South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies

16/02/2025

Bengali poets of the pre-Bangladesh period engaged in the struggle for the national liberation of Bengalis through their poetry by offering cultural resistance to East Pakistan’s internal colonisation by West Pakistan. This article examines the Bangla poetry written at the height of the Bangladesh independence movement, especially from the Mass Uprising of 1969 to the Liberation War of 1971, from a postcolonial perspective, and argues that the theme of resistance prevalent in this poetry is essentially anti-colonial in nature because its main objective was to free the native people from the foreign domination of Pakistan, resisting its colonial-style oppression, exploitation and injustice. The paper's reading of this poetry foregrounds the anti-colonial elements of resistance poetry written in the Bangla vernacular, and thus makes a novel contribution to postcolonial studies, which dominantly deals with Anglophone literature.

Bengali poets of the pre-Bangladesh period engaged in the struggle for the national liberation of Bengalis1 through their poetry by offering cultural resistance to East Pakistan’s internal colonisa...

16/02/2025

This article examines the idea of Hindustan that took form in the writings of the Muslim historian and reformer Shiblī Nomānī (1857–1914). Through an analysis of various essays he wrote on subjects related to the history of Muslim civilization in the subcontinent, the paper contends that for Nomānī, Hindustan comes to exist as a secular social and cultural space. At the heart of this notion of Hindustan is the concept of adab, a shared set of norms or practices that the Mughals brought with them used to cultivate India, together with building upon the ways of being-in-the-world that they found upon their arrival. It is through this dialectical relationship of accommodation and exchange, preservation and change that Nomānī demonstrates how the Mughals transformed Hindustan into a historically shared civilizational space for Hindus and Muslims, one which vitiates against territorial ideas of nationalism.

In this article, I will examine the idea of Hindustan that took form in the writings of the Muslim historian and reformer Shiblī Nomānī (1857–1914). Through an analysis of various essays he wrote o...

16/02/2025

This article critically examines the invisibilisation of Babasaheb Ambedkar in the list of ‘founders’ or ‘pioneers’ of Indian sociology despite his substantial contributions to the discipline. It examines existing literature to contend that unlike global sociology, which often recognises founders based on their substantive contributions to the field, Indian sociology favours those with specific university affiliations and a direct engagement with the discipline. Consequently, influential sociological voices like Ambedkar’s are often excluded.

The article poses a critical question: Why do Indian sociologists hesitate to teach about Ambedkar as a pioneer while readily recognising Marx, who lacked any direct connection to a sociology department, as a ‘founder’ of the field? Utilising critical mass theory, the article argues that small groups of scholars and teachers from marginalised communities can effectively challenge dominant academic groups and transform the discipline of sociology.

In this article, I critically examine the invisibilisation of Babasaheb Ambedkar in the list of ‘founders’ or ‘pioneers’ of Indian sociology despite his substantial contributions to the discipline....

14/02/2025

This article examines two royal women’s autobiographies—The Autobiography of an Indian Princess (1921) by Sunity Devi and Maharani: The Story of an Indian Princess (1953) by Brinda Devi, queen consorts in the princely states of Cooch Behar and Kapurthala, respectively—to study their employment of the literary genre of autobiography as a site for self-fashioning in the context of the emergent public sphere in India. Locating them at the intersection of multiple historical shifts in the late colonial period, the article aims to trace their negotiations of power through self-fashioning in a socio-political context in which they were both privileged (as royalty) and marginalised (as colonial subjects and women in a patriarchal structure). In doing so, it posits the motif of ‘un/veiling’ as central to the royal women’s autobiographical self-representation and argues how it is metaphorical of the larger act of self-fashioning performed by them in public.

This article examines two royal women’s autobiographies—The Autobiography of an Indian Princess (1921) by Sunity Devi and Maharani: The Story of an Indian Princess (1953) by Brinda Devi, queen cons...

14/02/2025

Using an analytical framework of a ‘symbiosis’ between East Bengal and West Pakistan, this article centres the two-wing configuration of united Pakistan as a key element in shaping political contestations around questions of federal design in the formative phase of state-building. It demonstrates that just as this two-wing structure influenced the political logic of the ruling clique in the West in subverting the demographic strength of the East, it also opened up new arenas of provincial opposition to centralisation, both inside and outside the constituent assembly. By foregrounding the story of dissent and resistance to emerging power structures and the dominant nationalist vision in Pakistan, it seeks to generate an understanding of postcolonial state-making as a contingent process that is informed by the alternative political possibilities that arose in the wake of decolonisation.

Using an analytical framework of a ‘symbiosis’ between East Bengal and West Pakistan, this article centres the two-wing configuration of united Pakistan as a key element in shaping political contes...

14/02/2025

This article explores how the rural areas of East Pakistan—Bangladesh since 1971—experienced the postcolonial state during 1947–70. How did the rural population react when facing the state-building efforts? An exploration of this question would reveal how the state carried forward the ‘burdens’ of colonial administration and approach for governance, as well as the ways in which the pre-existing society continued to mould the postcolonial ‘state’. Focusing away from the national elites, this article investigates the dynamics among the rural population, the local elites and the development bureaucracy. The article locates power dynamics in the spatial and temporal realities of social life. Finally, the article indicates to what extent and in which ways continuities and changes occurred during the postcolonial state period (1947–70) for the rural people in pre-independence Bangladesh.

This article explores how the rural areas of East Pakistan—Bangladesh since 1971—experienced the postcolonial state during 1947–70. How did the rural population react when facing the state-building...

