scholarly journals Seekership, Spirituality and Self-Discovery: Ayurveda Trainees in Britain

2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 423-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Warrier
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Holistic Health ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Holistic Healing ◽  
The West ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
Depth Interviews

AbstractThis paper examines the backgrounds and motivations of persons trained or training as Ayurvedic practitioners at two London-based institutions offering Ayurveda programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. It draws upon in-depth interviews with individuals at various stages of their training and practice in order to examine the paths that bring them to Ayurveda, their motivations for undergoing training, and the ways in which they apply their knowledge of Ayurveda during and after their training period. The findings here corroborate what other scholars have demonstrated in the case of Asian traditions like Yoga and Ayurveda in the West. These traditions have inevitably undergone shifts in meaning by virtue of their assimilation into the Western, in this case British, holistic health milieu. Most significant in Ayurveda’s case is the shift away from a preoccupation with remedial medicine (the bedrock of mainstream Ayurveda in modern South Asia), to a focus on self-knowledge and self-empowerment as a path to ‘holistic healing’ (understood to address mental and spiritual, not just physical, well-being). Even though the Ayurvedic curriculum transmitted at the educational institutions in London is based largely on that taught at Ayurveda colleges in India, the completely different orientations and dispositions of students in Britain (as compared to their South Asian counterparts) ensures that the Ayurveda they go on to apply and practise is radically different—this is ‘spiritualised’ Ayurveda, in radical contrast to the ‘biomedicalised’ version obtaining in modern mainstream South Asian contexts.

scholarly journals Agroforestry to Achieve Global Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Targets: Are South Asian Countries Sufficiently Prepared?

Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 303
Author(s):  
Shalini Dhyani ◽  
Indu K Murthy ◽  
Rakesh Kadaverugu ◽  
Rajarshi Dasgupta ◽  
Manoj Kumar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Climate Adaptation ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Agroforestry Systems ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Implementation Phase ◽  
Adaptation And Mitigation

Traditional agroforestry systems across South Asia have historically supported millions of smallholding farmers. Since, 2007 agroforestry has received attention in global climate discussions for its carbon sink potential. Agroforestry plays a defining role in offsetting greenhouse gases, providing sustainable livelihoods, localizing Sustainable Development Goals and achieving biodiversity targets. The review explores evidence of agroforestry systems for human well-being along with its climate adaptation and mitigation potential for South Asia. In particular, we explore key enabling and constraining conditions for mainstreaming agroforestry systems to use them to fulfill global climate mitigation targets. Nationally determined contributions submitted by South Asian countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change acknowledge agroforestry systems. In 2016, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation’s Resolution on Agroforestry brought consensus on developing national agroforestry policies by all regional countries and became a strong enabling condition to ensure effectiveness of using agroforestry for climate targets. Lack of uniform methodologies for creation of databases to monitor tree and soil carbon stocks was found to be a key limitation for the purpose. Water scarcity, lack of interactive governance, rights of farmers and ownership issues along with insufficient financial support to rural farmers for agroforestry were other constraining conditions that should be appropriately addressed by the regional countries to develop their preparedness for achieving national climate ambitions. Our review indicates the need to shift from planning to the implementation phase following strong examples shared from India and Nepal, including carbon neutrality scenarios, incentives and sustainable local livelihood to enhance preparedness.

scholarly journals Climate change, regulatory policies and regional cooperation in South Asia

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Habib Zafarullah ◽  
Ahmed Shafiqul Huque
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Regional Cooperation ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The South ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Regulatory Policies ◽  
Asian Region ◽  
South Asian Region

Purpose With climate change and environmental degradation being major issues in the world today, it is imperative for governments within a regional setting to collaborate on initiatives, harmonize their policies and develop strategies to counter threats. In South Asia, several attempts have been made to create a common framework for action in implementing synchronized policies. However, both political and technical deterrents have thwarted moves to accommodate priorities and interests of collaborating states. The purpose of this paper is to assess these issues and existing policies/strategies in selected South Asian countries and evaluate integrated plans of action based on collaborative partnerships. Design/methodology/approach Using a broad exploratory and interpretive approach, this paper evaluates how harmonization of environmental principles and synergies among countries can help reduce the effect of climate change and environmental hazards. Based on a review of ideas and concepts as well as both primary and secondary sources, including official records, legislation, inter-state and regional agreements, evaluation reports, impact studies (social, economic and ecological), and commentaries, it highlights several initiatives and processes geared to creating environmental protection standards and practices for the South Asian region. Findings Climate change has resulted in devastating impacts on people. It contributed to the proliferation of climate refugees and high incidence of poverty in South Asia. The region faces both political and technical obstacles in developing a sustainable approach to combat climate change. This is exacerbated by non-availability of information as well as reluctance to acknowledge the problem by key actors. The best strategy will be to integrate policies and regulations in the various countries of the region to develop strategic plans. The approach of prevention and protection should replace the existing emphasis on relief and rehabilitation. Originality/value The paper provides a critical overview of the climatic and environmental problems encountered in the South Asian region and provides pointers to resolving shared problems through the use of policy instruments for regulating the problems within the gamut of regional environmental governance. It attempts to identify solutions to offset regulatory and institutional barriers in achieving preferred results by emphasizing the need for redesigning regulatory structures and policy approaches for ecological well-being.

