India ReviewPub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2086407
Farooq Sulehria
{"title":"Lollywood on partition: surprise departures, anticipated arrivals","authors":"Farooq Sulehria","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2086407","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2086407","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Lollywood, or Lahore-based film industry, rarely explores the uneasy topic of the Partition. Hardly a dozen films could be produced in the last seven decades on the Partition. However, a few Lollywood productions – notably Punjabi-language Kartar Singh (1959) – either exploring the Partition or set in the context of the Partition, have surprisingly departed from business-as-usual and state-sponsored discourses whereby India/Hindu is otherified and villainized. It is even more interesting, this paper notes, that all the productions examined for this study drew huge audiences and were indeed successful ventures in terms of popularity. Hence, the contention of this paper is that Lollywood has reproduced as well as resisted the official narratives on the Partition. Arguably, the Partition in Pakistani films has been delineated in its complexity. Most importantly, these productions approach the plight of women with a humanist viewpoint. Methodologically, this paper establishes its argument through a discourse analysis of four films.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"373 - 392"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48911360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2088013
A. Ranjan, Farooq Sulehria
{"title":"Special Issue on Partition – IR 21(3) – Guest Editor Introduction","authors":"A. Ranjan, Farooq Sulehria","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2088013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2088013","url":null,"abstract":"The Partition of the British India in 1947 divided the people and territory on religious and confessional basis.Hence, the Partition further communalized the inter-religious relationships. It also disturbed the syncretic culture of the land. Most importantly, the Partition ever since has been turned into a politicized memory-project aimed at securing and maintaining power. Consequently, even after more than 74 years of the Partition, the political differences and cultural segregation on religious and confessional basis, especially in the case of Hindus and the Muslims, continues poisoning the politics that succeeded the British India. Over the years, as films, press, and television have powerfully evolved in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, these media have acted as means to manufacture, reproduce, recreate, and disseminate the theory of cultural differences based on religion. These cultural apparatuses have become more effective with the rise of majoritarian nationalism in India and Pakistan, in particular. By majority and majoritarian one does not mean the demographic majority. The majoritarianism ideology is usually constructed and thrust upon the others by a small segment of the population, which dominates the country’s political and economic resources and enjoys high social status. The ideas and values of such dominant groups are defined as nationalism, which the other people follow/ “forced” to follow. With the political rise of majoritarian nationalism, the political, social, and cultural chasms between the majority and minority communities have only widened. The majoritarian nationalism has thrived by otherizing the minority groups (for instance, the Muslims in India and the Hindus in Pakistan) as the fifth column undermining the majority community’s existence. Not only does the majority otherize the minorities but in most cases, even the otherized group(s) internalize such otherizations. In turn, minoritized communities otherize the majority. In the process, arguably, the minority groups have embraced conservative, and in some cases, radical ideologies. Like the majority, the minority","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"277 - 285"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49239018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2086404
A. Ranjan
{"title":"Language, religion, and identity: Hindi and Urdu in colonial and post-colonial India","authors":"A. Ranjan","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2086404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2086404","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper traces the history of a widening distance and constructed difference between Hindi and Urdu, and their communal identification in colonial and post-colonial India. It examines how majoritarian politics has shaped the language related issues in independent India. Finally, based on limited fieldwork in the Indian city of Mumbai, this paper tries to find out what language does common people speak.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"286 - 306"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49365058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2086410
Afroja Shoma
{"title":"1947, 1971: history, facts, and fictions","authors":"Afroja Shoma","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2086410","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2086410","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT After 24 years of the partition, the new neighboring country, Bangladesh, was born in 1971 in the Eastern region of India. The division of India and the birth of Bangladesh are, apparently, two unconnected events standing at two different times. However, researchers have found the incidents deeply interlinked. Kabir described partition not as an “event” but as an “ongoing process” while Zamindar termed this catastrophic event “a long partition” as the making of Pakistan and India involves years of social, political, and bureaucratic efforts. One of the main queries of this study is to find how partition is portrayed in Bangladeshi fictions. Do the fictions recognize the Liberation War of Bangladesh as an extension of the partition? In search of answers, the study inspects 12 Bengali novels focusing on partition and the Liberation War. This study is guided by the concept of “long partition” and the “Trauma theory” while it also takes Kabir’s theoretical proposition “Post-amnesia” into account.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"438 - 464"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47797758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2086409
Fahmidul Haq
{"title":"Cinema of Bangladesh: Absence of 1947 and abundance of 1971","authors":"Fahmidul Haq","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2086409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2086409","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Bangladesh got liberated from Pakistan through a bloody war in 1971. But the country was also a victim of 1947 Partition of India. The Partition not only split India also divided Bengal and Punjab. The East Bengal with Muslim majority got a new name East Pakistan. However, the country Pakistan with two wings with 1200 miles of Indian territory in between, could not stick together for long. In the memory of Bangladeshi people 1971 is relatively fresh and in the contemporary Bangladeshi politics 1971 still matters. The winding political trajectory of Bangladesh has influenced the discourses of cinema – making less films on 1947 Partition and more films on 1971 Liberation War. Different art forms have portrayed both 1947 and 1971 – the two historical incidents that heavily shaped the political and cultural nature of Bangladesh. This article will investigate why there is scarcity of 1947 films and abundance of 1971 films in Bangladesh. The article will also scrutinize how dominant historiography engulf the body of the films and discard alternative historiography. In examining these queries, the method would be a historical account of film production and its content and a few cases would be studied to get the picture in depth.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"419 - 437"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43314403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2080489
A. Benvenuti
