Science journalism in Hindi in pre-independence India: A study of Hindi periodicals

Science journalism in Hindi originated in the late nineteenth century. Hindi literary periodicals provided the first platform for science to be discussed along with literature. The onset of the twentieth century witnessed a remarkable advance in Hindi literary writing, and science writing also flourished with this advance. A remarkable overlap and a complementary relationship between the development of Hindi literature and Hindi commentaries on sciences is evident. Equally important in this context was the backdrop provided by a politically contentious process of evolution of a ‘modern’, ‘standard’ Hindi, and by the anti-colonial freedom movement, yoked to the idea of cultural and economic nationalism. The article surveys certain popular periodicals that regularly published essays and commentaries on science and scientific subjects. These periodicals were instrumental in shaping the popular discourses on science. The article also underlines an overwhelming effort by the intelligentsia to seek a philosophical commensurability between modern science and ‘traditional’ schools of thought. It concludes that the predominance of these characteristics in Hindi science journalism was a reflection of the agenda of the Hindi intelligentsia, shaped by linguistic nationalism framed alongside or in conjunction with a revivalist perspective.

The Indian Freedom Struggle and the Kenyan Diaspora

The connections between the Indian Freedom movement and the Kenyan Indian diaspora after the First World War led to the involvement of the Indian National Congress and Gandhi in the struggle of the Kenyan Indians for equality and equal treatment with the British white settlers in Kenya. The Congress considered that the success of the equality struggle in Kenya would also lead to equal treatment of Indians in India itself. This was consistent with the prevailing political goal of the freedom movement in India in 1919, which was self-rule through Dominion Status under the British Crown. But when the struggle of the Kenya Indians failed and equality was denied to them by the famous Devonshire Declaration in 1923, there the Indian freedom movement realized that this signalled unequal status and a denial of self-rule to India itself. Historic consequences followed. This was the turning point and over the years immediately after the Kenyan decision (1923–1929), the Indian National Congress changed its political aim from Dominion Status to Full Independence as a Republic, realized over the 17 years to 1947.

Teaching Freedom Song as Antiracist Praxis

In the teaching of history, oversimplification is, perhaps, unavoidable. In certain cases, however, that oversimplification can be deadly. There are some lessons that are too complex, some stories that are too nuanced, to be reduced in such a way. By their contours and particularities, they resist easy digestion. In the spirit of this particularity, my contribution to the colloquy is specific, but hopefully applicable to contexts beyond its specificity: I argue that the US Black Freedom Movement (or civil rights movement) and its music is a story that must be taught in all its complexity, for oversimplifying it does concrete harm to the ongoing struggle against white supremacy in the present. Teaching the US Black Freedom Movement and its music is also vital if we hope to enable our students to be forces of understanding, healing, and justice in the world, and should be an integral component of any undergraduate music curriculum that hopes to be antiracist.

Archetypes in Biak folktales: characters, symbols, and concepts

Characters, symbols, concepts, patterns, ideas, images, and many more are similar across the globe. This is because people are similar around the world to put it simply. But to put it in a more sophisticated way, these similarities are there because all human ancestors originated from the same place i. e Africa and later spread all around the globe together with the unconscious patterns of images, ideas, etc. inherited in their genes and universally present in individual psyches. These similarities in characters, symbols, concepts, patterns, and others are called archetypes. Using archetypal criticism, this article will present a number of archetypal characters, archetypal symbols, and archetypal concepts found in the Biak (in Papua) folk stories with discussions of similar characters, symbols, and concepts from around the globe. One very famous example of archetypal character in the Biak stories is Manarmakeri in the Manarmakeri myth with the famous archetypal symbol which found its way to be in the ‘Bintang Kejora’ (the Morning Star) flag of the Papua Freedom Movement called Sampari (also Makmeser), and the archetypal concept of a bountiful era, like Eden, called Koreri still sought for until today.