The local is everywhere: a post-colonial reassessment of cultural sensitivity in conflict governance

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristoffer Lidén ◽  
Elida K. U. Jacobsen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Sensitivity ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Subjective Norms ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Conflict Settings ◽  
Distribution Of Resources ◽  
History Of

Chapter six discuss the notion of ‘the local‘ through the history of governance in colonial and post-colonial India. The authors focus on ability of liberal governance to adapt to local culture. They discuss Ilan Kapoor's integration of postcolonial theory with debates on development and use this to identify what could make the liberal peacebuilders more open towards the idea of greater inclusion of local voices. The authors suggest that emphasis should be put on socio-cultural sensitivity. This entails that the international interveners should familiarize themselves with the context as much as possible. They invite critical analysis of the main issues at stake, which would be aimed against relevant theoretical debates. The authors also call for attention to the distribution of resources that are usually limited in conflict settings. They conclude that as long as subjective norms and interests of the peacebuilders are harmonised with local culture and practices - not creating tensions - they can be legitimately promoted.

scholarly journals Creating Religious Identities: Buddhist Monuments in Colonial and Post-Colonial India

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Himanshu Prabha Ray
Keyword(s):  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Director General ◽  
Archaeological Survey ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
And Control

This paper draws on my work on the maritime history of early South and Southeast Asia and the use of sea-lanes of the Indian Ocean by pilgrims for visits to sites associated with the life of the Buddha. A second perspective is provided by the rediscovery of Buddhism in Europe coinciding with the development of new disciplines, including archaeology. These disciplines were introduced into India with the government-sponsored Archaeological Survey of India, founded in 1871. Alexander Cunningham, the first Director-General, brought Buddhism to the forefront and established its study as a separate sub-discipline. This had far-reaching implications for the demarcation and archaeological investigation of many of the monuments linked to Buddhism, especially Bodh Gaya and Sanchi. This paper addresses the issue of the manifestation of a Buddhist identity in colonial India. It is often suggested that this identity owed its origins to the formation of the Mahabodhi Society and the emergence of nationalism in Sri Lanka. This paper examines political developments in India in the context of the Navayana or the Neo-Buddhist path, forged by B.R. Ambedkar on the 2500th anniversary of Buddha’s parinirvana, or demise, in 1956. To what extent did this newly formed identity become interlinked with the identification and control of archaeological sites in India and their redefinition? How did the renegotiation of Buddhist identity affect India’s relationship with Thailand?

scholarly journals AT THE NATION-STATE’S EDGE: CENTRE–PERIPHERY RELATIONS IN POST-1947 SOUTH ASIA

2016 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 509-539 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELISABETH LEAKE
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
History Of ◽  
Autonomy Movements

ABSTRACTThis article examines centre–periphery relations in post-colonial India and Pakistan, providing a specific comparative history of autonomy movements in Nagaland (1947–63) and Baluchistan (1973–7). It highlights the key role played by the central government – particularly by Jawaharlal Nehru and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto – in quelling both insurgencies and in taking further steps to integrate these regions. It argues that a shared colonial history of political autonomy shaped local actors’ resistance to integration into the independent nation-states of India and Pakistan. This article also reveals that Indian and Pakistani officials used their shared colonial past in very different ways to mould their borderlands policies. India's central government under Nehru agreed to a modified Naga State within the Indian Union that allowed the Nagas a large degree of autonomy, continuing a colonial method of semi-integration. In contrast, Bhutto's government actively sought to abandon long-standing Baluch political and social structures to reaffirm the sovereignty of the Pakistani state. The article explains this divergence in terms of the different governing exigencies facing each country at the time of the insurgencies. It ultimately calls for an expansion in local histories and subnational comparisons to extend understanding of post-1947 South Asia, and the decolonizing world more broadly.

scholarly journals Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born in the History of African Literature: A Critical Analysis of a Landmark Novel

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-57
Author(s):  
Kone Klohinlwélé
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
History Of

This study shows the central position held by Ayi Kwei Aramh’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born in the African literary world. It tries to prove that the publishing of this work was a landmark in the early post-colonial context of African literature. Through a series of breaks from still prevailing colonial and neocolonial literary discourses, it has initiated an innovative aesthetics which has left a tremendous legacy which is being continued by subsequent generations.      

‘Useful’ and ‘Earning’ Citizens? Gender, state, and the market in post-colonial Delhi

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (06) ◽  
pp. 1924-1955
Author(s):  
ANJALI BHARDWAJ DATTA
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
The State ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Refugee Women ◽  
Point Of Entry ◽  
Indian State ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Disaster

AbstractThe Indian state treated the partition of Punjab as a ‘national disaster’ and training for refugee women was deemed essential to restore the social landscape; yet the kind of help it offered to refugee women rested on its clear assumptions and biases about the kind of work that was appropriate for them: women were offered training in embroidery, stitching, tailoring, and weaving, as these are associated with feminine and household-based skills. This article will reveal that the state rehabilitation enterprise was primarily masculine in focus. The state treated women refugees as secondary earners and as guardians of hearth, kith, and kin; it did not see them playing a definitive role in nation-building in post-colonial India. In the absence of state supportive policies, refugee women were compelled to take up informal jobs like petty trading, domestic service, and labouring work. This article suggests that refugee women were handicapped in the labour market at their very point of entry. It traces the history of women's informalities in Delhi. In doing so, it investigates the feminization and commercialization of urban space in twentieth-century Delhi. It urges that women made space in more than one way: identifying fragmentary livelihoods, producing small-scale capitalism, and creating informal markets.

