In this study, I investigate the sociolinguistic factors that exert a subtractive influence on the Telugu language and Andhra culture. This study focuses on the sociolinguistic features of the Telugu Community and Telugu speaking Hindus in Natal. The majority of the Telugu speaking immigrants settled in the vicinity where they served during indentureship, for e.g. in Kearsney and Tongaat on the North Coast and, 1II0vo, Esperanza, Umzinto, Sezela and Port Shepstone on the South Coast. The contents of this study are largely based on the findings of the survey conducted among the Andhras living in Durban and surrounding areas. As a Telugu home language speaker and concomitantly, an Andhra, my concern about other Andhras moving away from our language and culture has stimulated me to investigate the factors exerting a subtractive influence on the Telugu language and Andhra Culture. My participation in the Andhra community has afforded me a unique opportunity to view the occurrences in the community. I have enjoyed vast experience as an executive member of the Andhra Maha Sabha of South Africa (hereafter AMSSA). The study aims to respond to the following key questions: • Why is there an erosion of the Telugu language and culture? • Is AMSSA fulfilling its aims and objectives in the nurturing of the Telugu language and Andhra culture in South Africa? • Does the Andhra Eisteddfod help in the maintenance of the Telugu language and Andhra culture in South Africa? • What is the community's attitude towards the Telugu language and Andhra culture? This study applies to the sociolinguistic phenomenon of language shift (L.S.) to determine the status of the TeLugu language. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2005.

"Karnāṭaka Yūnīvarsiṭī dvārā Pī.-eca. Ḍī upādhi ke lie svīkṛta śodhaprabandha." / In Hindi. Includes bibliographical references (p. [326]-344).

"Isa śodha-prabandha para (lekhikā)--ko Sāgara Viśvavidyālaya kī Pī-Eca. Ḍī kī upādhi prāpta huī hai." / Includes bibliographical references (p. [352-360]).

This dissertation is a genealogical study of the intersections between popular cinema, popular religion and politics in South India. It proceeds with a particular focus on the discursive field of Telugu cinema as well as religion and politics in the state of Andhra Pradesh from roughly the 1950s to the 2000s. By discursive field of cinema, I refer to not only filmic texts, but also disciplines of film making, practices of publicity, modes of film criticism as well as practices of viewership all of which are an inalienable part of the institution of cinema. Telugu cinema continued to produce mythological and devotional films based mostly on Hindu myths and legends many decades after they ceased to be major genres in Hindi and many other Indian languages. This was initially seen simply as an example of the insufficiently modernized and secularized nature of the South Indian public, and of the enduring nature of Indian religiosity. However, these films acquired an even greater notoriety later. In 1982, N.T. Rama Rao, a film star who starred in the roles of Hindu gods like Rama and Krishna in many mythologicals set up a political party, contested and won elections, and became the Chief Minister of the state, all in the space of a year. For many political and social commentators this whirlwind success could only be explained by the power of his cinematic image as god and hero! The films thus came to be seen as major contributing factors in the unusual and undesirable alliance between cinema, religion and politics. This dissertation does not seek to refute the links between these different fields; on the contrary it argues that the cinema is a highly influential and popular cultural institution in India and as such plays a very significant role in mediating both popular religion and politics. Hence, we need a fuller critical exploration of the intersections and overlaps between these realms that we normally think ought to exist in independent spheres. This dissertation contributes to such an exploration. A central argument this dissertation makes is about the production of the figure of the citizen-devotee through cinema and other media discourses. Through the use of this hyphenated word, citizen-devotee, this study points to the mutual and fundamental imbrication of the two ideas and concepts. In our times, the citizen and devotee do not and cannot exist as independent figures but necessarily contaminate each other. On the one hand, the citizen-devotee formulation indicates that the citizen ideal is always traversed by, and shot through with other formations of subjectivity that inflect it in significant ways. On the other hand, it points to the incontrovertible fact that in modern liberal democracies, it is impossible to simply be a devotee (bhakta) where one's allegiance is only to a particular faith or mode of being. On the contrary, willingly or unwillingly one is enmeshed in the discourse of rights and duties, subjected to the governance of the state, the politics of identity and the logics of majority and minority and so on. Religion as we know it today is itself the product of an encounter with modern rationalities of power and the modern media. Hence, we cannot simply talk about the citizen or the devotee, but only of the modern hybrid formation, the citizen-devotee. The first full length study of the Telugu mythological and devotional films, this dissertation combines a historical account of Telugu cinema with an anthropology of film making and viewership practices. It draws on film and media theory to foreground the specificity of these technologies and the new kind of publics they create. Anthropological theories of religion, secularism and the formation of embodied and affective subjects are combined with political theories of citizenship and governmentality to complicate our understanding of the overlapping formations of film spectators, citizens and devotees.

