3274912 results
1 - Introduction: Climate Justice in India
- Edited by Prakash Kashwan, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
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- Climate Justice in India
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- 03 November 2022
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- 31 May 2024, pp 1-24
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Summary
Arundhati Roy famously described the COVID-19 pandemic as a
portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it. (Roy 2020)
As inspiring and insightful as these words are, such juxtaposition of utopia and dystopia barely scratches the surface of what and who we are as a nation. The soulcrushing images of burning pyres in parking lots turned into makeshift graveyards, which international and national media have immortalized, offer a clue, as does the sombre poetry of Parul Khakhar (Tripathi 2021). India is a land pockmarked with a million fires.
The COVID-19 crisis has come as a shock to many middle-class Indians. Yet, to India's Dalits, Adivasis, women, and other marginalized groups, haunted by centuries of oppression, this crisis is yet another in a long list of historical and ongoing crises. For example, the coalfields of Jharia in Jharkhand have been burning for over a century now. As a result, at least 130,000 families have, quite literally, lived through a century-long trial by fire (Rahi 2019). Since 1995, the state-owned Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) has claimed to have a ‘master plan’, which is possibly gathering dust in some almirah of the coal ministry (S. Kumar 2021). One would imagine that a pandemic like COVID-19 might scare the minister whose job includes ensuring the welfare of the 3.6 million people who work in mines with a less than adequate supply of fresh air. Yet, in 2020, India's coal minister valorized coal workers as ‘our coal warriors who are toiling day and night to keep the lights on even during the corona pandemic’ (Press Information Bureau 2020). They toiled very hard indeed.
A year later, as India struggled to confront the monstrous second wave of the pandemic, Central Coalfields Limited (CCL), a subsidiary of Coal India Limited (CIL), recorded the highest-ever single-day coal dispatch of 80 railway rakes (PNS 2021).
Introduction
- Sumit Chakrabarti, Presidency University, Kolkata
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- Local Selfhood, Global Turns
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- 30 June 2023
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- 31 May 2024, pp 1-17
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One would often, but not consistently, come across mentions of Akshay Kumar Dutta in discussions on the cultural and intellectual life of nineteenth-century Bengal. He would, on most occasions, be a cursory reference, a footnote, a character on the fringes of the larger rubric of the discussion. There was a great churning of intellectual frameworks throughout the nineteenth century in Bengal – religious and educational reforms, epistemic shifts, cultural upheavals, and much of all these have been documented with care by historians and social scientists alike. Akshay Kumar Dutta, however, has rarely featured as a crucial presence in these discussions and debates. This book asks the ‘why’ question by attempting to closely read some of his works and examine if such erasure has foreclosed possible complications to certain categories of critique.
Born on 15 July 1820 in the quiet hamlet of Chupi in Burdwan district, Akshay was the youngest and the only surviving child of Pitambar Dutta and Dayamayi Debi. His father worked as a cashier in Calcutta (now known as Kolkata), and Akshay's initial years were spent in Chupi, being educated in the local pathsala run by Gurucharan Sarkar. He also started learning Farsi with Munshi Aminuddin and Sanskrit with Gopinath Tarkalankar as a young boy while still at Chupi. His father, subsequently, took him to Calcutta, where, after a brief stint at a free school run by missionaries at Kidderpore, he was admitted to Gourmohan Auddy's Oriental Seminary. His father's untimely demise in 1839 did not allow him to finish his formal education, but as his biographers have documented, his love of learning led Akshay to train himself in both the sciences and the humanities and provoked him, at an early age, to contemplate on the epistemic disconnect between Puranic and European forms of learning. As Akshay grew up in Calcutta, the city caught in the middle of multiple reforms, he was introduced, through his visits to the Bangla Bhasanushilani Sabha (a forum for the spread and practice of the Bangla language), to the poet Iswarchandra Gupta, who was also incidentally the editor of the periodical Sangbad Prabhakar.
