This dissertation explores the means by which Hindus in the United States theorize and cultivate desires in the midst of the larger project of making Hindu subjectivities for themselves and their children. It suggests that the cultivation of desire—while significant in creating any type of subjectivity anywhere—is a centerpiece of making identities for Hindus in the diaspora. From its very beginnings, in reference to Jews, the language and sentiment of diaspora have always been associated with desires. Specifically, there is the longing for the homeland, which most diasporic communities have cultivated. For many Hindus, the idea of India as a desired ‘homeland’ is also fundamental, but for them, as throughout history, the desires associated with diasporic experiences have been enacted in a range of ways and they have always been about more than simply place. Hindu parents and community members are engaged in the development of other types of desires—moral-spiritual, theological, narrative-historical, “sanctioned” romantic and familial, gastronomic, and material. Many contemporary practices of Hindus in the diaspora—educational, ritual, representational, political, and consumer—revolve around the inculcation and fulfillment of desires, for both children and adults. Desire is a recurrent trope, articulated differently by parents, teachers, community leaders, married couples, students, young adults, devotees, and children. Not only do people express their own desires, but they negotiate, facilitate or hinder the desires, both real and perceived, of others. Through an examination of various Hindu realms and practices, I trace some of the types of Hinduism that are forming in the United States, as well as the affective cultures and desires that seem to animate them. The chapters explore: the development, content and cultures of Hindu supplementary educational programs; new modes of Hindu exhibition as ritual and devotional practices, and as reflections of collective desires about Hindu representation; the role of consumer cultures—particularly the place of ethnic stores and practices of shopping; the rise in forms of Hindu advocacy, particularly with respect to the concomitant desires to control representations of Hinduism and Indian history within educational and other public spheres; the place of Hindu nationalism and the motivations of participants in a variety of Hindu spaces; and the expression of ‘strategic citizenship’ on the part of a Hindu community seeking public recognition and acceptance. My hope is that this work not only sheds light on processes at work within contemporary Hindu communities in the U.S., but helps us to consider larger human questions about the development of religious selves and sensibilities, the shaping of identities, the cultivation of belonging, the negotiation of public and civic spheres, and the politics and poetics of nationalism and self-representation. The ways people locate themselves and are located by others, both consciously and unconsciously, are often artifacts of desire, and it is through desire that various identifications are negotiated.

