constructing new literature work, and indicates that these new sources may well be laying foundations for the histories of the future of many subaltern communities of South Asia.

Amrikan Shari'a: The Reconstruction of Islamic Family Law in the United States

Zaman, S. — 2008-07-15

This article examines the growth and development of the hybridized practice of Muslim laws in the shadow of the American legal system, a form of unofficial law that may be called amrikan shari'a. Following the immigration trajectory of many American Muslims, transnational information links forged by wide-scale immigration are explored, particularly the innovative use of new online resources available to Muslim immigrants in America and the proliferation of online fiqh discussion groups, which has fostered the very American character of the do-it-yourself mufti. A further section considers several mahr cases that have reached American courtrooms and compares one such case with a similar English case, which was decided rather differently. The article concludes with an assessment of how the Bush government's ‘War on Terror’ and domestic US developments, such as legalizing gay marriage in Massachusetts and the increasing presence of second-generation Muslim Americans, combine to affect the future of amrikan shari'a within a secular legal system.

South Asian Female Migrants' Work Differentials: Multicultural Assessment

Foroutan, Y. — 2008-07-15

This article examines the employment and occupational status of South Asian female migrants in Australia, mostly Indian and Sri Lankan. It highlights their work differentials with both native-born and other female migrants in this multicultural context and confirms that they are a highly selected population who potentially bring considerable economic benefits to the receiving society. The observation that South Asian female migrants in Australia are able to contribute significant human capital in the form of language and education skills, but do so to some extent on their own terms, suggests that more careful attention needs to be paid to selecting migrants from South Asia and facilitating their entry into the labour market.

Book Reviews

2008-07-15

Exploring the Right to Secession: The South Asian Context

Chandhoke, N. — 2008-02-21

One of the most intractable problems confronting South Asian states and societies has been the presence of secessionist movements and insistent demands for a state of one's own. Though societies and states tend to react violently when faced with such demands, many serious issues are embedded in secessionist demands, as well as in the responses to these demands, above all issues of justice and injustice. The present article seeks to trace out the key issues involved in demands for secession, exploring reasons for why and when such demands arise in the first place. Examined within the wider context of international law, specific scenarios in South Asia are considered to propel a debate about whether secession can be argued to be a right, and in what circumstances. It is proposed that the concept of secession has, in effect, to be extricated from narrow agendas of national security, war against terror, and military strategy, and placed within the wider domain of normative political theory, which can indeed find justifications for demanding secession.

Hazrat-I-Dehli: The Making of the Chishti Sufi Centre and the Stronghold of Islam

Aquil, R. — 2008-02-21

This article explores the significant linkages between the rise of Delhi as the foremost Sufi centre and the bastion of Islam as well as the seat of political power in the 13th and 14th centuries. Three out of the first five leading Chishti saints of the Sultanate period chose to live in Delhi, catapulting the city onto the map of the sacred geography of South Asian Islam. The Chishti Sufis also helped in shaping the cosmopolitan character of the city, even as they ensured that the interests of Islam and Muslims were safeguarded. Hence, though Delhi remained the centre of Muslim power for close to six centuries and its landscape is dotted with mosques, madrasas and dargahs of the Sufis, the exclusionist, juridical interpretation of Islam was sidelined in favour of a more inclusive approach to religion practised and propagated by the Chishtis. The essay charts this process and its significance for the early history of Islam in India.

Recognising Complexity, Embracing Diversity: Working Children in Bangladesh

Haider, M. — 2008-02-21

The diversity of children's work and life across the world has generated intense debates on the socio-legal status of working children, particularly in countries of the South. Official legal systems often accord little recognition to working children, while in practice they encompass a distinct yet complex entity. This article examines the tensions between official international and national laws and the actual reality or ‘living laws’ regarding working children in Bangladesh in a wider interdisciplinary context. While these children are mainly so impoverished that they have to work for their own survival, to deny them any agency in negotiating their position seems misguided. Thus it is argued that the present dominant understanding of child work is not compatible with the real life situations of such children and is, in fact, injurious to their individual interests. The article suggests that a culture-specific analysis which properly diagnoses the contextual struggles of working children in countries like Bangladesh is better suited to minimising the ongoing suffering of working children.

'The Touchstone of a Nation's Greatness is the Status of its Women'--Responses to Colonial Discourses on Indian Womanhood

Nijhawan, S. — 2008-02-21

Civilizing discourses about the degradation of womanhood in Indian society have featured as a central reference point not only among colonial rulers and missionaries, they also inserted themselves into the consciousness of indigenous elites and emerging middle classes and remain of relevance even today. This article explores the interventions of women's periodicals in Hindi into colonial civilizing discourses of the late 1910s–1920s. Many contributors suggested that more attention should be turned towards a presumed ideal Hindu past and women's revered status therein rather than using ‘the West’ as a model for civilization, especially with regard to female emancipation. Seeking ‘measurement scales’ from within Indian society became instrumental to reformist and nationalist agendas that ultimately wanted to prove cultural superiority over the West. The article demonstrates how civilizing discourses were not only appropriated in women's periodicals, but were also transformed to serve another civilizatory purpose that made Indian women's rights and citizenship a precondition rather than a logical consequence of the independence struggle. Articulate women writers rebutted the ‘victim-syndrome’, claiming that moral improvement was not to be received from British actors or Indian men, but needed to be achieved by women themselves.

