Showing papers in "Contributions to Indian Sociology in 2002"
TL;DR: This paper explored the deployment of globes, maps, and bodyscapes in patriotic visual practices in colonial and post-colonial India and suggested that popular cartography is marked by the convergence of two modalities of seeing India, a disenchanted geographic habit in which its territory is visualised as a geo-body, and an enchanted somaticism in which India is the affect-laden body of Bharat Mata.
Abstract: This article focuses on the national longing for cartographic form by exploring the deployment of globes, maps, and bodyscapes in patriotic visual practices in colonial and postcolonial India. I suggest that popular cartography is marked by the convergence of two modalities of seeing India—a disenchanted geographic habit in which its territory is visualised as a geo-body, and an enchanted somaticism in which India is the affect-laden body of Bharat Mata. Patriotic cartography transforms the nation's territory into an object of visual piety, even as it makes more visible a hitherto unfamiliar entity—the map of India. But most of all, popular patriotic cartography encourages the citizen-beholder to engage the nation's territory corporeally, affectively, and interestedly, so that it is not some empty social space, but the motherland) worth dying for. Patriotism in modernity requires peculiarly novel technologies of persuasion. Maps of the national territory are among the most intriguing—and compelling—of these.
63 citations
TL;DR: In Bollywood, the climax of most popular Indian films is the intense exchange of gazes between the lover and the beloved as discussed by the authors, which not only expresses sexual desire but also signifies a physical interaction through vision.
Abstract: Following a sequence of visually stunning dance routines accompanied by sounds of sung poetry, the climax for most popular Indian films is the intense exchange of gazes between the lover and beloved. This exchange of penetrating gazes not only expresses sexual desire but, in a move beyond voyeurism, signifies a physical interaction through vision. This intense and even tactile gaze relies on two different notions of vision: that of drishti, activated in Indian religious contexts, and of nazar, so essential for the exposition of love in Persianate poetry. The lyrics of film songs rely for their affectivity on these notions of drishti and nazar. Committed to memory by film viewers, this repertoire of film songs generates a poetics of sight and visual display within the film-going public. By framing and focusing in on eyes and thereby simulating moments of intense visual interaction, Bollywood film directors have poetically nuanced a modern visual genre for contemporary Indian audiences which actively employ...
26 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the relationship between Ayurveda and the modern market through an analysis of decisions regarding the product profiling, positioning, and packaging of Ayurate medicines by its leading manufacturer, Dabur.
Abstract: This article seeks to understand the encounter between Ayurveda and the modern market through an analysis of decisions regarding the product profiling, positioning and packaging of Ayurvedic medicines by its leading manufacturer, Dabur. These seemingly mundane, economic decisions are seen here as expressions of a deep operation of power, mediated through culture. The analysis takes us beyond the simplified picture of the rise of modern biomedicine as the inevitable and onward march of rationality, or that of Ayurveda as the helpless victim of modernity. It argues that the multiple strategies adopted by the Ayurvedic pharmaceutical companies, in response to the changing conditions of the market, can be viewed in larger terms as its response to the changing nature of the field of power. This identifies the 'moment of confrontation', the 'moment of withdrawal' and the 'moment of diversion' as some of the strategic responses. While these strategies did succeed in creating and retaining a foothold for Ayurvedi...
24 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the theoretical process which goes into the construction of a communitarian collective inexorably leads to a position where "identity" and "history" are conflated to disable democratic movements.
Abstract: Can democratic rights be claimed for cultural communities without subverting the first principle of democracy? What theoretical assumptions have to be made—implicitly ifnot explicitly—to posit the sociological existence of a cultural collective as the first step towards mounting a political movement critical of a liberal system of governance founded upon the idea of citizenship? This article tries to address these questions through a textual analysis of two essays arguing for the political rights of 'cultural communities'as a means towards enhancing a democratic political culture. It concludes with the argument that the theoretical process which goes into the construction of a communitarian collective inexorably leads to a position where 'identity' and 'history' are conflated to disable democratic movements.
19 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the visual representation of the ideal of secularism in the popular print culture of the Nehruvian era of Indian nation-building in the light of some contemporary controversies.
