scholarly journals ‘IN ANY CASE WE ARE SUFIS’: THE CREATION OF HIJRA SPIRITUAL IDENTITY IN SOUTH ASIA

Islamology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 38
Author(s):  
Sara Kuehn
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Spiritual Identity ◽  
Safe Spaces ◽  
Liminal Spaces ◽  
Gender Divide ◽  
Gender Categories ◽  
Binary Gender

Providing spiritual ‘safe spaces’, the Sufi shrine-world throughout the Indian Subcontinent is generally open to those who do not identify with conventional gender categories. Ajmer Sharif Shrine (dargāh) in the northern Indian town of Ajmer in Rajasthan is renowned for being particularly ‘inclusive’. It accepts all pilgrims without discrimination, including the so-called ‘third gender’, often referred to as hijras or kinnars, terms that transgress the socially-defined binary gender divide. Marginalized, and often socially stigmatized, these groups are naturally drawn towards liminal spaces such as Sufi dargāhs which encourage the transcendence of socio-religious boundaries. This paper explores certain typological aspects of traditional Sufi ritual and belief that make it particularly receptive to hijras, and the way in which hijras in turn appropriate and reconfigure Sufi religious belief to negotiate the tension between the liminality of their lived experience and the exclusive duality of the society around them. As well as utilizing fieldwork undertaken at the 808th

Translating the Scribe: Lithographic Print and Vernacularization in Colonial India, 1857–1915

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 281-300
Author(s):  
Amanda Lanzillo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
North India ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Book Production ◽  
Manuscript Culture ◽  
Arabic Script ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Focusing on the lithographic print revolution in North India, this article analyses the role played by scribes working in Perso-Arabic script in the consolidation of late nineteenth-century vernacular literary cultures. In South Asia, the rise of lithographic printing for Perso-Arabic script languages and the slow shift from classical Persian to vernacular Urdu as a literary register took place roughly contemporaneously. This article interrogates the positionality of scribes within these transitions. Because print in North India relied on lithography, not movable type, scribes remained an important part of book production on the Indian subcontinent through the early twentieth century. It analyses the education and models of employment of late nineteenth-century scribes. New scribal classes emerged during the transition to print and vernacular literary culture, in part due to the intervention of lithographic publishers into scribal education. The patronage of Urdu-language scribal manuals by lithographic printers reveals that scribal education in Urdu was directly informed by the demands of the print economy. Ultimately, using an analysis of scribal manuals, the article contributes to our knowledge of the social positioning of book producers in South Asia and demonstrates the vitality of certain practices associated with manuscript culture in the era of print.

Nonbinary Gender Identities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Hegarty ◽  
Y. Gavriel Ansara ◽  
Meg-John Barker
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Gender Identities ◽  
Health Culture ◽  
Gender Binary ◽  
Nonbinary Gender ◽  
Language And Cognition ◽  
Binary Options ◽  
Gender Categories ◽  
Binary Gender

This chapter concerns nonbinary genders; identities and roles between or beyond gender categories such as the binary options ‘women and men,’ for example. We review the emerging literature on people who do not identify with such binary gender schemes, unpack the often-implicit logic of thinking about others through the lens of gender binary schemes, and briefly describe some other less-researched, but longstanding cultural gender systems which recognize nonbinary genders. This chapter makes the case that consideration of nonbinary genders is germane to several core topics in psychology including identity, mental health, culture, social norms, language, and cognition.

Microlithic occurrences associated with sediments dated to terminal Pleistocene-late Holocene in the central Narmada basin, Madhya Pradesh, India

2021 ◽  
pp. SP515-2020-216
Author(s):  
Nupur Tiwari ◽  
P. Morthekai ◽  
K. Krishnan ◽  
Parth R. Chauhan
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Late Pleistocene ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Central India ◽  
Madhya Pradesh ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
Terminal Pleistocene

AbstractThe earliest occurrence of microliths in South Asia dates back to the Late Pleistocene at Mehtakheri (45 ka) and Dhaba (48 ka) in Central India, Jwalapuram 9 in Southern India (38 ka), Kana and Mahadebbara in Northeastern India (42-25 ka) and Batadomba-Lena (35-36 ka) and Fa Hien Lena (48 ka) in Sri Lanka. Microlithic technology is distributed across the entire Indian Subcontinent and chronologically continues up to the Iron Age and Early Historic periods. This paper discusses new data acquired from the first author's doctoral research in the two districts of Madhya Pradesh (Hoshangabad and Sehore), which fall within the central part of the Narmada Basin in central India. We present here the preliminary dates from key areas of distribution to understand the geo-chronological contexts of microliths at Pilikarar, Morpani, and Gurla-Sukkarwada. Initial dates from these respective occurrences range between 12.5 ka and 2.3 ka.

