3 research outputs found
Racializing white residues: seditious Anglo-Indians and others
No full textMy dissertation interrogates the discursive residues of the Anglo-Indian question in decolonized India. To problematize these residues, I structure my dissertation as a fragmented genealogy of colonial and post-colonial perceptions of Anglo-Indians. I open my dissertation by showing how, since the late-nineteenth century, Anglo-Indians were claimed to be only of part-European racial provenance, and tautologically had their bodies deemed sexually deviant. Their bodies being, like those of their non-Anglo-Indian counterparts, in fact of uncertain racial intermixture, I argue that Anglo-Indians inhabit mongrel bodies—bodies in a state of continual flux of class and race, inhabiting a multiplicity of pluralized communities. The ethical end of the decolonized Indian nation-state, I accordingly suggest, is to facilitate the recognition of mongrelism as an inevitable phenomenon across groups—one that fractures monolithic conceptions of race and community. To flesh out this argument, I conduct readings from an archive of novels, historiographic treatises, short stories, memoirs, films, and cartoons. The figures whose texts I examine include, among others, colonial Anglo-Indian ‘prostitute’ Amelia Horne, Anglo-Indian anti-racism activist Cedric Dover, Bengali novelist Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, diasporic English writer Aubrey Menen, Indian cartoonist Mario Miranda, Bengali film director Satyajit Ray, Anglo-Indian politician and historiographer Frank Anthony, and British-Indian writer Ruskin Bond.Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'U of I Access', the embargo will last until 2020-08-01The student, Debojoy Chanda, accepted the attached license on 2018-07-04 at 01:48.The student, Debojoy Chanda, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2018-07-04 at 02:33.This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2018-07-06 at 10:04.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #12728 on 2018-09-27 at 11:16:29Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-27T16:30:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
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Previous issue date: 2018-07-06Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 107771
Lift date: 2020-09-27T16:30:34Z
Reason: Author requested U of Illinois access only (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD systemEmbargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 107771
Lift date: 2020-09-27T16:31:43Z
Reason: Author requested U of Illinois access only (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD systemEmbargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 107771
Lift date: 2020-09-27T16:34:29Z
Reason: Author requested U of Illinois access only (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD systemU of I Only Restriction Lifted for Item 107771 on 2020-09-28T09:15:16Z
In Search of Other Worlds: The Dalit in De Facto Statelessness in Avinash Dolas’s "The Refugee"
No full textThis article is reproduced here with permission from the author and may be found online at http://www.mcrg.ac.in/rw%20files/RW57/RW57.pdf.In this article, I discuss the position of the dalit citizen of India as one of de facto statelessness. To embark on my discussion, I delineate the dalit body as primally marked by the absence of the materiality of intimate touch from the caste-Hindu. This absence of touch allows me to locate the dalit body within social distance, that is, in empty space as the site facilitating the pure existence of humiliation. The humiliation, I allude to stems from the habitation of the dalit body in a perpetual state of alterity, given the absence of the warm touch of the other encasing it. This framework of humiliation stains the body in corporal lowness— a lowness in which the ruins of the consciousness inhabiting the body are trapped. Such a state of entrapment may lead these ruins of consciousness to go to great lengths to do violence to their bondage in social distance, as I demonstrate through my reading of the suicide letter written by dalit doctoral student and activist Rohith Vemula (1988-2016). Seeming to drift as the dalit body does in the perennial liminality of social distance, Marathi dalit writer and activist Avinash Dolas portrays the figure of the dalit as akin to that of a refugee in the Indian nation-state. Through a reading of Dolas’s short story “The Refugee,” I aver the untenability of this portrayal. Indeed, the dalit can, I suggest, perhaps be said to occupy a position which is closer to that of an internally displaced person— a person disowned by Brahminical touch and recognised in her internal displacement as a figure that the United Nations would term an ‘invisible citizen’ of India. This state of invisible citizenship, I argue, situates the dalit in de facto statelessness within an international juridical regime of human rights. Though the dalit’s claim to these human rights will not ensure that her body is liberated from the humiliation of social distance, her voicing of such a claim will set a tussle against caste privilege in motion. This tussle, as I show in broad strokes, bears the possibility of ending with the dalit being able to articulate her human rights as political rights