This study resituates the twentieth-century origins of lifestyle reform movements by examining the cultural politics of nourishment in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868), when the move toward a shared, authoritative, and seemingly objective system of dietary reform began to take shape, apart from the influence of modern nutritional sciences or the nation-state. A host of popular writers adapted older knowledge on medicine and longevity to communicate rules for dietary conduct that could apply across the spectrum of status and class. The celebration of nourishment in the emerging cultural marketplace of Tokugawa Japan in part represented an attempt to bring society back into alignment through a rhetoric that bundled self-regulation, morality, and individual and collective prosperity into a holistic sense of what the body could become in the world when properly fueled. Surrendering to a desire for the delicious was tantamount to shirking one’s duty, inviting disease, and weakening not only the individual body but the household as well. This tension between self-regulation and an expanded, socially embedded conception of bodily care became the animating logic behind the dispensation and reception of dietary advice in Japan from the eighteenth century on. As the core component in a system of healthy being, nourishing life in late-Tokugawa Japan transcended the personal longevity regimens from which it had once originated to become a perceived cure for social ills. Developments in the Tokugawa and Meiji periods reveal an ongoing tension between a universal healthy diet rooted in human physiology and Japan-specific nutritional standards meant to apply only locally. This study seeks to demonstrate how difficult it can be to isolate and identify a Japanese diet in light of waves of historical change, not only in patterns of eating but in thought and motivation behind competing visions of what to eat and why. Each new iteration of advice represents another attempt to distill and communicate priorities that often extend beyond immediate physiological concerns of bodily care. Following dietary guidance into the past compels us to think of nourishment not as a progression to an increasingly sophisticated and complete understanding of the ways in which food affects how the body performs in the world, but as a contingent struggle between systems of self-care with their own logics, claims to efficacy, and extra-physiological concerns rooted in the historical contexts from which they emerged. Chapter One examines Kaibara Ekiken’s (1630-1714) Precepts on Nourishing Life (Yōjōkun, 1713), a text that marked a turning point at which previously esoteric principles of health migrated from medical systems to an emerging popular culture of nourishment. By the end of the Tokugawa period, Yōjōkun had become both a set of specific principles recorded by Ekiken and a “brand” that others could use to legitimize their own dietary sensibilities. Ekiken carved out a new position from the earlier Chinese and Japanese longevity texts from which he drew inspiration, adapting a model of alimentary choice and personal responsibility to his own historical moment. Chapter Two explores the rise of new knowledge, new knowledge makers, and new knowledge consumers in vernacular dietary guidebooks. These guides changed the implicit structure of authority between ordinary people and those from whom they sought advice on health. Assertions that guidebooks alone could provide all the care one needed altered the terms of the relationship between everyday readers and experts by inserting a new layer of access to knowledge without the need for firsthand consultation. Despite emerging from the realm of medical knowledge, new nourishing life (yōjō) manuals betrayed a growing skepticism of doctors and medicinal healing, subordinating them to preventive nourishment regimens. Chapter Three investigates how the commercial publishing culture of late Tokugawa Japan created a venue for non-specialist authors to comment on the social place of the well-nourished body developed in nourishing life guides. Literary storybooks explored the moral and economic dimensions of health, highlighting excess, gluttony, wealth, and income disparity as themes in who should or could eat what. The chapter focuses on two ‘tales of the stomach,’ which aimed to demystify digestion and the workings of the inner body by personifying foods and bodily responses to them. I argue for a more expansive view of food publications in the Tokugawa period, as well as an understanding of didacticism inclusive enough to account for shared dietary themes across genres. Chapter Four concludes the dissertation by tracing the encounter between Tokugawa dietary health and Western scientific nutrition in the Meiji period (1868-1912), as the fledgling Japanese empire negotiated its new position vis-à-vis the West on political, cultural, and corporeal grounds. The new nutritional sciences were a novel departure from the norms of dietary thinking not only in Japan but in Europe and America, where views on diet had been largely commensurable with those of nourishing life until around the middle of the nineteenth century. Late Meiji doctor Ishizuka Sagen and the civil organizations founded to advance his ideas were among the first to use a “chemical theory of nutrition” to challenge new norms of Western science by evoking a traditionalist vision of a Japanese diet of brown rice, whole grains, miso, and vegetables. Yet vernacular advice persisted as the medium for recording and communicating nourishment to the public, and Tokugawa understandings of yōjō continued to live on in new forms.

