The South Asianist Journal
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Forced migration, land grabbing and ethnic conflict: Demographic and socio-economic transformation of the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. An interview with Dr Shapan Adnan
No full textIn this video interview, recorded at the University of Edinburgh on 31st May 2012, Dr Shapan Adnan, from the University of Oxford, explains how the complex processes of forced migration and land alienation transformed a polyethnic society subject to the imperatives of an assimilating nation-state, controlled by a dominant majority group. The case study of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh - a remote and forested highland area along the country’s international border with India and Burma, inhabited by ‘tribal’ or indigenous peoples. Since the mid-twentieth century, the region has been subject to massive disruptions through large-scale submergence by a hydroelectricity project, counter-insurgency warfare against ‘tribal’ rebels, forced migration, and grabbing of indigenous lands by the state, settlers and commercial interest groups.Even though a peace agreement was signed in 1997 between the state and the rebel forces, most of its substantive clauses, including restitution of illegally alienated lands, have not yet been implemented by the government. Paradoxically, instead of the ‘dividends of peace’, the disbanding of rebel forces has inadvertently served to facilitate continuing in-migration of settlers from the plains and intensification of land seizures. Shifts in ethnic composition includes processes of forced eviction of indigenous peoples and resultant flows of international refugees and internally displaced persons, as well as state-sponsored transmigration and self-propelled in-migration of settlers.Such complex population displacements and transfers have resulted in drastic transformation of the socio-demographic structure of the CHT, reflected in striking changes in the composition of the population by ethnicity and religious affiliation, as well as associated changes in inter-ethnic social and political relationships.Video running time: approx. 13 minutes
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Get PDFWe (the Editorial Team) approached several dozen renowned scholars of South Asia – in the UK, South Asia and elsewhere – to get their critical appraisal of our journal website, as well as some limited content we prepared for an Issue 1 preview published during the journal’s official launch on 14 June at the Centre for South Asian Studies at Edinburgh University. We are delighted that many of those same scholars we approached have agreed to join our Advisory Board. Many more have contributed their endorsements (below), invaluable advice, and have offered to promote the journal as well as our new blog within their own networks. Our sincerest gratitude and appreciation for the tremendous support and belief in this project! Editorial Tea
“We cannot be touched”: Body and voice in women’s protests in tea plantations
No full textContesting the understanding of women workers in tea plantations as victims this paper maps their agency through active expressions of protests. While performing the socially ascribed gender roles, responsibilities and practices, there are instances where the women express their agency in definite, visible ways. In understanding the duality of agency and vulnerability, the central role of the body and narratives has to be explored. Protests are manifested through bodily actions where the body is literally put in the line of actions, verbalizing narratives contrary to the dominant narrative. At the same time, however, the examination of the layers within the protest brings out the embeddness of the ascribed gendered roles and position. Through data obtained from two tea gardens in North Bengal, India, this paper explores how protests are played out through the women’s bodies and voices and how this points to a dual and not necessarily contradictory co-existence of agency and subjugation
The socialisation of aged bodies: A case study of a state-managed care home in Goa
No full textThis paper examines the socialization of residents in a state managed care home in Goa. It focusses on how self, bodies and place are constructed and reconstructed by residents of a North Goa Care Home (NGCH). The paper will attempt to evince the above by highlighting five socialization processes encountered by the residents in this home. These include: adjustment of the body, assessment of the body, emphasis on the body, management of the body and relation to the body. Adjustment of the body occurs within the changed physical and social environment upon entering the home; assessment of the body follows within the assessments by the staff during admission which focus on the new resident’s body as dysfunctional and limited; emphasis on the body refers to the home’s focus on body care as well as the residents’ focus on their own ageing and ‘unpredictable bodies’; management of the body focusses on the impact of routines, regulations and procedures on the residents’ body; and finally relation to the body describes the residents’ relations to the boundaries of relationships within the home. This paper thus helps to capture how residents internalise institutional socialisation processes, and the sources of tension and conflict that need to be kept under control in order to ensure the smooth running of the home
