Raj Sekhar Basu

Bio: Raj Sekhar Basu is an academic researcher from University of Calcutta. The author has contributed to research in topics: Tamil & Identity (social science). The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 9 publications receiving 99 citations.

Review Essay on Les Back, Tim Crabbe and John Solomos, The Changing Face of Football: Racism, Identity and Multiculture in the English Game. Oxford: Berg, 2001

Abstract: The line between British and English was clearly drawn in a colonial setting, but it was undoubtedly one of the several contexts in which a British identity seemed to separate itself from other sor...

Miners and Millhands: Work, Culture and Politics in Princely Mysore:

Abstract: of morality, illegitimacy, and autonomy, both sexual and economic. Thus women were prepared to be stigmatized as unchaste in order to escape remarriage and retain control of their late husband's property, as well as sexual autonomy. Simultaneously, as she points out, women were speaking with two voices: one supportive of the patriarchal order and structured within class, but another subversive of it. Chowdhry highlights women's defiance and preservation of individual interest and self-help without openly confronting hierarchies of power and authority, though acts of open defiance were not absent.

'Rights over Wastelands' and New Narratives of the Paraiyan Past (1860-1900) ∗

Abstract: The rural world of nineteenth-century Tamil Nadu was highly diversified in terms of land control and ownership. Academic efforts have largely focused on the various claims to ‘privileged’ landownership. This overemphasis on the authority, rights, claims and protests of the ‘privileged’ too often negated the prospects of a serious introspection into the twin issues of agrestic servitude and landlessness. The present article is concerned with one group of rural labourers, who in nineteenthcentury Tamil Nadu were essentially regarded as ‘agrestic serfs’. The Paraiyans were mostly landless labourers and depended for their livelihood on the dominant rural groups. Their existence as a depressed social category, denied of all privileges including landownership, provokes a serious investigation into the operation and mechanism of the institution of mirasi in the Tamil country. The definition of ‘waste’ was mired in terms of complexities emanating from the classification of lands, which were essentially referred to as anadu karambu or gramanattams. These complexities in course of the nineteenth century had fashioned differing sets of opinions within the conservative and reformist sections of the colonial bureaucracy. Such contradictions alongside discussions on the hidden ‘Paraiyan history’ have been explored to understand the broader issues centring around the ‘Sedentary Paraiyan’ as well as the ‘Slave Paraiyan’.

Imperialism, Nationalism and the Making of the Indian Capitalist Class, 1920–1947

Abstract: Nehru wrote his own autobiography, as did Gandhi, and like Gandhi, many biographies have been written about him. Only this year, two new biographies have appeared, one by Judith Brown and another by Shashi Thakur. Nehru’s life is fairly well known. Each generation makes its own assessment of the heroes of the past. Nanda, despite his deep admiration for Nehru, admits that his centralized system of planning did not provide enough scope for pophlar participation, that land reforms were neglected, and that the license permit Raj and too much bureaucratic control stifled economic growth. Nanda could have also mentioned that while Nehru’s emphasis on higher technical education and management which led to the foundation of IITs and IIMs has to be acknowledged, primary and mass education were neglected in the initial years of independence, as was primary health care. There is an interesting essay on Nehru as a inan of letters. In the final chapter, Nanda sums up Nehru’s contribution to the freedom movement, to nation building and to world peace.

Medical Encounters in British India

Abstract: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION SECTION I: THE MULTIPLICITY OF DOMAINS 1. PROBING HISTORY OF MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH IN INDIA: A STUDY OF ENCOUNTERS AT MULTIPLE SITES (DEEPAK KUMAR) 2. ANATOMICAL KNOWLEDGE AND EAST-WEST EXCHANGE (JAYANTA BHATTACHARYA) 3. FROM BAZAAR MEDICINE TO HOSPITAL MEDICINE: CALOMEL, INDIA AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE, C.1750-C.1800 (MARK HARRISON) 4. DIETETICS, MIMESIS, AND ALTERITY: FOOD IN ASIAN MEDICAL TRADITIONS AND EAST-WEST EXCHANGES (DAVID ARNOLD) 5. HEALTH AND SOVEREIGNTY IN THE NEW ASIA: THE DECLINE AND RISE OF THE TROPICS (SUNIL AMRITH) SECTION II: THE DIFFERING PERCEPTIONS 6. CHOLERA, HEROIC THERAPIES, AND RISE OF HOMOEOPATHY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY INDIA (DHRUB KUMAR SINGH) 7. KNOWING HEALTH AND MEDICINE: A CASE STUDY OF BENARES, C.1900-1950 (MADHURI SHARMA) 8. HEALING THE SICK AND THE DESTITUTE: PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES AND MEDICAL MISSIONS IN NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURY TRAVANCORE (RAJ SEKHAR BASU) 9. A MIXED RECORD: MALARIA CONTROL IN BOMBAY PRESIDENCY, 1900-1935 (MRIDULA RAMANNA) 10. VULNERABILITY OF WOMEN TO BACILLUS: MYTHS AND REALITY IN INDIA (1890-1950) (BIKRAMADITYA K. CHOUDHARY) 11. NEGOTIATING SUBALTERNITY: SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF TUBERCULOSIS IN COLONIAL AND POST-COLONIAL INDIA (ARABINDA SAMANTA) 12. 'DELIVERING THE "MURDERED CHILD": INFANTICIDE, ABORTION AND CONTRACEPTION IN COLONIAL INDIA' (INDIRA CHOWDHURY) SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY NOTE ON CONTRIBUTORS