scholarly journals (Non)Places of Bangalore: Where the East Meets the West in Bharati Mukherjee’s Miss New India

2019 ◽  
pp. 83-90
Author(s):  
Izabella Kimak
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
South Asian American ◽  
Primary Location ◽  
Spatial Locations ◽  
The Impact

This essay constitutes an attempt at reading Bharati Mukherjee’s 2011 novel, Miss New India, through the prism of spatial locations depicted in it. Unlike many of the texts in the late South Asian American author’s oeuvre, which depict migration from the East to the West, Miss New India is located exclusively within South Asia. This notwithstanding, the novel focuses on the impact the West used to and continues to exert on the East. I would like to argue that through her depictions of places and non-places of Bangalore-the novel’s primary location-Mukherjee points to the spatial interconnectedness of the East and the West as well as to the temporal interconnectedness of the colonial past and postcolonial, late-capitalist present.

Religion and Politics in South Asia

Worldview ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-5
Author(s):  
Donald Smith
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
British Empire ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Geographical Region ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
World Religions ◽  
The West

The relation of religion and politics in South Asia is a subject of unusual complexity, with a richness of phenomena which at once intrigues and embarrasses. In the West we are concerned chiefly with the major branches of the Christian church; in South Asia we find a compact geographical region which is the meeting place of three major world religions. The majorities in the three most important South Asian countries, India, Pakistan and Ceylon, profess respectively Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism. From a comparative point of view it is important to note that the three countries share a similar colonial background: all three were part of the British Empire. British policies with respect to religion in undivided India and in Ceylon were not identical, but they did follow the same general lines.

scholarly journals Growing up South Asian: A Brief Trajectory Drawn from South Asian Novels Targeted for Youths

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 41-49
Author(s):  
Hari R. Adhikari
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Interest ◽  
The Political ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Significant Change

This paper primarily presents the trajectory of growing up in South Asia drawing insights from the selected novels about South Asian youths (SA youths). In this process, the paper explores the political interest of the West in non-Western children and youths. The focus is on the exploration of whether contemporary youth literatures have still been reinforcing the image of SA youths as the Other of the European youths, or if there has been any significant change augmented by the recent phenomenon of global connectedness. By laying a framework of these forces for analyzing how they are reflected in the literatures for the South Asian youths by foreign, diaspora and home authors, this paper prepares a ground for further exploration.

scholarly journals Constraining the chronology and ecology of Late Acheulean and Middle Palaeolithic occupations at the margins of the monsoon

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
James Blinkhorn ◽  
Hema Achyuthan ◽  
Julie Durcan ◽  
Patrick Roberts ◽  
Jana Ilgner
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Asian Monsoon ◽  
South Asian Monsoon ◽  
Middle Palaeolithic ◽  
Thar Desert ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Margin

AbstractSouth Asia hosts the world’s youngest Acheulean sites, with dated records typically restricted to sub-humid landscapes. The Thar Desert marks a major adaptive boundary between monsoonal Asia to the east and the Saharo-Arabian desert belt to the west, making it a key threshold to examine patterns of hominin ecological adaptation and its impacts on patterns of behaviour, demography and dispersal. Here, we investigate Palaeolithic occupations at the western margin of the South Asian monsoon at Singi Talav, undertaking new chronometric, sedimentological and palaeoecological studies of Acheulean and Middle Palaeolithic occupation horizons. We constrain occupations of the site between 248 and 65 thousand years ago. This presents the first direct palaeoecological evidence for landscapes occupied by South Asian Acheulean-producing populations, most notably in the main occupation horizon dating to 177 thousand years ago. Our results illustrate the potential role of the Thar Desert as an ecological, and demographic, frontier to Palaeolithic populations.

