The South Asianist Journal
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From Untouchable to Dalit and beyond: New directions in South Indian Dalit politics
Get PDFIn 1999, following a decade long boycott of the political process the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi - the largest Dalit movement in Tamil Nadu - contested elections for the first time. This paper will examine the process of institutionalisation that has occurred since that point. One of the main changes to have occurred is that the party has sought to reach out beyond the Dalit category in order to secure more votes. Increasingly, thus, Dalit parties in Tamil Nadu are taking up the issue of Tamil nationalism in a bid to reach out to other castes on an ethno-linguistic basis. The paper will chart the pros and cons of such an approach before thinking about possible future directions
Maya Miriga (Odia, 1984): a mirage called life
Get PDFReview of a landmark cinematic triumph in Odia Cinema that pioneered its New Wave movement of the 1980s, and propelled a lesser known regional cinema into national and international recognition.Direction: Nirad N. MohapatraCast: Bansidhar Satpathy, Manimala, Binod Mishra, Manaswini Mangaraj, Sampad MahapatraMusic Director: Bhaskar Chandavarka
NREGA and labour migration in India: Is village life what the \u27rural\u27 poor want?
Get PDFThe Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is the flagship welfare programme of the UPA government, and the largest of its kind in India. One of its main objectives is a significant reduction in labour migration through the provision of locally available work in rural areas, but in spite of some successes, the programme has not had the wished-for impact. Drawing on government data, recent independent studies and the Indian media, the present article argues that NREGA’s limited impact partly stems from a misconception of labour migration – as a poverty ‘problem’ and as merely a product of ‘push-and-pull’ economic factors. It contends that this view wrongfully casts ‘rural’ livelihoods and ‘urban’ society as somehow separate, and assumes that farming is what ‘the poor’ really want, thus establishing poverty as chiefly a rural problem to be tackled by rural development. Accepted explanations for NREGA’s relative failure do not account for the possibility that migration for work may be perceived as a more attractive activity. The view of labour mobility as essentially ‘involuntary’ and driven solely by economic considerations overshadows two sets of reasons why people may still prefer to migrate; namely social factors and evolving perceptions of ‘modernity’. The poor too have aspirations, which are not restricted to survival matters. NREGA has benefitted those with little or no access to positive migration opportunities, especially Scheduled Castes and Tribes, but is unlikely to succeed in curbing labour mobility significantly – which is not desirable anyway. Here, the crucial development challenges are not to reduce migration but to improve its conditions, both economic and social – and to account for the poor’s aspirational horizons
\u27Ego\u27, morality and sophistication: The making of the Indian cosmopolitan person among urban youth in Kerala
No full textContrary to arguments about youth friendship in south India as a period marked by an egalitarian ethos by which more established hierarchies of caste and community are to a large extent rejected, this paper argues that youth-to-youth interactions among middle-class urban youth in Ernakulam are increasingly marked by strategies of distinction. The core objective of this paper is to draw attention to how peer group relations in and beyond schools play a critical role in the production of successful middle class subjects in India. To this end, the paper proposes a move away from the pervasive consumption-centric discourse that has infused debates about becoming and being middle class in India, to the idea of competence as a key analytical notion. Lashing onto the hype surrounding this moment of Indian history, in which being Indian entails being a ‘world citizen’, the emergent hierarchies among youth draw primarily from particular kinds of competences that are perceived to stand for a person’s cosmopolitan character. Specific focus is given to the experiences, perspectives and practices of three 17-year-old schoolmates of widely divergent backgrounds. Their experiences reveal that on the one hand the new hierarchies do mediate earlier categories of distinction (centrally caste, family background and class), allowing youth from more established middle class backgrounds to reify their status. On the other, this paper shows that other youth of less dominant positions actively sought to undermine or adapt to the cultural dominance of the former. This was creatively accomplished through cultivating mutually distinctive identities or by seeking to appropriate the cultural styles of dominant peers, always highlighting their globalised competence
Research Cultures in Clinical Science in South Asia
No full textBased on ethnographic research conducted from 2010 to 2012 within the Biomedical and Health Experimentation in South Asia (BHESA) project, this paper argues that a change in law that occurred in India in 2005 led to crucial transformation of the pharmaceutical industry in the country. These legal changes allowed international pharmaceutical companies to test experimental compounds in India. One of the outcomes of this has been that the Indian pharmaceutical industry, which has traditionally produced generic drugs, is evolving towards an innovation based drug industry. Becoming innovators required collaboration and navigating between different forms research cultures: 1) science collaboration that facilitates local research capacity as well as 2) commercial research [contract research organisations, financial investment networks etc.]. This paper discusses changes in the pharmaceutical industry in South Asia, the actors involved and the implications that these changes have had on local research cultures and rights of the experimental subjects
Development @ what cost? A film review of \u27Shanghai\u27 (June, 2012)
Get PDFOne may wonder why a film on the politics of development in an Indian city is called Shanghai. The trigger for the film apparently was one of ex- Maharashtra Chief Minister and Indian National Congress Party leader Vilasrao Deshmukh’s 2004 pre-election clarion pledges to make ‘Mumbai the next Shanghai’ – a futuristic city imagery defined by higher high rises, swankier malls, cleaner (poor free!) environs and clogs free infrastructure... In brief, a builder’s playing ground or a capitalist’s paradise! It was an effectively rhyming, pro-development regional slogan attempting a one-up on Bhartiya Janata Party’s national level ‘Indian Shining’ campaign of the 2000s. ‘Shanghai’ since, courtesy the voluble sloganeering in favour of, and against the idea in Mumbai’s media space, has been consciously transformed from a proper noun to an adjective of aspiration in the psyche of Mumbaikars (the residents of Mumbai), which Dibakar Bannerjee’s latest film dissects, spoofs and critiques...(cont\u27d
Skin tone and self/state identity in India: The North/South question
