Partition: The “Pulsing Heart that Grieved”

2013 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald James Larson
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Current Issue ◽  
Islamic Republic ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Eastern Province ◽  
British Raj ◽  
Constituent Assembly ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Draft Constitution

By way of framing Manan Ahmed Asif's intriguing personal (and poetic) reflection entitled “Idol in the Archive” in this current issue of the Journal of Asian Studies, it must always be remembered that in August 1947, the old British Raj gave birth to not one but two independent nation-states, namely India and Pakistan. India became a “Sovereign Democratic Republic” when its Constitution came into effect on January 26, 1950, following adoption of its draft Constitution by its Constituent Assembly on November 26, 1949. Pakistan took a bit longer, becoming the “Islamic Republic of Pakistan” when its first Constitution came into effect on March 23, 1956. Furthermore, of course, Pakistan underwent secession of its Eastern Province with the founding of the “People's Republic of Bangladesh” in 1971. It is hardly an exaggeration to suggest that partition is the defining event of modern independent India and Pakistan, and, more than that, continues to be the defining event of India and Pakistan even after more than fifty years of independence.

Tripartism and Its Aftermath

2019 ◽  
pp. 302-342
Author(s):  
Isser Woloch
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Educational Opportunity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constituent Assembly ◽  
Voter Approval ◽  
Postwar Recovery ◽  
Draft Constitution

This chapter argues that the restoration of democracy in France started in earnest only with the election in October 1945 of a Constituent Assembly. When voters rejected the Constituent Assembly's draft constitution in the requisite referendum, another six months elapsed before a second Constituent Assembly reached sufficient compromises to produce a new draft, which won voter approval by a thin margin. During the long provisional interval, the CNR Common Program helped undergird Charles de Gaulle's unity government and subsequent tripartite coalitions after the general abruptly exited the scene. However, until the fall of 1947, when a great strike wave brought the experiment to an explosive end, tripartism remained the political framework for France's postwar moment. Successive governments addressed the intractable challenges of postwar recovery while they sought to implement the “peaceful revolution” imagined by CNR in such matters as economic controls, social security, housing, and educational opportunity.

Transit to East Germany: The Distribution and Reception of Once Upon a Time in the West in the German Democratic Republic

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Stott
Keyword(s):  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
East Germany ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Business Professionals ◽  
The West ◽  
Nation States

This chapter examines the relocation, transition, and appropriation of the Spaghetti Western in a hitherto under-researched context: the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), prior to its unification with the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) in 1990. It explores the selection, distribution and reception of Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era una volta il West, Sergio Leone, 1968) in the German Democratic Republic as a case study of how international cultural transfer causes objects of cultural production to be repositioned as they enter a new reception context. It also examines the ideological, economic, and sociological concerns underpinning the decisions of those who facilitated the movement of film across the political, cultural, and linguistic boundaries of nation states. In East Germany, the facilitators involved in the selection, censorship, dubbing, and promotion of films were mainly government administrators rather than film business professionals, because film was a state-controlled industry. The chapter focuses on the ‘official’ reception of the film on the basis of available censorship protocols and government policy papers, as well as print media sources.

Terror and Civil Conflict

2020 ◽  
pp. 164-193
Author(s):  
Robert I. Rotberg
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
The Self ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
Republic Of Congo ◽  
Nation States ◽  
North And South

Too many of Africa’s nation-states, both north and south of the Sahara, remain convulsed by combatants, infiltrated by insurgents, and damaged deeply either by the self-inflicted wounds of civil conflict or attacked from within by Islamists supported from without and loyal to externally propagated ideologies. In their founding years, independent northern and southern Africa harbored conflicts that tore new nations apart. In contemporary times some of those civil wars linger, joined as they have been since the dawning of the new century by newly spawned fundamentalist revolutionaries and by reactionaries who regard constituted authority and modern political instrumentalities as illegitimate, even haram—“forbidden.” Although there are fewer civil conflict deaths per year than there were in the 1980s and 1990s, there are many more episodes of terror, and fatalities, than there were in those times. And the seemingly intractable nature of some of the conflicts and many of the campaigns against terror give the impression that sections of Africa—Egypt and the Sinai; Algeria, Libya, and the Sahel; the Horn of Africa and Kenya; Nigeria and its northeastern neighbors; and the Democratic Republic of Congo—are today immured in warfare that will not easily end.