1 - The Sahaja Islam of Nund Rishi
- Abir Bazaz, Ashoka University
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- Nund Rishi
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- 05 August 2023
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- 31 May 2024, pp 51-130
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My son, may God hide from you the apparent meaning of the Law and reveal to you the truth of impiety! Because the apparent meaning of the Law is hidden impiety and the truth of impiety is manifest knowledge. Now therefore: praise to God, who manifests Himself upon the point of a needle to whomsoever He will and who hides Himself in the heavens and on the earth from whomsoever He will, with the result that one attests that “He is not” and the other attests that “There is only Him.” Neither is he who professes the negation of God rejected, nor is he who confesses his existence praised. The intent of this letter is that you explain nothing by God, that you extract not a single argumentation from him, that you desire neither to love him nor to not love him, that you do not confess his existence and that you are not inclined to deny it. And above all, refrain from proclaiming his Unity!: Maná¹£ūr al-Ḥallaj, cited by Michel de Certeau.
The contemporary discourses on Kashmir turn often to the idea of Kashmiri Islam as being unique and distinctive in South Asia. Such notions have appealed to Kashmiris themselves and inform articulations of Islam and Muslim nationalism in contemporary Kashmir. Even Kashmiri historians such as Mohammad Ishaq Khan who are critical of an understanding of Kashmir's pasts as “syncretic,” and not unqualifyingly Islamic, have found it difficult to reject the idea of an exclusive, even exceptional, Islam in Kashmir. The Rishi Order of Kashmiri Sufism is fundamental to these debates about a distinctive history of Islam in Kashmir. The shruks of Nund Rishi in the Kashmiri vernacular not only turn to metaphors, symbols, and events from the Qur’ān but also rely on pre-Islamic Kashmiri cultural memory at a time (the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries) when Islam was still a minority religion in Kashmir after the establishment of a Muslim ruling dynasty in the fourteenth century. The Rishi Order is recognized by most scholars of religion, history, and literature in Kashmir to have played a significant role in Kashmir's transition to Islam. The Rishi Order is also considered central to the claims of a distinctive Kashmiri Islam because of its retention of such pre-Islamic ascetic practices as vegetarianism and celibacy.
List of Figures
- Afsar Mohammad, University of Pennsylvania
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- Remaking History
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- 01 August 2023
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- 31 May 2024, pp ix-x
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8 - Reimagining Climate Justice as Caste Justice
- Edited by Prakash Kashwan, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
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- Climate Justice in India
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- 03 November 2022
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- 31 May 2024, pp 162-182
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The contribution of colonialism and imperial expropriation to the unfolding climate crisis has been well documented on a global scale. This chapter seeks to interrogate the role of caste as a structural element in shaping environmental inequities within India and beyond. Scientists across disciplines agree that the current system of production is unsustainable at the planetary level, even if a consensus on how to address this issue remains elusive. I argue that in the case of India, accounting for historical and contemporary caste-based extraction is crucial for any meaningful realization of climate justice.
Globally, academic scholarship and policy have come to acknowledge the uneven and unjust ways in which the burden and responsibility for the current crisis are distributed across nations, ethnicities, races, and genders. There is an emerging consensus that the historical pathways of colonialism and capitalist development are directly responsible for this uneven distribution. This pattern is seen across the histories of energy production, plantation economies, and commercial agriculture, as demonstrated in the detailed work of political ecologists (for example, Li 2017). Consequently, the idea that mitigation, adaptation, and resilience-building strategies must account for this historical unevenness is no longer controversial.
We see this acknowledgement in the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ formally adopted by the United Nations in 1992. Under this principle, world governments recognize the lesser contribution of formerly colonized countries such as India towards planetary environmental degradation. This can be read as an acknowledgement of the unequal distribution of political power and economic prosperity across world nations because of colonialism. Acknowledging this historicity of the climate crisis is important, but our understanding of it would remain incomplete without a serious stock-taking of those dimensions of inequality and unevenness that significantly pre-date the rise of colonial capitalism and are yet implicated in its development trajectory. These dimensions of inequality often operate at the national or sub-national levels and therefore escape scrutiny on the global stage. In the case of India, one such important and all-pervasive dimension of inequality is caste.
For decades, anthropological and historical scholarship on caste focused only on ritual, scriptural, and mythical dimensions, thus constructing the issue as a matter of religion alone. Anti-caste scholars and activists such as Ambedkar, Phule, and Periyar have resisted such ‘orientalist’ representations of caste.
