Download or read book The Other in South Asian Religion Literature and Film written by Diana Dimitrova and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces the term "otherism" and looks at the discourse of otherism and the issue of otherness in South Asian religion, literature and film. It examines cultural questions related to the human condition of being the "other," of the process of "othering" and of the representation of "otherness" and its religious, cultural and ideological implications. The book applies the perspectives of ideological criticism, theories of hybridity, orientalism, nationalism, and gender and queer studies to gain new insights into the literature, film and culture of South Asia. It looks at the different ways of interpreting "otherness" today. The book goes on to analyze the ideological implications of the creation of "otherness" with regard to religious and cultural identity and the legitimation of power, as well as how the representation of "otherness" reflects the power structures of contemporary societies in South Asia. Offering a well-thought-out reflection on important cultural questions as well as a deep insight into the study of religion and "otherness" in South Asian literature and film, this book is a pioneering project that is of interest to scholars of South Asian Studies and South Asian religions, literatures and cultures.

Download or read book The Other in South Asian Religion Literature and Film written by Diana Dimitrova and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces the term "otherism" and looks at the discourse of otherism and the issue of otherness in South Asian religion, literature and film. It examines cultural questions related to the human condition of being the "other," of the process of "othering" and of the representation of "otherness" and its religious, cultural and ideological implications. The book applies the perspectives of ideological criticism, theories of hybridity, orientalism, nationalism, and gender and queer studies to gain new insights into the literature, film and culture of South Asia. It looks at the different ways of interpreting "otherness" today. The book goes on to analyze the ideological implications of the creation of "otherness" with regard to religious and cultural identity and the legitimation of power, as well as how the representation of "otherness" reflects the power structures of contemporary societies in South Asia. Offering a well-thought-out reflection on important cultural questions as well as a deep insight into the study of religion and "otherness" in South Asian literature and film, this book is a pioneering project that is of interest to scholars of South Asian Studies and South Asian religions, literatures and cultures.

Download or read book Religion in Literature and Film in South Asia written by Diana Dimitrova and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative, interdisciplinary collection of essays by scholars based in Europe and the United States offers stimulating approaches to the role played by religion in present-day South Asia.

Download or read book Rethinking the Body in South Asian Traditions written by Diana Dimitrova and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-14 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses cultural questions related to representations of the body in South Asian traditions, human perceptions and attitudes toward the body in religious and cultural contexts, as well as the processes of interpreting notions of the body in religious and literary texts. Utilising an interdisciplinary perspective by means of textual study and ideological analysis, anthropological analysis, and phenomenological analysis, the book explores both insider- and outsider perspectives and issues related to the body from the 2nd century CE up to the present-day. Chapters assess various aspects of the body including processes of embodiment and questions of mythologizing the divine body and othering the human body, as revealed in the literatures and cultures of South Asia. The book analyses notions of mythologizing and "othering" of the body as a powerful ideological discourse, which empowers or marginalizes at all levels of the human condition. Offering a deep insight into the study of religion and issues of the body in South Asian literature, religion and culture, this book will be of interest to academics in the fields of South Asian studies, South Asian religions, South Asian literatures, cultural studies, philosophy and comparative literature.

Download or read book Divinizing in South Asian Traditions written by Diana Dimitrova and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-06-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The issue of divinizing in South Asian traditions has not been examined before as a process involving various methods to affect the socio-cultural cognition of the community. It is therefore essential to consider the context of "divinizing" and to analyse what groups, institutions or individuals define the discourse, what are the ideological positions that they represent, and who or what is being divinized. This book deals with the issue of divinizing in South Asian traditions. It aims at studying cultural questions related to the representations and the mythologizing of the divine. It also explores the human relations to the "divine other." It studies the interpretations of the divine in religious texts and the embodiment of the "divine other" in ritual practices. The focus is on studying the phenomenon of divinizing in its religious, cultural, and ideological implications. The book comprises eight chapters that explore the question of divinizing from the 2nd century CE up to present-day in North and South India. The chapters discuss the issue both from insider and outsider perspectives, within the framework of textual study as well as ideological and anthropological analysis. All articles explore various aspects of the cultural phenomenon of being in relation to the divine other, of the process of interpreting and embodying the divine, and of the representation of the divinizing process, as revealed in the literatures and cultures of South Asia. Applying theoretical models of religious and cultural studies to discuss texts written in South Asian languages and engage in critical dialogue with current scholarship, this book is an indispensable study of literary, religious and cultural production in South Asia. It will be of interest to academics in the fields of South Asian studies, Asian Studies, religious and cultural studies as well as comparative religion.

