The South Asianist Journal
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Criminal networks and governance: a study of Lyari Karachi
Full text linkKarachi, the mega city and the commercial hub of Pakistan, has become one of the most dangerous cities of the world in past few decades. This paper uses Lyari, a violent neighborhood in Karachi, as a case study to explore the underlying causes of conflict. The paper builds the argument that political management of crime has created spaces for the criminals to extend their criminal networks. Through connections with state officials and civic leaders, they appropriate state power and social capital that make their ongoing criminal activities possible. I present a genealogical analysis of politico-criminal relationships in Lyari and then examine the interactions of the criminals with the society through qualitative field research. The article also demonstrates how such criminals develop parallel governance systems that transcend state authority, use violence to impose order and work with civic leaders to establish their legitimacy. It is argued that these \u27sub-national conflicts\u27 have not only restrained the authority of the government, but also curtailed accountability mechanisms that rein in political management of crime
Elite politics and dissent in Sri Lanka
Full text link2015 has been a dramatic year in politics in Sri Lanka. A Presidential as well as General Election within the first 8 months of the year and the country saw a new President as well as a new government come into power. The new political order was brought into power on a wave of mobilisation from a range of civil society groups and actors reminiscent of the political transformation that took place in 1994. Then too, a government that had been in power for 17 years, who had overseen the violent suppression of an insurrection in the South was defeated by a relative new comer into politics. This paper attempts to examine the changes that have taken place in 2015 in relation to certain established facts about Sri Lanka’s political system, particularly the dominance and endurance of the elite. It argues that the focus on elite politics as well as the violence resistance against the state by groups such as the LTTE and the JVP has resulted in the lack of attention paid to the endurance of certain democratic impulses in Sri Lankan society. This is examined in relation to the dissent and resistance displayed by smaller groups that played a crucial role in the political transformations both in 1994 as well as in 2015
The \u27avenging angel\u27 and the \u27nurturing mother\u27: women and Hindu nationalism
Full text linkHindu nationalism presents Indian women with a variety of challenges and opportunities. This essay begins by looking at the historical origins of Hindu nationalism in the colonial period, particularly with respect to the role of women in this period of nationalism. It also considers the role of masculinity in Hindutva politics, and the idea of the ‘defilement’ of Mother India by Muslim invaders, as well as the perceived virility of Muslim and Hindu men contested in the female body, through sexual violence. It also looks at women’s empowerment in the context of right-wing nationalism and militancy and the public role of women in the Sangh Parivar. The essay then focuses on the view of the Shiv Sena on women, especially in the Bombay riots of 1993. The essay concludes that Hindutva politics attempt to marry two visions of the woman: one as a nurturing mother, the other as a warrior goddess. Women’s empowerment in this framework is limited to roles that conservative leaders link to ‘tradition’ and purity
The story of the "6% t-shirt": the hundred day struggle of the Federation of University Teachers\u27 Association, Sri Lanka
Full text linkMuch has been written, mainly in mainstream media, about the hundred day struggle launched in 2012 by the Federation of University Teachers\u27 Association (FUTA) of Sri Lanka. This includes details of the main events of the struggle, unraveling the logic behind the main demand of the struggle – an allocation of six percent of GDP for education and the political significance of the struggle. This paper attempts to investigate how it was possible for the FUTA, a loose umbrella organization that represented over forty sister unions of university academics from the Sri Lankan state university system, to launch and sustain a struggle against the then powerful Mahinda Rajapakse government and to transform itself during that time to a social movement. The paper identifies certain key features of the struggle ranging from the nature of the leadership and the membership, the choice of slogans, structures of the organisation to the nature of the responses of the government, which created this unique space for a trade union struggle to evolve into a social movement. In doing so the paper positions the FUTA struggle in the larger socio-political landscape that extended well beyond the space occupied by the traditional trade unionism of the island.