Contents
- Abir Bazaz, Ashoka University
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- Nund Rishi
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- 05 August 2023
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- 31 May 2024, pp vii-viii
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12 - Urbanization and Housing Infrastructure in Urban India
- Edited by K. S. James, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, T. V. Sekher, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai
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- India Population Report
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- 15 August 2023
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- 31 May 2024, pp 452-497
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Introduction
Cities are considered the growth engines for an economy (Chen and Partridge, 2013). They cover a very small part of the land but account for a major share of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). In India, the urban share of the GDP was 62–63 per cent in 2009–10, which is expected to increase to 70–75 per cent by 2030 (Housing and Urban Development Corporation [HUDCO] and National Institute of Urban Affairs [NIUA], 2017). As per The Economic Survey 2016–17, about 90 per cent of tax revenues are generated by just one-third of the country's population, which reside in urban areas (Ministry of Finance, 2017). However, the rapidly growing cities in developing countries are struggling to provide the adequate infrastructure, services, and governance systems needed by the increasing populations (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], 2016). Urban infrastructure is the underlying structural support and needs of a city. It is defined as the ‘sinews’ of the city, which include its roads, bridges, water and sewer lines, waste disposal facilities, power systems, public buildings, parks, and recreation areas (National Research Council, 1984). The basic infrastructure and services such as availability of electricity, improved source of drinking water, improved sanitation, and clean fuel are the most critical aspects for the better quality of life of the urban population (Bhagat, 2011). No doubt, cities play a vital role in the national economy, but on the contrary, they also face increased strain on existing inadequate infrastructure such as transport, housing, water, sanitation, and electricity. According to the 2011 census, in India about 93 per cent of the households have electricity as the main source of lighting, 81 per cent have latrine facilities within the premises, 71 per cent have access to tap-water facility, and only 68 per cent in urban areas have housing that may be deemed to be in good condition.
Since independence, India's total population has increased two-and-a-half times, while at the same time the urban population has grown by more than sixfold. As per the 2011 census, 377 million Indians (31 per cent) lived in nearly 7,933 towns and cities of the country, which was only 62 million (17 per cent) in 1951. India accounts for about 11 per cent of the global urban population.
7 - 100 Years After Indenture: The Present Generation of Indo-Trinidadians and Their Cultural Environments
- Edited by Ashutosh Kumar, Banaras Hindu University, India, Crispin Bates, University of Edinburgh
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- <i>Girmitiyas</i> and the Global Indian Diaspora
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- 20 April 2024
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- 31 May 2024, pp 157-175
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TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO TODAY
Trinidad and Tobago is a twin-island republic located at the southern tip of the Caribbean archipelago. Approximately 10 kilometres from the northern coast of Venezuela, the islands are collectively comprised of around 2,000 square miles of land. Tobago is the smaller of the two with a wealth of natural scenic beauty. Trinidad is the agricultural, industrial and service hub of the nation. Both islands have separate and interesting histories. While Tobago has a predominantly homogeneous racial grouping, Trinidad reflects a mosaic of races and cultures, the result of its separate and distinct historical antecedents and heritages (built and natural). This multicultural mix is reflected in existing population statistics, in its philosophical, social, economic, religious and physical landscape and in its artistic expressions. It is manifested in its performative traditions: its fasts, feasts, rituals and festivals. Within this cultural dynamo the Indo-Trinidadian contribution is noteworthy, adding significantly to the rhythm of daily life. This chapter explores what has been, and what continues to be, the role of the Indo-Trinidadian in shaping this dynamic, syncretic culture.
Addressing this question requires a definition of the term ‘culture’. Culture in this sense is the sum total of one's norms of behaviour, one's values, attitudes to spiritual and religious development, to society, to family and to personal growth and development, to life in general. It is influenced by our heritage, traditions, legacies and our present circumstances. Culture is thus the vehicle and platform for maintaining historical linkages and for shaping one's environment. It guides and inspires a people, giving them a personality of their own. It influences the environment, provides historical continuity and opportunities and sets out a veritable road map for future development.