This dissertation investigates the vocation of politics in the Maratha Empire from the release and restoration of Chhatrapati Shahu Bhonsle in 1708 to the British East India Company’s final victory against the Marathas in 1818. Founded in the mid-seventeenth century by the ambitious general and first Chhatrapati Shivaji Bhonsle, the Maratha Empire encompassed a decentralized web of allied governments stretching from the western Deccan into far-flung parts of the Indian subcontinent. While the Company’s pejorative moniker of “confederacy” has cast a long shadow over historical understanding of the politics of the Maratha state, this dissertation argues that the ascendancy of scribal-bureaucratic networks and their practices of communication enabled Maratha governments to foster a modern diplomatic framework of deliberation, adjudication, and collaboration. The creation of a flexible language and practice of communication transcending linguistic, cultural, religious, and political divisions was the signal achievement of the scribal-bureaucratic networks that increasingly came to dominate politics and government in the eighteenth-century Maratha Empire. Through a case study of individuals and households of the Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu sub-caste, this dissertation demonstrates that both non-Brahman and Brahman officials skilled in the arts of verbal and written communication rose from the lower ranks of the Maratha bureaucracy to the highest circles of political decision-making. They not only advanced their socioeconomic claims to wealth, title, and property, but also shaped government agendas, resolved disputes, and forged alliances through the dialogic exchange of oaths, treaties, objects, and sentimental words. Moreover, scribal-bureaucrats drew on this mode of communication to build strategic multilateral coalitions and to pen novel reflections on the meaning and purpose of politics once the dominance of the British East India Company was impossible to ignore. Communicative politics comes into vivid focus through a critical examination of the records and manuscripts that described, evaluated, and enacted relationships between Maratha governments. While the focus is on the critically important governments of Satara, Nagpur, and Pune, close attention is paid to conduits of power, persuasion, and affiliation between them and their rivals and allies in the eighteenth-century Deccan. Over the course of six chapters, this dissertation traces a chronological arc from the re-constitution to the dissolution of Maratha sovereignty as well as a thematic one from the structures and practices, to the personnel, and finally to the shifting meanings of politics. Chapters 1 and 2 explore how the delicate frameworks and practices preserving relationships between governments were made and unmade in the context of Maratha expansion in the Deccan. Turning to the personnel of politics, Chapters 3 and 4 follow the careers of Kayastha Prabhu scribal officials who attained influence at the courts of Satara, Kolhapur, Nagpur, and Baroda. Finally, Chapters 5 and 6 highlight the ways in which the meaning of politics shifted in response to the emergence of Company power. The story of Maratha politics is thus the story of a concatenation of deliberative, pragmatic compromises suited to the realities of a dynamic inter-imperial world.

On the southwestern coast of India, Kerala, with its fortuitous position in the Indian ocean trade network, has served as a beacon for merchant ships since antiquity. As early as the ninth-century, Kerala’s rulers – the Cēras (ca. 800 – 1124) and merchant polities developed a symbiotic relationship that allowed a wealth of diplomatic privileges for traders. Religious leaders who travelled with merchants are named as the benefactors of agreements between the Cēras and the guilds. This dissertation will show that a corollary of this unique trade policy was the canonization of a shared architectural and artistic vocabulary in the region’s religious monuments. Individual chapters dedicated to the architectural style of temples, churches, synagogues, and mosques will examine this syncretism and the idiomatic mode of sacred art and architecture that came to define the Kerala style.

The study of Indian indentured servitude in the British Empire has largely been confined to the histories of slavery or free labor. Few scholars have connected indenture to larger processes in the British Empire. This dissertation examines the global nature of Indian indenture to find how trends in colonial power were inflected in the relationship between the state and the indentured worker. This dissertation uses the colonial experience in South Asia as a basis for its global history. It contends that the history of the colonial rule of law in the subcontinent was of deep importance to the mechanisms of indenture. By looking at archival records from the United Kingdom, Trinidad, Fiji, and elsewhere, this dissertation finds that officials in the indenture colonies were attempting to transform indebted Indian peasants into indentured workers. This process was inflected by the experience of colonial rule elsewhere. At first, this meant the implementation of ideas tied to imperial liberalism. Following the challenges to British colonialism in the mid-nineteenth century, the indenture colonies mirrored a wider movement towards conservative governance. The ways in which the colonial state attempted to control and manipulate workers underwent a dramatic shift. In the indenture colony, colonial power exerted both authoritarian and paternalist tendencies. This dissertation uses the governorships of Arthur Hamilton-Gordon in Trinidad and Fiji to explore this shift. This dissertation makes its argument by focusing on the indenture colonies of Trinidad and Fiji. In doing so, it moves beyond the model of studying indenture that has looked at the British Empire as a whole, or otherwise in specific colonies or sub-regions. Using Trinidad and Fiji allows for a deep understanding of continuity and change. For example, Trinidad can be used to examine indenture’s beginnings, as the colony began to import Indian indentured labor in 1842, while Fiji can be used to understand late indenture. Furthermore, colonial officials, ideas of authority, capital, labor, and goods were always circulating throughout this global empire. The study of Trinidad and Fiji allows for a critical understanding of such exchanges and this dissertation uses both to explore bureaucratic offices, law, financial systems, governance, protest, medicine and health, and global agitation in Indian indenture. “The Currents of Restless Toil” is an in-depth study into the nature of colonial governance in the indenture colonies of Trinidad and Fiji. It explores the nuances of colonial power, providing a window into the theory and practice that shaped the restless toil of Indians across the world.