Abstract: The A. focuses on the visual representation of the ideal of secularism in the popular print culture of the Nehruvian era of Indian nation-building in the light of some contemporary controversies. The analysis reveals a tension between a relatively egalitarian understanding of the principle of unity in diversity, in which all religious traditions are conceived as equivalent sources of truth, and a majoritarian understanding whereby other religions are appropriated to a Hindu order (represented by Mother India, the Mother Goddess, or the Mother Cow). This tension, as well as relations of equivalence, reciprocity and exchange, are illustrated in reference to a set of Sikh calendars of the period. These calendars instantiate the delicate relations of similarity and difference, affinity and hostility, between the Hindu and Sikh faiths as constituents of the multireligious society of post-Independence India. The A. also illustrates the process whereby old images are reworked in new contexts, sometimes to provoke the assimilationist/separatist confrontation, but sometimes, on the contrary, to mark a gesture of conciliation.
18 citations
TL;DR: The A. as mentioned in this paper examines the popular, cheaply mass-produced prints known as calendar or bazaar art, going beyond appearances to explore how their value and power is located not just in their visuality as such, but also in their capacity as circulating objects.
Abstract: The A. examines the popular, cheaply mass-produced prints known as calendar or bazaar art, going beyond appearances to explore how their value and power is located not just in their visuality as such, but also in their capacity as circulating objects. He describes how these prints can be seen as sites of intersection between the colonially-derived institution of fine art and what historians have called the bazaar economy. The postcolonial visual regime in which bazaar images circulate is therefore characterised by different but co-existing frames of value and moral-commercial economies. The animated circuits of bazaar icons, the A. argues, have served to shore up relations of credit and exchange in the informal social, moral-ethical and commercial networks of the bazaar, obviating the distinction between sacred and commercial forms of value. However, there are tensions between the role of images in the bazaar and the schema of aesthetic judgement within fine art. The A. focuses on the way in which performative and bodily engagements, integral to a ritual and devotional relationship with images, have been denigrated within an aesthetic schema which privileges a distanced, disembodied gaze. This paves the way for a re-examination of the notion of the fetish, asking why one of the few categories that speaks to the power of the image as a circulating object rather than as a static sign does so within a moral framework of denigration and abnormality. The A. relates this denigration to the historical conditions of this concept's appearance, and the specific ideological work it has had to do within a European bourgeois-liberal public sphere.
18 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the study of popular culture points us to modern acts of discernment, identity-formation, and passionate activism, and that these individual acts harness the agency of participants in shaping their societies and scrutinising their nation-states.
Abstract: Everyday acts of seeing and knowing enable persons as actors and consumers to constitute their identities and construct meaning from their world. Taken in the aggregate, these individual acts harness the agency of participants in shaping their societies and scrutinising their nation-states. The argument implicit in these two statements is that the study of popular culture points us to modern acts of discernment, identity-formation, and passionate activism. Aggregation matters, for it brings together individual and (various) collective interests. Working through the familiar and the new, the local and the global, popular culture refracts and mediates these interactions and their aggregation.It is through popular cultural artifacts that historians may trace evidence of the ways in which the agency of viewers/consumers impels a civil society to grapple with change, to process change through indigenous sociologies of knowledge so that it can be naturalised and accommodated. I would argue that the visual realm...
18 citations
TL;DR: In the 1920s, W.E. Gladstone Solomon, the nationalist sympathising director of Bombay's J.J. School of Art, provided a remarkable description of that institution's blossoming hybridity: "The Western buildings in which different departments of the School are housed almost seem, to knowledgeable eyes, to have been draped by the hands of their Indian students with invisible saris".
Abstract: In the 1920s, W.E. Gladstone Solomon, the nationalist sympathising director of Bombay's J.J. School of Art, provided a remarkable description of that institution's blossoming hybridity: ‘… the Western buildings in which different departments of the School are housed almost seem, to knowledgeable eyes, to have been draped by the hands of their Indian students with invisible “saris” … in the depths of their dark eyes are the fires of enlightenment, but it is a Secret of their own Country that they are engaged in unravelling in the School of Art’. This ‘partialisation’ and failure of the ‘redemptive’ colonial aesthetic project forms the core of this article which will attempt to place the interventions of the colonial state alongside enduring practices of vision and a radically reconfigured political context, all of which have helped determine the nature of modern India's popular visual archive.
18 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine visual representations of the nation produced by state and non-state actors in post-colonial India through an examination of how'moving pictures' of Indianness have been produced and deployed over the past 50 years, exploring the formation and transformations of the postcolonial nationalist imagination.