From Protests to Policies: Actors, Spaces and Processes

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 368-384
Author(s):  
Niloshree Bhattacharya ◽  
Manish Thakur
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
The State ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Transnational Networks ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
History Of

This paper addresses a rather understudied aspect of the ways through which protests get translated into policies by focussing on the actors, spaces and processes. It further identifies key actors in the policy making formulation process, which we call ‘policy intermediaries’. It discusses the emergence of ‘policy intermediaries’ in relation to the history of social movements in post-colonial India. It situates the policy making processes in the country and the role of ‘policy intermediaries’ therein, in the overall context of changing configurations of relationships amongst the state, non-governmental organisations, think tanks and the emergent transnational networks and discourses. By implication, it maps out some of the attributes of middle class activism with illustrations from select social movements in India. The paper explores the multiple spaces in which ‘policy intermediaries’ function, the diverse roles they play and the networks in which they are wilfully or otherwise enmeshed.

Trustee, State and Stakeholder: Hindu Temple Management in Contemporary India, 1957–2012

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-94
Author(s):  
Tetsuya Tanaka
Keyword(s):  
Dominant Role ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
History Of ◽  
Public Interest Groups ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Temple

The literature on temple management in colonial and post-colonial India focusses on the dominant role of the trustees and the impact of state intervention. However, this article tries to grasp significance of the role of the stakeholders in the temple management as a bridge between the trustees and the state by analyzing the management history of the Rani Sati temple from 1957 to 2012. It will first explain the historical background of this temple and its managers, the Marwaris. The second section analyzes the form of the temple management from the 1950s to 1970s, and the judicial case against the traditional temple stakeholders, then chief priest and his family members. Because of the national controversy over sati in the late 1980s, public interest groups emerged as the new stakeholders of the temple. Third, this article clarifies the state’s intervention in the temple’s management according to the influence of new the stakeholders. By focussing on the role of the stakeholders, this article discloses how a state intervention can be initiated by the stakeholders and the possibility of transformation of the temple management. JEL: M14, K41, Z12

scholarly journals How deep is love? The engagement with India in Joseph Needham's historiography of China

BJHS Themes ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 13-41
Author(s):  
LEON ANTONIO ROCHA
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Disciplinary History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Indian Medicine

AbstractIn 2015 Dhruv Raina published Needham's Indian Network: The Search for a Home for the History of Science in India (1950–1970), bringing to light the long-range networks that institutionalized the disciplinary history of science in post-colonial India, and demonstrating the intellectual and infrastructural contributions of Joseph Needham (1900–1995) in this endeavour. This paper takes a different approach and turns to the way that Needham perceived Indian vis-à-vis Chinese civilization, and the role India played in Needham's historiography of science. It turns out that Needham's most sustained engagement with India could be found in his histories of medicine, bodily practices and alchemical traditions. In the first section of the paper, I outline the key concepts of ‘Grand Titration’ and ‘oecumenical science’ that animated Needham's historiography, which clarifies why Chinese medicine, especially acupuncture, occupies a privileged status. The second section elaborates on Needham's scholarship and vision of acupuncture, involving the verification of acupuncture's reality and efficacy via Western biomedicine. He thought acupuncture would be China's unique contribution to a new ‘universal medicine’ in the modern age, but by contrast Needham saw little worth refurbishing in Indian medicine, arguing via an investigation in yoga that Indian practices were generally less ‘materialist’ and less ‘proto-scientific’. In the third section, I turn my attention to Needham's preoccupation with the history of alchemy around the world, and discuss his theorization on transmission and circulation of scientific knowledge. I comment on Needham's commitment to the thesis that European alchemy was a melting pot of Chinese, Indian, Persian, Arabic, Greek, Egyptian and Roman ideas and practices. While Needham reserved his ‘deepest love’ and ‘profoundest desire’ for Chinese civilization, India on the other hand often occupied a secondary status in his historical accounts, and in the conclusion I move from a critique of Needham's preconceptions to reflect on the writing of the history of non-Western science.

scholarly journals ہندو مت پر اردو میں علمی مواد: ایک موضوعاتی کتابیات

ĪQĀN ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (01) ◽  
pp. 123-174
Author(s):  
Dr. Muhammad Akram ◽  
Dr. Ayesha Qurrat Ul-Ain
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Hindu Tradition ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Identity Constructions ◽  
Urdu Literature ◽  
History Of

Three types of academic sources are crucial for understanding the Hindu tradition in our times: a) scriptures and the classical texts that are available mostly in Sanskrit b) works in the English language produced by orientalists, religious studies scholars, and some modern Hindu religious leaders themselves, and c) writings of colonial/post-colonial Hindu and Muslim scholars on Hinduism in Hindi/Urdu language that is understood by a vast majority of the population in South Asia. Many Hindu authors used to write on their religion in Urdu using the Perso-Arabic script in colonial India. Similarly, some Muslim authors also produced scholarly works on Hinduism in Urdu, which could open up better Hindu-Muslim understanding. However, Urdu ceased to be the medium of such writings when religion and language surfaced as two vital factors in national identity constructions in the changing sociopolitical milieu, a process through which the Urdu language became associated with Muslim culture and religion. As a result, the number of Urdu works on Hinduism decreased sharply after British India's partition along religious lines. Nevertheless, this body of Urdu literature is an essential part of the history of modern Hinduism. Keeping this in view, we have produced a comprehensive thematic bibliography of Urdu works on Hinduism, including books, dissertations, and journal articles, which would help preserve the history of the indigenous study of Hinduism in modern times.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document