Over the years the various cultural streams in Trinidad have assimilated. These streams have included the cultures of the former European colonizers, of the various ‘mother’ countries as well as internal innovations within them. To them have been added both North and, to a lesser extent, South American ideas, values, behavioural patterns, traditions and aesthetics. Today, evidence reveals the existence of a unique, syncretic emerging culture in Trinidad and Tobago. Intertwined with this emergent culture are major identifiable elements of cultural persistence in the Indo-Trinidadian psyche, as is very apparent in their everyday lifestyles. There is a kind of ‘ethnic dualism’ as parallel cultural traits exist side by side.
Part 4 - Architectures of Devotion
- Edited by Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, Vazira Zamindar, Brown University, Rhode Island
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- How Secular Is Art?
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- 21 February 2023
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- 31 May 2024, pp 331-332
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9 - Can a Festival of a Goddess Be ‘Secular’?
- Edited by Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, Vazira Zamindar, Brown University, Rhode Island
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- How Secular Is Art?
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- 21 February 2023
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- 31 May 2024, pp 261-296
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What defines the secular in a cultural festival in Bengal that centres on the annual homecoming of Goddess Durga? How may we read the rhetoric of secularization of this event that has a long historical background and has become crucial to its contemporary identity? In keeping with the title of this volume, a question mark necessarily hovers around the nomenclature of the ‘secular’ and the extent to which it may lend itself to the profile of a festival that has well outstripped its religiosity and willed its transformation into Kolkata’s biggest public art event. Defying any easy placement within an institutionally secure realm of either religion or art, and never fully measuring up to the criterion of the secular, the Durga Pujas provide a powerful site for the interrogation of each of these conceptual categories. I will be arguing that the contemporary festival of Durga in Kolkata (and the ideas and forms it exports to Durga Puja celebrations across Bengal and other big cities of India) offers itself not just as a case study but as a constitutive ground in the dismantling of boundaries between artistic, religious, and secular practices, allowing each of these to freely trespass into each other’s domains. This sense of trespass is not one that comes from within the field of festival art and its creative protagonists. It erupts more within the fields of scholarship and disciplines such as art history and religious studies. It is in the spaces of these disciplines that the need to redefine the normative domains of art, religion, and secularity has gone hand-in-hand with the urgency of maintaining their separate jurisdictions and their different rights and prerogatives. It is important, in this context, to mark the coming of age of the field of South Asian visual studies and its tendentious criss-crossing of the disciplines of art history, visual anthropology, and the study of ritual, religion, and material cultures; and to situate my turn to the changed artistic contemporary proclivities of Kolkata’s Durga Pujas within this shifting disciplinary confluence in the initial decades of the twenty-first century.
As a mega urban spectacle that has been engaging with a spectacular array of art and craft productions, new visual technologies, and social media, the city festival holds out an invitation to the field of visual studies that is hard to resist.
Index
- Abir Bazaz, Ashoka University
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- Nund Rishi
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- 05 August 2023
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- 31 May 2024, pp 263-281
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List of Illustrations
- Edited by Harsh V. Pant, King's College London, Hasan T. Alhasan, King's College London
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- India and the Gulf
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- 01 August 2023
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- 31 May 2024, pp vii-viii
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6 - Climate Action Plans and Justice in India
- Edited by Prakash Kashwan, Brandeis University, Massachusetts
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- Climate Justice in India
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- 03 November 2022
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- 31 May 2024, pp 115-139
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Introduction
‘Climate change seems to be the last of the priorities of the state and central government. Despite various climate plans, we continue to privatize coal and divert forest land. How does one reconcile these decisions with the objectives of the climate action plan?’ asked a senior administrative officer in the Odisha Revenue and Disaster Management Department when questioned about the auctioning of new coal blocks and the state's climate action plan. His grim observation points to the political and economic barriers against implementing an effective climate policy that addresses climate justice in India.
In this chapter, we argue that India's climate policy fails to adequately address difficult political questions related to climate justice and rising inequality. As our analysis of state and national climate action plans show, India's engagement with questions of climate justice remains merely symbolic. This directly follows from the country's stance in international climate negotiations, during which it has shied away from undertaking rigorous domestic climate action citing high levels of poverty and a need to focus on economic growth (Kashwan and Mudaliar 2021).