{"title":"Nehru’s Bandung moment: India and the convening of the 1955 Asian-African conference","authors":"A. Benvenuti","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2080489","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2080489","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores Jawaharlal Nehru’s role in convening the 1955 Bandung Conference. Drawing upon previously embargoed Indian and Western government records, it sheds light on a largely overlooked aspect of Nehru’s Cold War diplomacy. By doing so, it shows that Nehru did not attach, at least initially, much importance to Indonesia’s calls for an Asian-African conference. Only in late 1954 did he show more interest in the Indonesian proposal. Three factors pushed Nehru in this direction: his reluctance to embarrass Indonesia, his concerns about American regional policy and his desire to exploit China’s support for peaceful coexistence. Confronted with renewed regional tensions but able to capitalize on Beijing’s new-found reasonableness, Nehru threw India’s diplomatic weight behind Indonesia’s proposal with the view to furthering his vision of “areas of peace.” Nehru’s “Bandung moment,” however, was short-lived. Although the Bandung Conference appeared to have advanced India’s national interests in the short term, its benefits were more questionable in the long run. In the end, India was unable to tie China down to its regional vision and protect itself against Chinese belligerence. Faced with a mounting Chinese challenge, Nehru’s strategy, centered upon nonaligned peaceful coexistence, manifested all its limitations.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"153 - 180"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41647289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2080485
D. Mitra
{"title":"The changing nature of dominant castes: a case study of caste-based identity construction in Varanasi","authors":"D. Mitra","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2080485","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2080485","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The idea of “dominant caste” has been important in the discourse of caste that saw the movement from social intercourse (hierarchy, purity-pollution) to political mediation (representation, demand for positive discrimination) in various literature. This paper offers a longitudinal study of caste relations in and around Varanasi in North India, focusing on the Brahmin caste vis-à-vis another dominant caste (non-Brahmin). It combines historical material with individual-level data set, the findings of which are presented as a case study. The essay’s objectives are as follows (a) description and analysis of two different “dominant” castes to understand the functioning of the caste identity in contemporary India. This is done to reevaluate how the castes have sought to convert their historically accrued caste capital into social or political capital; (b) the relationship between the two “dominant” castes. It was found that dominance was regionally located in both cases, but in the colonial period, it depended on caste hierarchy, unlike in post-colonial/modern days. This recreated a sort of discrimination manipulated by the dominant castes at their respective levels.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"129 - 152"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49435592","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2080486
Aditi Malik, M. Prasad
{"title":"Peace by committee: state, society, and the control of communal violence in Bhagalpur, Bihar","authors":"Aditi Malik, M. Prasad","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2080486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2080486","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Why do communal provocations generate violence in some moments but not in others? Drawing on 52 interviews and archival and ethnographic evidence from Bhagalpur, Bihar, we develop a theoretical framework to explain how communal conflict might be controlled. In Bhagalpur, we find that a state-society partnership has helped the city to avoid active violence since 1989. Civil society elites gain and maintain local followings by drawing on their access to the state to resolve quotidian problems for their constituents. Doing so cements their status in their communities and imbues them with the credibility to calm communal tensions. These findings illuminate the governance strategies through which state actors might delegate the performance of important state functions, such as maintaining order, to non-state groups. They also reveal a range of tactics through which state-society partnerships might thwart communal conflict in divided societies like India.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"181 - 215"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49084301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2080488
Aniruddha Saha
{"title":"Addressing the norms gap in international security through the India-US nuclear relationship","authors":"Aniruddha Saha","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2080488","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2080488","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT While scholars (mainly from the Global North) in International Relations have been turning to a (critical) constructivist agenda in norms research, the field has increasingly become devoid of applying this area of research in understanding the nuclear behavior of deviant states from the Global South. The paper therefore attempts to bridge this research gap by using the case of the India-US nuclear relationship. To do so, the paper: i) identifies the probable convergences of the existing literature on nuclear policy and the research on constructivist norms, ii) highlights India’s racial treatment as a Southern nuclear state in academia and policy discourse, and iii) recognizes plausible avenues for the expansion of the Western dominated normative research agenda by analyzing India’s nuclear relationship with the US ― with a specific focus to norm contestation and normative change. In bringing together (critical) constructivists and scholars in nuclear politics to further our understanding of how we perceive security of non-western states, this work makes an epistemological and ontological contribution in the field of international security studies.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"216 - 248"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42368944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2080487
A. Phadnis, A. Khandelwal
{"title":"The rise of political consultancy in India","authors":"A. Phadnis, A. Khandelwal","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2080487","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2080487","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Around the world, the practice of politics has taken a turn toward “professionalisation.” A key political actor that is facilitating this change is the political consultant. However, despite the influential role that consultants play in contemporary politics, they have been subject to little scholarly attention. We introduce a study on political consultants for the context of India, a large middle-aged democracy that has seen a growing presence of consultants over the last two decades. The study investigates four main questions: (a) What factors have fueled the growth of political consultancy? (b) What are the characteristics of the industry, such as the number and types of firms and types of clientele? (c) What are the range of services that consultants provide to political clients? (d) How have political consultants grown and evolved over time in the Indian context? The data for the study come from a combination of primary sources such as interviews with political consultants, and secondary sources such as media and industry reports, and personal accounts published by consultants. The study concludes with a forecast of the future of political consultancy in India, and identifies the pain points that are likely to stifle its growth potential.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"249 - 276"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43281507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}