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South Asian History and Culture 2011 - Vol. 2,1

South Asian History and Culture
South Asian History and Culture / Editorial Board: David Washbrook [u.a.]. - Vol. 2. - London [u.a.] : Routledge, 2011
ISSN 1947-2501 (electronic), 1947-2498 (paper)
URL: Taylor and Francis: South Asian History and Culture

Inhalt: Vol. 2,1 (Januar 2011)
Badri Narayan:
A book also travels: circulating small booklets in Dalit poorva, 1-15
DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2011.531599

Abstract: This article examines how Dalit popular booklets, known as 'chhoti kitab', emerge in the Dalit space and who writes these. It studies the readership and social impact of this writing, including the missionary zeal of the authors and publishers who market these booklets on cycles, in fairs, festivals, chetna mandaps, meets and rallies, melas commemorating Dalit heroes and political gatherings. It unravels how these booklets travel from the writers to the various agencies that disseminate the message of these booklets and then to the educated, aware Dalits from whom they reach the grassroots in the Uttar Pradesh villages. In open spaces, like village tea stalls, educated Dalits read these booklets, while their illiterate brethren listen with rapt attention. Discussions follow, causing a socio-political awareness amongst them. The article also addresses the Dalit popular writing as a contested domain, studying the responses of the state and the judiciary. It focuses on the making of Dalit publics in rural north India through such writings.

Mohammad Sajjad:
Muslim resistance to communal separatism and colonialism in Bihar: nationalist politics of the Bihar Muslims, 16-36
DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2011.531601

Abstract: This article explores the issue of community and nation-making in a relatively less explored region of colonial India, Bihar. Although engaging with the existing literature on the theme, it looks into new sources including those in Urdu. The exploration finds that considerably large sections of Muslims were firmly and consistently opposed to the communal separatist politics of the Muslim League in the last days of the empire. Their adherence was to the principle of composite nationalism (muttahidah qaumiyat) and was articulated through the Imarat-e-Shariah and the Muslim Independent Party (MIP), whose essential ideological affiliation was with the Congress. This affiliation was manifested most clearly during and after the Congress ministry (1937-1939).
   The Muslim League's victory in 1946 elections of Bihar was far from inevitable. The 'Rajendra Prasad Papers', Urdu sources, besides other archival accounts, however, clearly suggest that the Congress refused to extend necessary cooperation to those Muslim leaders/political formations (religious/secular and biradri based, most of them belonging to the Congress itself) which were opposed to the idea of communal separatism. Rising assertion of the majoritarian communalism of organizations like the Hindu Mahasabha/RSS and the considerable communalization of the lower strata of the Congress was no less significant factor, which is amply testified by the archival documents (like intelligence reports and official correspondences) of 1940s.

Elliott L. Watson:
South Asia and the Cold War: Vice President Nixon's forgotten trip to Ceylon, 37-54
DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2011.531608

Abstract: In October 1953, Vice President Richard Nixon embarked on a precedent-setting tour of the countries of South and Southeast Asia. The newly elected Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had reinvented the vice presidency by elevating it from a nominal and ceremonial position to one of unprecedented responsibility in US foreign policy. Nixon's core remit was to reinforce, consolidate and expand where possible, the American Cold War sphere of influence in Asia. As part of this tour, the Vice President spent 3 days in Ceylon, an Indian Ocean island state recently independent from Great Britain. In 1951, Ceylon became the only non-communist Asian state to begin shipping strategic materials to the newly communist China. Nixon's visit to Ceylon, to address this (and other issues) personally, would become something of a blueprint for US diplomatic operations in South Asia. This landmark visit has never been investigated nor its impact explained. This article is an attempt in that direction.

Madelaine Healey:
'Regarded, paid and housed as menials': nursing in colonial India, 1900-1948, 55-75
DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2011.531609

Abstract: This article highlights the role of the colonial state in the ongoing stigmatization of the profession of nursing in India. The low status of nursing in India has long been ascribed to local culture, namely, caste and gender practices, which, it is often argued, made the acceptance of nursing as a career for young women impossible. My examination of interactions between the professional leadership and the state between 1900 and 1948, however, illustrates that in fact the inaction of the state meant that society's negative perceptions of nursing, whatever their origins, were entirely rational and reasonable. The state failure to attend to working conditions or to pay liveable wages meant that nursing was indeed a dirty, dangerous, low-status job, and that a number of nurses were forced to turn to prostitution. The dreadful conditions in which nurses were allowed to work in fact reinforced and validated the distaste many felt for the career of nursing, creating a longstanding legacy of stigma and low status for the profession in India. It is my contention that political discussion of the fortunes of nursing, throughout twentieth-century India, has remained overly focused on the issues of stigma and status, with insufficient focus on the more easily remedied issues of working conditions and pay.

Arijit Sen:
Architecture and world making: production of sacred space in San Francisco's Vedanta temple, 76-102
DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2011.531611

Abstract: This article provides two 'readings' of the Vedanta temple of San Francisco to understand the complex process of world making by Hindu religious preachers in the USA during the first decade of the twentieth century. On the one hand is the visible world of shared meanings and practices and on the other hand is the haptic domain navigated by individuals in embodied ways. These two ways of knowing the building are intertwined; they play against each other, and yet they serve different purposes. The first reading explains the material configuration of place and the relationship between the various spaces and their uses. The second reading examines the spatial choreography and human experience of using this building. The example of the Vedanta temple shows us that a building is not a neutral container where inhabitants play out their lives as they wish. Instead, buildings are actively engaged in the way that events, experiences and memory are shaped.

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