South Asia

2020 ◽  
pp. 542-573
Author(s):  
Mehrdad Shokoohy ◽  
Natalie H. Shokoohy
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
South India ◽  
Uttar Pradesh ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Archaeological Survey ◽  
Historic Sites ◽  
North And South ◽  
The Way

In South Asian archaeology, Buddhist and Hindu sites and monuments dominate, while Muslim ones, with the exception of a few grand edifices, have never been given the priority they deserve. In India, there has been little significant excavation of any Muslim sites, but during the British period the major ones were gradually identified, some of the better-preserved monuments were restored, while the ruins, if regarded as significant, were cleared of debris and rudimentary efforts made to preserve the standing remains. After Partition, the Archaeological Survey of India continued to maintain Muslim sites such as those in Delhi; the forts and monuments of Bidar, Bijapur, Daulatabad, and Gulbarga in the Deccan; scattered remains in Gaur and Pandua (the site of Laknautī, the Muslim capital of Bengal); and the monuments in Jaunpur (Uttar Pradesh) and Sasaram in Bihar. The monuments of Ahmadabad and some other towns of Gujarat have been more extensively studied. Whatever has been undertaken in the way of fresh exploration in North and South India has been mainly by independent scholars and experts. In Pakistan, some excavation has been carried out in the early Muslim sites, including at Banbhore, the site of the ancient port of Daibul, and at Brahmanābād, the site of al-Manṣūra, the seat of the Arab governor of Sind, both dating from the first and second century of the Hijra. In Bangladesh, the historic sites already restored before Partition have been maintained, but funds and resources to carry out fresh excavations or restoration are lacking. Much is left for present and future archaeologists to explore.

“Rhythm,” “Beat,” and “Freedom” in South Asian Musical Traditions

2019 ◽  
pp. 314-336
Author(s):  
Richard K. Wolf
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
South India ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Musical Traditions ◽  
Asian Music ◽  
North And South

This chapter argues that a family of common rhythmic conceptions underlies many of the musical traditions of South Asia despite sometimes dramatic regional differences in language, culture, and religion. Two contrasting kinds of rhythmic representation are examined: one that objectifies through names and numbers, and one that points toward freedom and resists numeration. Evidence for the first is drawn from the analysis of ritual drumming in India and Pakistan as well as concepts and structures in the art music traditions of North and South India. The second concerns both drumming and the elastic rhythm of rāga ālāpana. Examination of a range of data turns many common conceptions of rhythm, beat, and freedom in South Asian music on their heads.

scholarly journals Jews and Muslims in South Asia

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia Egorova
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
First Century ◽  
Common Space ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
Muslims In Europe ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
The Way

In the European imaginary Jews and Muslims have shared a common space reserved for the ultimate other and have been constructed in opposition to each other. This book examines the way Jewish and Muslim communities encounter each other in South Asia and interact in ways that do not easily fit conventional Western tropes of Jews-Muslim relations. In doing so, the book explores how, in the history of the subcontinent, globalized discourses about Jewishness and Islam intersect and acquire different dimensions in varying sociopolitical contexts in ways that cast analytical light on the notions of race, religion, and minorities. Moving on to the contemporary period, the book demonstrates how South Asian Jewish experiences have been turned into a rhetorical tool to negate the discrimination of Muslims and argues that the ostensible celebration of Jewishness in the discourse of the Hindu and, analogously, European right masks not only anti-Muslim but also anti-Jewish prejudice. It also interrogates both those accounts that inscribe Jews and Muslims as each other’s enemies and those that imagine them as linked by a commonality of theologies, rituals, and narratives, and suggests that rather than being considered as a category of analysis, Jewish-Muslim relations would be best thematized as a construct produced by the very processes of minoritization, stigmatization, and othering that have been applied to Jews and Muslims in Europe and then globalized at the turn of the twenty-first century.

scholarly journals Tracing the biogeographical origin of South Asian populations using DNA SatNav

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ranajit Das ◽  
Priyanka Upadhyai
Keyword(s):  
Population Structure ◽  
South Asian ◽  
South India ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Population History ◽  
Genetic Admixture ◽  
Indian Populations ◽  
Asian Populations ◽  
South Indian ◽  
North And South