13/02/2025

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies is inviting article abstracts for a proposed special issue examining the triad of breath, body, and air in South Asia. For more info and submission details, click:

Submissions are invited for a proposed special issue examining the triad of breath, body and air in South Asia.

07/02/2025

This essay looks at the popular self-described mythologist, Devdutt Pattanaik, and his Mahabharata retelling, Jaya (2010), to analyse the production and dissemination of Hindu mythology in contemporary India as a guidebook. Drawing on cultural histories of book production in post-Independence India, the rise of the Hindu Right, and studies of neoliberalism and the post-millennial workspace, this essay argues that Pattanaik recontextualises the Mahabharata narrative using both rationalistic and pseudo-rationalistic knowledge systems to foreground the multiplicity of the Mahabharata narrative tradition while simultaneously reinscribing centre-margin hierarchies upon that multiplicity and legitimising the logic of Hindu history in his vision of a national Indian culture. Pattanaik thus retells the Mahabharata to provide lessons in self-control and self-regulation by reframing the narrative and rearticulating its moral lessons within the discourse of responsibilised productivity to (re)produce neoliberal workers.

This essay looks at the popular self-described mythologist, Devdutt Pattanaik, and his Mahabharata retelling, Jaya (2010), to analyse the production and dissemination of Hindu mythology in contempo...

07/02/2025

A new linguistic hierarchy emerged in nineteenth century colonial Bengal with the implementation of a centralised education system in the English language by the British and the codification of a new vernacular, sadhu-bhasha (standard Bangla). This new linguistic hierarchy paved the way for the social othering and linguistic marginalisation of several social groups, including Bengali-speaking Muslims. This study investigates the position of Bengali-speaking Muslims in this changed socio-linguistic landscape and explores the factors that contributed to its creation. The research highlights that Bengali Muslims navigated linguistic hegemonies shaped by the implementation of English, the promotion of standard Bangla and the pressure of Urdu, the language for asserting pan-Indian Islamic identity. This study explores the constant linguistic negotiations Bengali Muslims undertook in shaping their language of education. It traces how language became a source of social exclusion for them on the path to gaining formal education both inside and outside their community.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00856401.2024.2432231 #:~:text=The%20new%20linguistic%20hierarchy%2C%20a,identity%20construction%20of%20Bengali%20Muslims.

07/02/2025

The site of Rozabal in Srinagar, Kashmir, locally called the burial place of a nabīʼ (prophet), is famously known as the Tomb of Jesus. This paper analyses portrayals of the site in two well-known Persian texts from Kashmir, Azam Dedmari’s mid eighteenth century Wāqiʻāt-i Kashmir (Events of Kashmir) and Hassan Khuihami’s late nineteenth century Asrār-ul Aḵẖyār (Secrets of the Pious). It demonstrates how the bringing together of the oral and textual narratives into a genre of historical chronicles by the two authors played a critical role in mapping the site of Rozabal onto the larger canvas of what Nile Green has termed as a ‘sacred geography’ of the region. It argues that the making of Rozabal as an Islamic shrine presents a perfect case of the Persian texts creating sacred geographies at the intersection of myth, memory and history. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s claims about Jesus’s burial in the shrine and the subsequent undying debates between his proponents and opponents revolved around reinterpretations of Wāqiʻāt and Asrār’s textual descriptions of the site, demonstrating the renewed lives of these texts in modern contexts.

The site of Rozabal in Srinagar, Kashmir, locally called the burial place of a nabīʼ (prophet), is famously known as the Tomb of Jesus. This paper analyses portrayals of the site in two well-known ...

03/02/2025

This paper attempts to analyse Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s writings on Indian Christianity with the aim to outline their methodological significance and limitations. We argue that the significance of his work stems from the fact that he placed the ‘untouchable’ Christian—and their individual and collective predicaments—at the heart of his analysis. Dalit Christian movements have duly acknowledged and expounded this aspect of his work. Nevertheless, his normative-ideal approach to religion, informed by the conventions of imperial knowledge production and the politics of nationalism, pose peculiar problems to the sociologist of Indian Christianity. The paper argues for an emphatic reconsideration of Ambedkar’s use of religion as an ontological given and an epistemic destiny in the context of Indian Christianity.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00856401.2025.2425563?src= #:~:text=Ambedkar%20argued%20that%20the%20Christian,to%20Gandhi's%20hostility%20towards%20them.

03/02/2025

This article engages with questions about smell, specifically ‘fish stench’, to understand social hierarchy amongst Muslims in Kerala. It argues that the discourse on fish ‘stench’ as framed by inland Muslims contributes to the construction and maintenance of hierarchy between themselves and coastal Muslims. The paper investigate smell on three levels: (1) in relation to Islamic understandings of cleanliness and hygiene; (2) through the distinction between ‘Gulf smell’ and ‘fish stench’; and (3) in contradistinction to sight. It argues that the ‘marginal’ sense of smell is key to the marginality of coastal Muslims vis-à-vis inland Muslims, who develop a perspective in which they are associated with the ‘higher’ sense of sight. This hierarchisation of the senses becomes the ground for a variety of what Johannes Fabian calls the ‘denial of coevalness’, aligning economically mobile inland Muslims with the future and coastal Muslims with the past.

This article engages with questions about smell, specifically ‘fish stench’, to understand social hierarchy amongst Muslims in Kerala. I argue that the discourse on fish ‘stench’ as framed by inlan...