{"title":"Heteronormativity and its Private and Public Balancing in Sri Lanka","authors":"Subham Ghosh, Smriti Singh","doi":"10.1177/02627280241272432","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02627280241272432","url":null,"abstract":"Within the public sphere of South Asian countries, prominent movements to formally recognise gender diversity and decriminalise same-sex relations have had effects in Nepal and India, but same-sex relations remain a criminal offence in Sri Lanka and other South Asian countries. Against this background, the article analyses an early novel by the Sri Lankan Canadian writer Shyam Selvadurai, showing how prohibition and tolerance go rather uneasily hand in hand within the public and private spheres of Sri Lanka, creating anxious precarities in the everyday lives of individuals, their families and supporters within a heteronormative framework. Since formal legal recognition per se can never fully guarantee the freedom to live one’s life as one desires, the article discusses, in light of Selvadurai’s work, to what extent private individual strategies of navigation and self-management remain crucial for non-heteronormative individuals.","PeriodicalId":44525,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Research","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142183057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: M.K. Raghavendra, The Writing of the Nation by Its Elite: The Politics of Anglophone Indian Literature in the Global Age","authors":"Devapriya Sanyal","doi":"10.1177/02627280241272354","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02627280241272354","url":null,"abstract":"M.K. Raghavendra, The Writing of the Nation by Its Elite: The Politics of Anglophone Indian Literature in the Global Age (London and New York: Routledge, 2022), vii + 221 pp.","PeriodicalId":44525,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Research","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142183058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Pallavi Chakravarty, Boundaries and Belonging: Rehabilitating Refugees in India, 1947–71","authors":"Werner Menski","doi":"10.1177/02627280241272353","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02627280241272353","url":null,"abstract":"Pallavi Chakravarty, Boundaries and Belonging: Rehabilitating Refugees in India, 1947–71 (Delhi: Primus Books, 2022), xvi + 412 pp.","PeriodicalId":44525,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Research","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142183056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mobilising Kinship as a Modern Network: Syrian Christian Family Associations","authors":"Nidhin Donald","doi":"10.1177/02627280241241545","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02627280241241545","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the meanings, practices and socio-historical contexts of kudumbayogams (family associations) among the large, relatively prosperous, multi-denominational community of Syrian Christians in Kerala, who are today spread across the globe. Kudumbayogams present new ways of mobilising and displaying family, kinship and community ties. The article argues that while earlier socio-economic shifts inaugurated the spatial dispersal and reconstitution of Syrian Christian patrilineal families and households, they also led to the formation of family associations, alongside other modern associational forms. Based on a detailed analysis of printed family histories, and allied documents, this study conceptualises kudumbayogam as a modern fortification of attempts to resolve the ambiguities of changing times by tethering a Christian brand of upper-caste social conservatism with ‘neoliberal’ individualism. This modern fortification mobilises households and families through an array of structures and activities that seek to foster cultural continuity, communication, conflict resolution and charity among its members. In the process, kudumbayogams actively blunt intra-group contradictions and highlight inter-group differences.","PeriodicalId":44525,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Research","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140810989","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Boycott of Foreign Goods in Premchand’s Stories","authors":"Canan Yogurt, Aykut Kismir","doi":"10.1177/02627280241240033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02627280241240033","url":null,"abstract":"This article showcases that studies on Hindi and Urdu literature are also being conducted outside South Asia and that elsewhere, too, such literary studies and socio-political analyses are being combined in quite specific ways. Boycott of foreign goods was one of the most important parts of colonial India’s freedom struggle and many intellectuals from the literary and art worlds expressed their views on it. In his Hindi and Urdu stories, Munshi Premchand used his unique narrative technique, critical perspective on social events, and deep understanding of Indian society also to comment on the boycott of foreign goods. The article examines how such reflections of India’s struggle for independence manifest in two of Premchand’s lesser-known stories in which he argued for boycotting foreign goods. Our analysis portrays Premchand as an activist writer, who chose common people’s language to present gendered social documents, in a form akin to oral history, as his specific contribution to India’s freedom from foreign rule.","PeriodicalId":44525,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Research","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140837041","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Drug Dispensation by ‘Signature Pharmacists’ in South Asia","authors":"Nicholas Lassi","doi":"10.1177/02627280241240031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02627280241240031","url":null,"abstract":"The phenomenon of ‘signature pharmacists’ in South Asia has allowed allopathic prescription medication to be dispensed without the necessary medical knowledge, specifically of drug interactions, dosages and side effects. This practice, in which qualified pharmacists delegate their professional inputs to often unqualified and unsupervised sales staff, persists due to complicity among pharmacists, other healthcare professionals and regulatory officials. The article discusses the extent of this significant risk to public health in South Asia and argues that pharmacy enforcement and education standards should be reformed to address these huge challenges to ensure consumer protection and the general public’s welfare. While the advice is that regulatory authorities should intensify their supervision and inspection efforts to ensure registered pharmacists actively participate in regular pharmacy operations, the article also identifies predicaments related to corruption that are difficult to tackle.","PeriodicalId":44525,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Research","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140804274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Nadeera Rupesinghe, Law Making in Dutch Sri Lanka: Navigating Pluralities in a Colonial Society","authors":"Punsara Amarasinghe","doi":"10.1177/02627280241241512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02627280241241512","url":null,"abstract":"Nadeera Rupesinghe, Law Making in Dutch Sri Lanka: Navigating Pluralities in a Colonial Society (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2023), 301 pp.","PeriodicalId":44525,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Research","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140583264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Food City: Ahmedabad as a Globalised Vegetarian Space","authors":"Jerene Sarah George","doi":"10.1177/02627280241240008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02627280241240008","url":null,"abstract":"Existing studies, highlighting that dining out forms an important part of public cultures in India, have focused on the growing influence of consumer cultures on India’s middle classes and their identity formation. However, insufficient scholarly attention has been paid to the distinctly different ways in which middle-class experiences with modernity and cosmopolitanism unfold across different cities in India and in the worldwide South Asian diaspora. This article argues that in the major Gujarati city of Ahmedabad, middle-class engagement with new and global culinary practices is couched within dominant, regionally coloured vegetarian cultures, redefining vegetarianism as integral to the project of modern middle-class identity among certain upwardly mobile social groups. This ethnographic study of popular pizzerias sheds light on the transformative capacity and significance of vegetarian food. From being a symbol of exclusionary bourgeois hegemonic cultures, it has turned into a consumer item regarded as accessible and desirable for supporting middle-class aspirations to experience ‘global’ forms of consumption. The concluding analysis suggests that, since there are many diverse, cosmopolitan urban spaces like Ahmedabad, more research is needed especially on how global Gujarati food culture has been developing.","PeriodicalId":44525,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Research","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140583551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Amit Ranjan and Diotima Chattoraj (Eds), Migration, Regional Autonomy, and Conflicts in Eastern South Asia. Searching for a Home(land)","authors":"B. Mohan Nikhil Teja","doi":"10.1177/02627280241241511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02627280241241511","url":null,"abstract":"Amit Ranjan and Diotima Chattoraj (Eds), Migration, Regional Autonomy, and Conflicts in Eastern South Asia. Searching for a Home(land) (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), xxiii + 337 pp.","PeriodicalId":44525,"journal":{"name":"South Asia Research","volume":"57 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140583615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}