AbstractThe Indian subcontinent includes India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka that collectively share common anthropological and cultural roots. Given the enigmatic population structure, complex history and genetic heterogeneity of populations from this region, their biogeographical origin and history remain a fascinating question. In this study we carried out an in-depth genetic comparison of the five South Asian populations available in the 1000 Genomes Project, namely Gujarati Indians from Houston, Texas (GIH), Punjabis from Lahore (PJL), Indian Telugus from UK (ITU), Sri Lankan Tamils from UK (STU) and Bengalis from Bangladesh (BEB), tracing their putative biogeographical origin using a DNA SatNav algorithm - Geographical Population Structure (GPS). GPS positioned >70% of GIH and PJL genomes in North India and >80% of ITU and STU samples in South India. All South Asian genomes appeared to be assigned with reasonable accuracy, along trade routes that thrived in the ancient Mauryan Empire, which had played a significant role in unifying the Indian subcontinent and in the process brought the ancient North and South Indian populations in close proximity, promoting admixture between them, ~2300 years before present (YBP). Our findings suggest that the genetic admixture between ancient North and South Indian populations likely first occurred along the Godavari and Krishna river basin in Central-South India. Finally our biogeographical analyses provide critical insights into the population history and sociocultural forces driving migration patterns that may have been instrumental in shaping the population structure of the Indian subcontinent.

scholarly journals Metrical Distinctiveness of Indian Crania Demonstrated through Stepwise Multivariate Classification

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Pathmanathan Raghavan ◽  
Gayathiri Pathmanathan
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Discriminant Function Analysis ◽  
South India ◽  
Function Analysis ◽  
Great Variability ◽  
Correct Identification ◽  
Correct Classification ◽  
Index Analysis

Our previous metrical study of Indian crania from across the South Asian subcontinent found great variability within all of the series, combined with average trends whereby the Indian series resemble each other and contrast with series outside of South Asia. This contribution confirms the craniometric distinctiveness of Indian crania, notwithstanding their intra-series variability, through stepwise discriminant function analysis of the six best sampled series from northern and South India. The proportion of crania from places beyond South Asia classified as Indian is negligible, while over 90% of Indian crania are correctly identified as Indian. This correct identification of Indian crania is enhanced amongst those specimens whose possession of pronouncedly Indian craniometric attributes is revealed through index analysis. By extrapolation, index analysis may also assist the correct classification of non-Indian populations that also are craniometrically distinct. Further, Indians’ craniometric distinctiveness aligns with genetic evidence for the predominantly indigenous ancestry of Indians who speak Indo-Aryan and especially Dravidian languages.

Protection Rackets and Party Machines

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 693-723 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Martin ◽  
Lucia Michelutti
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Uttar Pradesh ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
North India ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
Protection Rackets ◽  
The Relationship

Control over means of violence and protection emerge as crucial in much research on corruption in non-South Asian contexts. In the Indian context, however, we still know little about the systems of organised violence that sustain the entanglement of crime, capital and democratic politics. This timely comparative ethnographic piece explores two different manifestations of what our informants identify as “Mafia Raj” (“rule by mafia”) across North India (Uttar Pradesh and Punjab). Drawing on analytical concepts developed in the literature on bossism and “mafias”, we explore protection and racketeering as central statecraft repertoires of muscular styles of governance in the region. We show how a predatory economy together with structures of inter- and intra-party political competition generate the demand for and the imposition of unofficial and illegal protection and shape different manifestations of Mafia Raj. In doing so, the paper aims to contribute to debates on the relationship between states and illegalities in and beyond South Asia.

Globalization, Democratization, Liberal Peace, and Human Security in South Asia

2019 ◽  
pp. 46-76
Author(s):  
Shibashis Chatterjee
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Human Security ◽  
The State ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Liberal Peace ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The Given ◽  
The Way

The chapter deals with three transformative theses and their possible impact and consequences in South Asia. The author examines the impacts of globalization, democratic peace, and human security to find whether these have changed elite mindsets in the subcontinent. He finds that none of these alleged changes have impacted on the way Indian and South Asian elites imagine their neighbourhood. First, globalization has divided the subcontinent along economic lines that complicate India’s neighbourhood policies further. Second, the dynamic of globalization has unfolded within the given geopolitical parameters of South Asia and, therefore, no liberal order has grown within the region. This episode brings out the disjuncture of economic and political dynamics in this region despite two decades of globalization. Third, democratic peace has no credibility in South Asia given the intense geopolitical competition between India and Pakistan that also affects the foreign policies of smaller states. The state in South Asia has dominated the agenda of non-traditional security and defined it. South Asian states continue to suffer from fears and tensions since most of these insecurities stem from within and are the products of the state.