Download or read book Hinduism and Hindi Theater written by Diana Dimitrova and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-08-18 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the representation of Hinduism through myth and discourse in urban Hindi theatre in the period 1880-1960. It discusses representative works of seven influential playwrights and looks into the ways they have imagined and re-imagined Hindu traditions. Diana Dimitrova examines the intersections of Hinduism and Hindi theatre, emphasizing the important role that both myth and discourse play in the representation of Hindu traditions in the works of Bharatendu Harishcandra, Jayshankar Prasad, Lakshminarayan Mishra, Jagdishcandra Mathur, Bhuvaneshvar, Upendranath Ashk, and Mohan Rakesh. Dimitrova’a analysis suggests either a traditionalist or a more modernist stance toward religious issues. She emphasizes the absence of Hindi-speaking authors who deal with issues implicit to the Muslim or Sikh or Jain, etc. traditions. This prompts her to suggest that Hindi theatre of the period 1880-1960, as represented in the works of the seven dramatists discussed, should be seen as truly ‘Hindu-Hindi’ theatre.

Download or read book Cultural Identity in Hindi Plays written by Diana Dimitrova and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with the interface between identity, culture and literature. It aims at studying questions of cultural identity and gender in Hindi plays of the 19th- and 20th- centuries and the interplay of poetics and politics, as revealed in the work of several influential playwrights. The book explores questions related to the ways in which seven representative playwrights imagine India and its identity and the ways, in which this concept is revealed in the "narratives of the nation", its postcolonial contentions and the politics of identity, as revealed in the production of various cultural discourses. The chapters explore various aspects of the ongoing process of constructing and narrating culture, gender, the nation and identity. There has been no monograph on the questions of cultural identity in Hindi drama. This is a pioneering project and a desideratum in the field of Hindi literature, South Asian Studies, and broadly, in the study of theatre of India and of South Asian cultures and literatures.

Download or read book The Indian Partition in Literature and Films written by Rini Bhattacharya Mehta and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-17 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an examination of fictional representations, in books and films, of the 1947 Partition that led to the creation of the sovereign nation-states of India and Pakistan. While the process of representing the Partition experience through words and images began in the late 1940s, it is only in the last few decades that literary critics and film scholars have begun to analyse the work. The emerging critical scholarship on the Partition and its aftermath has deepened our understanding of the relationship between historical trauma, collective memory, and cultural processes, and this book provides critical readings of literary and cinematic texts on the impact of the Partition both in the Punjab and in Bengal. The collection assembles studies on Anglophone writings with those on the largely unexplored vernacular works, and those which have rarely found a place in discussions on the Partition. It looks at representations of women’s experiences of gendered violence in the Partition riots, and how literary texts have filled in the lack of the ‘human dimension’ in Partition histories. The book goes on to highlight how the memory of the Partition is preserved, and how the creative arts’ relation to public memory and its place within the public sphere has changed through time. Collectively, the essays present a nuanced understanding of how the experience of violence, displacement, and trauma shaped postcolonial societies and subjectivities in the Indian subcontinent. Mapping the diverse topographies of Partition-related uncertainties and covering both well-known and lesser-known texts on the Partition, this book will be a useful contribution to studies of South Asian History, Asian Literature and Asian Film.

