South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies

24/08/2025

Informality has been conventionally understood as a barrier to financial inclusion. This article offers an alternative perspective that conceives informality as labour, housing and financial informality, and financial inclusion as universal access to and use of a full range of formal financial services to challenge this prevailing view. Field evidence collected in Kolkata suggests that while labour and housing informality hinder broad-based financial inclusion, financial informality, comprising heterogenous informal financial practices that act as substitutes for or supplements to formal practices, play a developmental role, or involve illegal elements in the process, has more complex implications for financial inclusion. This permits the advancement of a typology of financial informality—substitutive, supplementary, developmental and illegal—to categorise informal financial practices. Among them, developmental informality that promotes a stepping stone transition to formality undisputedly challenges the idea that informality is always a barrier to financial inclusion.

Informality has been conventionally understood as a barrier to financial inclusion. This article offers an alternative perspective that conceives informality as labour, housing and financial inform...

24/08/2025

This article examines the evolution of elephant preservation in Mysore and contends that following the Rendition of Mysore (1881), leveraged the colonial elephant preservation legislation to assert their kingship and sovereignty. Despite the end of the war elephant and the ensuing decrease in their importance to Indian kingship, it shows how elephants continued to remain integral to expressions of kingship in Mysore. Examining the close links between the state’s much-celebrated khedda operations and elephant preservation policy, the article demonstrates how they facilitated the reinterpretation of traditional kingship practices within the region while showcasing collaborative British rule. Reviewing state policies on elephant hunting, it illustrates how the Elephant Preservation Act of 1874 allowed the maharaja to assert his sovereign authority. The article highlights the Wodeyars’ dynamic adaptation of traditional practices to colonial challenges, illustrating complex interactions between colonialism, hunting, conservation and sovereignty in the context of elephant preservation.

This article examines the evolution of elephant preservation in Mysore and contends that following the Rendition of Mysore (1881), leveraged the colonial elephant preservation legislation to assert...

24/08/2025

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among transgender people in Kerala, this paper unravels the processual understanding of kinship enabled through q***r mobility and kin‐making practices. With a focus on intra‐regional movements of transgender people in a Parivar, a kinship unit headed by a trans woman, it argues that q***r mobility and kin‐making constitute each other to an understanding of ‘kinship on the move’ in opposition to the perception of kinship as static and fixed. The literal and figurative movements of transgender people to various kin positions and various households render an understanding of kinship as an ongoing process that includes connections, disconnections and a conglomeration of natal kin, Parivar kin and kin that matter. The study blurs the boundary between kinship and kin‐making and points to the need to ­consider these aspects together.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among transgender people in Kerala, I unravel the processual understanding of kinship enabled through q***r mobility and kin‐making practices. With a focus on intr...

24/08/2025

This article examines the relationship between democracy and ideas of corruption in Nepal. It argues that the transformations in media that followed the country’s transition to multiparty democracy in 1990 have prompted new dynamics of visibility that have fostered perceptions of eroded moralities in democratic political life. The first part of the paper traces this transformation and illustrates how politicians have become more visible and known to the Nepali public than ever before. The second part of the paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork to illustrate the contemporary workings of local journalism in Nepal. The moral frameworks that have accompanied democracy make accusations and ‘revelations’ of corruption powerful political weapons, and battles over reputation consistently play out across the local media. Attention to these transformations in media and visibility provides insight into the growing ambivalence around federalism and democracy in the region.

This article examines the relationship between democracy and ideas of corruption in Nepal. It argues that the transformations in media that followed the country’s transition to multiparty democracy...

24/08/2025

This paper draws from textual, folklorist, ethnographical and archaeological sources to show that a range of exotic goods exported from India in the period of Indo-Roman sea trade was extracted and supplied by ethnic and tribal communities inhabiting remote forested and mountainous regions. These communities adopted (and still do) a ‘foraging’ approach to derive both necessities and ‘trade’ commodities from their immersive ecological landscape.

It is submitted that the process of extraction of certain forest produce and minerals in ancient times was part of a broader foraging way of life rooted in prehistory that was never fully abandoned...

19/08/2025

Southern India played a key role in supplying boatbuilding materials in the western Indian Ocean for millennia. South Asian forest-dwellers provided a continuous flow of timber and fibre cordage to the communities along its coasts, enabling them to build ships that sustained the trade networks connecting the ports of the Indian Ocean. Yet, the commerce of boatbuilding materials has been long overlooked in scholarly discourse, which is generally more focused on the trade of luxury commodities. This paper discusses the use and trade of boatbuilding materials in the western Indian Ocean by using a multidisciplinary approach that combines historical sources, archaeological evidence, experimental archaeological data and ethnographic records. This offers insights into the significant role played by South Asian materials such as teak (Tectona grandis), coconut palm (Cocos nucifera), dammar resin and cotton in the context of western Indian Ocean shipbuilding.

Southern India played a key role in supplying boatbuilding materials in the western Indian Ocean for millennia. South Asian forest-dwellers provided a continuous flow of timber and fibre cordage to...

