Indian Christians and The Making of Composite Culture in South India

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Christhu Doss
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
South India ◽  
North India ◽  
Educational Strategies ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Indian Identity ◽  
The Devil

While North India erupted in rebellion in 1857, South India was experiencing a range of cross-cultural contests between missionary Christianity and local converts, who protested against Indian culture being dismissed as a work of the devil. Converts in the emerging Christian communities, particularly in South India, made efforts to retain their indigenous cultural ethos as part of their lived experience. Early attempts to balance Indian identity with Christian beliefs and practices were later replicated in a second anti-hegemonic movement by claims of Indian Christians for respectful inclusion into the new composite nation of postcolonial India. This article brings out how these two processes of asserting hybridity and equity developed. The initial impact of hegemonising Christianity created a chasm between missionaries and converts, which especially the latter addressed constructively. After 1857, emboldened British hegemonic and missionary activities sparked further divisive identity politics, feeding fresh rebellious ambitions that needed to be pacified to maintain the empire. As more culturally conscious Indian Christians realised that missionary Christianity was antithetical to their lived experiences as part of an emerging Indian nation, they used educational strategies to strengthen the formation of India’s composite culture, so that India’s Christians could now (re)assert their rightful place within the postcolonial nationalist framework, despite contentions from majoritarian forces.

Locating the Tawa’if Courtesan-Dancer: Cinematic Constructions of Religion and Nation

2021 ◽  
pp. e20200014
Author(s):  
Sitara Thobani
Keyword(s):  
National Identities ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
Dance Performance ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
Indian Identity ◽  
Indian Nation ◽  
Cinematic Narratives ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Artistic Performance

The development of the Hindi/Urdu cinema is intimately connected to the history of artistic performance in India in two important ways. Not only did hereditary music and dance practitioners play key roles in building this cinema, representations of these performers and their practices have been, and continue to be, the subject of Indian film narratives, genres, and tropes. I begin with this history in order to explore the Muslim religio-cultural and artistic inheritance that informs Hindi/Urdu cinema, as well as examine how this heritage has been incorporated into the cinematic narratives that help construct distinct gendered, religious, and national identities. My specific focus is on the figure of the tawa’if dancer, often equated with North Indian culture and nautch dance performance. Analyzing the ways in which traces of the tawa’if appear in two recent films, Dedh Ishqiya and Begum Jaan, I show how this figure is placed in a larger representational regime that sustains nationalist formations of contemporary Indian identity. As I demonstrate, even in the most blatant attempts to define the Indian nation as “Hindu,” the “Muslimness” of the tawa’if—and by extension the cinema she informed in ways both real and representational—is far from relinquished.

North India

2019 ◽  
pp. 119-130
Author(s):  
Leonard Fernando SJ
Keyword(s):  
North India ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Indian States ◽  
Constitutional Protection ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Nicobar Islands ◽  
Missionary Societies ◽  
Christian Population ◽  
The Church

The Christian population in North India is varied, from less than 1% (in most North Indian states) to 22% in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Many fix its emergence in the 16th century, when Jesuits were invited by the Muslim Emperor Akbar the Great. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, many Protestant missionary societies were established in India. Six churches in India united in 1970, forming the Church of North India (CNI). Recently, Christians have been attacked as a threat to the hierarchical social system and threatened by radical Hindu fundamentalism. Amidst the persecutions, Christianity has continued in unique paradigms: whether in the adoption ashram life to promote the mystical traditions of Christianity as well as Hinduism, in translations of the Bible into tribal languages; or in the faculties of philosophy and theology in North India preparing men and women for ministry. Religious communities and NGOs in North India have served those at the peripheries. Lack of growth of Christian communities can be attributed to hostility against Dalit Christians who risk losing constitutional protection given to other Dalits. In fact, the collaboration of lay Christians is on the increase through different associations, basic Christian communities and Charismatic movements.

Richard Wright’s Mission

2018 ◽  
pp. 86-104
Author(s):  
Marilyn Nissim-Sabat
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Healthy Human ◽  
South Side ◽  
Native Son ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Human Need

Some readers of Wright’s work have criticized him for failing to portray healthy human connection or solidarity. In her chapter, Marilyn Nissim-Sabbat maintains that Wright was deeply aware that people could only live as human beings through meaningful relations with one another. Wright understood both that the human need for solidarity runs deep and that the ability to forge it can be damaged. Without such solidarity, alienation from oneself and others will crush “Bigger” and Bigger-like characters on the South Side of Chicago and globally. Wright therefore championed the healing made possible by qualitatively enlarging our lived-experience of and with one another. Essential to articulating and acting on this need is a critical theory of transcendence that is implicit in Wright’s work. Such a theory emerges in this essay through a critique of Simone de Beauvoir’s views on identity politics and cross-group identity in The Second Sex as contrasted with parallel discussions by Wright in Native Son.

The lived experience of Buddhist-oriented religious coping in late life: Buddhism as a cognitive schema

2019 ◽  
pp. 135910531988274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianbin Xu
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Religious Coping ◽  
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Analysis Data ◽  
Cognitive Schema ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Coping Methods ◽  
Mantra Meditation

This article explores how older Buddhists in Singapore use Buddhist beliefs and practices to cope with stress. Semi-structured interviews with six older Buddhists were conducted. Interview transcripts were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Data analysis identified three ways of Buddhist-oriented religious coping: meaning-making coping, meditative coping, and ego-transcendence coping. In meaning-making coping, participants employed the notions of karma and duḥkha to make sense of stress. Participants’ meditative coping methods included visualization and mantra meditation. During ego-transcendence coping, participants drew on the notion of non-attachment to the ego. The three ways of Buddhist-oriented religious coping can be examined in a Buddhism-as-cognitive-schema perspective.