Download or read book Imagining Indianness written by Diana Dimitrova and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-02-08 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together several important essays examining the interface between identity, culture, and literature within the issue of cultural identity in South Asian literature. The book explores how one imagines national identity and how this concept is revealed in the narratives of the nation and the production of various cultural discourses. The collection of essays examines questions related to the interpretation of the Indian past and present, the meanings of ancient and venerated cultural symbols in ancient times and modern, while discussing the ideological implications of the interpretation of identity and “Indianness” and how they reflect and influence the power-structures of contemporary societies in South Asia. Thus, the book studies the various aspects of the on-going process of constructing, imagining, re-imagining, and narrating “Indianness”, as revealed in the literatures and cultures of India.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Asian Politics written by Alexander C. Tan and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2023-12-11 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This state-of-the-art Encyclopedia provides a detailed snapshot study of politics in Asia. Curated by two internationally recognized scholars, entries offer key insights and critical reference points in order to navigate the vastness, diversity, and dynamism of Asian politics.

Download or read book Imagining Muslims in South Asia and the Diaspora written by Claire Chambers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-13 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary, cinematic and media representations of the disputed category of the ‘South Asian Muslim’ have undergone substantial change in the last few decades and particularly since the events of September 11, 2001. Here we find the first book-length critical analysis of these representations of Muslims from South Asia and its diaspora in literature, the media, culture and cinema. Contributors contextualize these depictions against the burgeoning post-9/11 artistic interest in Islam, and also against cultural responses to earlier crises on the subcontinent such as Partition (1947), the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war and secession of Bangladesh, the 1992 Ayodhya riots , the 2002 Gujarat genocide and the Kashmir conflict. Offering a comparative approach, the book explores connections between artists’ generic experimentalism and their interpretations of life as Muslims in South Asia and its diaspora, exploring literary and popular fiction, memoir, poetry, news media, and film. The collection highlights the diversity of representations of Muslims and the range of approaches to questions of Muslim religious and cultural identity, as well as secular discourse. Essays by leading scholars in the field highlight the significant role that literature, film, and other cultural products such as music can play in opening up space for complex reflections on Muslim identities and cultures, and how such imaginative cultural forms can enable us to rethink secularism and religion. Surveying a broad range of up-to-date writing and cultural production, this concise and pioneering critical analysis of representations of South Asian Muslims will be of interest to students and academics of a variety of subjects including Asian Studies, Literary Studies, Media Studies, Women’s Studies, Contemporary Politics, Migration History, Film studies, and Cultural Studies.

Download or read book Ethnic Subnationalist Insurgencies in South Asia written by Jugdep S. Chima and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a micro-historical analysis of the emergence and contemporary dynamics of recent ethnic sub-nationalist insurgencies in South Asia. Using comparative case studies, it discusses the causes of each insurgency, analyses the trajectory and dynamics of each including attempts at resolution, and highlights the wider theories of ethno-nationalist insurgency and mobilization. Bringing together an international group of contributors, the book covers insurgencies in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh. It questions why ethnic sub-nationalist insurgencies occurred at particular points in time and not at others, and explores the comparative trajectories of these movements. The book goes on to discern reappearing patterns of conflict escalation/de-escalation through the method of comparative process-tracing. It argues that while identity is a necessary factor for insurgency, it is not a sufficient one. Instead, ethnic mobilization and insurgency only emerge when it is activated by tension emerging from political competition between ethnic and central state elites. These elite-led dynamics, when combined with favourable socio-economic and political conditions, make the ethnic masses primed to accept the often symbolically-rich appeals from their leaders to mobilize against the central state. Providing an important study on ethno-nationalist insurgencies in South Asia, the book will be of interest to those working in the fields of South Asian Politics, Security Studies and Ethnic Conflict.

Download or read book Religion and Film written by Stefanie Knauss and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-01-29 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This critical overview of the field of film and religion distinguishes three complementary approaches: the study of film as text, the investigation of how film affect audiencs, and the consideration of film and religion as agents in cultural processes. The overview concludes with a reflection on theories and methodologies of the field and some possibilities for future development.