Growth and seed yield of lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus) genotypes of West Asian and South Asian origin and crossbreds between the two under rainfed conditions in Nepal

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 (9) ◽  
pp. 971 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Shrestha ◽  
K. H. M. Siddique ◽  
N. C. Turner ◽  
D. W. Turner ◽  
J. D. Berger
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Water Use ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Seed Yield ◽  
Dry Matter ◽  
Reproductive Period ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Mediterranean Environments ◽  
Significant Difference

Nineteen diverse lentil genotypes, 8 originating from South Asia, 6 from West Asia, and 5 crossbreds using parents from South Asia and West Asia (or other Mediterranean environments), were evaluated for growth, phenology, yield, and yield components at Khumaltar in the mid-hill region of Nepal. Additionally, dry matter production, partitioning, root growth and water use of 8 selected genotypes from the 3 groups were measured at key phenological stages. The seed yield of the West Asian genotypes was only 330 kg/ha, whereas the South Asian genotypes produced a mean seed yield of 1270 kg/ha. The crossbreds had a significantly (P = 0.05) greater seed yield (1550 kg/ha) than the South Asian genotypes. The high seed yield of both the South Asian and crossbred genotypes was associated with rapid ground cover, early flowering and maturity, a long reproductive period, a greater number of seeds and pods, high total dry matter, greater harvest index, and high water use efficiency. West Asian genotypes, on the other hand, flowered 43 days later, matured 15 days later, and had a shorter reproductive period (by 22 days) than the crossbred and South Asian genotypes. The 23% greater seed yield in the crossbreds compared with the South Asian genotypes was the result of a similar increase in seed size (weight per seed). There were no significant differences in total root length (mean 4.7 km/m2), root dry matter (mean 95.5 g/m2), or water use among the 3 groups during the major part of the growing period. There was a significant difference in total water use due to the longer growing season of the West Asian genotype ILL 7983 and its ability to use late-season rainfall. Maximum water use efficiencies for seed yield of 7.0 kg/ha.mm and for above-ground dry matter of 18.9 kg/ha.mm were comparable with those reported in India and the Mediterranean environments of south-western Australia and Syria.

The Emerging China, Pakistan, and Russia Strategic Triangle: India’s New Gordian Knot

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parvaiz Ahmad Thoker ◽  
Bawa Singh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
The West ◽  
Problematic Situation ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Great Game

The primary cause for the emerging triple axis including China, Russia, and Pakistan in South Asia has been to curtail the Indo-US extended political, economic, and military connections. India in the post-Cold War era tilted significantly toward the West, the move which has been equally ostracized by the triumvirate. Hence, in reprisal, Russia’s recent rapprochement with the duo further solidified the Sino-Pak geostrategic bond. India’s wide-ranging collaboration with the US, primarily in the post-civil nuclear deal, led to the budding fusion of three atomic powers. Under such circumstances, the region has been enticing the major global powers and latterly various extra-regional players exhibited profound interests in the entire South Asia. Therefore, under the formation of power blocks, a new geopolitical great game has been emerging in the region. India, the leading South Asian player, therefore, has been facing an extremely problematic situation while making a balancing choice amongst the two hostile powers, China and the US. Against this backdrop, the study will primarily focus on the rise of South Asian Triple Axis and its possible consequences upon the rising Indo-US strategic leverage.

River rivalry: water disputes, resource insecurity and diplomatic deadlock in South Asia

Water Policy ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Wirsing ◽  
Christopher Jasparro
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
River Basin ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Regional Cooperation ◽  
Resource Development ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Resource Requirements ◽  
Resource Endowments ◽  
Integrated Or

This article examines the reasons for the stalled river resource diplomacy that exists among the South Asian region's four main co-riparian states (India–Pakistan in the west; India–Bangladesh–Nepal in the east). It maintains that the stalemate emerges from three stubborn realities characterizing these states—first, the existence among them of fundamental differences in natural river resource endowments; second, the pressure on all of their governments to give highest priority to their own country's river resource requirements; and third, their resolute adherence to diplomatic strategies that are in large part irreconcilable. It maintains, further, that the stalemate is unlikely to be overcome, barring a dramatic change in the way the region's river resources are conceptualized and managed. This means, concretely, that these states would have to abandon their current almost exclusively unilateralist inclinations in favor of bilateral or even multilateral approaches that were significantly more trans-boundary, integrated or “river basin” in focus. It warns that the continued festering of un-addressed river resource disputes between these states—between India and Pakistan, India and Nepal, and India and Bangladesh—is bound to retard rational river resource development in the region, stiffen the antagonism already apparent in their bilateral relationships and, inevitably, weigh heavily against hopes for expanded regional cooperation.

On the Beginnings of South Asian Spice Trade with the Mediterranean Region: A Review

Radiocarbon ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayelet Gilboa ◽  
Dvory Namdar
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Mediterranean Region ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Organic Residue ◽  
The West ◽  
Spice Trade ◽  
Sustainable Trade

When did the trade in lucrative spices from South Asia to the West commence? Recent organic residue analyses performed on small early Iron Age (11th–late 10th century BCE) Phoenician clay flasks provide the first concrete archaeological evidence that such sustainable trade took place much earlier than hitherto suspected. The analysis shows that several of the flasks contained cinnamon, which in this period could only have originated in South/Southeast Asia. Here, we first summarize the rationale and results of that study. Subsequently, we provide an updated review of all sources of data relevant to the question at hand—archaeological, analytical, and textual. Finally, we offer suggestions for future research on the Asian spice trade with the West.

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