This article claims that the history of modernity in twentieth-century Kerala is inextricably bound up with the histories of migration and transnationalisms in the region. It argues that a distinction can be made between the earlier and later phases of the migratory and transnational experience. The former allowed for the ‘cosmopolitanism of ideas’ that imagined hitherto-non-existent communities across cultural boundaries and ‘competing cosmopolitanisms’ in the region. Post-independence, however, altered political conditions that impacted migration and transnationalism and produced the ‘cosmopolitanism of duty’, which works with fairly fixed ideas about the national and community/family values and aims for flexibility in negotiating these worlds. These have had distinct effects on modernity in Kerala.

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En-Gendering Individuals: The Language of Re-Forming in Twentieth Century Keralam

Migration, transnationalism and modernity: thinking of Kerala’s many cosmopolitanisms

This paper investigates the emergence of ‘internationalised’ schools as a form of middle-class aspiration in Kochi, India. It complements recent literature on the growth of international schools catering for host country elites, and shows how private schools are actively engaged in extending the aspiration for internationalised education among the city’s middle classes. The article shows how internationalised schooling has penetrated beyond Indian metropoles into secondary cities. It provides a detailed ethnographic account of how a private school has rebranded itself as an ‘internationalised’ school, involving the introduction of new practices and the repackaging of the school’s old nationalist project.

‘Keeping up with the time’: rebranding education and class formation in globalising India

Contentious Ethics Creativity and Persuasion among Environmental Organizers in South India

Many studies assume that dance develops as a bearer of tradition through iconic continuity (Downey 2005; Hahn 2007; Meduri 1996, 2004; Srinivasan 2007, 2011, Zarrilli 2000). In some such studies, lapses in Iconic continuity are highlighted to demonstrate how “tradition” is “constructed”, lacking substantive historical character or continuity (Meduri 1996; Srinivasan 2007, 2012). In the case of Mohiniyattam – a classical dance of Kerala, India – understanding the form’s tradition as built on Iconic transfers of semiotic content does not account for the overarching trajectory of the forms’ history. Iconic replication of the form as it passed from teacher to student was largely absent in its recreation in the early 20th century. Simply, there were very few dancers available to teach the older practice to new dancers in the 1960s. And yet, Mohiniyattam dance is certainly considered to be a “traditional” style to its practitioners. Throughout this paper I argue that the use of Peircean categories to understand the semiotic processes of Mohiniyattam’s reinvention in the 20th century allows us to reconsider tradition as a matter of Iconic continuity. In particular, an examination of transfers of repertoire in the early 20th century demonstrates that the “traditional” and “authentic” character of this dance style resides in semeiotic processes beyond Iconic reiteration; specifically, the “traditional” character of Mohiniyattam is Indexical and Symbolic in nature.

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Radical Recreation: Non-Iconic Movements of Tradition in Keralite Classical Dance

This article reflects on the translation of feminism into the local language in Kerala State, India, over the past twenty-five years. Drawing on Tejaswini Niranjana's claim that the feminist translator located in post-colonial societies lives constantly “in-translation”, I argue that she needs not only to straddle different linguistic registers and political languages, but also to engage in multiple “modes of translation”. I seek to view the efforts at translating feminism into the local language within two distinct modes of translation: the “faithful” mode, which aims for stability of terms created, and is typically associated with pedagogy and high intellectual activity, and the “grounded” mode, seemingly derived out of a broadly modern critical possibility, expressed in local idiom and clearly serving local political ends.

En-Gendering Individuals: The Language of Re-Forming in Twentieth Century Keralam

Citations

Migration, transnationalism and modernity: thinking of Kerala’s many cosmopolitanisms

‘Keeping up with the time’: rebranding education and class formation in globalising India

Contentious Ethics Creativity and Persuasion among Environmental Organizers in South India

Radical Recreation: Non-Iconic Movements of Tradition in Keralite Classical Dance

Being “in-translation” in a post-colony