Existence, location, possession, and copula in Malabar Indo-Portuguese

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-57
Author(s):  
Ana Krajinović
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
Salient Features ◽  
Asian Languages ◽  
The Way

Abstract This paper offers a diachronic and a contact-based analysis of existential, locative, possessive, and copulative constructions in Malabar Indo-Portuguese creole (MIP). The existential, locative, and possessive predicates are all expressed with the copulative verb tæ, and nominal and property-denoting predicates can either have the copula tæ or zero copula. I analyze these copulative constructions by establishing their sources in the Portuguese lexifier and Malayalam substrate/adstrate. I show that although the Portuguese verbs ter ‘have’ and estar ‘be’ have paved the way to the semantics of tæ, Malayalam had a strong impact on the morphosyntax and semantics of existential, locative, possessive, and copulative constructions in MIP. This influence is most notable in the case of possessives, which take dative subjects. These findings are compared to the relevant structures in other South Asian languages and show that the existence of locative possession is a strong areal feature of South Asia. I also show that the variability of copula usage in nominal and property-denoting predicates can be explained by variable input from Portuguese and Malayalam copulative constructions. One of the most salient features influenced by Malayalam is the choice of what are etymologically Portuguese nouns instead of adjectives in property-denoting predicates.

Agro-Pastoralism, Archaeology and Religious Landscapes in Early Medieval South India

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 207-243
Author(s):  
Hemanth Kadambi
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
South India ◽  
The Political ◽  
Archaeological Survey ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Sacred Landscapes ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Deccan Plateau ◽  
Medieval India ◽  
Semi Arid

Agro-pastoralism has been an important economic subsistence among diverse communities in the semi-arid climate and dry-deciduous ecology of the Deccan for the last four millennia. Recent research that looks at the entanglements of human-animal-environment relations in South Asian archaeology and history have highlighted the complex histories that prompt a reconsideration of the contexts within which political authority articulated in medieval India. This essay demonstrates the presence of non-elite agro-pastoral groups based on the evidence from my archaeological survey. I then present results from a limited study the Early Chalukya inscriptions to identify agro-pastoral activities. In addition, I employ limited architectural and iconographic analysis and argue that the non-Brahmanical religious affiliations of pastoral groups played a role in shaping the political and sacred landscapes of the Early Chalukya polity (ca. 550–750 ad) in the Deccan plateau of South India. A related aim in this essay is to highlight the productive engagement of archaeological investigations with ‘conventional’ history research. I suggest that the medieval period of Indian archaeology is a potent arena for such interdisciplinary research.

Heritage

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omar Shaikh ◽  
Stefano Bonino
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Online Video ◽  
The South ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Public ◽  
Video Footage ◽  
Community Heritage ◽  
Personal Accounts ◽  
The Way

The Colourful Heritage Project (CHP) is the first community heritage focused charitable initiative in Scotland aiming to preserve and to celebrate the contributions of early South Asian and Muslim migrants to Scotland. It has successfully collated a considerable number of oral stories to create an online video archive, providing first-hand accounts of the personal journeys and emotions of the arrival of the earliest generation of these migrants in Scotland and highlighting the inspiring lessons that can be learnt from them. The CHP’s aims are first to capture these stories, second to celebrate the community’s achievements, and third to inspire present and future South Asian, Muslim and Scottish generations. It is a community-led charitable project that has been actively documenting a collection of inspirational stories and personal accounts, uniquely told by the protagonists themselves, describing at first hand their stories and adventures. These range all the way from the time of partition itself to resettling in Pakistan, and then to their final accounts of arriving in Scotland. The video footage enables the public to see their facial expressions, feel their emotions and hear their voices, creating poignant memories of these great men and women, and helping to gain a better understanding of the South Asian and Muslim community’s earliest days in Scotland.

The End of History Museums: What's Plan B??

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Carson
Keyword(s):  
Historic Sites ◽  
The Public ◽  
End Of History ◽  
House Museums ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Plan B ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The Way

Abstract Are historic sites and house museums destined to go the way of Oldsmobiles and floppy disks?? Visitation has trended downwards for thirty years. Theories abound, but no one really knows why. To launch a discussion of the problem in the pages of The Public Historian, Cary Carson cautions against the pessimistic view that the past is simply passéé. Instead he offers a ““Plan B”” that takes account of the new way that learners today organize information to make history meaningful.

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