What to do about cows? Princely versus British approaches to a South Asian dilemma

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAN COPLAND
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Custom ◽  
Vexed Question

For more than a millennium, cow slaughter has been a source of bitter contention in South Asia. Hindus revere the animal; Muslims like to eat it and, until recently, the cow has been the preferred animal of sacrifice at the Islamic festival of ‘Id-ul-Adha¯. This paper looks at how, over the twentieth century, Indian governments of differing type and ideological colour—British and princely during the late colonial period and Congress nationalist after 1947—have tried to mediate this vexed question. It finds that while policies differed widely, there was a tendency for all governments in the early twentieth century to be guided by social custom and local opinion, so that in the small Muslim-ruled state of Mangrol, which had an official ban, the Muslims who killed cows occasionally for food were never prosecuted so long as they kept their activities discreet—but this ‘discretionary’ option became politically unviable once the country embraced democracy.

Caste-Less Tamils and Early Print Public Sphere: Remembering Iyothee Thass (1845–914)

2021 ◽  
pp. 026272802110348
Author(s):  
Dickens Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of

Responding to the history of Dalit invisibility in print public sphere, this article explores one of the earliest Dalit articulations in print in South Asia during the colonial period. Extending studies on anti-caste thought by foregrounding the Tamil cosmopolis, this conceptualises how the most oppressed by caste engaged with print in the early twentieth century, through studying the works on and of Pandit Iyothee Thass and his movement. The article proposes that these experiments with print opened the chance of a political to emerge, which was otherwise foreclosed, towards wording a caste-less community at this earlier time in Indian history.

Catalogue of Tamil manuscripts in the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine

1990 ◽  
Vol 122 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-369
Author(s):  
S. Gunasingam
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
South Asia ◽  
History Of Medicine ◽  
British Empire ◽  
South Asian ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
History Of

Since the time South Asia, together with other Asian and African countries, became an integral part of the British Empire, the significance of manuscripts, published works and other artefacts, relating to those regions has stimulated continued appreciation in the United Kingdom, albeit with varying degrees of interest. It is interesting to note that the factors which have contributed in one way or another to the collecting of South Asian I material for British institutions vary in their nature, and thus illuminate the attitudes of different periods. During the entire nineteenth century, the collectors were primarily administrators; for most of the first half of the twentieth century, it was the interest and the needs of British universities that led to the accumulation of substantial holdings in many academic or specialist libraries.

The Voice in the Drum

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard K. Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Novelistic Form ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Based on extensive research in India and Pakistan, this book examines the ways drumming and voices interconnect over vast areas of South Asia and considers what it means for musical instruments to be voice-like and carry textual messages in particular contexts. The book employs a hybrid, novelistic form of presentation in which the fictional protagonist Muharram Ali, a man obsessed with finding music he believes will dissolve religious and political barriers, interacts with the book's field consultants, to communicate ethnographic and historical realities that transcend the local details of any one person's life. The result is a daring narrative that follows Muharram Ali on a journey that explores how the themes of South Asian Muslims and their neighbors coming together, moving apart, and relating to God and spiritual intermediaries resonate across ritual and expressive forms such as drumming and dancing. The story charts the breakdown of this naiveté. A daring narrative of music, religion and politics in late twentieth century South Asia, the book delves into the social and religious principles around which Muslims, Hindus, and others bond, create distinctions, reflect upon one another, or decline to acknowledge differences.

Adaptation of Western Modern Concepts in Modern Korean Architecture in the Early Twentieth Century: Through the Perspective of Science, Efficiency, and Hygiene

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-153
Author(s):  
Myengsoo Seo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The West ◽  
Company Housing ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
Korean Architecture

This research explores the characteristics of Korean early modern architecture in the early twentieth century. Modern Korean architecture experienced conflicts and continuities between tradition and modernity from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. To evaluate these various influences, this article considers Korean early modern architecture through the perspective of such modern concepts as “science,” “efficiency,” and “hygiene.” These modern concepts emerged first in the West before the nineteenth century, and they played significant roles in constructing a modern society in the West and the East. By investigating how these modern concepts were adopted in Korea in the early twentieth century, this research scrutinizes not only individual architects such as Park Gilryong and Park Dongjin but also newly constructed buildings such as kwansa (official residences of Japanese ministries) and sat’aek (company housing), especially during the Japanese colonial period. Furthermore, this research goes beyond Korean architecture to encompass regional and cultural differences. This research enables early modern Korean architecture to find its identity through the approach of social and cultural contexts, and by comparison with Western architectural culture.