19/08/2025

In their petition to Edwin Montagu in 1917, the Utkal Sammilani, a pan-Oriya forum, used the Linguistic Survey’s map of Oriya to represent a political and territorial claim to a majoritarian linguistic province. However, for survey administrator George Grierson, language maps only showed an approximate geography and could not be used to draw boundaries. This article argues that Grierson’s map set off a series of contested cartographic exercises which led to the eventual creation of Orissa in 1936. Initially, debates over a separate Orissa played out through existing maps and geographical data from the LSI and other sources. When the Orissa question was taken up by the Simon Commission, a series of new maps were created that undid Grierson’s cartographic logic and remade the indefiniteness of language into a mappable, bounded province. This article concludes that Grierson was eventually proved right as different linguistic communities continued to resist being left on the wrong side of the line.

In their petition to Edwin Montagu in 1917, the Utkal Sammilani, a pan-Oriya forum, used the Linguistic Survey’s map of Oriya to represent a political and territorial claim to a majoritarian lingui...

19/08/2025

This article investigates India’s media discourse on Coronil, a contentious drug launched as an Ayurvedic treatment for COVID-19. By analysing four national English-language newspapers in India, we find that with the partial exception of The Indian Express, the reporting on Coronil focused on the legal and logistical aspects of the drug release but lacked depth and analysis. Such reporting has socio-economic and public health implications. The green light given to Coronil confounded the government’s own scientific communication during the pandemic, leading to confusing messaging about the treatment for COVID-19. Moreover, some members of the government, judiciary and media adopted the rhetoric of what we call populist medical pluralism, justifying the endorsement of Coronil in terms of the neoliberal economy of ‘choices’ and ‘needs’ of the Indian citizens. We show how this populist promotion of pluralism is linked to the Hindu nationalist discourse.

This article investigates India’s media discourse on Coronil, a contentious drug launched as an Ayurvedic treatment for COVID-19. By analysing four national English-language newspapers in India, we...

19/08/2025

In a newly formed postcolonial East Pakistan, educated Bengali Muslim women became entrusted with modelling and producing modern Muslim women who would be productive members of the nation. This article explores the autobiographies of three educationists—Professor Beggzadi Nasir, Zobeda Khanum and Hamida Khanam—to trace their negotiations and adjustments with the society and state in promoting their ideas of womanhood. Two key insights have been drawn from this study. Firstly, ideal womanhood was not imagined by educated Bengali Muslim women as an uncontested, homogenous category. Secondly, their investment in pro-Pakistan and later pro-Bangladesh nationalism extended beyond communal or partisan interests, their imagined nation being a heterogenous safe haven for women to pursue their diverse potentials as equal stakeholders. By examining these educationists’ struggle for women’s progress, this article contributes to a more nuanced social history of nation-building from the perspective of Bengali Muslim women’s identity formation between 1947 and 1971.

In a newly formed postcolonial East Pakistan, educated Bengali Muslim women became entrusted with modelling and producing modern Muslim women who would be productive members of the nation. This art...

17/08/2025

Ancient Greek and Roman sources usually depict India as a fabulous land. By broadening the range of sources to examine, this article shows a less exoticising image of India. It is necessary to shed light on the place from which those fabulous literary constructions originate: the forest. This article makes such an effort by connecting testimonies from historiography and magic. In the first section, it looks at forests and forest-dwellers as described by Megasthenes, Pliny the Elder and in the Periplus of the Red Sea. A second line of inquiry investigates products from Indian forests as ingredients in Graeco-Roman Magical Papyri and gemstones. Their exotic provenance is interpreted here as a mere geographical feature rather than an amplification of the ritual power of an item. Greek and Graeco-Roman cultures were well accustomed to several products from India and to forest people living in the Western Ghats.

Ancient Greek and Roman sources usually depict India as a fabulous land. By broadening the range of sources to examine, this article shows a less exoticising image of India. It is necessary to shed...

17/08/2025

In the Indian philosophical system, the meaning of ‘satya’ (truth) is unintelligible without considering the context in which it occurs. The ambiguous nature of the word satya gives rise to several ethico-religious problems. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and Rabindranath Tagore, two chief literary personalities of Bengal, were involved in a debate about the meaning of satya and morality. Both of them wrote several articles against each other to make their points. This debate concerning truth between Bankimchandra and Rabindranath may be seen as a debate between two paradigms of morality—consequentialism and deontology. The aim of this article is to analyse the concept of satya following both Rabindranath and Bankimchandra and, consequently, their idea of morality. This article further seeks to explore an alternative way of resolving the moral dilemma posed by Bankimchandra. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00856401.2025.2490878

17/08/2025

Assamese cinema has documented the changing phases of masculinity in Assamese society. The Gandhian intervention in Indian politics of the twentieth century led to a change in ideas of heroism, and the idea of sacrifice gained prominence. The wave of revolutionary socialism that swept through the state in the middle of the last century reinforced the idea of physical strength as a quality of masculinity along with an uncompromising faith in ideology. In the 1980s, filmmakers and cultural icons of the state popularised the figure of militarised masculinity. Changes continued through critical moments of Assam’s history in the twentieth century such as the Assam Movement, the rise of insurgency, and the waves of indigenisation through which people responded to globalisation. In more recent times, Assamese cinema has represented the rise of hegemonic masculinity, comparable to similar processes in the Mumbai film industry.

Assamese cinema has documented the changing phases of masculinity in Assamese society. The Gandhian intervention in Indian politics of the twentieth century led to a change in ideas of heroism, and...