Abstract: The article examines visual representations of the nation produced by state and non-state actors in postcolonial India. Through an examination of how ‘moving pictures’ of Indianness have been produced and deployed over the past 50 years, I explore the formation and transformations of the postcolonial nationalist imagination. I focus on the genre of non-commercial film and video and compare the image-making efforts of the Nehruvian developmentalist state with those of the contemporary liberalised state, and also with images of Indian identity produced by non-state actors. The first section examines the state's vision through the documentary films produced by the state-owned Films Division of India and the audiovisual fillers and shorts produced by the Department of Audio-Visual Publicity. The state and the activities that it undertakes on behalf of the nation are foregrounded in these visual representations of Indianness, which is depicted as a relation between an enlightened, transcendent state and a dive...
17 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyse the revolutionary impact of the processes of mechanical reproduction on artistic production and formation of modern identity in colonial India and argue that the very nature of mass reproduction itself contributed to the weakening and diluting of the monolithic character of elite nationalism.
Abstract: The A. analyses the revolutionary impact of the processes of mechanical reproduction on artistic production and formation of modern identity in colonial India. Mechanical reproduction, with endless repeatability as its chief characteristic, turned India into an iconic society. It affected the elite as much as the underclass, as elite artists vied with artisans to capture the greatly expanding market in cheap prints. Mechanical reproduction arrived in India in two basic forms: as a source for European masterpieces for Indian artists to copy, and as inexpensive images available even to the poorest. Unlike in the West, the printed image in India rivalled painting, thereby challenging its aura of authenticity. As the pioneering printmaking firms, Calcutta Art and the Poona Chitrashala Press show, mechanical prints helped forge the Indian nation by creating a common visual culture. However the very nature of mass reproduction itself contributed to the weakening and diluting of the monolithic character of elite nationalism.
12 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze the ways in which new audiovisual technologies may organize and challenge patterns of seeing for purposes of political mobilisation and ideological indoctrination, and the context of the context is discussed.
Abstract: This article analyses the ways in which new audiovisual technologies may organise and challenge patterns of seeing for purposes of political mobilisation and ideological indoctrination. The context...
TL;DR: This paper examined a women's organisation in South India, which is linked to a Dravidian social movement and explored the way the movement repro duces and challenges the social terrain on which some women are expected to participate in reforming Tamil society.
Abstract: The proliferation of women's organisations, particularly those attached to larger social movements or state initiatives, necessitates ethnographically situated examinations of the way women's issues and gendered experiences are constituted and understood within specific cultural contexts. This article examines a women's organisation in South India, which is linked to a Dravidian social movement. I explore the way the movement repro duces and challenges the social terrain on which some women are expected to participate in reforming Tamil society. The reformist character of the movement evokes ambivalent responses by women to key elements of its ideology, which calls for the dismantling of caste, and an end to Hindu hegemony characterised by religious dogmatism and Brah minical superiority. The incorporation of feminist discourse into their ideology signals the transnational character of regionally based movements, and provokes further con sideration of the way feminist discourse itself is deployed cross-cu...
TL;DR: In this article, a subset of 20th century images in which the divine monkey appears as afurless, humanised, and (of late) heavily-muscled hero with only vestigial simian characteristics is presented.
Abstract: Hanuman, simian sidekick to the principal human hero of the Ramayana tradition, has evolved within comparatively recent times into one of the most popular and ubiquitous of Hindu deities. He is revered by tens of millions as their ishta-deva or ‘chosen, personal deity’, and his shrines have proliferated in both urban and rural areas. The visual representation of this deity has likewise evolved conventions that, through the mass reproduction and gradual homogenisation characteristic of 20th century popular art, have crystallised in a number of readily-recognisable icons. After briefly surveying the range of Hanuman's historical representations, this essay focuses on a subset of 20th century images in which the divine monkey appears as afurless, humanised, and (of late) heavily-muscled hero with only vestigial simian characteristics, and situates these images within the context of a number of contemporary trends in popular visual culture. Finally, it attempts to link this new visual convention to a widespre...
TL;DR: The authors examines the production of visually spectacular ancestral houses by migrant merchants in colonial South Asia between 1860 and 1930, as well as the recent transformation of these now-abandoned homes into sites of tourism.