The Indian Voice: Connecting Self-Representation and Identity Formulation in Diaspora

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saima Nasar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
East African ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Racial Hierarchies

AbstractThis article examines a previously overlooked publication titled The Indian Voice of British East Africa, Uganda and Zanzibar. Printed in Nairobi between 1911 and 1913, the Indian Voice has been dismissed by some scholars as “insignificant” in the wider context of Kenya’s militant press. As an important tool for discovering, exploring and analyzing the nature of racial hierarchies, diasporic identity and belonging, this article argues that the Indian Voice can be used to understand how “new kinds of self-representation” both emerged and dissolved in early twentieth-century East Africa. By contextualizing the historical significance of the newspaper, it demonstrates how the Indian Voice offers an invaluable means of generating new insights into the complex cultural and political formulations of Indian identities in diaspora. In doing so, this article contributes to remapping the historical perspective of East African Indians within the early colonial period.

Secular Democracies, Governance and Politics of Religion in South Asia

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-261
Author(s):  
Surya Prakash Upadhyay
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Politics Of Religion ◽  
Colonial Histories ◽  
Role Of Religion

South Asian countries have a lot of commonalities exhibited through socio-political and economic situations. The cultural as well as political dynamics within the countries form more or less a similar pattern. These are closely related to colonial pasts, post-colonial histories, polyethnic population, political leadership and governance. These commonalities are also related to political instability, ethnic violence and a greater role of religion in the formation of secular democracies. Scholars have observed that in the post-colonial period, religion has played an important role in political formations in South Asian countries. This article looks at political situations, since the early 1950s, and traces the trajectory of religions’ association in formation of secular democracies in these countries. The article looks at available literature on South Asia and discusses two key ideas: how and why religion and politics are intertwined in South Asian countries, and ramifications of such association in the expansion of secular democracy. The article argues that religion has always been a potent force in South Asian countries and secularisation, in the Western sense, has never been achieved. Therefore, formations of secular democracy take different trajectories in South Asia.

Print and the Urdu Public

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Eaton Robb
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Temporal Orientation ◽  
Muslim Identity ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Training Materials ◽  
New Type ◽  
Government Records

In early twentieth-century British India, prior to the arrival of digital medias and after the rise of nationalist political movements, a small-town paper from the margins became a key node for an Urdu journalism conversation with particular influence in the United Provinces and Punjab. Understanding this newspaper’s rise shows how a print public characterized by bottom-up as well as top-down approaches influenced the evolution of a new type of Urdu public in twentieth-century South Asia. Addressing a gap in scholarship on Urdu media in the early twentieth century, during the period when it underwent some of its most critical transformations, this book contributes a discursive and material analysis of a previously unexamined Urdu newspaper, Madinah, augmenting its analysis with evidence from contemporary Urdu, English, and Hindi papers; government records; private diaries; private library holdings; ethnographic interviews with families who owned and ran the newspaper; and training materials for newspaper printers. Madinah identified the Urdu newspaper conversation both explicitly and implicitly with Muslim identity, a commitment that became difficult to manage as the pro-Congress paper sought simultaneously to counter calls for Pakistan, to criticize Congress’s treatment of Muslims, and to emphasize Urdu’s necessary connection to Muslim identity. Since Madinah delineated the boundaries of a Muslim, public conversation in a way that emphasized rootedness to local politics and small urban spaces like Bijnor, this study demonstrates the necessity of considering spatial and temporal orientation in studies of the public in South Asia.

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