Buying modern: Muslim subjectivity, the West and patterns of religious consumption in Lahore, Pakistan
No full textThis paper explores the emerging patterns of religious consumption in urban Lahore. The popularity and sale of headscarves, CDs and DVDs of sermons, Islamic mobile ringtones is often determined by their perceived popularity amongst the Muslim diaspora in the West. This paper analyses the reasons behind this pattern and argues that it is linked to local perspectives on ‘being modern’. By looking at the role of religious consumption in creating Muslim subjectivity, it shows that Muslims in Lahore increasingly want to buy goods that show them as ‘rational’ and ‘forward thinking’, ideas which they closely associate with modern-ness. Embedded in these decisions and understanding of ‘being modern’ is a problematic relationship with the West where it is seen as centre of modernity but its modernity is not accepted entirely and is countered by using religious consumption to build a modern Muslim identity
The funeral of Asians or Muslims: Contestation over representation of community and perceptions about state during 2011 riots in Birmingham
No full text“If any act of terrorism happens, the government labels us as Muslims, but when some of us are killed during riots, they call us Asians. This is how government plays with us. They still have same old policy for us; divide and rule” said Ali, a young British-Pakistani Muslim social activist, in his speech, on a public vigil in Birmingham after three young men of Asian-Muslims background were killed as riots spread across major big cities in England during August 2011. Birmingham witnessed the death of three Asian-Muslim men when the copycat of London riots started in the city. The three men were killed when a car overrun them during the night of riots while they were standing on the road in a neighbourhood of Birmingham where mixed communities live together. Mainstream and local British media presented the death as ‘killing of young Asian men’ by the looters and rioters who were portrayed on mainstream and social media as people belonging to Afro-Caribbean background. The killing of three men, community responses, timing of releasing their dead bodies by police and over all media representation of the events that occurred during and after the riots in Birmingham in August 2011 triggered an intense political debate, social activism and a politics of representation among and between various Muslims and non-Muslim South Asian groups and associations over the issue of race relations, identity, state cooption of events and community cohesiveness. This paper is going to explore how various social, political and religious groups of South Asian communities in Birmingham responded, interpreted and reinterpreted the riots killings by constructing and reconstructing their perceptions and understandings about the state, self and others, religion, community and race relations
Endangered and empowered: Indians in the eyes of Civil Defence and Disaster Management
No full textThe relationship between the Indian state and its citizens has been constantly evolving since independence. One of the ways, which illustrates a change in the conceptualization of Indian citizens, is how civilians were and are treated in cases of disasters. In my paper, I will look at the historical trajectory that has led to the recent establishment of the new disaster management framework in India epitomized by new institutions such as the National Disaster Management Authority and the National Institute for Disaster Management. I will touch on the modernist project of developing India through science and technology and based on the study of programmatic documents, historical material and fieldwork; I will explore the link between disaster and citizenship. Whereas the Civil Defence Act 1968 treats civilians as those to be modernised, shuffled around and dominated, the Disaster Management Act 2005 is full of language reminiscent of international development ‘speak’, seeking to demonstrate respect for local knowledge, indigenous technology and the power of community. I am going to explore how this change from a top-down framework to community based disaster management occurred
Going down in flames: Self-immolation in China, Tibet and India
Get PDFOver the last twenty years, Tibetan protest against Chinese rule has transformed markedly, shifting in particular from the monastic protests by inmates of the great monasteries of Lhasa and Central Tibet to popular protest throughout the region and in particular throughout the Eastern Tibetan regions of Kham and Amdo, outside what is administratively called the Tibetan Autonomous Region. In the last three years in particular, the wide-scale protests and riots of Spring 2008 have been followed by a growing lineage of personal self-immolations, increasingly attended by the writing of personal testaments, the moral authority of which is gaining rapid ground both in Tibetan regions and amongst Tibetan exiles in India. These testaments call both for Tibetan independence and the return of the Dalai Lama, and for Tibetans across the region to come together in patriotic unity. Self-immolation is very much a novelty in