Our analysis of India's national and state climate action plans offers insights into the often-unstated normative principles that guide decision-making on climate change within the country. In this study, we demonstrate how, if at all, these action plans incorporate questions of justice and equality. We argue that most of India's climate action plans demonstrate a superficial understanding of socio-economic inequalities and hence fail to adequately address the disproportionate impact of climate events on the poor and marginalized.
We begin by discussing the principles that guide climate policy internationally and domestically. We then provide a critical overview of national and state climate action plans. We then scrutinize these action plans in terms of substantive equality and climate justice criteria, namely caste, gender, poverty, and co-benefits for development. We then analyse the action plans with regard to their treatment of these substantive criteria, the limitations in their approach, and possible strategies to address these limitations.
Background
Internationally, India is known to have pioneered the approach of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR), which allows developing countries to prioritize poverty alleviation and economic growth over climate mitigation.
3 - Becoming Nothing
- Abir Bazaz, Ashoka University
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- Nund Rishi
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- 05 August 2023
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- 31 May 2024, pp 184-213
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The death of God is the final thought of philosophy, which proposes it as the end of religion: it is the thought towards which the Occident (which in this respect excludes neither Islam nor Buddhism) will not have ceased to tend.
—Jean-Luc NancyThe shruks of Nund Rishi bring us face-to-face with an existential encounter with death's imminence. But what work does the recognition of death's imminence do? We have already seen that Nund Rishi's insistence on death's imminence is a call to a dying before death. The call to a dying before death is often also in Nund Rishi a call to becoming Nothing. Let us turn to the first two lines of a shruk taken up by Rahman Rahi in his critical essay on the mystical poetry of Nund Rishi that we also discussed in the previous chapter:
Zū neri brōnṭh tu’lōbh nēri patu’
Gatshan dọn zu’ vaṭu’, shunya ākār
The first to depart is life and only then greed
The two go on separate paths: the form of the Nothing
Rahman Rahi turns to the modern theatre stage in an attempt to interpret this shruk. He sets up a play between zū, or zuv (life), and lōbh (greed), which meet their end in the nothingness of death. Zū nēri brōnṭh (the first to leave, or depart, is life) gives us a palpable sense of someone's departure (in this case, zū, or life) before that of someone else (lōbh, or greed). It is, in other words, impossible for human greed to end before the end of life. Lōbh, greed or avaricious desire, has such a tenacious hold over us that it only leaves the stage of existence after life has already departed. What life and desire leave behind is a space of emptiness (shunya), and this play has the form of nothingness (shunya ākār). The idea that everything is empty (śūnyatā, or emptiness) is central to Mahayana Buddhism, which held sway in Kashmir between the third century BCE to about the fifth century CE (the Sanskrit term śūnya also means zero). Such a stance was not seen in the Buddhist tradition as nihilist. Graham Priest identifies the core meaning of the idea of śūnyatā: “Nothing exists in and of itself. Everything that exists does so inasmuch as, and only inasmuch as, it relates to other things.
9 - Malnutrition Status of Women, Children, and Adolescents in India and its Relation with Educational Attainment
- Edited by K. S. James, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, T. V. Sekher, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai
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- India Population Report
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- 15 August 2023
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- 31 May 2024, pp 313-346
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Introduction
India is going through a rapid socio-economic transition resulting in considerable changes in dietary patterns and nutrition levels among different sections of the population. Despite several policy initiatives to combat malnutrition (Ministry of Women and Child Development, n.d.) over the past more than four decades, the level of malnutrition in India remains abysmally high. Malnutrition was the top cause of death and disability in India in 2017, followed by dietary risks, including poor diet choices, according to the 2017 Global Burden of Disease study (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation [IHME], 2018). The groups at the greatest risk of malnutrition are children, adolescents, and women. According to the 2020 Global Nutrition Report, every second child under five years of age in India is malnourished in some form or the other, with a prevalence of wasting being 21 per cent and stunting being 38 per cent – both figures notably greater than the than the average for Asia, where the wasting level is over 9 per cent and stunting level 23 per cent (Development Initiatives, 2020). Additionally, 36 per cent of children under five years of age are underweight, while 2 per cent are overweight (International Institute for Population Sciences [IIPS] and ICF International, 2017). A poor nutritional status, particularly in early life, can have lifelong consequences on physical and psychological well-being and can also impair long-term employment opportunities (Black et al., 2013).
