India Review最新文献

{"title":"Remembering, forgetting and memorialising: 1947, 1971 and the state of memory studies in South Asia","authors":"Isha Dubey","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2021.1993709","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2021.1993709","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The “cultural turn” in memory studies acknowledges that collective memory has a distinctive social aspect reflected in the manner in which it is communicated orally from one individual or generation to another. However, the point of departure is the emphasis on the need to account for the fact that memory is, in equal measure, shaped and mediated by tangible channels such as texts, images, objects, rituals, buildings and so on. The interactions and intersections between these two strands of approaching collective memory have been employed to write the most human and engaging histories of trauma and displacement – especially in the context of the Holocaust. This article takes this discussion forward by critically looking at the scope of the field of memory studies – with its largely Western frames of reference – to facilitate a deeper understanding of similar engagements and entanglements between communicative and culturally tangible forms of collective memory in South Asia. It looks at the ways in which the dominant discourse of nationalism is constructed and contested through the politics inherent in memorialization and memory in the South Asian context by comparing the partition of 1947 that resulted in the creation of Pakistan and the Liberation War of 1971 which gave birth to Bangladesh. Through a review of some important recent works of scholarship on the long, complex and intertwined afterlife of the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, this article shows how the processes of the construction and contestation of a dominant discourse of nationalism and nationhood are fraught with their own forms of remembrance and forgetting. And yet they speak in a language of exceptionalism that mirrors a somewhat universal template for remembering “difficult pasts” characteristic of the memorial landscape of the Holocaust. Finally, it is argued that the interstices of “national memory” contain voices that unsettle or counter it. Acknowledging these voices while also recognizing their own memory politics shall broaden and nuance the dominant modes of memorializing the partition and the Liberation War in a way that better reflects the specificities and complexities of their context.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"20 1","pages":"510 - 539"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43734178","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}

{"title":"Victorious outliers: India’s border regions and the contested memory politics of the Burma campaign","authors":"Nimmi Kurian, Jayashree Vivekanandan","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2021.1993710","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2021.1993710","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The article looks at British India’s Burma campaign of 1941–45 and asks why the decisive battles of Imphal and Kohima appear to be virtually invisible from India’s national imagination today. It further critiques dominant readings of the twin battles for their failure to accommodate the heterogeneity of experiences and contributions of the hill tribes of the India-Burma borderlands who fought in it. The omission appears even more intriguing given that despite being on the winning side, the border communities end up losing the memory battle. While it questions the conventional notion that memory is the postcolonial state’s prerogative, it also recognizes that counter-memories are by no means monolithic. It makes the case for acknowledging alternative constructions and communities of practice that imaginatively decenter the construction of memory in the borderlands. Without connecting with the lives, and in turn, the memories of the border communities who inhabit the physical sites of the war, the cliché of the “forgotten war” will remain an overused, and ultimately, an offensive trope.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"20 1","pages":"497 - 509"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48785670","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}

{"title":"Postage stamps as sites of public history in South Asia: an intervention","authors":"Manu Sharma","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2021.1993708","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2021.1993708","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Postage stamps are a significant visual text of an issuing state. In 1947, British India was divided into independent states of India and Pakistan. The successive new regimes in both countries got the freedom to design, print, and circulate the official visual iconography through postage stamps as a symbol of sovereignty for its citizens and the world community. This article explores how India and Pakistan visualized the narrative of national identity and discourse on development through postage stamps in the first two decades of their independence. The article does not intend to retell the narrative of the postcolonial nation-building process in the subcontinent. Instead, the objective is to introduce postage stamps as a primary visual resource for exploring the contours of public history of India and Pakistan by arguing that stamps retain its importance as excellent visual archives for postcolonial scholarly analysis in the age of new media.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"20 1","pages":"540 - 564"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42928146","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}

