Critical South Asian Studies

Deconstructing Divine Diktat from Orthodoxy to Altruism: Mahima Cult – The Last Surviving Renegade Faith in India

2024-08-21T16:19:29+00:00

This paper explores religion, societal mores, shared practices, and emotional moorings in the postcolonial Indian community. The questions of power are also dealt with meticulously in culture, society, and the state from a comparative religious perspective. Exploration of the articulation of faith by the members of Indian society leads to critical analyses of notions of time and history and their myriad manifestations in literature. The intricate interactions and mutual imbrications between religion, social order, and power – especially in the functioning of religious institutions by the exponents of the spiritual domain – have been discussed in detail. A case study is undertaken on Mahima Dharma, medieval Orissa's last great religious revival, perhaps the most salient feature in India's religious history. Still a living religion with a very well-consolidated order, it has been grounded in its spiritual ventures by a heavy code of injunctions and bound in solidarity by its various modes of reckoning. In the 19th century, when there was the enveloping darkness all around because of the colonial rule with encircling gloom everywhere, and the social order was in disarray, a Kondh tribal poet, Bhima Bhoi, the prime interlocutor of the renegade faith, started a revolt from below to champion human rights and several socio-religious and cultural movements in Odisha and the adjoining areas. He used poetry as a tool - an alternative mode of communication - to proclaim his authority on religious affairs. While exploring the nuances of such a mode of transmission over the centuries, especially in divine matters, we will analyse how successfully Bhima Bhoi gravitated against the prevailing vitiating social order through his verses, which have timeless relevance, drawing sundry attention even today for their emotional appeal, lyrical value, and musical mode. Inevitably, Bhima's Bhajans and Jananas have remained household lores and become a medium capturing the depths of human experience, expressing the most profound emotions, and conveying our deepest thoughts and ideas on Divine Affairs. Such modes of communication essentially remained instrumental in lending a Deific Identity* to Bhima and his Guru, Mahima Swami, the founder of the Mahima Cult.

The Manifestations of Liberalization on Bollywood Cinema of the 1990s and Early 2000s

2024-12-16T06:52:12+00:00

This article will look into the significant manifestations of the Economic reforms of the 1990s on Bollywood cinema of 1990s and early 2000s. By doing so the article aims to establish the relationship between the changing economic scenarios of the nation and the reformation of the aesthetics in the Bollywood industry. With a focus on the various realms of camera technology, fashions, and marketing, this article will highlight the transformation of the Bollywood cinema in the light of economic reforms of the 1990s. By looking at the various elements constituting the technical aspects involved in the making of a film, the article aims to establish the fact that a change in the socio-economic realm of the nation is very well visible and represented in the films. A change of narrative is presented in the article with a focus on the process of economic reforms by looking into the more technical realities of the process on the silver screen of Bollywood. The article will end with the establishment of the global identity of both the Bollywood industry and the Indian economy.

Ethnographic Analysis of South Asian Forced Migration

2024-12-29T13:15:40+00:00

The understanding of forced migration can be explained by the cultural factors of forced migration where migration creates culture and culture leads to migration. In these consequences, the major objective of this research paper is based on the process, determinants and consequences of forced migration from South Asia (Pakistan and Bangladesh) to Greece. The paper's methodology is based on ethnographic field surveys among South Asian asylums and refugees in Athens in August 2017. Qualitative data was collected through focus group discussions (FGDs), informal interviews and passive observation methods. Collected qualitative data is analyzed using narratives, descriptions, and case studies under the content analysis of ethnographic technique. The study's findings show that there is a function of culturalization of forced migration from Pakistan and Bangladesh to Greece due to the depth penetration of the culture of migration. These consequences led to one-way migration because South Asian asylums and refugees did not have any option about direct return to root due to unidentified geo-nation identity but these asylums and refugees in-directly returned to their homelands through the formation of South Asian culture in Greece in the context of assimilation and integration between two different cultures as “Hybrid cultural Diaspora” with discrimination, contradictions and challenges of forced migration. Therefore, the findings of the study would encourage researchers, policymakers and academicians for further research in the area of forced migration on a global level.

"اين نيز می کذرد" Narrative Plasticity in Rahimi's War Chronicles

2025-01-02T18:49:21+00:00

This paper examines Atiq Rahimi’s war chronicles through the lens of Catherine Malabou’s theory of plasticity. It aims to deconstruct his war trauma and understand his conflicted relationship with his motherland: he sometimes mourns it and longs for it, while at other times he stares at it and hopelessly portrays its regretful annihilation. Through novels, films, letters, and photographs, he attempts to sustain a bond with his homeland. The plasticity of his works allows history to be preserved. Malabou’s notion of plasticity will be used to demonstrate the precariousness of memory and the fragility of perceptions in times of war. This article will highlight how Rahimi, through his “vision of thoughts,” transforms his pain into art and his chronicles into history.