The proportion of under-nutrition among women of reproductive ages declined from 36 per cent in 2005–06 to 23 per cent in 2015–16; at the same time, the proportion of over-nourished (overweight or obese) women increased from 13 per cent to 21 per cent. Maternal under-nutrition contributes to foetal growth restriction, which increases the risk of neonatal deaths and, for survivors, stunting by two years of age (Black et al., 2013), thus passing on the burden of under-nutrition to the next generation.
School-age children and adolescents, too, are affected by under-nutrition and over-nutrition, but they failed to gain attention until the recent past; women and child health, particularly the health of children below the age of five years, had been the focus of researchers and policymakers all these years. According to a study on worldwide trends, more children and adolescents aged 5–19 years are moderately or severely underweight than obese (NCD Risk Factor Collaboration [NCD-RisC], 2017).
Dedication
- Afsar Mohammad, University of Pennsylvania
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- Remaking History
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- 01 August 2023
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- 31 May 2024, pp v-vi
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2 - Kinship Matters: Women’s Land Claims in the Santal Parganas
- Nitya Rao, University of East Anglia
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- Quest for Identity
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- 26 July 2023
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- 31 May 2024, pp 37-65
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Introduction: Land, Kinship and Identity
This chapter discusses the processes by which kinship relations, particularly patrilineages, are being strengthened amongst the Santal community in a village, called here Chuapara, in Dumka district, Jharkhand (see Figure 2.1). The rise of a democratic state, accepting the notion of equal rights for all citizens, alongside the creation of market institutions (wage labour and land markets, for instance) to meet production requirements, is expected to lead to an erosion of men's base of power in terms of both caste- and kinship-based control over land. However, writings in the field of anthropology have demonstrated the continuing importance of kinship in determining property rights and gendered access to resources, social rights and obligations, and in organising power and authority.2Rather than withering away, social structures of kinship and caste have been re-fashioned, with the upper-caste elite diversifying and dominating non-agricultural assets, not just land. Women, who face disadvantages in terms of education, capital and mobility while continuing to be held responsible for household maintenance, are further marginalised in this diversification process (Epstein, Suryanarayana and Thimmegowda, 1998; Harriss-White and Janakarajan, 2004). Sacks notes that
the other side of that process is that kin corporations were not totally destroyed over-night. Rather they have been and continue to be slowly subverted, transformed, and overcome – only to struggle toward rebirth repeatedly as a defense against ruling-class attacks, as a means of spreading the risks of existence, or as a way of holding one's own against poverty. Women as sisters, mothers, and wives, have been the central actors in these struggles. This history has yet to be written. (1979: 7)
In this chapter, I examine the ways in which kinship relations are being reformulated and their implications for gender in a context where the struggle for a separate state of Jharkhand emphasises not just a class or proletarian identity but also a tribal, or adivasi, identity. There has been considerable debate on the use of different terms when representing the tribes, as these have varying political connotations. Hardiman notes that the term adivasi is preferable in the Indian context – with over 400 such communities representing close to 8 per cent of the total population – as it relates to ‘a particular historical development: that of subjugation’ (1987: 15) by traders, moneylenders and landlords who established themselves under the protection of colonial authorities.
Part I - Introduction
- Nitya Rao, University of East Anglia
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- Quest for Identity
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- 26 July 2023
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- 31 May 2024, pp 1-2
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3 - “I Am Going to Fight …”: Muslim Women’s Politics and Gender Activism
- Afsar Mohammad, University of Pennsylvania
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- Remaking History
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- 01 August 2023
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- 31 May 2024, pp 145-188
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Summary
I am a woman and I can sense and feel the sound of an impending danger sooner than anyone. Now writers have to pay more attention to this world than ever before. The new knowledge, the dangers of the new politics have flared up this world. The darkness of hostility, destruction, and disenchantment are everywhere and constantly increasing!