Extent of Poverty Alleviation by Migrant Remittances in Sri Lanka

Kageyama, A. — 2008-02-21

After reviewing some of the available empirical literature on current trends of remittances and their economic impact on welfare of migrating countries, this study focuses on the case of Sri Lanka to demonstrate that workers’ remittances may have both positive and negative consequences in home communities. Economically, remittances will benefit migrant households, particularly poorer ones, by increased income in the short term. However, they may sometimes cause negative social effects, particularly through disruption in family relations and also by creating a sense of relative deprivation in non-migrant communities. Therefore, migration and remittances are not the sole solution of poverty alleviation and appropriate policies also need to address unexpected adverse effects.

Reviews

2008-02-21

Re-considering Chronologies of Nationalism and Communalism: The Khilafat Movement in Sind and its Aftermath, 1919 1927

Tejani, S. — 2007-12-05

In 1920, M.K. Gandhi launched the Non-cooperation campaign, his first attempt at mass anti-colonial mobilisation. It quickly became aligned with the Khilafat movement—a mobilisation among Indian Muslims to protect the position of the Khalifa after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. Scholars have seen this moment as the high point of cooperation between India's Hindus and Muslims, with a real possibility for unity in the nationalist movement. However, the campaigns ended within two years and, after 1922, differences among the leadership intersected with violent conflicts between Hindu and Muslim communities in a number of different regions; the promise of the preceding years appeared shattered, some argue for ever. Scholarship on the Khilafat movement has been teleological, tending to read it either as part of the story of ‘Muslim separatism’ or subsuming it into the forward march of Indian nationalism.

Arguing that the picture drawn by the existing scholarship is misleading, this article asks if the Khilafat movement can really have a story of its own. Through examining the campaign in Sind, it shows that at the grassroots it was made up of a complex set of alliances, often little related with religious difference or Indian nationalism, made and broken right from its inception. Rather, it argues that political developments in the post-Khilafat period proved crucial to the way that nationalism and communalism would come to be defined.

The Darbar, the British, and the Runaway Maharaja: Religion and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Western India

Saha, S. — 2007-12-05

The Vallabha Sampradaya or Pusti Marga Hindu devotional community was founded in the sixteenth century by the Vaisnavite philosopher, Vallabha. His successors, known as maharajas, continued to spread the teachings of the Pusti Marga and enjoyed much success in Rajasthan and Gujarat. Political and economic patronage by elites of Western India soon transformed these maharajas into wealthy landlords whose affluent lifestyles would cause much controversy in the nineteenth century.

This article uses unpublished documents found in the National Archives of India to detail one of these controversies, revolving around struggles between the Pusti Marga, the royal house of Mevad., and British authorities for control of the wealth associated with Nathdvara, the central focus of Pusti Marga pilgrimage in Rajasthan. The protracted struggle for the control of Nathdvara indicates how Hindu spiritual leaders were far from passive observers of the world who gave themselves purely to the cultivation of spiritual pursuits. On the contrary, this particular controversy is a striking example of how the active engagement of religious leaders in local and regional politics could profoundly affect the existing religious and social structures of their time.

'Power Smashes into Private Lives': Violence, Globalization and Cosmopolitanism in Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown

Siddiqi, Y. — 2007-12-05

In Shalimar the Clown, Salman Rushdie fashions a novel of global proportions, tracing the interlacing fortunes of characters from a small Kashmiri village and from the metropolises of North America and Europe. Against the backdrop of international networks of diplomacy, capital and Islamic terrorism, and the repressive forces of the Indian state, Rushdie explores both vernacular and global articulations of cosmopolitanism. The essay argues mainly that Rushdie draws in this novel on the ideal of Kashmiriyat to imagine possibilities of conviviality across religious differences. Ultimately, he projects this ideal of a reconstituted Kashmiriyat, characterized as a vernacular form of cosmopolitanism, onto a global screen. Appealing as such a projected ideal might be, it is problematic in that it advances an elite vision of cosmopolitanism.

The Coming of the Secular in Indian Polity: A Sociological Reading

Chakraborty, T., Kundu, A. — 2007-12-05

Instead of searching for a definitive connotation of what is ‘secular’, the present essay explores how secular concepts gradually arrived on the scene of the Indian polity from a variety of areas and re-examines possibilities of probing the place of the secular in Indian polity by problematising its practice over time. Our methodology involves a shift of focus in searching for the roots of this concept in local and peripheral arenas rather than central texts and events. The dynamics of Indian centre-periphery relations have been dominantly historicised by the struggle for independence. This essay highlights the relevance of peripheral texts in defining secular aspects of polity, examining the dominant texts of the centre from the vantage point of the margin. While documenting an alternative discursive construction of secular politics in India, a sociologically informed reading on the question of ‘the secular’ argues that it will never dominate Indian politics without multiple challenges.