Editor's Preface: Commentaries on the Partition

2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-300
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Basic Information ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
Nation States ◽  
British Rule ◽  
One Year

The February 2014 issue of the Journal of Asian Studies opened with a section made up of two brief “Reflections” on partition—the traumatic South Asian developments of the late 1940s that accompanied the end of British rule over the subcontinent and led to the founding of India and Pakistan as separate nation-states. The first of this pair of short pieces was an introductory look at partition by Gerald James Larson, which I asked this prominent scholar of religion to write. I suggested that it take the form of an at-most lightly footnoted overview of the topic, which would provide basic information of a sort that would help nonspecialists understand the historical background of the partition and would serve to frame the main commentary to follow. That second piece, a meditation on memory and loss by historian Manan Ahmed Asif, was experimental in form for an academic article (a hallmark of the Journal's one-year-old “Reflections” genre) and accompanied by photographs. The trio of essays that follow here, titled “Further Reflections on Partition,” are part of a two-stage effort to respond to and carry forward discussion of issues raised in the earlier pieces. This sort of sequel to previously published work is unusual for the JAS, and is not something I expect to run with any regularity as editor, so some further remarks are in order.

Beyond Imperial Aesthetics

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Local Modes ◽  
Aesthetic Experiences ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Critical Aesthetics ◽  
Regulatory Powers

Observing that the division between theory and empiricism remains inextricably linked to imperial modernity, manifest at the most basic level in the binary between "the West" and "Asia," the authors of this volume reexamine art and aesthetics to challenge these oppositions in order to reconceptualize politics and knowledge production in East Asia. Current understandings of fundamental ideas like race, nation, colonizer and the colonized, and the concept of Asia in the region are seeped with imperial aesthetics that originated from competing imperialisms operating in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Such aesthetics has sustained both colonial and local modes of perception in the formation of nation-states and expanded the reach of regulatory powers in East Asia since 1945. The twelve thought-provoking essays in thiscollectiontackle the problematics that arise at the nexus of aesthetics and politics in four areas: theoretical issues of aesthetics and politics in East Asia, aesthetics of affect and sexuality, the productive tension between critical aesthetics and political movements, and aesthetic critiques of sovereignty and neoliberalism in East Asia today. If the seemingly universal operation of capital and militarism in East Asia requires locally specific definitions of biopolitical concepts to function smoothly, this book critiques the circuit of power between the universalism of capital and particularism of nation and culture. Treating aesthetic experiences in art at large as the bases for going beyond imperial categories, the contributors present new modes of sensing, thinking, and living that have been unimaginable within the mainstream modality of Asian studies, a discipline that has reproduced the colonial regime of knowledge production.

scholarly journals Seroprevalence and Virus Activity of Rift Valley Fever in Cattle in Eastern Region of Democratic Republic of the Congo

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tshilenge M. Georges ◽  
Masumu Justin ◽  
Mbao Victor ◽  
Kayembe Jean Marie ◽  
Rweyemamu Mark ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rift Valley ◽  
Rift Valley Fever ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay ◽  
Rt Pcr ◽  
Eastern Province ◽  
Valley Fever ◽  
Republic Of The Congo ◽  
South Kivu ◽  
North Kivu

Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a zoonotic disease that is characterized by periodic and severe outbreaks in humans and animals. Published information on the occurrence of RVF in domestic animals is very scarce in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). To assess possible circulation of Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) in cattle in the eastern province of DRC, 450 sera collected from cattle in North Kivu, South Kivu, and Ituri provinces were analyzed using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), for the detection of viral Immunoglobulin (Ig) G and M, and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), for detection of viral RVF RNA. A cumulative anti-RVF IgG prevalence of 6.22% (95% CI 4.25–8.97) was recorded from the three provinces sampled. In North Kivu and Ituri provinces the anti-RVF IgG prevalence was 12.67% [95% CI 7.80–19.07] and 6% [95% CI 2.78–11.08], respectively, while all the sera collected from South Kivu province were negative for anti-RVF IgG antibodies. Anti-RVF IgM prevalence of 1.8% was obtained among sampled animals in the three provinces. None of the positive anti-RVF IgM samples (n=8) was positive for viral RVFV RNA using RT-PCR. Our findings suggest that RVFV is widely distributed among cattle in eastern province of DRC particularly in North Kivu and Ituri provinces although the epidemiological factors supporting this virus circulation remain unknown in these areas.

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