Abstract: This article examines the production of visually spectacular ancestral houses by migrant merchants in colonial South Asia between 1860 and 1930, as well as the recent transformation of these now-abandoned homes into sites of tourism. I primarily consider the elaborately painted houses belonging to the migrant Marwari traders of north India in the Shekhawati region of eastern Rajasthan, and comment upon the south Indian ornamental houses built by the Chettiar merchants in Madras Presidency, now known as Tamil Nadu. I argue that these empty mansions are being rapidly appropriated into new objects of visual consumption through international tourism, thereby transforming spaces of the private into spaces of public access. Visual practices in India have to be understood as part of a global and capitalist modernity, and not just in terms of India's pre-modern past. Through practices of tourism, spatial geographies of diasporic identity formation are being re-created through a visual orientation of the past.
TL;DR: In this paper, the formation and gendering of Indian nationalist ideologies of citizenship through an examination of suffrage debates in India in the period 1917 to the 1940s is explored. But the debates surrounding the vote as a measure of equality, disclose complex intersecting layers of socio-political forces-nationalist, colonialist, feminist, masculinist and conservative.
Abstract: This article explores the formation and gendering of Indian nationalist ideologies of citizenship through an examination of suffrage debates in India in the period 1917 to the 1940s. The article draws attention to citizenship as a terrain of struggle, where a multitude of socio-political forces and ideological formulations exist in unequal and conflicting relationships. It starts from the premise that the defining parameters of citizen ship in India emerged in the historical context of the anticolonial movement and the assertion of a national self-identity. The 'vote' assumed significance in this context as a claim to equality and to the political rights of citizenship that were denied to colonised subjects. However, the debates surrounding the vote as a measure of equality, disclose complex intersecting layers of socio-political forces-nationalist, colonialist, feminist, masculinist and conservative. This article focuses on the debates over women's franchise and the manner in which gendered meanings came...
TL;DR: In this paper, Pranjape makes an attempt (mainly based on Eric Erikson) to search fosocio-psychological factors in the making of Babasaheb Ambedkar identity and ideological perspective.
Abstract: A.C. Pranjape makes an attempt (mainly based on Eric Erikson) to search fosocio-psychological factors in the making of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s identity and ideological perspective. Ambedkar received the training of self-respect, confidence and religiosity in his family since his father was a Subedar-Major in the army and his parents belonged to the Kabir cult. His father taught him English translation. After matriculation when he met K.A. Keluskar, a copy of his book Life of Gautama Buddha was presented to the young Bhim. He went to the US and the UK, lands of liberty and prosperity. While abroad, his teachers John Dewey, Seligman, and Edwin Cannon influenced him the most. In the Govern-
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss Ambedkar's work for the education of the downtrodden and for their empowerment, and identify greed and betrayal as the main factors responsible for the present state of the movement.
Abstract: the rule of Dharma. To overcome these problems, Ambedkar launched a movement for awakening Dalits, launching protests and struggling for power. Eleanor Zelliot discusses Ambedkar’s work for the education of the downtrodden and for their empowerment. J.P. Mishra notes that political power is the solution of the Dalits’ problems. In Ambedkar’s scheme for the social transformation of Dalits, Yogendra Yadav sees three instruments, viz., use of state power, progressive legislation and spread of education. Regarding the post-Ambedkarian movement, Anand Teltumbde identifies the tendencies towards greed and betrayal among the Ambedkarites as the main factors responsible for the present state of the movement.
TL;DR: The use of first names-Pat, Ben, Graham and Philip-by Bob reflects a new practice of writing about masculinities that confronts second name usage as the only ’legitimate’ inscription of identities as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Vic Seidler (The Achilles Heel Reader, London: Routledge, 1991), Jonathan Rutherford (Men’s Silences, London: Macmillan, 1992) and others have addressed the initial feelings of guilt that underlay many men’s reaction to feminism, producing a muting or renouncing of their masculinity and a further estrangement from their own lived experiences. Anti-sexist groups need to work their way through the issue of women’s oppression and a more conscious orientation toward the self. Agenetic subjectivities cannot work through self denial. Instead, the splits between pro-feminist and patriarchal discourses which demand contradictory things need to be ’outed’ from the closet. One of the really striking things about this book is not just the way experience is privileged as a way of understanding a being in the world a la Seidler and Rutherford, but also how the experience of pro-feminism produces new practices and ways of being in the world. The usage of first names-Pat, Ben, Graham and Philip-by Bob reflects a new practice of writing about masculinities that confronts second name usage as the only ’legitimate’ inscription of identities