Young Muslim Women and Sport: the Impact of Identity Work

Abstract: This article focuses on the relationship between young Muslim women’s identity work and their involvement in sport and physical activities. The concept of ‘identity work’ is used to underline the dynamic aspect of identity construction. The study is based on life‐history interviews with 21 Muslim women with immigrant backgrounds living in Norway, aged between 16 and 25 years. The study demonstrates how young Muslim women’s identity work is influenced by their ethnic and religious collective identities. While some of the women situate themselves clearly within their ethnic identity, others challenge the boundaries of their ethnic identity and some of the young women choose to focus more on religion than ethnicity. The study illustrates two major patterns that link young Muslim women’s identity work to their involvement in sport and physical activity. First, being a young woman and participating in sport is seen as a challenge to the boundaries of their ethnic identities. Therefore, young women who...

Digging women: towards a new agenda for feminist critiques of mining

Abstract: This article addresses how a contemporary feminist perspective can problematise the ancient human endeavour of mining, and indicates which direction research on the interface between extractive industries and gender could usefully take. Feminist research has confronted masculinist discourses of mining by questioning the naturalisation of men as industrial workers, and by illustrating the gender-selective impacts of capitalist mining projects. The article probes the sources of these masculinist discourses of mining and reinterprets these critiques. Most importantly, by highlighting the diverse range of extractive practices that reflect different stages of surplus accumulation, it encourages a rethinking of mining itself as an area of feminine work. Finally, it makes tentative suggestions as to how the field of women and mining might be examined and addressed by contemporary feminists. A postcapitalist feminist critique of mining would hinge upon revealing women's agency in mining and revisit the convention...

Betwixt and Between: Trajectories and Projects of Transmigration

Abstract: There were a number of problems with the anthropology of transmigration in the 1990s which have gradually been addressed. It is now well understood that transmigration is not a singular phenomenon: there are different ways of being transnational, and transnationalism affects people in different ways—e.g. by gender. There was also a tendency to treat transmigration as a static phenomenon, whereas it is a long-term process which may be viewed, from an analytical perspective, as a trajectory, or rather as a multiplicity of potential trajectories. The paper examines these trajectories in the light of various terms such as cosmopolitan, translocal, hybrid, and l'homme des confins that have been used to characterise actors who in some sense transcend traditional boundaries. Frequently, however, these terms are employed in ways which tend to decontextualise and conflate different personal and institutional subject positionings, and in doing so analyses may overlook the extent to which transmigrants remain bound ...

The green waves of environmental sustainability in sport

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework surrounding the typology of environmental sustainability efforts made within the sport industry. We draw from multiple theoretical fra...

Saltdean can't cope: Protests against asylum-seekers in an English seaside suburb

Abstract: During 2002-3, the British Government, responding to popular moral panic about asylum-seekers, sought drastically to reduce the numbers trying to enter the country. Long-term policy aimed to process all asylum applications overseas, but meantime this had to be undertaken in dispersed induction centres in Britain itself. Proposals to create such centres invariably met with opposition from local residents. The article documents one such protest, in a suburb along the South Coast of England, demonstrates the localist and cosmopolitan discourses employed by anti- and pro-asylum-seeker groups, and considers the extent to which the former overlapped with that of the extreme right British National Party. By examining how those opposed to the centre framed their opposition and how they sought to distance themselves from charges of racism, the study explores the significance of such protests for our understanding of xenophobia in contemporary middle-class Britain and asks how their denials of racism might be interpreted.