A Mughal Treatise on Essence and Existence

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 108-140
Author(s):  
Shankar Nair
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Alternative Formulation ◽  
The South ◽  
Mulla Sadra ◽  
Annotated Translation ◽  
Peculiar Mode

Abstract This article presents an annotated translation of The Equivalence between Giving and Receiving (al-Taswiya bayna al-ifāda wa-l-qabūl), a short Arabic treatise on essence (dhāt) and existence (wujūd) composed by the South Asian philosopher-Sufi Shaykh Muḥibb Allāh Ilāhābādī (996–1058/1587–1648). Although modern scholarship has habitually referred to Muḥibb Allāh as an ardent defender of the doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd (“unity of existence”) associated with the figure of Ibn al-ʿArabī, such generalized formulations fail to do justice to the uniqueness of Muḥibb Allāh’s intellectual contributions. Most authors who had set out to provide a philosophical defense of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s teachings – including the well-known likes of Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī, ʿAfīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī, Dāwud al-Qayṣarī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī, Mullā Ṣadrā, and so on – had tended to prioritize a philosophically utilizable formulation of wujūd or “existence.” Muḥibb Allāh, in notable contrast, favors a presentation of the divine Reality in terms of “pure essence/quiddity” (dhāt/māhiyya maḥḍa), at times going to considerable lengths to uphold his alternative formulation. Such a strategy of argumentation is uncommon amongst philosophical defenders of Ibn al-ʿArabī, the distinctiveness of which is further enhanced by Muḥibb Allāh’s peculiar mode of disputation, which straddles the line between metaphysics and natural philosophy/physics. The Taswiya occasioned at least sixteen commentaries and refutations; this translation benefits from consulting the earliest of these, composed by Mullā Maḥmūd al-Jawnpūrī (d. 1062/1652) and Khwāja Khwurd (d. 1073/1663), as well as three later commentaries by Ḥabīb Allāh Paṭnaʾī (d. 1140/1728). Most significantly, this translation makes extensive use of Muḥibb Allāh’s own Persian auto-commentary, the Sharḥ-i taswiya, which is a critical aid for deciphering the author’s at times opaque manner of expression and argumentation.

Labels, Histories, Politics: Indian/South Asian Dance on the Global Stage

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
AVANTHI MEDURI
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
First Century ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The South ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Indian Nation ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Uk

In this paper, I discuss issues revolving around history, historiography, alterity, difference and otherness concealed in the doubled Indian/South Asian label used to describe Indian/South Asian dance genres in the UK. The paper traces the historical genealogy of the South Asian label to US, Indian and British contexts and describes how the South Asian enunciation fed into Indian nation-state historiography and politics in the 1950s. I conclude by describing how Akademi: South Asian Dance, a leading London based arts organisation, explored the ambivalence in the doubled Indian/South Asian label by renaming itself in 1997, and forging new local/global networks of communication and artistic exchange between Indian and British based dancers and choreographers at the turn of the twenty-first century.

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.

(Un)Settling Imagined Lands

2019 ◽  
pp. 174-208
Author(s):  
Kakali Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Asian Women ◽  
South Asian Women ◽  
The South ◽  
Global North ◽  
Research Praxis ◽  
Global Agenda ◽  
Academic Discourses

De/colonial methodologies and ontoepistemologies have gained popularity in the academic discourses emerging from Global North perspectives over the last decade. However, such perspectives often erase the broader global agenda of de/colonizing research, praxis, and activism that could be initiated and engaged with beyond the issue of land repatriation, as that is not the only agenda in de/colonial initiatives. In this chapter, I coin a framework, Par/Des(i), with six tenets, and offer three actionable methodological turns grounded in transnational de/colonial ontoepistemologies. I locate, situate, and trace the Par/Des(i) framework within the South Asian diasporic discourses and lived realities as evidenced from my empirical work with transnational South Asian women, my community, and my colleagues. Therefore, I offer possibilities of being, knowing, and enacting de/colonizing methodologies in our work, when engaging with the Par/Des(i) framework, with an invitation for an expanded conversation.

scholarly journals Taxonomic revision of the South Asian River dolphins ( Platanista ): Indus and Ganges River dolphins are separate species

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gill T. Braulik ◽  
Frederick I. Archer ◽  
Uzma Khan ◽  
Mohammad Imran ◽  
Ravindra K. Sinha ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Taxonomic Revision ◽  
Ganges River ◽  
The South ◽  
Separate Species

Insulating Peace: Managerial Coordination in Durable Security Complexes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Travlos
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Regional Security ◽  
Collective Intentionality ◽  
South American ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
The South ◽  
Mapping Tool ◽  
Region I ◽  
The Face ◽  
Future Evaluation

Abstract I argue that insulation via managerial coordination is a key element in any explanation about the formation of political regions among states. The key role it plays is as a tool for the maintenance of intra-regional pacific relations in the face of diffusion and contagion processes, resulting from continued security linkages with excluded extra-regional states. In order to explore these dynamics, I propose a new reconceptualization of the concept of managerial coordination based on the basic framework concept mapping tool. This leads to clarity about what managerial coordination does as a dimension of insulation. It also necessitates a revamp of the scale of interstate managerial coordination as a measuring instrument of the intensity of collective intentionality toward insulation among the members of a region. I then map the region concept of durable security complex (DSC) as the scope for the enactment of managerial coordination, based on a review of existing region concepts in the new regionalist literature. I then conduct an ideographic proof-of-concept exercise on three DSCs in the presence or absence of managerial coordination. These are the Scandinavian states, the South Asian regional security complex, and the South American Norther Tier local hierarchy. The exercise provides indicators for a number of theoretical propositions worthy of future evaluation.

The effects of US–China competing strategies in Asia-Pacific on India and Pakistan rivalry in the South Asian region

2021 ◽  
pp. 205789112110211
Author(s):  
Zafar Khan
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Strategic Partnership ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
The South ◽  
Reduced Pressure ◽  
The Us ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Modernization Process ◽  
The One

This article primarily focuses on how the increasing US–China competing strategies in Asia-Pacific affect the policies of South Asian rivals India and Pakistan when, on the one hand, the US as part of its offshore balancing grand strategy has been increasing its strategic partnership with India through the transfer of emerging technologies in terms of military modernization process, and on the other hand, China and Pakistan have improved their geo-economic and geostrategic partnership as part of the Chinese grand strategy via the Belt and Road Initiative while enabling Pakistan to produce effective countermeasures against its potential adversary. The article presumes that, in doing so, such competing strategies frame a quadrangle setting comprising of US and India to deter and contain China on the one hand and China and Pakistan to produce countermeasures and try to create a balance to potentially prevent the risk of conflict in South Asia out of such competing strategies at the quadrangle order conceived here. However, in fact, neither the US nor rising China would desire such a possibility of conflict otherwise unintendedly occurring from the intense US–China competing strategies while affecting the policies of the South Asian rivals. The article concludes that the shaping of this quadrangle framework may bring both opportunities and challenges for the South Asian rivals. It also concludes that the more intense the competition between the US and China becomes, the more intense its implications could be on the South Asian rivals, while the reduced tension between China and the US, although unlikely, would have reduced pressure on India and Pakistan relations as well.

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