Thesis (D. Min.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 1988. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 335-354).

Thesis (M.A.)--Capital Bible Seminary, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-81).

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Kathline M. Erndl, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Religion. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 16, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

This is a thesis on marital conflict among Hindu South Africans, a community in which the divorce rate is steadily rising. This study aims to gather objective and scientific information on some of the more important factors responsible for this conflict. Identification of high risk factors would provide valuable pointers about what needs to be done to prevent serious marital discord from arising in the first place, or, having arisen, what can be done about resolving them satisfactorily before relationships have been irreparably harmed. The sample comprised two groups of couples who were differentiated from each other by the quality of their marriages, one whose marriages have been generally stable and happy (the SM group) and the other whose marriages have been showing obvious signs of strain and instability over a period of at least six months (the UM group). At the time of the study the 100 couples who comprised the UM sample were receiving professional assistance at some welfare agency, hospital or marriage guidance centre. The 50 couples who comprised the SM sample were recommended by social workers on account of their very happy marriages. Data from the two groups were obtained through the use of an interview schedule. Their responses were compared so as to determine whether, and in what respects, the two groups of spouses differed from each other. The following factors were found to be associated with poor marital adjustment : marriage at an early age; low educational, occupational and socioeconomic levels; quarrelsome parents; hasty unions; marriage against parents' wishes; pre-marital pregnancy; periodic unemployment of breadwinner, and frequent change of occupation; debts; disadvantaged housing, short courtship period; marked age differences between partners; a more idealised, less realistic set of expectations regarding married life; unplanned pregnancies, too close or too little attachment with one's parents; a negative attitude toward in-laws; parents' disapproval of prospective partner; absence of friends; conflict over the choice of friends; activities which jeopardise a family's limited resources such as drinking and gambling; poor communication between spouses; sexual problems; and disagreement over division of labour in the home. The following factors were associated with good marital functioning: some conflict with one's parents, but not too much; visiting in-laws together; joint participation in outside interests; wholesome personality traits; freedom to communicate one's real feelings to the spouse without fear of retribution; constructive ways of handling conflict; wise handling of family's finances; democratic relationships; sexual compatibility; and a circle of mutual friends. A call is made for a National Family Programme (which will include the Hindu community) whereby the quality of family and married life can be improved. Joint contributions need to be made by the central government, universities, schools, the media, business and industry, as well as welfare, cultural, religious and service organisations. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1985.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1991.

No description available.

In this dissertation, I investigate the socioeconomic causes of consequences of ethnic conflict, and evaluate interventions that can reduce social animosity and misperceptions about outgroups. In particular, I focus on conflict between Hindus and Muslims in India. In recent years, online misinformation has emerged as a major contributor to misperceptions and animosity towards Muslims in India. In Chapter 1, I investigate if we can inoculate people against misinformation and mitigate its impact on people’s beliefs, attitudes, and behavior? We conduct a large field experiment in India with an intervention providing weekly digests containing a compilation of fact-checks of viral misinformation. In these digests, we also incorporate narrative explainers to give details and context of issues that are politically salient and consistent target of false stories. Specifically, we address misperceptions about Muslims increasingly fuelled by online misinformation. We find that familiarity with fact-checks increases people’s ability to correctly identify misinformation by eleven percentage points. However, belief in true news also decreases by four percentage points. We estimate a structural model to disentangle the two mechanisms of impact—truth discernment, which is the ability to correctly distinguish between false and true news; and skepticism, which changes the overall credulity for both false and true news. The impact is driven by an increase in both truth discernment and skepticism. Whereas skepticism increases immediately, it takes several weeks to become better at discerning truth. Finally, our intervention reduces misperceptions about Muslims, as well as leads to changes in policy attitudes and behavior. Treated individuals are less likely to support discriminatory policies and are more likely to pay for efforts to counter the harassment of inter-faith couples. In Chapter 2, I investigate the economic impacts of conflict and social animus by estimating the causal impact of ethnic violence on economic growth in India. For causal identification, I use shift-share instruments to isolate exogenous national shocks to violence from endogenous local shocks. On average, a riot reduces state GDP growth rate by 0.14 percentage points. To investigate mechanism, I estimate the dynamics of impact using the synthetic control method and compare it to theoretical predictions from a shock to social capital versus physical capital. This shows that the negative impact of violence is likely driven by a negative shock to social capital from higher animosity and discrimination among communities exposed to violence. This impact of violence on growth creates a vicious cycle when one also considers the effect in the opposite direction – lower growth leading to more violence. The multiplier due to this vicious cycle magnifies the impact of external growth shocks by 40 percent in equilibrium. Overall, the results highlight the importance of strong institutions to manage conflict for the long-term prosperity of societies. In Chapter 3, I investigate the historical origins of ethnic violence in India by comparing violence in regions that were directly ruled by British, versus those that were indirectly ruled through native kings who had significant autonomy. I find that regions that are directly ruled have more violence in post-independence period. I then use direct British rule as an instrument for ethnic violence to estimate the impact of violence and residential segregation.