{"title":"Representing partition in the UK: an archive, an exhibition and a classroom","authors":"K. Greenbank","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2021.1993711","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2021.1993711","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In 2005 Rev. Michael Roden, the vicar at Church of England church of St Mary’s in Hitchin (a small town about 30 miles north of London) was invited to India to give a series of sermons to Indian Church of England congregations. He was struck during his visit by the scars in Indian society that he thought were the remnants of Partition’s aftermath. His visit set him thinking about the ways in which Partition has shaped British as well as Indian and Pakistani society, and about how little people in the UK know about the calamitous results of British policy at the time of decolonization. In particular, he wondered about why it was the case that Partition had never been taught in schools in the UK, and why children were coming out of school with no understanding of the forces which had created a multi-cultural society in the UK over the course of the twentieth century. Reverend Roden contacted the University of Cambridge’s Centre of South Asian Studies and set in train a series of events that would lead to Partition being included in the curriculum of all Church of England schools in England and Wales. This process was to engage politicians, academics, playwrights, television companies and members of the general public. It would lead to more than teaching in the classroom – a swathe of television documentaries, for example, were broadcast around he 70th anniversary of Partition in 2017, providing information about a part of the shared UK/South Asian past which has been largely neglected in Britain. Alongside this process, the Centre of South Asian Studies also prepared an exhibition of materials from its own archive collections which ran from August 2017 and drew in thousands of visitors. This paper will examine the ways in which the process of presenting Partition to the people of the UK was fashioned and followed, and the nature of the output which resulted from it, looking at the ways in which academe can interact with public opinion and public knowledge in meaningful and positive ways.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"20 1","pages":"589 - 609"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43815169","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}

{"title":"Introduction to the Special Issue on ‘Chronicling the Histories of India: The Politics of Remembrance and Commemoration’","authors":"Jayashree Vivekanandan","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2021.1996120","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2021.1996120","url":null,"abstract":"Postcolonialism has proven to be a fertile ground for interdisciplinary enquiries into the loci of power and agents of change. It has provoked intellectuals to ask probing questions about the exclusions, disparities and invisibilities they detect as pervading international politics, both elite and everyday. This sensibility has informed analyses that examined imperial associations with globalization, identity, memory, development, and indeed, with the international itself, among other issues. This distinctive aspect about its orientation—an abiding interest in drawing continuities between the past and the present—invariably brought historical depth into postcolonial formulations, even as these reopen history itself to critical scrutiny. In doing so, postcolonialism has prompted a richly textured engagement of International Relations (hereby IR) with history that has not only examined macro-historical processes but micro-histories as well. They bring out how elite politics intersected with the ordinary and the everyday, thereby constituting individual and collective memory. Postcolonial theory shared this emphasis on socially situated analysis with other post-positivist approaches in IR. From the 1980s onwards, and steadily picking up pace ever since, critical approaches such as non-Western IR, postmodernism and feminism have questioned structural power and the role IR as a discipline has played in legitimizing it. Consequently, we witness a continued engagement with issues concerning marginalized identities, structural violence and discriminatory practices. Such normative positioning has, expectedly, disturbed traditional typologies that inform order as we know it and which, willy-nilly, regard dominance to be a function of such order. Traditional IR’s preoccupation with great power politics, and the claims of Western scholarship to universality (and hence, to superiority) are regarded as reflecting this bias. Given how wary critical IR is of authoritative claims to (universal) truth, it is no surprise that it employs a diverse range of epistemes. Postcolonialism, in seeking to represent the unique historical experiences of the non-Western INDIA REVIEW 2021, VOL. 20, NO. 5, 483–496 https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2021.1996120","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"20 1","pages":"483 - 496"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48055220","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}

{"title":"Indian foreign policy as public history: globalist, pragmatist and Hindutva imaginations","authors":"S. Chatterjee, Udayan Das","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2021.1993707","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2021.1993707","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Public histories are narratives straddling across space and time, challenging the inside/outside distinction. Indian foreign policy makers have engaged in a selective remembering of the past in an attempt to script the making of a postcolonial state. The study takes up three cases from India’s foreign policy in elucidating how different imaginations of India’s identity has been refashioned to legitimize its foreign policy. These three cases point to Nehru’s decision to join the Commonwealth, Vajpayee’s strides for nuclearization and Modi’s approach toward the diaspora. We argue that foreign policy makers in India have either refrained from engaging with ‘public history’ due to their uncritical positioning in structural realism or erected versions of the past that happily rationalize their contemporary practices. The deployment of public histories has taken place to invoke India rightful place in the international order and as instruments in shaping public consensus which advances the interests of the elites in validating their foreign policy choices. This elite-driven exercise is shot through the dominant Western imaginations and cognitive categories although these elites self- consciously took charge of the destiny of a nation that had to be refashioned as ‘post- colonial.’","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"20 1","pages":"565 - 588"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48652216","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}