It is consistently documented in the literature that Asian Indians are at high risk of coronary heart disease and this risk is exacerbated among migrant Asian Indians globally. Asian Indians have a premature, markedly severe and malignant course of coronary heart disease. This study was built on the premise that in order to provide culturally competent and sensitive care for migrant Asian Indians with coronary heart disease in a multicultural society such as Australia, it is important to explore migrant Asian Indians’ experiences, risk factor knowledge and health beliefs and behaviours in relation to coronary heart disease. Findings indicate the need for health promotion and cardiac illness prevention programs that use intervention models of health behaviour change and are sensitive to the needs of migrants from Asian Indian culture. The major limitation of the study was that the data obtained were from a group of tertiary-educated migrant Indians. Future studies should explore the coronary heart disease perspectives of migrant Indians with different education levels and from the perspective of second-generation Indians in Australia. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

For many years, migration has been intensively politicised in Australia. Political parties have different stands about migration and the government has raised its transparency to such a high level that the public is aware of developments and policy directions in migration for the present and future years. It was realized that well-educated migrants with skills and experience are able to accomplish better employment prospects and settlement outcomes. Skilled migration has therefore been emphasized. This thesis consists of a literature review on some of the motivations that support the objectives of migration over past years, outcomes brought by migration and overview of the migration program and main categories under skilled migration. As skilled migration has been placed with more emphasis since the 1990s and a larger quota has been allocated to facilitate younger migrants with the skills and expertise that are of use to Australia, it has become necessary to assess the economic impact brought by some of these skilled migrants. Coinciding with the emphasis of skilled migration, the trend of settler arrivals has changed so that Asians have increased their presence in Australia and the focus of this thesis is narrowed down to assess the economic impact of Asian groups. A description of general Asian culture and characteristics is also included in the literature review. Although Asians in Australia maintain their own cultures and some common characteristics, I have chosen the two biggest groups, namely Chinese and Vietnamese, to explore and identify their differences and economic contributions. Apart from ethnicity factor, other elements specifically educational attainment, occupational achievements, labour force status in which they have participated, age, English language proficiency, years of arrival and hours worked are tested for significance in enabling Chinese and Vietnamese migrants to earn income. This study also examines whether higher qualifications would increase the prospects of employability. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Poems in Spanish with English analysis. Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 182-185). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Poems in Spanish with English analysis. Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 182-185). Also available on the Internet.

A second generation South Asian can be faced with contrasting and conflicting cultures which can impact the formation of a healthy ethnic identity. The present study investigated what facilitated and hindered a South Asian's adolescent experience of becoming bicultural. Flanagan's (1954) Critical Incident Technique was used in interviewing 8 adult participants, including 5 females and 3 males, aged 20 to 26 years of age. The results identified 88 critical incidents, forming 10 helping categories and 4 hindering categories. The 10 Helping categories were: (1) Cross Cultural Friendships, (2) Speaking both Punjabi and English, (3) Personal Attributes, (4) Shared Experiences with Peers in the 'Same Boat', (5) Family Support and Influence, (6) Involvement in Recreational, Cultural and Religious Community Activities, (7) Visiting India, (8) High School Experience, (9) University Education and (10) Acceptance of Parent's and / or Grandparent's Views. The Hindering Categories were: (1) Parental and / or Familial Expectations, (2) Media Influence / Societal Expectations, (3) Personal Conflict of Cultural Values and (4) Experiencing Racism. The categories were found to be reliable and valid through procedures such as exhaustiveness, independent raters, co-researcher's cross checking, participation rate and theoretical agreement. The resulting categories provide a list of comprehensive factors that can facilitate and hinder an individual's process towards developing a bicultural identity. The findings are discussed in relation to implications for counselling theory and practice, and future research.