No full textRegarding images medias are showing, Indians, even in the South, are “white”. The gap between these images and reality is so deep, that a strong feeling of “self hate” has grown among the youngest. In response to this massive whitening campaign, a reaction is now coming from the South and Dravidians are organising themselves as the “black power” of India. It is not a secret that in India it is better being « fair and lovely » than « brown and ugly ». But the craving for white skin is not only a question of beauty; it is also a matter of domination and self-determination. The whiteness issue takes place at multiple levels in India. Love of white/light skin is firmly rooted in ancient classifications such as class, castes, but also in the North/South distinction. The North/South distinction is particularly interesting because, not only is it one of the key drivers of whitening products’ consumption dynamics in India, but it is also a way to question “states and ethnic identities”. How do Indians see themselves and their skin tone? How does skin tone establish your position in society and your state belonging? Do South Indians use whintening products to look like North Indians? Why do North Indians want to be even whiter if they already are the dominant group? Who are they attempting to look like? How does skin tone affect the construction of one’s identity in India? These are some of the questions we will attempt answer in this paper
South Asian Anthropologist\u27s Group (SAAG) 2012
No full textPersons, Bodies and the State in South Asia: Changing Concepts and Relations 4-6th September 2012 Social Anthropology and the Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh The 2012 SAAG workshop aims to investigate the interrelated themes of persons, bodies and the state in South Asia, and explore the continuities and changes in how these concepts affect everyday lives in the sub-continent and in the diaspora. We invite a broad and creative engagement with these themes and anticipate a wide range of papers that explore how such concepts intersect with, for example, labour practices; health and well-being; political mobilisation; the law and legal entitlements; intimate relationships; new technologies; religion; and bio-security. We hope to provoke debate about how past understandings of persons and bodies held currency through changing social, political and economic circumstances, and what is illuminated anew as we re-visit them in contemporary South Asia. As global markets have created new possibilities for the commoditisation of bodies, have ideas shifted about the body, personhood and what it means to be a citizen? Looking across the region, can we understand more about how contentions between states influence the ways in which states differentiate persons within a state - e.g. on the basis of religious or ethnic identities? Have democracies in South Asia created more or less space for the recognition of diverse forms of personhood? How have different communities re-shaped expressions of personhood in relation to particular policies of the state – e.g. emphasising ethnic or caste identities? How has the development industry’s focus on certain kinds of bodies (e.g. malnourished, HIV infected, disabled) and certain kinds of persons (e.g. mothers, children, refugees, ‘indigenous’ people) influenced how people see themselves, and the ways in which states engage with these people? Underlying all these questions is the issue of how certain groups of people, or certain kinds of bodies become politicised. In what ways are digital technologies creating new possibilities for expanding our understandings of personhood and creating new opportunities for state control of populations – e.g. through digitalising census records and ID documents? How have these technologies, and the emergence more broadly of new kinds of social spaces and networks, also presented new possibilities for intimacy, love and relationships? How have social and political movements used particular bodily practices to establish certain concepts of personhood? SAAG 2012 will be hosted jointly by Social Anthropology and the Centre for South Asian Studies from the 4th to the 6th, September 2012 in the Chrystal Macmillan Building, 15A George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LD. Lunch and refreshments will be provided for which a small contribution will be required. We also hope to provide some travel bursaries, which will be announced later, but potential participants are encouraged to look for other funding opportunities. SAAG is a relaxed and friendly event which aims to stimulate intellectual debate and dialogue on current research and emerging issues in the study of South Asia. Papers will be pre-circulated to participants and the format for panels will be: paper presentation by discussant, author’s response and then open discussion. As usual, we welcome paper proposals from people at any stages of their academic careers, from first year PhD students onwards. If you are interested to attend, submit a paper, or act as a discussant for SAAG 2012, please contact [email protected]. For those proposing a paper, please send a title and brief abstract by April 30th 2012
Telugu Jews: Are the Dalits of coastal Andhra going caste-awry?
Get PDFIn the context of religious conversion movements of low castes in India, many Dalit groups have embraced Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and even Jainism in order to restore egalitarian traditions. However, their conversion to Judaism is relatively unheard of in the academia. This essay throws light on the nature of these conversions by looking at a section of Dalit population in the coastal Andhra, who embraced Judaism two decades ago by declaring their community to be the descendants of the Children of Ephraim – one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
Filming a metaphor: Cinematic liberties, Navarasa influences and digressions in adaptation in Sanjay Leela Bhansali\u27s ‘Devdas’
Get PDF‘Devdas’ is a landmark 20th century tragic-romantic Indian novella by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay. In the nine decades since its publication, the story has acquired a cult status in Indian cinema and society courtesy its many stated and inspired film adaptations. When auteur filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali made his opulent 21st- century on screen adaptation, its self-destructive hero had far outgrown the novella to become a national metaphor of “doomed love”. The present article identifies the achievement of the “Devdas metaphor” in Bhansali’s 2002 film, Devdas, especially in context of its new plot additions and mythical allusions and analyses the role of its eight allegorical songs shot to grandiose mise-en-scène in the perpetuation of that intention. These departures from the original novella, while arguing for reviewing celluloid adaptations as works of art in their own merit, build a case for reviewing Bhansali’s Devdas as a refreshing new cinematic tale whose songs driven narrative reaffirm Bollywood’s signature story-telling traditions. This is evidenced in a rasa (emotion) based analysis of the film’s ornately dramatized songs, which while portraying elements of the Navarasas as recommended by India’s ancient Sanskrit drama (Nātyasāstra) canons are able to unite their overall experience and impact in the single dominant rasa of karuna (or pathos), which also is the dominant sentiment of the novella