Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Vijaya Ramadas Mandala
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Masculine Identity ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
Game Hunting ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
Big Game Hunting

The introductory chapter opens the debate on why there is a need to write a book on shikar in South Asia. It makes a compelling case for taking the symbolism and practice of big-game hunting as central to the expression of rule and making of authority in colonial India. The reader would learn about the historical developments of hunting as a political practice, and an enactment of ritual authority and masculine identity from ancient societies down to medieval and modern ones. In discussing these developments, the chapter charts out the framework of big-game hunting and conservation in relation to the historical literature in the field, often drawing comparisons and juxtaposing the same with Britain and other parts of the colonial world.

Imperial Culture and Hunting in Colonial India

2018 ◽  
pp. 38-78
Author(s):  
Vijaya Ramadas Mandala
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
East Indian ◽  
Imperial Culture ◽  
Indian Company ◽  
British Military ◽  
The World ◽  
Game Hunting ◽  
Big Game Hunting

This chapter offers a brief account of the institution of the hunt, or shikar, and its significance as an allegory of rule in pre-colonial and colonial India, by illustrating the transition of hunting from the Mughals to the East Indian Company period. Further, this study moves away from the purely recreational focus on hunting, and places it within the world of everyday colonial administration and rule. It firmly establishes the link between shikar and governance, particularly how the British positioned and employed big-game hunting and conservation at various levels, and in different situations, aimed at the establishment and stabilization of colonial rule, and in ordering and redrawing Indian marginal territories. Another key aspect is how shikar served as an essential platform, where power and rule operated in a recreational situation. Here, the chapter illustrates the way the hunting field aided and enabled the British to formulate their political and imperial agendas in an expedient way. The sporting lives of the Company administrators like John Malcolm and James Outram are studied in detail to demonstrate the nature of high imperial decades and British military credence in the Indian hunting field.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Muhammad Qasim Zaman
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Single Study ◽  
History Of

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. There is a significant body of literature on different facets of Islam in colonial South Asia and in Pakistan. What is lacking is a work that brings them together within the confines of a single study. This book deals with the history of, and the contestations on, Islam in colonial India and Pakistan. It addresses questions such as, how have various facets of Islam interacted with one another and with a state created in the name of Islam? How are the different Islamic orientations to be distinguished from one another? What sort of constraints have the differences among them placed on the ability of their adherents to join hands at particular moments in history?

Palaeolithic Big Game Hunting at HP766 in Wadi Umm Rahau, Northern Sudan

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Achilles Gautier ◽  
Daniel Makowiecki ◽  
Henryk Paner ◽  
Wim Van Neer
Keyword(s):  
Late Prehistoric ◽  
Large Mammals ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Large Size ◽  
Animal Bone ◽  
Game Hunting ◽  
Big Game Hunting ◽  
Bone Remains

HP766, discovered by the Gdansk Archaeological Museum Expedition (GAME) in the region immediately upstream the Merowe Dam in North Sudan and now under water, is one of the few palaeolithic sites with animal bone remains in the country. The archaeological deposits, the large size of the site, the lithics and the radiocarbon dates indicate occupation of a silt terrace of the Nile in late MSA and perhaps LSA times. Large and very large mammals predominate markedly among the recovered bone remains and it would seem that the palaeolithic hunters focused on such game. They could corner these animals on the site which is partially surrounded by high bedrock outcrops. Moreover swampy conditions of the site after the retreat of the annual Nile flood may have rendered less mobile the prey animals. According to this scenario, HP766 would testify to the ecological skills and generational memory of late prehistoric man in Sudan.

Surviving Desire: Reading Ḥāfiz̤ in Colonial India

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Ali Altaf Mian
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
The World ◽  
Mystical Theology

Abstract This article contributes to scholarship on Muslim humanities, Islam in modern South Asia, and the Urdu literary tradition in colonial India. It does so by contextualizing and closely reading Ashraf ʿAlī Thānavī’s (1863–1943) commentary on the Dīvān of the fourteenth-century Persian poet Ḥāfiz̤. Unlike his modernist contemporaries, Ashraf ʿAlī does not read Ḥāfiz̤ through the prisms of social reform or anti-colonial nationalist struggle. Rather, in his capacity as a Sufi master, he approaches Ḥāfiz̤’s Dīvān as a mystical text in order to generate insights through which he counsels his disciples. He uses the commentary genre to explore Sufi themes such as consolation, contraction, annihilation, subsistence, and the master-disciple relational dynamic. His engagement with Ḥāfiz̤’s ġhazals enables him to elaborate a practical mystical theology and to eroticize normative devotional rituals. Yet the affirmation of an analogical correspondence between sensual and divine love on the part of Ashraf ʿAlī also implies the survival of Ḥāfiz̤’s emphases on the disposability of the world and intoxicated longing for the beloved despite the demands of colonial modernity.

On Common Speech

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-498
Author(s):  
Sravanthi Kollu
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Linguistically Diverse ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
South Indian ◽  
Indian Identity ◽  
Recent Emergence ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
The Common

Abstract The multilingual turn in literary studies emphasizes the fairly recent emergence of a monolingual attachment to language. While this rightly calls into question the academic focus on monolingual competencies and offers a substantial area of inquiry for scholars working with the linguistically diverse regions of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, this essay posits that the persistence of multilinguality among historical actors from these regions does not merit a shift away from monolingualism in contemporary scholarship. This argument derives from the claims analyzed in this essay, made by South Asian writers in colonial India, about the singularity of one's own language (swabhasha) and the writers' anxieties to protect this language from vulgar speech (gramyam). Building on contemporary work on the vernacular, the essay seeks to draw renewed attention to the role of speech in language debates in Telugu, a language whose particularity has not become a metonym either for the nation (like Hindi) or for a pan–South Indian identity (like Tamil). In tracing the movement from vulgar speech to proper language in this archive, this essay reframes vernacularity as an ethical compulsion premised on the common.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Armstrong-Partida
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Manual Labor ◽  
Masculine Identity ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The Church

This introductory chapter provides an overview of clerical masculinity and priestly identity. Throughout the medieval period, secular and regular clergy struggled with, contested, and negotiated their own ideas of manliness and the demands of the Church. In medieval society, social and cultural trends that focused on marriage, fatherhood, and displays of patriarchal authority shaped how many men understood and reacted to gendered ideals that ultimately affected how they formed their own masculine identity. Clergy received the gendered messages of their environment, and some conformed, modified, or challenged gendered prescriptions in creating their masculinity. Depending on their social status, education, and clerical rank, clergymen expressed their masculine identity in a variety of ways that included—but were not limited to—celibacy, active sexuality, models of spirituality, pious devotion, intellectual prowess, abstinence from manual labor, military skill, and violence.

Alternative Centers of Shiʿi Islam

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Simon Wolfgang Fuchs
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Religious Education ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Creative Potential ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Transnational Connections

The introduction discusses the fundamental transformations of Shi‘i thought and conceptions of religious authority that occurred in tandem with the expansion of Shi‘i religious education in colonial India and Pakistan throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. In particular, this section introduces the reader to the three key analytical lenses of the book, namely the evolving nature of sectarianism, the salience of transnational connections, and the creative potential of local religious authority when engaging with the Shi‘i scholarly tradition. The introduction adopts a model of “impetus” and “response” to elucidate the travel of ideas between the Middle East and South Asia, while also paying attention to their translation from Arabic and Persian into Urdu.

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