Download or read book Devotional Islam in Contemporary South Asia written by Michel Boivin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Muslim shrine is at the crossroad of many processes involving society and culture. It is the place where a saint – often a Sufi - is buried, and it works as a main social factor, with the power of integrating or rejecting people and groups, and as a mirror reflecting the intricacies of a society. The book discusses the role of popular Islam in structuring individual and collective identities in contemporary South Asia. It identifies similarities and differences between the worship of saints and the pattern of religious attendance to tombs and mausoleums in South Asian Sufism and Shi`ism. Inspired by new advances in the field of ritual and pilgrimage studies, the book demonstrates that religious gatherings are spaces of negotiation and redefinitions of religious identity and of the notion of sainthood. Drawing from a large corpus of vernacular and colonial sources, as well as the register of popular literature and ethnographic observation, the authors describe how religious identities are co-constructed through the management of rituals, and are constantly renegotiated through discourses and religious practices. By enabling students, researchers and academics to critically understand the complexity of religious places within the world of popular and devotional Islam, this geographical re-mapping of Muslim religious gatherings in contemporary South Asia contributes to a new understanding of South Asian and Islamic Studies.

Download or read book International Migration and Development in South Asia written by Md Mizanur Rahman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In migration studies, the nexus between migration and development in the global South has been meticulously debated. However, a unanimous resolution to this debate has not been found, due to the ever-changing nature of international migration. This book advances knowledge on the global debate on the migration-development relationship by documenting experiences in a number of countries in South Asia. Drawing on the experiences of global South Asians, this volume documents the impact of migration on the social, economic, and political fields in the broader context of development. It also presents a regional experience by looking into the migration-development nexus in the context of South Asia, and analyses the role South Asian migrants and diaspora communities play in the South Asian society. Contributions from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, including sociology, anthropology, political science, international relations and economics, document the development implications of South Asian migration. Broad in scope in terms of contents, timeline of migration, and geographical coverage, the book presents empirically-based case studies involving India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Nepal and their emigrants living and working in different parts of the world. Going beyond reporting the impacts of migration on economic development by highlighting the implications of ‘social development’ on society, this book provides a fascinating contribution to the fields of Asian Development, Migration Studies and South Asian Studies.

Download or read book Culture Health and Development in South Asia written by M. Islam and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently, mass arsenic poisoning of groundwater has emerged as a disastrous public health concern in Bangladesh. Apart from hundreds of deaths that have already been reported, 85 million people are estimated to be at high risk of developing deadly arsenicosis symptoms. The severity and extent of arsenicosis have obliged the government of Bangladesh to declare it the "worst national disaster" the country has ever faced, and further to be deemed a "state of emergency." To fight this pervasive public health disaster, the Bangladesh government has collaborated with the international and national NGOs to implement development projects to provide arsenic-free water to rural villagers. Drawing upon ethnographic research in rural Southwestern Bangladesh, this book discusses arsenic contamination and its resultant health impact from a medical anthropological and anthropology of development perspectives. It examines how the actual patients perceive, explain, manage and respond to this catastrophic public health outbreak, and goes on to analyse how such lay perceptions shape health-seeking behaviour of subjects in a medically plural context. To make the issue more holistic, this book further examines mitigation strategies and community participation in these projects. Challenging approaches to development and development project management, the book is of interest to policy makers, practitioners and academics working in the field of development studies, South Asian studies, medical anthropology, anthropology and sociology of development.

Download or read book Mobilizing Religion and Gender in India written by Nandini Deo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-30 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious nationalists and women’s activists have transformed India over the past century. They debated the idea of India under colonial rule, shaped the constitutional structure of Indian democracy, and questioned the legitimacy of the postcolonial consensus, as they politicized one dimension of identity. Using a historical comparative approach, the book argues that external events, activist agency in strategizing, and the political economy of transnational networks explain the relative success and failure of Hindu nationalism and the Indian women’s movement rather than the ideological claims each movement makes. By focusing on how particular activist strategies lead to increased levels of public support, it shows how it is these strategies rather than the ideologies of Hindutva and feminism that mobilize people. Both of these social movements have had decades of great power and influence, and decades of relative irrelevance, and both challenge postcolonial India’s secular settlement – its division of public and private. The book goes on to highlight new insights into the inner dynamics of each movement by showing how the same strategies - grassroots education, electoral mobilization, media management, donor cultivation - lead to similarly positive results. Bringing together the study of Hindu nationalism and the Indian women’s movement, the book will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian Religion, Gender Studies, and South Asian Politics.