Organizer: Amrita Basu, Amherst College
Chair: Arjun Guneratne, Macalaster College
Rajmohan Ramanathapillai, Gettysburg College
Classical Tamil poetry from the Cankam period, the first and the third century,
offers a precious opportunity to see the richness of the landscape and wildlife
in South India. This poetry also reveals that elephants were highly valued.
Puranuru, or war poetry, within the Cankam era, describes the exterior world
of politics and battlefields, with glorious heroes referring to elephants
nearly 150 times in 400 songs. But what is the relationship between elephants
and these war-loving kings? Kailasapathy argues that the necessity for celebrating
elephants is to give attention to the “strength and power of the devastation they
cause”. Rutting male elephants were feared and respected. Heroes of war
jealously admired the unpredictability and wrath of a rutting elephant. Bards
compared these elephants to the indiscriminate character of ruthless fighters.
To slay a rutting elephant or to be slain by it in combat brought immortality
to a hero. The notion of maram, which means valor and bravery, refers equally
to a hero or elephant combatant. Above all, the use of elephants in war, to
secure one’s kingdom or expand its power and wealth, was pragmatic. But
how did elephant worship in India evolve from this context as it came out
of the cruelty of exposing this animal to warfare? This paper will argue that
as nature worship came out of necessity in the Vedic period, the worship of
elephant in South India and India general was shaped by a necessity of a different
kind.
Indivar Kamtekar, Jawaharlal Nehru University
The 1940s are usually seen in Indian history as the time of independence
from British rule. This paper moves away from the common obsession with imperialism
and nationalism to investigate the enduring effects of the Second World War
on the relationship between Indian society and the state. Looking at the
changes in the army and police forces, it shows how the coercive power of the
state actually increased throughout the decade. The paper also traces how new
forms of government activity, like rationing, began in this period. Economic
controls—often
assumed in independent India to be the outcome of a socialist ideology—were
actually sired by a war economy. The economic policy structure under which the
citizens of independent India lived ‘til the liberalization of 1991 was
a child of the Second World War. And the war economy also fathered other children,
who grew up to have lives of their own: very high rates of taxation, sales tax
as a major source of revenue, very widespread tax evasion, and a bureaucratic
mindset convinced that businessmen should do as they are told. The world-war
mindsets encouraged living with shortages rather than overcoming them, damaged
the ideology and practice of the market, and opened the door to the “License-Permit
Raj”. During the decade associated with independence, Indian society came
to be held more tightly within what was for some Indians an unwelcome embrace
of the state.
Taberez A. Neyazi, National University of Singapore
The paper is an attempt to understand the changing face of Hindi newspapers
through a case study of Dainik Bhaskar, that claims to be the largest read
newspaper in India with multi-editions and being simultaneously present in Gujarati
and English languages also. Through a qualitative content analysis of Dainik
Bhaskar from 1980 to 2007 and participant observation to explore the activities
in the newsroom, life of reporters, photographers, sub-editors, and editors,
the paper unravels the changing dynamics of news-making practices. Furthermore,
the advent of new media and the convergence of offline and online editions of
Hindi newspapers are making readers conscious about local issues and problems,
but at the same time, global response has been also visible to the local problem.
The process of local news-making practices and the people involved in the process
clearly reveal the cultural and political significance of Hindi newspapers and
their orientation toward “reflexive modernity” that belies the thesis
of “cultural imperialism”. Such a conclusion is based on my fieldwork
experiences in Bhopal, India, and my long term involvement with people associated
with Dainik Bhaskar.
Cherubim A. Quizon, Seton Hall University
This project seeks to combine available Web 2.0 classroom technologies as
tools for teaching about the peoples and cultures of Southeast Asia by following
the cultural and historical trajectory of textiles and dress that ostensibly
belong to a well-defined “tribe” or ethnic group. When students
learn that intergroup relations in Southeast Asia follow dynamic models, such
as that between upstream-downstream communities, Leach’s formulation of
gumsa-gumlao modes of self-identification, or as performative roles of transgender
individuals outside ascribed models of citizenship, it is equally important
to rethink longstanding assumptions about how visual signals of a “tribe” are
often mapped onto a single “tribal art style”. By following the “life
cycle”, so to speak, of specific artifacts of cloth and clothing; by approaching
them as material culture agents that derive multiple meanings in different contexts;
and by actively relating these to a variety of textual material (from early
modern travelers accounts to contemporary ethnographies), the project seeks
to delineate both the fluidity of ethnic boundaries on one hand, and on the
other, the ideological persistence of late-modern identity projects. Teaching
advanced undergraduate students about the dynamics of Southeast Asian ethnicity,
gender, and national identity using textile material culture includes tapping
resources now on the internet that were once the purview of specialists. Consequently,
intellectual property issues, responsible digital scholarship and the notion
of a “creative commons” will also be addressed.
Robin Tatu, University of Hawai'i, Manoa
Composed since the early 18th century, Balinese babad are works that narrate
the history of extended family groups, with the earliest manuscripts detailing
the lineage of royal dynasties. Despite the dissolution of local kingdoms, the
formation of the Republic of Indonesia, and the rise of modern academic history,
babad remain for many Balinese an important means for defining the past. These
works are notable for their fluidity, continuously being recomposed as well
as presented in oral recitations and theatrical productions.
In this paper, I examine the politics of history-making in Bali and the ways
in which babad are today employed by members of all levels in the society, often
as a way to lay claim to status and heredity rights. I argue that to gain a
more complete understanding of these negotiations, we need to look beyond the
written works to the uses of babad as they are revised and updated in new editions,
chanted and analyzed in pepaosan recitation, and excerpted and embodied in topeng
dance-drama theatre, all within a religious context. As one example of a living
local historical tradition, Balinese babad should offer insights for the study
of other non-western historical traditions.
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