Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies

Front Matter

Deepra Dandekar — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Our Worth and Value

Deepra Dandekar — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Social Reproduction of Relational Space in South Asia

Venugopal Maddipati — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Kuchh toh Kar Lenge ‘We will Manage Something’

Bhawna Parmar — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper is based on the experiences of students of the Santhali community in a classroom in a village in the Dumka district in the Santhal Pargana region of Jharkhand. I draw attention to the aspirations of Santhali students by emphasising their everyday interactions and negotiations with the state and the education system. While juggling between manual labour and the pressures of early marriage, Santhali students strive to acquire educational capital that promises them symbolic distance from manual labour. The spatial practices of schooling emphasise a ‘decontextualized modernity’, which scholars have noted, deems Adivasis as non-modern and hence in need of reform. The hidden curriculum of the school is Foucauldian, aiming to impose values of mastering self-discipline, and this value becomes central to the relationship Adivasi students have with the education system, embodied by the classroom. This article argues that while the classroom urges Adivasi students to leave their identity outside the school, under the garb of equality, it still others them through pedagogical practices, teacher-student interactions, and a curriculum that defines what is and what is not attainable for them. Employing ethnographic methods, this paper extends Dost and Froerer’s (2021) idea of aage badhna (progress) that education promises but makes ‘almost impossible’, by disallowing Adivasi students the promised social mobility that shapes their aspirations. In its exclusion of the Adivasi identity, the state education thus excludes and fails Adivasi students.

The Voice of Mithila Mihir

Devanand Kamat — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The demand for a separate Mithila has recently resurfaced. This is however also an older demand that first emerged in the 1940s. Maithil linguistic nationalism in the early decades of the 20th century played an essential role in contributing to the generation of a movement led by Maithil intellectuals, for whom the prestige and heritage of the Maithili language took precedence over all other concerns. To understand this process better, this paper peruses the literature on Mithila, Maithil, and Maithili that underlies the emergence of Maithili nationalism and the demand for a separate state. Many of these books were initially published through Maithili language and literary magazines. For instance, the Mithila Tattva Vimarsha published in 1949 was first released as a series of articles in the Mithila Mihir Magazine between 1912 to 1914. In this paper, I discuss questions of Maithili, Maithil, and Mithila in the way it emerged in the Mithila Mihir. This study, which draws on hitherto unavailable information from official and archival sources, fills a substantial gap in the literature on Mithila, historicizing the movement for the Mithila State in the context of the State Reorganisation Commission (henceforth SRC). This article also seeks to delve into why the demand for a separate Mithila failed. Though it is common to recount success stories of state-formation in the context of post-independence India, explaining why such demands failed, is also equally important.

Tale of the ‘Twin City’

Isha R. Chouksey — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The study attempts to analyse the applicability of global colonial theories at the grassroots levels through a case study of Nagpur. Nagpur was first the capital of Gond rulers, then the Marathas, and later the administrative headquarters for the Central Provinces in the colonial period. As the second capital of Maharashtra, Nagpur also continues to assert its position in the political realm in the postcolonial period. However, despite its prominence, there is an unusual gap in colonial records about the city. This study aims to fill these gaps and historicizes the formation of urban Nagpur. Categorizing key events in history based on archival sources under the three frameworks of colonial urban development, trade, and public culture, this study consolidates a cogent historical narrative especially by redrawing archival maps between 1818 and 1930 and linking them with important events, to reimagine the trajectory of urbanization. The study attempts to critically analyse spatial components from British governance: the administrative area, the railways, the cantonment, the civil lines, and the ‘buffer space’ to demonstrate how the emergence of a European environment distanced itself from the medieval city as a strategic defence mechanism. This buffer zone underwent transformation; the cordon sanitaire understood as that very component of colonial separation became the centre of trade and industrialization. This introduces the third entity in the development of urban Nagpur: its immigrant elites, and its labour force that complicates this urban form of the ‘twin cities’.

Fragmented Planning and Splintered Urbanism

Pritpal Randhawa and Rachna Mehra — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper engages with debates on the transformation of towns near metropolitan cities in India. Through the case study of Ghaziabad, a city located in the eastern periphery of Delhi in Northern India, we examine the interconnections between industrialisation, urbanisation, and planning. Our paper maps the trajectory of urban morphological changes in Ghaziabad and its development from a town to a city in the post-independence period. Our purpose is to historically document the urban transition in the region of Ghaziabad by focusing on the continuous shift in economic activities, the expansion of planned and unplanned areas, and the incessant flow of poor and middle-class migrants to the city. In doing so we argue that though the planning process in Ghaziabad looks congruous from a distance, yet in reality it is fragmented to the core, resulting in dispersed industrialisation and the formation of a mosaic of residential segregation. The paper also discusses how Delhi’s urbanisation and planning interventions have reconfigured the socio-urban changes in Ghaziabad. The growth of an urban agglomeration under the shadow of a metropolitan city, apart from influencing its salient identity, has also hindered its independent growth in comparison to other satellite cities like Faridabad, Gurgaon, and Noida.

Arabi-Malayalam Disaster Ballads

Ophira Gamliel and Shihab Ayappally Kalluvalappil — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper presents three disaster narratives in Arabi-Malayalam Typhoon Ballad (toofaan maala) by Kattilveettil Ahmed Koya (1909), Flood (vellappokkam) by Mundambara Unnimammad (1924), and Flood Ballad (vellappokka maala) by Pulikkottil Haidar (1961). We explore the aestheticized expressions of flood disasters, their impact on landscape and people, and the role of cultural and artistic productions in enhancing community resilience and risk perception. We approach these Arabi-Malayalam disaster ballads as deliberate engagement with the mechanisms of the disaster cycle of preparedness, response, and recovery. Arguing that these compositions constitute vital strategies in cultivating effective response to disasters, we relate them to official and historical records as well as an ethnographic account following the 2018 Kerala floods. We conclude that the tradition of Arabi-Malayalam disaster ballads constitutes an attempt to standardise and aestheticize spontaneous post-disaster narratives that survivors and rescuers tell and retell for sharing their experiences. Our analysis builds on the concept of local and indigenous knowledge systems (LINKS) to argue that such compositions are crucial for producing knowledge on participatory and organised decision-making processes, desirable leadership skills, and collaborative action aimed at survival, relief, and rescue.

Evening with a Sufi

Epsita Halder — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Missionaries and Modernity

Tim Allender — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Ocean as Method

Sadan Jha — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

World Literature and the Question of Genre in Colonial India

Deepra Dandekar — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Vulgarity of Caste

Kaustubh Naik — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Language of the Snakes

Jackson Stephenson — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Archaeology of the Nātha Sampradāya in Western India

Westin Harris — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Writing Tamil Catholicism

Torsten Tschacher — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000