Feasts of merit, election feasts or no feasts? On the politics of wining and dining in Nagaland, Northeast India
Full text linkOne of the small joys the election season offers ordinary villagers in Nagaland is the inevitable feasts hosted by politicians. In the Chakhesang Naga village I shall call Phugwumi,and where I was carrying out research when the 2013 State Legislative Elections ensued, election feasts became twice-daily events from roughly two weeks prior to Polling Day. Meals were partaken in five political camps – usually a part of an open compound cordoned off by wood and bamboo, set around an open fire, and decorated with party posters and flags – presided over by three rivalling politicians who supplied the camp(s) of their followers with a steady inflow of rice, vegetables and meat. Of these ingredients meat was the one crucial, and some days an entire pig or buffalo was walloped towards a camp, then cut, cooked and eaten. Supplied too, albeit less openly, was liquor; cans of beer and cheap, and sometimes not so cheap, rums and whiskies. Less openly because Nagaland is designated a ‘dry state’, the outcome of a persistent lobby by the locally influential Nagaland Baptist Church Council (NBCC), which construes the intake of alcohol as an abomination before God. Politiciansfear being caught contravening law and church endowed morality, and therefore entrust the task of distributing liquor, which is invariably demanded, to one of their aides. This wining and dining was crucial during the election period, and its historical imprints, intricacies, and its contested moralities today, the subject of this article
Photography
No full textImage 1: (‘I need to look forward’). Just before the commencement of one of the regional rallies in Kandy, organised by the FUTA to mobilise throughout the country.Image 2: (‘Orange is the new colour of hope’). Just before the commencement of one of the regional rallies in Kandy, organised by the FUTA to mobilise throughout the country.Image 3: (‘”Free” education from crises’). Students campaigned for free education with teachers who fought to save state education.Image 4: (‘Move forward somehow’). One of the many processions conducted by the FUTA during the 2011-2012 trade union struggle.Image 5: (‘The other side of the story’). Thousands of leaflets were printed and distributed throughout the island describing the need to allocate 6% of GDP for education Image 6: (‘Workers of the world, Unite’). Five-day march reaching Colombo.Image 7: (The next station). 6% campaign was about the right to education for the younger generation more than the right to higher education
Reading continuities and change in vernacular architecture among the Hao Naga
Full text linkThe Hao (Tangkhul) people are among the largest of the Naga tribes, and are settled on either side of the India and Myanmar border. Prior to the arrival of the British, Hao villages were largely peripheral to the modernising forces that brought about significant change in political centres such as Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The increasing presence of the British administrative apparatus along with the advent of Christianity introduced significant changes most notably western forms of education and governance. The establishment of institutions at variance with indigenous forms created hybridisations in both religious and social arenas, significantly altering local Hao world views. Forms of visual and material culture absorb new influences, and this paper presents types, meanings, and motifs associated with social status among the Hao as indexed in vernacular architecture
Who is speaking? co-option, authority, and envisioning the nation: women and narratives of sexual violence in conflict
Full text linkThis article presents an investigation of the forces of authority and co-option surrounding the documentation of violence and specifically sexual violence against women in conflict, and examines the representation of survivors in media and academic sources. The first section focusses on the use of oral testimony in the conflicts in East Pakistan/Bangladesh in 1971 and the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and how survivors\u27 narratives are interpreted and communicated. It then goes on to examine the representation of violence against women in the Bangladesh conflict in a variety of South Asian newspaper sources in the years immediately following 1971. This is then further explored in the final section where these media discourses display the co-opting of women\u27s experiences into discourses of nation-building and state legitimacy in Bangladesh. The article concludes that the sources examined reflect a tendency for narratives of sexual violence in conflict to be co-opted or otherwise \u27used\u27 for secondary political purposes by the media, the state and even academic researchers, such that the women survivors retain little authority over the communication of their \u27history\u27 and its utilisation
Fecund mullas and goni billas: gendered nature of anti Muslim rhetoric in post-war Sri Lanka
Full text linkIssues that are prominent within the anti-Muslim hate discourse that pervaded Sri Lanka in recent years are the speed at which the Muslim community is increasing its numbers—they are said to become a majority in a few decades; as well as Muslim women’s dress- the hijab nikab and abhaya. Certain Muslim interlocutors’ own responses have included defending the hijab as protecting women from violence, and urging that the state institute measures to increase the Sinhalese population. Ironically the latter was also the position of the Bodu Bala Sena the group propagating anti- Muslim sentiment; and the government responded to the position and institutionalized it by way of a health ministry circular banning NGO programs in reproductive health. I look at the manner in which gender orders became reorganized in the aftermath of the state’s military victory over the rebel group the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009 as a consequence of militarism. This reordering is reflected both in the anti Muslim rhetoric and the rolling back of important women friendly policies in the country. Writing on women’s experiences in Sri Lanka, however look mainly at the experiences of particular ethnic communities at the expense of a collective narrative of exclusion exploitation and misogyny. Exploring these developments this paper will also speculate as to why it is difficult to think outside the ethnic frames to understand the gendered nature of the post war moment