scholarly journals In the Shadow of Ghadar: Marxism and Anti-Colonialism in Colonial Punjab

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Ammar Ali Jan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Communist Movement ◽  
Political Project ◽  
Popular Movements

The Ghadr Party, an eclectic group of diasporic Punjabis, was perhaps one of the most significant political movements led by emigre Indians in the early twentieth century. Designated as one of the biggest threats to colonial rule in the 1910s, the Ghadr Party spread its operations over five continents, and repeatedly committed acts of sabotage aimed at colonial officials from India. By the 1920s, however, the birth of popular movements in India marginalized various groups that believed in the spectacular actions of a vanguard as a strategy for overcoming the stifling impact of colonial rule. Members of the party, eager to find a foothold in the changed political scenario, opened discussions for building a popular front in Punjab, with many returning to the country to participate in such an endeavour. In this article, I study the encounter between the Ghadarite tradition and the communist movement in colonial Punjab through the writings of Sohan Singh Josh, who attempted to bring these two traditions together to produce a viable political project. I argue that Ghadar's encounter with Marxism not only influenced the former, but also radically transformed Marxism itself, particularly on questions of History, violence and volition.

In Search of One Word's Meaning: Zaman in Early Twentieth-Century Kano

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 95-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Christelow
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
West African ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Oral Discourse ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Do So

When Caliph Attahiru of Sokoto chose flight over submission to the British in March 1903, it was left to the blind and aging Waziri, Muhammad al-Bukhari, to provide those who remained behind with an explanation of how they could remain good Muslims while accepting infidel rule. Citing a text of the caliphate's founder, Shehu ʿUthman Dan Fodio, he argued that one could befriend the British with the tongue, without befriending them with the heart. It remained for others to develop the vocabulary that their tongues would need for this task.A particularly intriguing item in the vocabulary that emerged during the turbulent first decade of colonial rule was a new usage of zaman(time, era) that occurs in the records of the Emir of Kano's judicial council in such terms as hukm al-zaman (rule of the era) and ʿumur al-zaman (things of the era). It is worth noting that the judicial council did not keep written records before being instructed to do so by British Resident C.L. Temple in 1909, so the records might be seen as preserving what was essentially oral discourse—expressions of the tongue. These terms occur uniquely in relation to legal matters in which the British had intervened. Understanding them can shed new light on the religious and political adaptation of northern Nigerian Muslim leaders to life under British rule. To explore their meaning requires a threefold process of examining various usages and understandings of zaman in non-legal sources; describing how the judicial council used the word; and then analyzing how this usage may have been related to any of a number of influences, ranging from British officials to West African Islamic scholars to Western-educated North Africans passing through the region.

The Testamentary Waqf as an Instrument of Elite Consolidation in Early Twentieth-Century Massawa (Eritrea)

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 78-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Miran ◽  
Aharon Layish
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Real Estate Assets ◽  
Annotated Translation

This study examines the testamentary waqf of Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ghūl (1853-1919), a prominent merchant and communal leader in the cosmopolitan Red Sea port town of Massawa in Eritrea during the period of Italian colonial rule (1885-1941). We provide an annotated translation of the document and a detailed socio-legal analysis of its features. We argue that the testamentary waqf was a vehicle for ensuring the family’s integration in Eritrea in perpetuity. We also consider how the testamentary waqf was used as a strategy to sustain the al-Ghūl family as a corporate unit by preserving the integrity of its real estate assets and by upholding the family’s internal hierarchy of authority. Finally, by endowing properties to mosques and wells, the testator-founder sought to establish the family’s role as a patron of the Muslim community.


scholarly journals Dying against Democracy: Suicide Protest and the 1905 Anti-American Boycott

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Keren He
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Modes Of Action ◽  
Social Negotiation ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Face ◽  
Popular Movements ◽  
Chinese Political Culture

The joint rise of popular movements and mass media in early twentieth-century China gave birth to a democratic imagination, which culminated in the anti-American boycott of 1905. The transnational campaign nonetheless disintegrated as a result of partisan division—an ingrained predicament of democratic agonism that is best illustrated by the story of Feng Xiawei, a grassroots activist whose suicide in Shanghai constituted a key moment in the boycott. Juxtaposing a variety of accounts about Feng's death in journalism, political fiction, reformed opera, and advertisements, this article examines how, together, these texts construct democratic agonism and suicide protest as revealing two opposing political sensibilities as well as modes of action. Instead of expressing only nationalist passion, Feng's suicide reveals a deep anxiety of his time to locate a spiritual source of authority in the face of its glaring absence in social negotiation. This fraught dynamic between the democratic and the transcendent continues to characterize modern Chinese political culture to the present.