—Jeelani BanoIn Jeelani Bano's 1963 novel Aiwan-e-Ghazal (The palace of the ghazals), two ashraf Muslim women, Qaiser and her daughter Kranthi, join the radical squads of the Telangana armed rebellion led by the communists that fought valiantly between 1946 and 1951. Members of an extremely conservative family known for its absolute loyalty to the Nizam and its conservative Islamic practices, Qaiser and Kranthi take a path that unsettles the entire family and the local community. In fact, Qaiser's cousins Chaand and Ghazal had been predecessor rebels in the family; however, Qaiser's leftist politics—according to one of her elderly family members—“create nothing less than extreme chaos in the family.” The entire confrontation begins with what historian Mahua Sarkar terms an “invisible everyday agency.” However, in the case of these four Hyderabadi Muslim women characters whom I will introduce in this, this everyday agency gradually becomes strikingly visible in their interactions with the family, thanks to their explicit interventions in the political sphere of Hyderabad. Along with Qaiser and Kranthi, Chaand and Ghazal demonstrate two modes of gender activism with their participation in the Hyderabadi public sphere. In what follows, I discuss the magnitude of such gender activism and of the political dimension of Muslim women's selfhood as manifested in this novel. This chapter explains how amidst the intersections of the rise of new politics in the city, the system of modern education, the Telangana activism of the 1940s, and the progressivist ideology—all four of these women forcefully demonstrate their agency as resistance against traditionalism, and specifically against the normative definitions of Muslim womanhood and the hegemonic patriarchy. During my interviews and field research, I came to realize that the life story of the author also plays a crucial role in the making of this compelling political agency of Muslim women and their participation in the public sphere.
3 - Stories of Girmitiyas: Folklore and The Sociocultural World of Indentured Indians in The Sugar Colonies
- Edited by Ashutosh Kumar, Banaras Hindu University, India, Crispin Bates, University of Edinburgh
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- <i>Girmitiyas</i> and the Global Indian Diaspora
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- 20 April 2024
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- 31 May 2024, pp 69-82
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Summary
The presence of Indian labour across the globe during the nineteenth century not only helped transform the capitalist global economy but also affected the cultural expression, including folklore, of migrant workers. More than 1.3 million Indians signed contracts of indentureship between 1834 and 1916 and shipped out to sugar plantations across the globe under the aegis of European empires. The first colony to bring in Indian indentured work was Mauritius in 1834. British Guyana imported indentured labour next in 1838, Trinidad and Jamaica in 1845, the smaller West Indian colonies of St Kitts, St Lucia, St Vincent and Grenada in the 1850s, Natal in 1860, Suriname in 1873 and Fiji in 1879. Most indentured Indian labourers chose to stay in their new homes after the termination of their contracts and formed a distinct Indian diaspora in their respective host countries. Indentured Indians brought many sociocultural norms and expressions to the host countries which evolved over the succeeding generations. Folklore is one of these traditions.
Folklore is the traditional expression of a society or a particular group of people in which folk tales, songs, ballads, proverbs or jokes are transmitted from one generation to another. In the course of transmission, the folklore changes, depending on the place and cultural context. This is one of the reasons that different versions of the same folk tales exist. The origin and authors of folklore usually remain hidden as the stories and traditions are carried on and spread orally among often illiterate people.
INDENTURED FOLK TALES
When indentured migrants reached plantation colonies, they not only brought Indian religio-cultural norms but also folklore. Most of the folklore of the indentured Indians is in the Bhojpuri language as the majority of migrants were from the Bhojpuri-speaking areas of north India. However, over time, exposure to the languages, places and space of the host countries meant that indentured folklore in Mauritius can be found in both Creole and Bhojpuri. Other folklore in Mauritius is recorded in south Indian languages, such as Tamil, as a significant portion of the indentured there were from south India.
There are broadly five kinds of folk tales prevalent among Indian indentured societies across the globe. These are didactic tales, social stories, religious tales, love stories and entertainment stories. Moralistic tales endeavoured to encourage certain behaviours in children (and adults). A moral education was attempted through such accounts.