Tibet, and it’s place in the established post-1970s discourse of non-violence set up in exile by the Dalai Lama has led it to have a powerfully contested quality, with the Tibetan Government-in-Exile discouraging its use as ‘extreme’ (especially when carried out in democratic states like India, where several have also occurred) while celebrating the heroism of self-immolators themselves; by contrast, groups such as the Tibetan Youth Congress argue for the universal applicability of such protests because of a world political order, whether democratic or not, that colludes in the destruction of Tibetan culture and language within Tibet. This presentation for the South Asian Anthropologist’s Group’s 2012 workshop in Edinburgh is primarily an augmented briefing paper written for the Scottish Parliament’s Cross Party Group on Tibet in summer 2012, which describes for parliamentarians the basic features of the self-immolations as described above. It also has a short introduction discussing particular aspects of the process by which such papers get written, and the kinds of argument and discussion that get left out
The policy and the grassroots: Transparency and accountability activists working through class, gender and space in Delhi
No full textIn this paper I examine the role of class, space and gender in the practice of a Right to Information sangathan (grassroots non-governmental organisation) in Delhi. The sangathan brings together activists from the city’s upper middle class and poor working class areas in projects aimed at empowering local residents to monitor the performance of government and claim their rights as citizens. In practice this involves sangathan workers acting as mediators, helping people, often poor and illiterate and living in Delhi’s slum neighbourhoods, to engage with bureaucratic processes, paperwork and officials in claims concerning access to welfare schemes, education and the provision of utilities and sanitation for slum areas by local government. By presenting detailed ethnographic and life history data I show how working with the sangathan requires that Delhi’s ordinary social relationships and spatial boundaries are challenged and crossed to a certain extent, and how different people associated with the Sangathan, across the blurred boundary between activists and clients of the group, can benefit from their engagement with this type of local non-party political formation. However, the crossing of a boundary should not be confused with breaking it down. My paper also highlights the ways in which the informal organisational structure of the Sangathan actually accommodates and reproduces the social and economic hierarchies and spatial boundaries present in the city. The social, cultural and economic capitals of different members of the Sangathan, and their access to different spaces and social and political networks in the city inflect the everyday practice of the group. Although association with the Sangathan can have positive effects on the lives of activists and clients ultimately the group works with the grain of power and inequality in the city rather than against it
Negotiating reproduction: Transforming familial relationships and reproductive agency of women in central Punjab, Pakistan
No full textThis paper aims at describing how women from two generations negotiated their reproduction with their husbands and mothers-in-law during various stages of their fertility careers. In light of these descriptions, the paper also aims to assess how far the differences between two generations suggest that there has been a change in the quality of conjugal relationships and intergenerational relationships- particularly between young women and their mothers-in-law. The paper utilises 75 semi-structured interviews with young women, their mothers, mothers-in-laws and husbands from Sargodha (Punjab) to suggest that young women as compared to their mothers and mothers-in-laws, show more agentic behaviour during their fertility careers; not only by taking initiatives in communicating about their reproductive desires with their husbands but also by being consciously and actively involved in decisions regarding contraceptive use and abortion. The data also suggest that there has been a positive change in the quality of conjugal relationships as well as the relationship between the daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, which now allow a larger space for young women to manoeuvre their reproductive careers and decisions about contraception and abortion*. Increasing consideration of husbands with regard to their wives health and cooperation between the couple for birth spacing were particularly contributing to this change, besides showing the role of emotions and quality of relationships play on women’s reproductive agency in Pakistan. *These findings should not be seen separately from the changes in the wider social, cultural and economic context, which is being addressed by other chapters in the dissertation. These changes include increasing costs of bearing, raising and educating children and the raising aspirations young couples to attain a ‘better life’, the increased availability and acceptance of family planning methods, influence availability and influence of media and changing norms and desires with regard to family size, contraception and spacing of births