Diversities and Minorities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia Egorova
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
British India ◽  
History Of

The chapter provides an outline of the history of Jews and Muslims in South Asia focusing on the multiplicity of definitions of both groups. While highlighting the diversity of Indian Jews and Indian Muslims, it discusses how in the British period the colonial authorities constructed and sedimented the boundaries both around and within the two groups, depicting them simultaneously as foreign to the subcontinent in ways that would minoritize them in British India and, subsequently, in independent India, and as indigenous, in ways that proved to be detrimental to their position vis-à-vis the Hindu majority in the case of Indian Muslims and vis-à-vis overseas Jewish organizations in the case of Indian Jews.

Presidential Address: Too Little and Too Much: Reflections on Muslims in the History of India

1995 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 951-967 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara D. Metcalf
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Religious Nationalism ◽  
British India ◽  
The South ◽  
Untimely Death ◽  
Muslim Minority ◽  
History Of

I want to begin this evening by recalling my immediate predecessor as AAS president from the South Asian field, Barbara Stoler Miller, whose untimely death in 1992 took from us a distinguished Sanskritist, a gifted teacher, and a generous colleague whose absence we mourn. In my address I continue themes taken up by Barbara Miller four years ago (Miller 1991) as well as by Stanley Tambiah, as president from the Southeast Asian field, the year before (Tambiah 1990). Then, as now, scholars across the disciplines—whether, like Barbara Miller, a scholar of classical texts; or like Stanley Tambiah, an anthropologist; or myself, a historian of British India—have struggled to understand the religious nationalism of South Asia, one of whose most tragic outcomes has been an accelerating violence against the Muslim minority.

Spatial Inequity and National Territory: Remapping 1905 in Bengal and Assam

2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID LUDDEN
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Spatial Dynamics ◽  
Economic Globalization ◽  
Northeast India ◽  
Uneven Development ◽  
Transnational History ◽  
The Political ◽  
British India ◽  
History Of ◽  
Territorial Politics

AbstractIn 1905, Viceroy Nathaniel Curzon applied well-worn principles of imperial order to reorganize northeastern regions of British India, bringing the entire Meghna-Brahmaputra river basin into one new administrative territory: the province of Eastern Bengal and Assam. He thereby launched modern territorial politics in South Asia by provoking an expansive and ultimately victorious nationalist agitation to unify Bengal and protect India's territorial integrity. This movement and its economic programme (swadeshi) expressed Indian nationalist opposition to imperial inequity. It established a permanent spatial frame for Indian national thought. It also expressed and naturalized spatial inequity inside India, which was increasing at the time under economic globalization. Spatial inequities in the political economy of uneven development have animated territorial politics in South Asia ever since. A century later, another acceleration of globalization is again increasing spatial inequity, again destabilizing territorial order, as nationalists naturalize spatial inequity in national territory and conflicts erupt from the experience of living in disadvantaged places. Remapping 1905 in the long twentieth century which connects these two periods of globalization, spanning eras of empire and nation, reveals spatial dynamics of modernity concealed by national maps and brings to light a transnational history of spatial inequity shared by Bangladesh and Northeast India.

Historical Representations and Recent Changes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen Schaflechner
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Detailed History ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Representations ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Many Sources ◽  
Over Time

Chapter 3 introduces the tradition of ritual journeys and sacred geographies in South Asia, then hones in on a detailed history of the grueling and elaborate pilgrimage attached to the shrine of Hinglaj. Before the construction of the Makran Coastal Highway the journey to the Goddess’s remote abode in the desert of Balochistan frequently presented a lethally dangerous undertaking for her devotees, the hardships of which have been described by many sources in Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Sindhi, and Urdu. This chapter draws heavily from original sources, including travelogues and novels, which are supplanted with local oral histories in order to weave a historical tapestry that displays the rich array of practices and beliefs surrounding the pilgrimage and how they have changed over time. The comparative analysis demonstrates how certain motifs, such as austerity (Skt. tapasyā), remain important themes within the whole Hinglaj genre even in modern times while others have been lost in the contemporary era.

Jumbos and Jumping Devils

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nisha P R
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Social History ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of

Jumbos and Jumping Devils is an original and pioneering exploration of not only the social history of the subcontinent but also of performance and popular culture. The domain of analysis is entirely novel and opens up a bolder approach of laying a new field of historical enquiry of South Asia. Trawling through an extraordinary set of sources such as colonial and post-colonial records, newspaper reports, unpublished autobiographies, private papers, photographs, and oral interviews, the author brings out a fascinating account of the transnational landscape of physical cultures, human and animal performers, and the circus industry. This book should be of interest to a wide range of readers from history, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies to analysts of history of performance and sports in the subcontinent.

China’s South Asia Policy in the ‘New Era’

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-154
Author(s):  
Sanjeev Kumar
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Xi Jinping ◽  
New Era ◽  
Low Profile ◽  
Foreign And Security Policy ◽  
Neighbouring Region ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rise Of China

In recent years, there has been a rise in China’s profile in South Asia. It is no surprise that Chinese experts have used terms, such as ‘new springtime’ in China–South Asia relations, ‘rediscovery of the strategic status of South Asia’ and ‘most relevant region with regard to the rise of China’.    The objective of this article is to examine the nature and drivers of China’s South Asia policy, especially under the leadership of Xi Jinping vis-à-vis China’s policy towards the region in the past. It is not sufficient to only examine international factors or foreign and security policy in the context of the neighbouring region, such as South Asia. China’s ‘domestic periphery’ presents a significant threat to its national security. These areas are linked to neighbouring countries of South Asia and Central Asia. The announcement by Chinese President Xi Jinping of a ‘New Era’ or ‘third era’ in the history of Communist Party of China (CPC) represents a China which is known for its dictum ‘striving for achievement’ ( fenfa youwei). This is different from the second era’s policy of ‘keeping a low profile and biding the time’ proposed by Deng Xiaoping. Of course, the name of Mao Zedong is synonymous with the first era beginning from 1949.

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