Inquisitive Legacies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Benedito Ferrão
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Indian Nation ◽  
City State ◽  
Political Right

In keeping with the shift of the modern Indian nation-state to the religio-political right, minority legacies in such regions as the Malabar and Konkan coasts are either being obfuscated or rehistoricized. To prove my point, I employ two botanical texts from the 16th and 17th centuries. The former, the Colóquios dos Simples e Drogas e Cousas Medicinias da Índia, was written by Garcia da Orta, a Jewish-Catholic converso who lived and died in Portuguese Goa under the threat of the Inquisition. In its efforts to represent its past and present as a modern quasi city-state in line with other Indian metros, the Goan State chose, in 2012, to commemorate the 17th century Hortus Malabaricus, an ecological treatise that, curiously, comes from the Malabar, because among its contributors were Saraswat Brahmins with a dubious connection to Goan history. That this commemoration occurred on the uncelebrated 450th anniversary publication of da Orta's opus - one of the earliest texts to be published in South Asia - underscores the State's investment in legacy-making and forgetting.

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.

Geography, Genre, and Narrative in Kipling's Kim

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-64
Author(s):  
Emily Laskin
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Spatial Development ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Temporal Development ◽  
Geographic Regions

Abstract This article examines Kipling's 1901 novel Kim in light of the period's contemporary geopolitical events, arguing that the novel imagines both the end of the British Empire and a utopian state in which empire is static and eternal. The essay uncovers a parallel between the geographic regions on India's periphery, toward which the novel's action drives but which it never ultimately reaches, and two “developmental genres,” the picaresque and the bildungsroman, which the novel holds in tension. It argues further that whereas earlier studies of Kim and the bildungsroman have explained Kim's thwarted temporality as a novel about a period newly unmoored from the stabilizing concept of the nation-state, they do not account for the politicized space of Kipling's South Asia. This article shows that just as temporal development was becoming more open-ended and abstract, spatial development in the non-European world was becoming increasingly circumscribed. Kim therefore requires not just a youthful hero and a deferred Bildung but also an unreachable region—Central Asia, to India's north—and a thwarted picaresque narrative in order to represent the newly burgeoning globalized order.

Patronage Government (1953–63)

2019 ◽  
pp. 138-204
Author(s):  
Aijaz Ashraf Wani
Keyword(s):  
Central Government ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Third ◽  
The People ◽  
Indian Nation ◽  
Indian Secularism ◽  
Great Mass

The aggressive campaign by Praja Parishad in Jammu and Buddhist groups of Ladakh, assisted by Hindu nationalist forces in Delhi, deeply disillusioned Sheikh Abdullah. The nature of the revolt clashed sharply with the ideology of Abdullah which had prompted him to prefer India over Pakistan. Having got disillusioned with the expectations he had pinned on Indian secularism and India’s constitutional promises of sovereignty, Sheikh voiced his disappointment publicly and drifted towards a position in support of plebiscite which led to his widely condemned dismissal. The deposition of Sheikh Abdullah in 1953, replaced by Bakhshi, created a storm in Kashmir followed by the formation of Plebiscite Front under the patronage of Abdullah. At the same time the central government had the urgency to further integrate Kashmir with India which the popular leader, Abdullah had resisted. Thus emerged the need of Gramsci’s ‘expansive hegemony’ to obtain the consent of the great mass of the people willingly and actively to the ruling establishment. The third chapter engages with the steps taken by Bakhshi under the patronage of the central government to change the tide in favour of the Indian nation-state and their impact.

Imagining the Post-colonial Lawyer: Legal Elites and the Indian Nation-State, 1947–1967

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 156-186
Author(s):  
Alexander WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Public Law ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Supreme Court Of India ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Indian Nation

AbstractA key feature of British rule in India was the formation of a class of elite metropolitan lawyers who had an outsized role within the legal profession and a prominent position in Indian politics. This paper analyzes the response of these legal elites to the shifting social and political terrain of post-colonial India, arguing that the advent of the Indian nation-state shaped the discursive strategies of elite lawyers in two crucial ways. First, in response to the slipping grasp of lawyers on Indian political life and increasing competition from developmentalist economics, the elite bar turned their attention towards the consolidation of a national professional identity, imagining an ‘Indian advocate’ as such, whose loyalty would ultimately lie with the nation-state. Second, the creation of the Supreme Court of India, the enactment of the Constitution of India, and the continuous swelling of the post-colonial regulatory welfare state partially reoriented the legal elite towards public law, particularly towards the burgeoning field of administrative law.

Citizens, the Smoking Guns of AFSPA and Bare Life in Northeast India

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-367
Author(s):  
Vibha Arora
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Northeast India ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Indian Government ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Disturbed Areas ◽  
Indian Nation

At the heart of ‘Indian nation-state making’ in the post-colonial context is dominant imagery and imaginary of Indian-ness, and there is an uncertain relationship between legitimate and illegitimate violence, and debate on integration and coercion of diverse nationalities in this state-nation. The ethnic nationalities of India’s Northeast have not been well integrated into the Indian imaginary and share a sense of belonging. Insurgency shapes the politics of this borderland and fuels secessionist aspirations and led to a demarcation of disturbed areas and exceptional citizens. Following Foucault and Agamben, I highlight the immense ‘unchecked’ sovereignty and biopolitical control of the Indian government to demarcate zones of democratic exception in Northeast India and enforce laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) to perpetuate its domination, militarise and radically decide on matters of life. The law is draconian in its implications and I review some of the extant literature that reveals the ‘bare life’ enjoyed by some Indian citizens. Integrating ethnographic voices from Manipur, this paper deepens our critical perspective on the AFSPA to understand its fundamental impact on everyday life and routine violence in Manipur and the consequent emigration of its citizens.

Tangled Lands: Burma and India's Unfinished Separation, 1937–1948

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Bérénice Guyot-Réchard
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Complex Networks ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Cultural Hierarchies

In 1937, Burma formally separated from India. The separation might seem self-evident, given India and Burma's framing as distinct, bounded spaces. Yet, in the Patkai mountains straddling them, separation was a complex process with only a murky sense of finality, more problematic and contested than generally acknowledged. The border ran through similar groups and complex networks, which posed recurring problems for local inhabitants and frontier officials. As independence neared, colonial officials unsuccessfully tried to reshape the Patkai's territorialization. Viewed from the Patkai, the narrative of an amiable divorce between two ill-suited partners crumbles. The separation was one of several partitions that created bounded spaces across South Asia during the twentieth century. Seeing Burma and India as distinct others privileges spatio-cultural hierarchies rooted in colonial frameworks, assimilated by postcolonial political arrangements and nation-state-centric scholarship. This article foregrounds the need to explore how India and Burma were made against one another and recover alternative spatialities.

Between Science and Religion: An Astrological Interpretation of the Asian Tsunami in India

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-249
Author(s):  
Liang Yongjia
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Indian Ocean Tsunami ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Indian Nation ◽  
The Indian Ocean

AbstractAstrology plays an important role in Indian social life. Indian astrologers' claim to have accurately predicted the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, or the Asian Tsunami, was an effort to legitimize astrology as a full science. This effort demonstrates a difficulty in knowledge categorization, for in India, astrology is neither classified as a science nor as a religion. This is a result of the idea of an Indian nation-state, which rests upon both science and religion as foundations, but at the expense of expelling astrology from religion for not being scientific. However, as astrology continues to be important in India, the astrological interpretation of the Indian Ocean Tsunami drew substantial public attention. Astrology's significant presence in Indian society shows the role of a mature civil society in India as well.

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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