Echoes of Trauma: The Interplay of Bodies and Borders in Gitanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand

2025-01-28T10:37:00+00:00

This research paper explores traumatic memory associated with bodies and boundaries in the aftermath of World War I as represented in Tomb of Sand written by Gitanjali Shree. The contention of this paper is to analyse how witnessing violence and migration creates a sense of shock by transmitting the trauma in the selected novel of Gitanjali Shree Tomb of Sand. This research probes how the narrative depicts the painful aftermath of India's partition, emphasising the interplay of bodies, borders, and memory, particularly concerning women's experiences. Gitanjali Shree represents the influence of trauma in the mind of the individual by presenting the character Ma and how intergenerational trauma embodies her and restricts her way of living. This study analyses the novel through the lens of Cathy Caruth's notion of trauma, as stated in her seminal work Unclaimed Experience. The role of delayed, fragmented, and repetitive experiences of trauma is emphasised through this theory which, provides a crucial framework for understanding the characters’ psychological and emotional landscapes. Tomb of Sand with its nonlinear storytelling aligns with Cathy Caruth’s ideas and mirrors the disorienting and haunting nature of trauma. This research enhances our understanding of how literature relates history, collective memory, and personal experiences that serve as a site of trauma, healing, and recollection. Thus, providing the readers with an engaging storytelling method Shree's Tomb of Sand serves as a healer to partition sufferers.

Re)Imagining India: A Study on Nineteenth-Century Colonial Historiography

2024-09-11T17:27:04+00:00

The differences between Indian and British (by and large, the Western) historiography have been much discussed in post-colonial academia. The leitmotif that the early Indians were preoccupied with imagination was reinforced through and through to the point of celebration. But was the predominance of imagination so unique to the pre-colonial Indian practice of historiography? With the recent upsurge of revisionist historiography, old scholarships are again being summoned from academia to the public domain to deconstruct the long-held constant. This paper critically examines the historiography of the nineteenth century and especially nineteenth-century Bengal to revisit this question and, in doing so, considers deconstructive forays into history, particularly Alan Munslow and Ethan Kleinberg’s reflections, to develop its argument.

Alternating Between Flow and Reflexivity: Transformational Dramaturgy of Boal and Semiotic Autonomy of Spect-actor

2025-07-20T18:09:10+00:00

In experimental modes of performance and especially Postdramatic theatre, the question of spectatorship has become the core of theatrical aesthetics. In his Theatre of the Oppressed, Augusto Boal introduced a transformational dramaturgy derived from Brechtian aesthetics, in which theatre is treated as ‘event’ and performed through devices of ‘interruption’, ‘dialogism’, ‘polyvocality’, ‘detachment’ and ‘de-representation’. Boal modeled his audience members ‘Spect-actors’ who when invited on stage oscillate between ‘flow and ‘reflexivity’; between the character and speaking about the character. This paper explores Boal’s theoretical framework in an attempt to reveal how his unique style of performance transforms a spectator into an actor who transports between the ‘real world’ and ‘world of performance’. The paper reveals how the use of interruption as a technique enables the spectator to use/deploy his/her intellectual and semiotic capabilities. The paper explores the significance of ‘interruption’ as theatrical device in liberating the spectator through restoring his/her semiotic autonomy.

Bodies of Water: Hydrofeminist Perspectives on Gender, Religion, and Social Exclusion in Deepa Mehta’s Water

2025-07-20T18:40:07+00:00

This paper adopts hydrofeminist theory to analyze Deepa Mehta’s film Water (2005), exploring the intersection of gender, religion, and social exclusion. Embedded in Astrida Neimanis’ concept of hydrofeminism, it positions water as both a material and metaphorical concept that structures and designs social identities and cultural structures. The film portrays the predicament of Hindu widows in 1930s India, presenting how water signifies both life-giving and oppressive elements. It presents itself both as a juncture of purification, and salvation, and a framework of socio-religious control, interacting with boundaries of purity and power that restrict women’s agency. The Ganges River embodies and exhibits these dualities, demonstrating Neimanis’ idea that water holds both redemption and regulatory potential. By emphasizing the relationship between water, gender, caste, and religion, this paper critiques cultural dictates and ideologies that impose female subjugation and explicates water as a metaphor for resilience and social change, advocating for feminist and ecological approaches to address deeply stratified contexts.

Reading English Literature through the Lens of Indian Aesthetics

2025-07-20T18:48:15+00:00

English Studies in India are highly derivative as are other domains of knowledge in modern Indian universities. In the Postcolonial discourse, replacing colonial knowledge with indigenous knowledge is an important act/tool to overthrow the colonial hegemony. In view of this, in order to decolonise English Studies, the Indian scholars must look at their own roots and native aesthetics. Indian Aesthetics is quite rich and ancient Indian theoreticians have thought over different aspects of a literary text. Bharata’s Natya Shastra (date estimates vary between 500 BCE and 500 CE) contains Rasa Siddhanta. Besides, this there are five other indigenous schools of aesthetics viz. Alankara-sampradaya (Bhamaha, 6^th cen), Riti-sampradaya (Vamana, 8^th – 9^th AD), Dhvani-sampradaya (Anandvardhan, 9^th century), Vakrokti-sampradaya (Kuntaka, 10^th -11^th century), and Auchitya-sampradaya (Kshemendra, 10^th -11^th century). All of them can very well be used to analyse a literary text irrespective of its language identity. Sometimes even better results are there in its application as new interpretations emerge and a more intense textual analysis is done. T S Eliot, for example, made use of Rasa Theory in enunciating the concept of Objective Correlative and found Shakespeare’s Hamlet an artistic failure. The paper will demonstrate the use of Indian Aesthetics in analysing John Donne’s poetry.