Phylogeny based on 16S rDNA andnifHsequences ofRalstonia taiwanensisstrains isolated from nitrogen-fixing nodules ofMimosa pudica, in India

2004 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
pp. 313-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Subhash Chandra Verma ◽  
Soumitra Paul Chowdhury ◽  
Anil Kumar Tripathi
Keyword(s):  
16S Rdna ◽  
South India ◽  
Restriction Analysis ◽  
Cross Reaction ◽  
North India ◽  
Mimosa Pudica ◽  
Free Living ◽  
South Indian ◽  
Indian Isolates ◽  
Dinitrogenase Reductase

Bacterial symbionts present in the indeterminate-type nitrogen (N)-fixing nodules of Mimosa pudica grown in North and South India showed maximum similarity to Ralstonia taiwanensis on the basis of carbon-source utilization patterns and 16S rDNA sequence. Isolates from the nodules of M. pudica from North India and South India showed identical ARDRA (Amplified Ribosomal DNA Restriction Analysis) patterns with Sau3AI and RsaI, but AluI revealed dimorphy between the North Indian and South Indian isolates. Alignment of 16S rDNA sequences revealed similarity of North Indian isolates with an R. taiwanensis strain isolated from M. pudica in Taiwan, whereas South Indian isolates showed closer relatedness with the isolates from Mimosa diplotricha. Alignment of nifH sequences from both North Indian and South Indian isolates with that of the related isolates revealed their closer affinity to α-rhizobia, suggesting that nif genes in the β-rhizobia might have been acquired from α-rhizobia via lateral transfer during co-occupancy of nodules by α-rhizobia and progenitors of R. taiwanensis, members of the β-subclass of Proteobacteria. Immunological cross-reaction of the bacteroid preparation of M. pudica nodules showed strong a positive signal with anti-dinitrogenase reductase antibody, whereas a weak positive cross-reaction was observed with free-living R. taiwanensis grown microaerobically in minimal medium with and without NH4Cl. In spite of the expression of dinitrogenase reductase under free-living conditions, acetylene reduction was not observed under N-free conditions even after prolonged incubation.Key words: symbiotic nitrogen fixation, Mimosa pudica, rhizobia, phylogeny, 16S rDNA, nifH, Ralstonia taiwanensis.

scholarly journals Knowledge, Beliefs and Practices Associated with Teething Among Mothers in Mangalore Taluk, South India

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. A21-27
Author(s):  
Nishana E ◽  
Sham S Bhat ◽  
Sundeep K Hegde ◽  
Ajay Rao H T ◽  
Vidya S Bhat
Keyword(s):  
South India ◽  
Beliefs And Practices

scholarly journals Sleep of the Soul and Resurrection of the Body: Aphrahat’s Anthropology in Context

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 433-466
Author(s):  
J. Edward Walters
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Body And Soul

Abstract The fourth-century Syriac corpus known as the Demonstrations, attributed to Aphrahat, the Persian Sage, provides a unique window into the early development of Christianity among Syriac-speaking communities. Occasionally these writings attest to beliefs and practices that were not common among other contemporaneous Christian communities, such as Aphrahat’s apparent belief in the “sleep of the soul” and the implications of that belief for his concept of the soul-body relationship and what happens to the soul and body at the resurrection. Aphrahat addresses this topic in the context of a polemical argument against an unnamed opponent, which provides the occasion to consider whom these arguments might be addressed against. The present article seeks to understand Aphrahat’s views on the body and soul within the broad religious milieu of the eastern Mediterranean world in Late Antiquity. The article concludes with an argument for reading and understanding the Demonstrations as a witness to the contested development of Christian identity in the Syriac-speaking world.

scholarly journals Knowledge, Beliefs and Practices of Caregivers Regarding Home Based Bedsore Care in Chandigarh, North India

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 138-143
Author(s):  
Sukhpal Kaur ◽  
Upasana Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Warning Signs ◽  
North India ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Home Based ◽  
Government Hospitals ◽  
Care Practices ◽  
Knowledge Attitude And Practice

ABSTRACT Background Bedsores are quite frequent in bedridden cases. Caregivers have an important role in the management of such cases. Objectives To assess the knowledge, beliefs and practices of caregivers regarding bedsore care practices and management. Materials and methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in Chandigarh from September to November 2011. Caregivers were interviewed about the knowledge, attitude and practice regarding care of bedridden patients and their problems like bedsores. Results Data was collected from 42 bedridden cases (22 males and 20 females). Age was 18 to 90 years. Bedsores were found in 10 bedridden cases. Most common underlying diagnosis was neurological disease in 24 cases. Twenty-nine patients consulted government hospitals. Earlier episode of bedsore was experienced in about 14 cases. In 24 cases bed sheet was changed daily. In 11 cases, for more than two times patient had to wait for more than half an hour if urine/stools were passed in bed. In six cases unqualified practitioners were also consulted. Thirty-seven of them complied with the physician's advice. Seventeen of the caregivers were aware of the warning signs of development of bedsores. Exercises were not performed in 26 cases. Different dressing regimes were reported viz til oil, desi ghee, platelet ointment, paraffin wax, etc. Conclusion Quality of care of bedridden was not good. There is a need for formal training for the caregivers as most of them were untrained. Evaluation of various dressing regimes for bedsores is needed. How to cite this article Sharma U, Kaur S, Singh A. Knowledge, Beliefs and Practices of Caregivers Regarding Home Based Bedsore Care in Chandigarh, North India. J Postgrad Med Edu Res 2013;47(3):138-143.

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