scholarly journals Religious Division and Otherness as Portrayed in 'Shame' and 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'

Linguaculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-81
Author(s):  
Sheikh Zobaer
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Religious Fundamentalism ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Arundhati Roy ◽  
Communal Violence ◽  
Partition Of India

After the partition of India in 1947, religion has become a major catalyst for division and othering in most of South Asia. Bangladeshi author and activist Taslima Nasrin was exiled from her country, primarily for revealing the mistreatment of the Hindu minorities in Bangladesh in her novel Shame. Indian author Arundhati Roy has also faced severe backlash due to her portrayal of the mistreatment of the Muslims in India in her novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Religion has become an extremely fraught issue in South Asia, making almost any criticism of religious fundamentalism a highly perilous endeavor. Yet, both Nasrin and Roy had the courage to do that. This paper explores how the aforementioned novels expose the process of othering of the religious minorities in India and Bangladesh by highlighting the retributive nature of communal violence which feeds on mistrust, hatred, and religious tribalism – a cursed legacy that can be traced back to the violent partition of the Indian subcontinent based on the two-nation theory.

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.

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.

Religion, nationalism, and gender: Perspective from South Asia

2020 ◽  
pp. 205789111989852
Author(s):  
Nandini Deo
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Religious Fundamentalism ◽  
Woman Question ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
The Creation ◽  
And Gender ◽  
British Colonies

Religious mobilization often takes the form of engagement with “the woman question”: how should women as carriers of culture comport themselves? This article shows that many of the debates over the role of women and religion in South Asia are misunderstood when they are seen as instances of religious fundamentalism. Rather, the theoretical framework to make sense of public religion and gender debates should be through the lens of postcolonial nationalism. The creation and consolidation of the nation is what is at stake—not the creation of the religious community as such. In order to make this argument, the article offers both a review of the literature on secularism and gender as well as short case studies from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. These three former British colonies have each struggled to arrive at a secular settlement and often the contestation over the place of religion has centered on the rules and roles of women in these societies.

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.

Gender, Sexuality and Violence: Permissible Violence Against Women During the Partition of India and Pakistan

Hawwa ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 396-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deepa Narasimhan-Madhavan
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Women's Sexuality ◽  
Communal Violence ◽  
Women’S Sexuality ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Partition Of India

AbstractAugust 15, 1947 marked the division of India and the birth of Pakistan and resulted in a mass migration of Hindus to India and Muslims to the newly formed Pakistan. This day also marked the worst communal violence in India's history. The threats to family, religion, national status and security during the partition magnified the tension over ownership and honor in female sexuality, leading to terrible violence inflicted against the women of both societies. The sexual violence that occurred during the time of the partition of India and Pakistan illustrated an extreme manifestation of the societal view of women's sexuality, namely the need to control and own her. The violence also illustrated how women's sexuality symbolically represented power in the arrangement of gender relations in both the Hindu and Islamic communities in India. This article will address these concepts of sexuality through the examination of the partition of India and Pakistan as a theatre, in which, due to the heightened emotion of the situation, sexuality and power became especially commingled.

The Twilight of Certitudes: Secularism, Hindu Nationalism, and other Masks of Deculturation

1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashis Nandy
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Religious Violence ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Hindu Nationalism ◽  
Extreme Form ◽  
Communal Violence ◽  
Democratic Polity ◽  
National Ideology ◽  
Ways Of Life

What follows is basically a series of propositions. It is not meant for academics grappling with the issue of ethnic and religious violence as a cognitive puzzle but for concerned intellectuals and grassroots activists trying, in the language of Gustavo Esteva, to “regenerate people's space.” The aim of the article is threefold: (1) To systematize some available insights into the problem of ethnic and communal violence in South Asia, particularly India, from the point of view of those who do not see communalism and secularism as sworn enemies but as the disowned doubles of each other; (2) To acknowledge, as part of the same exercise, that Hindu nationalism, like other such ethnonationalisms, is not an “extreme” form of Hinduism but a modernist creed that seeks to retool Hinduism, on behalf of the global nation-state system, into a national ideology and the Hindus into a “proper” nationality; (3) To hint at an approach to religious tolerance in a democratic polity that is not dismissive toward the ways of life, idioms, and modes of informal social and political analyses of the citizens, even when they happen to be unacquainted with—or inhospitable to—the ideology of secularism.

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