Engaging with Discourse on Caste, Class and Politics in India

Pankaj, A. K. — 2007-12-05

This article maps the changing profile of pre-Mandal and post-Mandal debates on caste, class and politics in India, showing that the centrality of caste as an agent of politics and its dominant role in public-political life has remained a reality throughout. What is contested now is the extent to which recognition of caste as an instrument of socio-political change (following the Mandal Commission) and caste-centric socio-political movements of the 1980s and 1990s (the Dalit and Backward Class movements) has reinforced caste-centric public-political life by giving it a modern value and a secular purpose.

The article argues that the contemporary elaborate discourses on caste, class, and politics in India should seek to develop new paradigms for the discussion of caste and should interrogate more vigorously the democratic and secular roles of caste in relation to class and politics.

Review Article Colonialism, Caste and Custom in Indian History: Revisiting Governmentality

Wijeyeratne, R. d. S. — 2007-12-05

Book Reviews

2007-12-05

Structural Changes in Food Consumption and Nutritional Intake From Livestock Products in India

Ali, J. — 2007-07-25

Livestock as an important sub-sector of the Indian agricultural economy plays a multi-faceted role in providing liveli-hood support and food security especially to the country's rural population. There is a growing market for livestock products in India and it is well-documented that consumption patterns have been undergoing significant changes towards high value commodities like fruits and vegetables, milk, meat and eggs. Between 1983 and 1999, consumption of fruits increased by 553 per cent, of vegetables by 167 per cent, and of milk and milk products by 105 per cent. Consumption of meat, eggs and fish rose by 85 per cent over the same period, and these trends have continued since. The article analyses some significant recent structural changes in consumption of livestock products in India and examines their future scope in providing nutritional security. It is argued that despite significant reservations about meat consumption, livestock products have great potential to contribute significantly to the rural Indian economy and in providing better nutritional security for a still growing population.

Gender Considerations of Technological Interventions in Agriculture, Sustainable Management and Development in Indian Central Himalaya

Samal, P. K., Dhyani, P. P. — 2007-07-25

Agriculture in the Indian Central Himalaya as an integrated resource system, being mainly dependent on forests and livestock, is also absolutely dependent on the input of women. The article shows that women have greater access to the major primary productive resources in the region and shoulder the responsibility of rationally managing and conserving these resources. Food production, cattle care and other routine household activities demand that women often work more than 15 hours per day. This onerous shouldering of various responsibilities by women, to some extent an outcome of geo-cultural specificities that impact on gender division of labour, creates much drudgery. The article discusses the critical role of women in the use and conservation of forests, livestock and agriculture generally, identifying technologies and strategies to be adopted to conserve and improve these resources and their productivity, while simultaneously ameliorating the quality of life for women in this mountainous ecosystem.

A Morphological Processor for Malayalam Language

Idicula, S. M., David, P. S. — 2007-07-25

Work on morphological analyzers (which are computer programmes) for Indian languages is conducted vigorously these days. Usually published in specialized journals, this rather technical work is briefly presented here to provide some insights to a wider readership into little-known aspects of current language work. The morphological strength of Malayalam as a major South Indian language justifies the use of thorough morphological processing, which is the first step in any natural language processing task. The project is aimed at building a morphological processor for language, with two main components: a morphological generator and a morphological analyzer. The computational model of the processor takes care of the processing of nouns, pronouns, verbs and modifiers. The results obtained are encouraging and the work can be extended to the creation of a full-fledged part-of-speech tagger for Malayalam and other Dravidian languages, since they all exhibit structural homogeneity.

The Everyday Life of the Revolution: Gender, Violence and Memory

Roy, S. — 2007-07-25

The ‘heroic life’ or the life of the revolutionary is one that resists or even seeks to transcend the everyday and the ordinary. The ‘banal’ vulnerabilities of everyday life, however, continue to constitute the unseen, often unspoken background of such a heroic life. This article turns to women's memories of everyday life spent ‘underground’ in the context of the late 1960s radical left Naxalbari movement of Bengal. Drawing upon recent published memoirs and field interviews with middle class female (and male) activists, it outlines the ways in which revolutionary femininity was imagined and lived in the everyday life of this political movement. Particular focus is given to the gendered and classed nature of political labour, the gendering of revolutionary space, and finally, the extent to which everyday life in the ‘underground’ was a site of vulnerability and powerlessness, especially for women. The article also brings out how these memories of interpersonal conflict and everyday violence tend to remain buried under a collective mythicisation of the ‘heroic life’.

Women, Work and Fishing: An Examination of the Lives of Fisherwomen in Kerala

Samuel, L. — 2007-07-25

This article focuses on women and their families in the fishing industry of Kerala, India. Documenting women's daily routines and experiences in their work, home and social circles, it reveals the continuing significance of social customs and traditions in limiting and confining women in their everyday life. Despite the varied roles that women play in the fishing industry, the income women earn from working has not altered pre-existing exploitative relations between men and women. Divisions based on caste, the emulation of upper caste behaviour, the continued practice and inflation of dowry, and traditional perceptions of women's responsibilities within the family combine to keep women in a secondary and subservient position relative to men.

Review Article

Sarkar, N. — 2007-07-25

Book Reviews

2007-07-25