Decolonizing Consumption and Postcoloniality: A Theory of Allegory in Oswald de Andrade’s Antropofagia

2018 ◽  
pp. 33-68
Author(s):  
Daniel F. Silva
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mario De Andrade ◽  
Central Aspect ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Project

This chapter provides an exploration of the decolonial possibilities in works by the Brazilian Modernist movement of the early twentieth century – Antropofagia [Anthropophagy] – namely key works by its most acclaimed writers, Mário de Andrade and Oswald de Andrade. The first chapter, ‘Decolonizing Consumption and Postcoloniality: a Theory of Allegory in Oswald de Andrade’s Antropofagia,’ interrogates what I argue to be a central aspect of the works and political project of the movement – the deployment of a particular mode of allegory, one of consumption. I explore this allegory of consumption beyond canonical readings of the movement’s cannibal metaphor in relation to Oswald de Andrade’s collection of poetry, Pau Brasil [Brazilwood], in addition to his seminal manifesto, ‘Manifesto Antropófago’ [‘Antropophagic Manifesto’] (1928).

Imperial Romance

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Su Yun Kim
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Print Media ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Japanese Empire ◽  
Familial Relationships ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Colonial Policies

This book argues that the idea of colonial intimacy within the Japanese empire of the early twentieth century had a far broader and more popular influence on discourse makers, social leaders, and intellectuals than previously understood. The book investigates representations of Korean–Japanese intimate and familial relationships — including romance, marriage, and kinship — in literature, media, and cinema, alongside documents that discuss colonial policies during the Japanese protectorate period and colonial rule in Korea (1905–45). Focusing on Korean perspectives, the book uncovers political meaning in the representation of intimacy and emotion between Koreans and Japanese portrayed in print media and films. It disrupts the conventional reading of colonial-period texts as the result of either coercion or the disavowal of colonialism, thereby expanding our understanding of colonial writing practices. The theme of intermarriage gave elite Korean writers and cultural producers opportunities to question their complicity with imperialism. Their fictions challenged expected colonial boundaries, creating tensions in identity and hierarchy, and also in narratives of the linear developmental trajectory of modernity. Examining a broad range of writings and films from this period, the book maps the colonized subjects' fascination with their colonizers and with moments that allowed them to become active participants in and agents of Japanese and global imperialism.

scholarly journals The Mantle Odes

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 138-140
Author(s):  
Francis Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Reader ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

Non-Muslims, perhaps blinded by the claims of their own faiths, have longunderestimated Muslim reverence for the Prophet Muhammad. By thesame token, they have paid relatively little attention to Muslim traditionsof praising the Prophet, whether it be the naths sung by Sufi qawwali musiciansin South Asia, the maulid lectures on the first twelve days of Rabi al-Awwal ‒ or the biographies of the Prophet, which have become so numerousover the past century. This is unfortunate because, intermingled withpraise for the Prophet, there are often other messages, which non-Muslimsneed to note if they are better to understand their Muslim neighbors.The Mantle Odes contains translations, and interpretations in their context,of three of the most highly prized poems in the Arab-Islamic traditionin praise of the Prophet. One poem dates from the time of the Prophet, thesecond from the thirteenth century AC under the Mamluks, and the thirdfrom Egypt under colonial rule in the early twentieth century. The author’saim is “to bring these Islamic devotional masterpieces into the purview ofcontemporary literary interpretation in a way that makes them culturallyrelevant and poetically effective for the modern reader, whether Muslim ornon-Muslim” (xi) ...

World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Daniel Elam
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
British Empire ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Face ◽  
Theories Of Reading

World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth recovers an alternative strain of anticolonialism that does not seek national sovereignty, authority, and political recognition, but advocates instead inexpertise, unknowing, unintelligibility, and collective unrecognizability. Early twentieth-century anticolonial thinkers endeavored to imagine a world emancipated from colonial rule, but it was a world they knew they would likely not live to see. Written in exile, in abjection, or in the face of death, anticolonial thought could not afford to base its politics on the hope of eventual success. This book shows how anticolonial thinkers theorized inconsequential practices of egalitarianism in the service of impossibility: a world without colonialism. To trace this impossible political theory, this book foregrounds anticolonial theories of reading and critique in the writing of four thinkers, Lala Har Dayal, B. R. Ambedkar, M. K. Gandhi, and Bhagat Singh. These activists theorized reading not as a way to cultivate mastery and expertise, but as a way of rather to disavow mastery and expertise altogether. Reading was antiauthoritarian precisely because it urged readers to refuse authorship and, relatedly, authority. To become or remain a reader, and divest oneself of authorial claims, was to challenge the logic of the British Empire and European fascism, which prized self-mastery, authority, and sovereignty. Bringing together the histories of comparative literature and anticolonial thought, Elam demonstrates how these early twentieth-century theories of reading force us to reconsider the commitments of humanistic critique and egalitarian politics.

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