This thesis presents the first extended ethnographic account of a popular professional theatrical form and life-style—the jatra of West Bengal, India. The research material presented and analysed was collected from 1970-1972 in West Bengal and the immediately surrounding states of Assam, Orissa and Bihar. The cognitive universe of the jatra jagat (world), the cultural practice of the jatra business, and the interactional constraints operating among the various categories of people within the jatra profession, are described and interpreted. In addition, this thesis presents the first systematically and anthropologically annotated translation of a popularly performed jatra play, Pariah Paiser Pvithibi (The World for F-ive Paisa). The central point of the thesis revolves around an interpretation of the concerns of the professional jatra business—an aesthetic business, the business of cultural performance. The argument is that this performance form, from its asserted putative origin, has been a critical and self-reflective commentary on Bengali social and cultural life. The jatra is inextricably bound within the existential and cultural dilemmas of Bengali life, dilemmas and contradictions that traditionally were resolved at both metaphysical and practical levels. Now that the jatra is embedded within a capitalist business world, critical commentaries and revolutionary desires remain unresolved within the profession itself. In spite of this, the jatra remains critical of both itself and Bengali social and cultural life, embedded as it is in the current context of feared and despised Western cultural imperialism and internal domination. The anthropological interpretation and analysis presented in the thesis is informed from a number of sources; the views expressed by people within the jatra world, the work in anthropology that currently goes under the heading of 'symbolic anthropology', critical theory and literary criticism, and semiotics. With these points of view in mind, the thesis presents an analysis of the jatra advertising system, the jatra performance system, and a larger peripatetic performance system, as well as a statement about the interpretation of meaning in Bengali life. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Unknown

There is considerable evidence that dowry payments in India have not only increased over the last five decades, but that the custom has spread into regions and communities where it was never practiced before. The aim of this thesis is to understand why these changes have occurred. A particularly influential explanation is that rising dowries in India are concomitant with population growth. According to this interpretation, a population increase leads to an excess supply of brides since men marry younger women. As a result, dowry payments must rise in order to clear the marriage market. Reductions in the equilibrium age difference will tend to equalize the excess supply of women in the marriage market. It has been reasoned that the severe social and economic pressures associated with older unmarried daughters imply that households of older potential brides are willing to outbid the families of younger brides and that this competitive interaction places upward pressure on dowries. The first substantive chapter of this thesis explicitly models the dynamics of dowry payments when population grows. It points out some difficulties in making the theory reconcile the main observations relevant in the context of demographic change. In particular, there exist conditions under which population growth can cause dowries to decrease if the model is constrained from generating an increasing number of unmarried women. An alternative explanation is provided in the subsequent chapter which takes into account the phenomenon of caste. The explanation posits a process of modernisation which increases the heterogeneity of potential wealth within each caste. The new income-earning opportunities brought about by development are predominantly filled by men and as a result grooms become a relatively heterogeneous group compared to brides. If we perceive dowry as a bid that a bride makes for a groom of a certain market value, an increase in heterogeneity of grooms will increase the spread of dowries. Men who become more eligible in the marriage market will receive higher dowries, whereas the payments will decrease for those who are less eligible; however, average dowries may remain constant. The explanation as to why dowries also increase for the relatively less desirable grooms, and in turn average dowry payments necessarily increase, relies heavily on particularities of the caste system. Although there are numerous studies of the dowry phenomenon in India, research pertaining to the custom of dowry in the rest of South Asia is relatively sparse. The aim of the final chapter is to study dowry payments in Pakistan. Since an exploration of how they have evolved through time is not possible due to limitations of the data, the analysis focuses instead on the present role of dowry payments. The investigation concludes that the dowry phenomenon in Pakistan is similar to that occurring in India. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

This thesis presents a brief history of the Sino-Indian relations, and describes the issues leading up to the border dispute between China and India in 1962.

A pesar de que India da cuenta de una cultura civilizacional milenaria, la construcción de su Política Exterior (PE) comienza a consolidarse desde su reciente independencia, a mediados del siglo XX. El país ha tenido que lidiar con un legado colonial importante y una diversidad religiosa y cultural que han condicionado la formación de un sistema político con ribetes foráneos y particulares, configurando una democracia sui generis. En el tiempo reciente India se ha insertado en la esfera internacional como una potencia emergente gracias a sus altos índices de crecimiento económico que han sido acompañados por contradicciones propias de un país con grandes niveles de desigualdad. Esto ha conllevado a una nueva dinámica de construcción de PE, con nuevos liderazgos y desafíos que re-significan políticas que han destacado a India como país neutral y no alineado hacia un mundo de alianzas diversas y superación de tensiones culturales y territoriales. Ante esto, la presente tesis de investigación buscará, desde un enfoque constructivista, analizar el impacto de los valores e identidad de India en su Política Exterior.

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