Why does constitutionalism sustain itself as the primary language of politics in a postcolonial democracy like India? This dissertation answers this question by arguing that constitutionalism sustains itself as the primary language of politics for Indian democracy because of enduring anticolonial justifications for it that emerge from epistemically diverse worldviews in Indian society. In particular, this dissertation explores Islamic and anti-caste justifications for an anticolonial pluralist political conception of constitutionalism in India. In studying constitutionalism as an outcome of diverse anticolonial justifications for it, this dissertation demonstrates that the political conception of constitutionalism in India is not merely a continuation of liberal-imperial ideas of constitutionalism. Instead, popular justifications of constitutionalism in India, even in its current moment of crisis, have a genealogy that emerges from epistemically diverse anticolonial justifications of constitutionalism that took shape during constitutionalism's moment of creation in India. It makes this argument in three steps. First, by interrogating how liberal imperialism constructed the political domain in colonial India. Second, by exploring how anticolonialism critiqued this liberal imperial construction of the political domain and used these criticisms to justify a pluralist political conception for postcolonial constitutionalism. Third, by analyzing how these anticolonial justifications of constitutionalism are employed in postcolonial Indian democracy to maintain constitutionalism as the language of politics even when it faces a severe threat from Hindu majoritarianism. This dissertation demonstrates that anticolonial justifications of constitutionalism in India, which emerged from Islamic and anti-caste worldviews, remain relevant to the democratic discourse around constitutionalism and the political conception that it shapes for India by examining four significant justifications for constitutionalism in India. The first justification is captured by anticolonial worldmaking adopted by constitutionalism in India to acknowledge, forefront, and make legible to political life the background conditions for common life in India. This justification of worldmaking, which anticolonial thought regularly reflected on and brought to the fore of public life in India, includes (a) deeply ingrained dispositions about mutual coexistence that subconsciously shaped its participants for a millennium through the unfolding of overlapping geographical, linguistic, ethical and social worlds of diverse worldviews in India, and (b) agentic forms of participation, shaped by diverse groups in India coming into public spaces and employing constitutionally guaranteed political freedoms, to discursively construct the world that is India as one that is plural, progressive and enables self-respect despite being shaped by non-secular ideas. The second form of justification for constitutionalism in India lies in the use of non-secular conceptions of progress, where progress is not simply captured by a developmental conception but by the ethical modes of learning and knowledge-building through which constitutionalism enables diverse people to learn about others in the political community and develop a conception of fraternity. This dissertation shows how conceptions of fraternity that justify constitutionalism in India enable a non-secular conception of progress, pluralism, and self-respect in democracy in India. However, it also examines how a majoritarian conception of constitutional democracy threatens this conception of fraternity in India's postcolonial democracy. The third justification of constitutionalism emerges from endorsements for it that emerge from its capacity to enable self-respect, where diverse individuals who are shaped by the institutions and normative order established by constitutionalism demand that this order enable recognition, communication, association, and self-consciousness across the diverse groups that shape Indian society. Such a conception of self-respect, which derives its ideas from anticolonial conceptions of self-respect, is more expansive than conceptions of self-respect that emerge from Transatlantic liberalism because it reflects how colonialism shaped counter-concepts to self-respect across whole societies and worldviews, and not just as conditions that impact individuals alone. When this pluralist and emancipatory political conception of constitutionalism is threatened by other interpretations of constitutionalism by those in power, as it is by religious majoritarianism in its current moment of crisis, it is reaffirmed in sites of civil disobedience across India's postcolonial democracy where epistemically diverse interpretations of constitutionalism are not only respected but esteemed as justifications for constitutionalism in India. Such a form of participation in democratic politics through civil disobedience has led to a justificatory discourse around constitutionalism that draws on a pluralist conception of participation as the fourth justification of constitutionalism in India. These four interlinked justifications of constitutionalism in India have enabled a plural political conception of constitutionalism that survives in India, despite the threat to it from Hindu majoritarian politics. In exploring why justificatory discourse around constitutionalism enables democracy in India, this dissertation also develops an anticolonial u conception of justification as a form of making political principles legible to diverse peoples who were formerly colonized, as opposed to a strictly rational discourse of separating right from wrong in public reason that shapes democratic societies.

The promotion of the Hindi language by the Hindi Shiksha Sangh (South Africa) has dominated the cultural life of the majority of Hindi-speaking Hindus in South Africa for over fifty years. This study concerns itself with the role of music in the construction of a local Hindi identity in the Sangh. It examines the factors that created and sustained the Hindi identity. Areas that come under focus in the research include: the history of the Hindi-speaking Hindu and their language in South Africa; the promotion of the Hindi language; the role assumed by the Hindi Shiksha Sangh . (South Africa) ; the function and significance of music and the socio-historical context of music that informs the cultural identity of the Hindi-speaking Hindu. The theoretical basis for this research has been drawn from principles in musical ethnography. The study locates the cultural identity of a linguistic group within the premise of socially meaningful music. / Thesis (M.Mus)-University of Natal, Durban, 1999.

Weddings have always been an indispensable and auspicious part of Hindu life both in South Africa and in India. This study is an examination of one aspect of Hindu weddings, viz. the vocal and sometimes instrumental recital of songs of blessing and praise. These songs are known as mangalams and have evolved in South Africa in the last century due to various factors. Analysis of the mangalam enables us to understand how traditions and customs continue and change in accordance with changing circumstances. Much of the data presented in this thesis has been gleaned from oral sources and, as such, the methodology of oral history has been extremely influential in the shaping of this dissertation. / Thesis (M.Mus)-University of Natal, Durban, 1999.