{"title":"Politics and government in the “Hindi heartland” India: reading Raag Darbari","authors":"Ashutosh Kumar","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2021.1958584","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2021.1958584","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The paper reflects on how feudal, caste-ridden and corruption-infested rural India had its first brush with the newly introduced democratic and governmental administrative institutions, culture and practices, much of the latter inherited from the late colonial times. It does it by visiting Shivpalganj, a fictious village in the “Hindi heartland” region, as depicted in the celebrated novel Raag Darbari, published more than five decades ago. Reading the satirical text shows vividly how the institutions were subverted by the local politics that was infested by factionalism, corruption and patronage. It also exposes the misconception that the bureaucratic “system” inherited from the British raj could be “adapted” for very different purpose of facilitating development and welfare than for what it was set up originally. The essay argues that despite significant social, political and economic transitions that have taken place over the last five decades, one finds a great degree of similarity in the way the “system” continues to work in the region which still in many ways represents “most of India.” It looks into the possible explanations for the continuity and change, if any.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"20 1","pages":"436 - 450"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43513327","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}

{"title":"States, firms, and economic development","authors":"Sanjoy Banerjee","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2021.1958586","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2021.1958586","url":null,"abstract":"The books by Aseema Sinha in 2016 and Adnan Naseemullah in 2017 focus on India’s international and domestic political economy, and Naseemullah examines Pakistan as well. The challenge for the study of contemporary Indian political economy is to explain why the 1991 reforms were successful at all, and to explain the limits to their success. During the early stages of the reforms there was considerable skepticism that they could succeed at all. Within India and internationally, this skepticism was expressed in journalistic commentaries and in academic analysis. The two books under review expose some of the fallacies that lay behind that skepticism. Sinha argues that there was a dynamic process by which Indian firms and business associations, which had feared international competition and markets before, embraced them and built new competitive advantages. The WTO, as it emerged in 1994 from the Doha round, proved to be a remarkably effective international organization which trained government officials and corporate managers in India in the new norms of the global economy. And equipped with this knowledge, India was able to innovate both in industry itself and in the realm of trade negotiation and governance. She shows that Indian firms – the owning and managerial class – did not have fixed interests over the period. And the Indian state also did not have fixed political economic interests. Naseemullah finds the liberalization and globalization processes gave rise to two major management styles. The owning and managerial classes of Indian industry transformed themselves in ways not anticipated by the skeptics. The major debate in the background of these two books is whether a liberal state or developmental state is more effective in economic development. A liberal state is one that may provide certain public goods but remains neutral","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"20 1","pages":"468 - 482"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46601450","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}

{"title":"Parliament, demonetisation and GST","authors":"I. Rajaraman","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2021.1958585","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2021.1958585","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper exploits the property of random selection of questions for answering in Parliament to analyze the party-wise share of questions submitted, normalized by seat share, at two major economic policy events during the term of the Sixteenth Lok Sabha (LS16) – demonetization on 8 November 2016, and the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on 1 July 2017. Parties are grouped into three: the ruling party (BJP); allied parties in the ruling NDA coalition; and parties in opposition. The paper also charts the change over time in the types of questions asked, and mines the official responses for information not normally available through the usual channels.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"20 1","pages":"451 - 467"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43016380","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}

{"title":"India and the soft power rubric: the relevance of migrants, students, visitors and movies","authors":"Irene S. Wu","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2021.1958581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2021.1958581","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Much has been written about India’s soft power – how much it has, its sources and origins, and its deficits and applications. This article aims to place India’s soft power in context of other nations like China and the US, by applying the Soft Power Rubric, a model that harnesses quantitative data on ordinary human interactions – like foreign visitors appearing in local street markets – to understand the relationships among countries. In this examination of India’s soft power, the focus is on the activity of ordinary people, not necessarily actions by the government. The Soft Power Rubric centers around understanding in which foreign countries are people attracted to India and, vice versa, which foreign countries attract Indians to go abroad. The sum of this activity paints a picture of cultural affinity and social interaction unlike any other analysis of soft power.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"20 1","pages":"373 - 401"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49343794","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}