Multidisciplinary perspectives on the origins of past foodways and farming practice in South Asia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayushi Nayak ◽  
Nicole Boivin ◽  
Patrick Roberts
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Isotope Analysis ◽  
Radiometric Dating ◽  
Agricultural Practice ◽  
Current Application ◽  
Environmental Consequences ◽  
The People ◽  
Production And Consumption

Today, over half of the people living in South Asia are employed in an agricultural sector that supports one of the most densely populated regions on Earth. Yet the origins of agriculture in this environmentally and culturally diverse region have received relatively little attention compared to other parts of the Old World. Narratives of agricultural origins have frequently been monocausal, treating this massive landmass as a single entity. Recently, multidisciplinary applications of diverse methods (including archaeobotany, systematic radiometric dating, stable isotope analysis, and ancient DNA) have facilitated more nuanced insights into the origins, as well as the social and environmental consequences, of different farming foodways in prehistory. Here, we review the current application of these techniques across the Indian Subcontinent, focusing on the insights they have provided into cultivation and herding practices, dietary reliance on particular foods and culinary techniques, demographic turnover, changing settlement patterns, and the environmental impacts of agricultural practice in the Holocene. We argue that such approaches are essential if we are to properly understand the diverse drivers of different farming practices, as well as their demographic, ecological and dietary outcomes on the production and consumption of food in different parts of South Asia. Only then can we begin to discuss the prehistoric origins of the culinary and agronomic diversity that characterises this region today.

South Asia, the Middle East, and Muslim Transnationalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 186-192
Author(s):  
Simon Wolfgang Fuchs
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Research Paradigm ◽  
New Research

The conclusion revisits the extent to which Pakistani Shi‘is have been increasingly drawn into the circuits of the Shi‘i international in the course of the 20th and 21st centuries. It argues that both Sunni and Shi‘i scholars have not been satisfied with merely being relegated to peripheral positions. Rather, Pakistani Muslim thinkers have been actively carving out spaces of influence for themselves. They continue to insist on the historical intellectual contributions of the Indian subcontinent and at times even claim hermeneutical hegemony for the region. The conclusion also takes a comparative look at India, where Shi‘i intellectual life was significantly less disrupted than in Pakistan. The conclusion calls for a new research paradigm that would take seriously the importance of bidirectional flows of thought between South Asia and the Middle East. Such a novel perspective has the potential to fundamentally reshape existing understandings of present-day phenomena such as Islamism.

George Harrison and the Concert for Bangladesh

2017 ◽  
pp. 149-166
Author(s):  
Mohammad Delwar Hossain ◽  
James Aucoin
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
New Left ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Severe Weather ◽  
The South ◽  
George Harrison

The Concert for Bangladesh occurred on August 1, 1971, forever changing the dynamic between popular music, politics, and humanitarian aid. The concert was organized by former Beatle George Harrison, reflecting New Left political leanings. He was inspired to put on the concert by Bengali Ravi Shankar, who sought aid for victims of war and severe weather in East Pakistan, soon to become Bangladesh. The concert raised consciousness among the counterculture movement and mixed with world politics as the War of Liberation raged in the south Asia country on the Indian subcontinent.

scholarly journals The Case for Non-Binary Gender Questions in Surveys

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-135
Author(s):  
Mike Medeiros ◽  
Benjamin Forest ◽  
Patrik Öhberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
General Population ◽  
Statistical Difference ◽  
Adverse Reactions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Population Surveys ◽  
Gender Categories ◽  
Binary Gender

ABSTRACTLGBTQ activists and academics advocate the use of non-binary gender categories to include individuals who identify as neither rigidly male nor rigidly female to reflect the increasing number of people who do not place themselves in these two conventional classes. Although some general-population surveys have begun using non-binary gender questions, research has not examined the consequences of using (or not) a question with non-binary gender categories in surveys and censuses. Our study addresses this gap using a survey experiment in which respondents in the United States, Canada, and Sweden randomly received a binary or a non-binary gender question. We find no evidence of negative reactions to the non-binary question. Moreover, when there is a statistical difference, the reactions are positive. We thus conclude that general-population surveys could use a non-binary question without facing significant adverse reactions from respondents.

Drumming, Language, and the Voice in South Asia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard K. Wolf
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
The Public ◽  
South Indian ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indian Classical Music

This book explores drumming and other instrumental traditions that are interconnected over vast regions of South and West Asia. The traditions considered here qualify broadly as functional music rather than concert music and include the public instrumental music of weddings, funerals, and religious holidays. The book examines patterns that pervade functional music of South Asia and to some extent North and South Indian classical music and how performed texts are related to their verbal or vocal models. It also considers what it means in particular contexts for musical instruments to be voicelike and carry textual messages. This chapter discusses the broad historical context in which voices and instruments have been co-constructed in the history of the Indian subcontinent and regions west. Many examples from South India are included to help create a picture that transcends the bounds of Muharram Ali's travels.

Dispossession, Un-freedom, Precarity

2021 ◽  
Vol 120 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-219
Author(s):  
Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
The People ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Citizenship Laws ◽  
Laws And Regulations

The partition of the Indian subcontinent forced millions of people to flee to the other side of the borders, freshly demarcated by the British colonial rulers just on the eve of their departure from South Asia. Almost a decade-long migration of people could not, however, settle the boundaries and lives of the people once and for all. The postcolonial rulers retained many of the draconian laws of the late colonial period, like the Foreigners’ Act in India, and laced them with new laws and regulations, thus leading to greater dispossession of people of homes, generating widespread situations of un-freedom, and creating countless refugees and stateless persons, mostly forced to survive in sites of precarious life, without any right to have rights. The concern of this contribution is this politics of dispossession in postcolonial South Asia and its relation with citizenship laws of the region.

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