This study of mural painting in southern India aims to change the received narrative of painting in South Asia not only by bringing to light a body of work previously understudied and in many cases undocumented, but by showing how that corpus contributes vitally to the study of South Indian art and history. At the broadest level, this dissertation reworks our understanding of a critical moment in South Asian history that has until recently been seen as a period of decadence, setting the stage for the rise of colonial power in South Asia. Militating against the notion of decline, I demonstrate the artistic, social, and political dynamism of this period by documenting and analyzing the visual and inscriptional content of temple and palace murals donated by merchants, monastics, and political elites. The dissertation consists of two parts: documentation and formal analysis, and semantic and historical analysis. Documentation and formal analysis of these murals, which decorate the walls and ceilings of temples and palaces, are foundational for further art historical study. I establish a rubric for style and date based on figural typology, narrative structure, and the way in which text is incorporated into the murals. I clarify the kinds of narrative structures employed by the artists, and trace how these change over time. Finally, I identify the three most prevalent genres of painting: narrative, figural (as portraits and icons), and topographic. One of the outstanding features of these murals, which no previous scholarship has seriously considered, is that script is a major compositional and semantic element of the murals. By the eighteenth century, narrative inscriptions in the Tamil and Telugu languages, whose scripts are visually distinct, consistently framed narrative paintings. For all of the major sites considered in this dissertation, I have transcribed and translated these inscriptions. Establishing a rubric for analysis of the pictorial imagery alongside translations of the text integrated into the murals facilitates my analysis of the function and iconicity of script, and application of the content of the inscriptions to interpretation of the paintings. My approach to text, which considers inscriptions to be both semantically and visually meaningful, is woven into a framework of analysis that includes ritual context, patronage, and viewing practices. In this way, the dissertation builds an historical account of an understudied period, brings to light a new archive for the study of art in South Asia, and develops a new methodology for understanding Nayaka-period painting. Chapters Three, Four, and Five each elaborate on one of the major genres identified in Chapter Two: narrative, figural, and topographic painting. My study of narrative focuses on the most popular genre of text produced at this time, talapuranam (Skt. sthalapurana), as well as hagiographies of teachers and saints (guruparampara). Turning to figural depiction, I take up the subject of portraiture. My study provides new evidence of the active patronage by merchants, religious and political elites through documentation and analysis of previously unrecorded donor inscriptions and donor portraits. Under the rubric of topographic painting I analyze the representation of sacred sites joined together to create entire sacred landscapes mapped onto the walls and ceilings of the temples. Such images are closely connected to devotional (bhakti) literature that describes and praises these places and spaces. The final chapter of the dissertation proposes new ways of understanding how the images were perceived and activated by their contemporary audiences. I argue that the kinesthetic experience of the paintings is central to their concept, design, and function.

The purpose of the thesis is to examine the relationship between social structure and ritual. It is based on data collected in a peasant village in Visakhapatnam District, Andhra Pradesh, South India, over a period of twenty-three months 1970-1972). In this village, in which Gavara farmers are the dominant caste, the formal organizing principles of the society are hierarchy and interdependence. A detailed statistical survey of the realities of the society reveals that these principles, while on the whole upheld, are constantly under challenge. Women constantly challenge male dominance in domestic economic affairs and disputes and also play a major role in the high degree of marital instability and divorce. Brothers pursue their own households' interests to the detriment of their interdependent co-operation with each other. Between castes, economic relations do not always conform to a strictly hierarchical pattern. The caste hierarchy itself is a mass of discrepant unreciprocated claims. In the face of these violations and contradictory pressures it is ritual activity and its symbolism which define and uphold the formal conventions of social hierarchy and interdependence. This is achieved through the constant repetition of symbols of respect and in the principal ritual act, puja. This symbolic acting out of hierarchy is thus presented through rituals as the epitome of morality itself. The subordinate role of women is similarly defined by ritual concepts. The woman who is subordinated to her husband is virtuous and auspicious. A woman who becomes a widow is no longer subordinate to an elder male and is inauspicious. Performances of rituals of the major agricultural festivals foster ideal models of inter-caste cooperation by activating responsibilities for castes to participate interdependently. They are, however, also occasions through which numerous political and economic rivalries find expression.

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