published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Asian Studies / Master / Master of Philosophy

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Recent work in anthropology has translated systemic disjuncture to individual subjectivity, under the premise that "disordered" political economies cause "disordered" identities. However this work underplays the role of affect in "gathering" subjectivity amidst external transformation. The following thesis proposes a concept of "mood" as a set of conjoined, low-level affects that provides continuity in contexts of neoliberalism and change. It investigates women's "moods" in an urbanizing region of Uttarakhand, India. Drawing from ethnographic interviews in a village, and a migrant community, mood is shown to involve components of capitalist anxiety that articulate with attitudes of docility and duty. Experiences typically described as "postmodern" including "incompleteness", "estrangement" and "alienation", are common to, and produce "classical" gendered affects in both rural and urban settings. Although anxiety can be destabilizing, it joins paradoxically with these affects to lubricate women's sense of "belonging" in a place.

This thesis explores the use of collective memory in the practice of landscape architecture, specifically the use of 'memory mapping' as an imaging technique. The specific site chosen is Shaniwarwada, a fortified royal complex dating from the eighteenth century, in the city of Pune, India. In order to gain an insider's perspective of the site, written questionnaires were distributed and interviews were given. The findings of these inquiries coupled with an understanding of contemporary theories concerning memory mapping guided the development of programs and physical interventions. It is hoped that these undertakings will enhance the role of Shaniwarwada as an historical site and a community place in the future.

This thesis examines educational reforms initiated by British colonial officials in late nineteenth/early twentieth century India and the responses they ensued from Indian Muslim reformers. Focusing on the "woman question," British colonizers came to the conviction that the best method to "civilize" Indian society was to educate women according to modern Western standards. Muslim reformers sought to resolve the "woman question" for themselves by combining their own ideologies of appropriate female education with Western ones. Muslim reformers were also deeply concerned with the disappearance of Islamic identity owing to colonial educational policies. Reformers placed the responsibility of maintaining Islamic culture on the shoulders of women so as to both resolve the debate over the proper place of women in society and retain a distinct Islamic identity in the changing Indian context. This resolution limited Indian Muslim women's access to education as well as their participation in Indian society at large.

This thesis examines the complex interplay between colonial modernity and Sakta (goddess-centered) devotion in the context of an elite family of zamindars (landholders) in Bengal. One consequence of colonialism in Bengal was the efflorescence of overt Sakta religiosity among Bengal's elite. Religious practice, supposedly "protected" by the colonial order, became the site where indigenous elites expressed political will and, to an extent, resisted foreign domination. I argue that the zamindars of Bansberia in the Hugli district of Bengal were creative agents, engaging and resisting the various cultural ruptures represented by colonial rule in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Employing analyses of archival material, contemporary ethnography, and architectural style, this thesis is an ethnohistory of a modern zamindari-kingdom that locates its political voice in an emblematic Sakta-Tantric temple. It demonstrates the powerful relationship between religion and politics in colonial Bengal and discusses the implications of this strong association in the contemporary context.

Among the few matrilineal communities from around the world were the Nairs of the south-western coast, also known as the Malabar coast, of India. The system of matrilineal consanguinity and descent practiced by the Nairs was remarkable for its complex kinship organization and joint family set up, and the unique status---social and economic---it afforded to the women of the community. / These factors were reflected in the spatial morphology of the traditional Nair house, an assemblage of four blocks, called the nalukettu. The different structural identities of the tarawad institution; the comparative latitude and the bias of inheritance that women enjoyed; the codes of marriage, interaction and avoidance; and the observation of rituals, an integral part of the cosmology and temporal cycle of the system, all find expression in the layout and spatial organization. On the whole, the geometry of the Nair nalukettu was a graphic metaphor of the social and behavioral patterns of the Nair community overlaid on the Hindu way of life, as interpreted by the community. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

In India, the Hindu Succession Rights Act of 1956 allows the widow, the daughters, alongside the sons of the deceased senior male, to claim an equal share in familial property. By giving inheritance rights to daughters and widows, and not exclusively to sons, this Act proposes a radically different organization of the ideal patrilineal household, commonly referred to as "the Hindu joint family". The Act initiates a transformation of Hindu women's status through their rights to property, which implies the transformation of women's rights and duties in India. / Drawing on the analysis made during an extensive fieldwork period in a rural community and case studies in Pune tribunals, this thesis shows that women generally know that they have some rights to their father's and husband's property. However, for various reasons, they do not see any advantage in claiming their inheritance rights. Women often find it difficult to reconcile claiming rights with their duties as daughters (or daughters-in-law) and the social restrictions associated with widowhood. In addition, the complex relationships with the state bureaucracy often prevent them from their right to access property. In that context, before choosing a forum of justice, most women (and men) will first opt for conflict avoidance. / This socio-legal ethnography of women's succession rights, in the state of Maharashtra, is an anthropological contribution to the study of the dynamics of social cohesion in an environment where legal pluralism is itself in transition.

This dissertation focuses on a content analysis through which representation of women in Bollywood cinema is examined. Bollywood has been a major point of reference for Indian culture in the last century and will undoubtedly persist for years to come. To an extent, Bollywood has shaped the way in which people read Indian culture as well as reflecting India's events, traditions, values and customs by the mere fact that it is a pervasive and inescapable force in Indian society. Women have been and to an extent still are represented as mere wallpaper in Bollywood films. Issues around gender, gender-based violence, femininity, women's rights and sexuality (outside of being a sexpot) are often ignored and in most cases, subverted. Feminist discourse in the west has taken this up in relation to Hollywood (cf. Mulvey, 1975; Kuhn, 1984; Kaplan, 2000) however, discussions of gender in eastern cinema has yet to be fully developed. Even though there is a body of work in this field (cf. Butalia, 1984; Datta, 2000) there is room for far more in-depth investigation. This study explores the ways in which women are represented and misrepresented in Bollywood cinema by looking at the main features which make Bollywood what it is: the stock characters, song and dance routines and elaborate dress. Each of these elements is discussed by using one or two films to illustrate the formula that is used in Bollywood cinema to undermine women. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

Perhaps one of the greatest paradoxes in the history of modern Muslim India is embodied in the respective personalities and careers of Azad and Jinnah--a paradox in themselves as well as in opposition to each other. Muhammad 'Ali Jinnah, a "lay" person by descent, by training and by temperament chose to espouse the cause of religious communalism and, in spite of the contradictions between his personality and his career, he was audacious enough to proclaim his ideal loud and clear. On the other hand, Abul Kalam Azad, who was a religious person by birth, by education and by social classification, decided upon secularism as his goal but was not courageous enough to call a spade a spade. He could never get rid of religion as the final authority in his own arguments for secularism and he could never get the 'ulama, the personifications of religious authority, to olear out of politics once he had dragged them in. This thesis is an attempt on my part to assess the role of religion in, and its influence on, Indian Muslim politics in the present century, and to see how the earliest efforts at making Indian Muslims take a more secularist attitude towards politics met with failure.