This study examines the effect on school achievement of a policy such as hostels, aimed at giving children from a poor socioeconomic background an opportunity to receive education. Data is collected from two different schools in a district in Andhra Pradesh, India, in which both hostel students and day-scholar students, having a similar background, are studying. Exam scores for three different subjects are used as dependent variables in the analysis. The results indicate that private hostels do have a positive effect on achievement in all subjects, thereby contributing to reducing the large gap in school achievement between different socioeconomic groups

This project investigates various ways in which resistance is explored by Kamala Das, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Arundhati Roy in My Story, Vidheyan, and The God of Small Things respec-tively. “Liminal Resistances: Local Subjections in My Story, Vidheyan, and The God of Small Things” aims to examine the workings and creative subversions of hegemonic discourses of caste, class, gender and color within the local milieu of Kerala, India. By exploring the theoreti-cal apparatuses employed in three diverse texts set in Kerala, this project identifies: firstly, Das’s subversion of Nair Kerala’s sense of gendered and casted normativity in My Story; secondly, Adoor’s depiction of the notion of home that enables self-recognition between the exploited and tyrant ensuring both suppression and libratory self-formation for classed subjects in Vidheyan; and finally, Roy’s portrayal of the conceptual category of whiteness within Kerala as being nei-ther uniformly subservient nor stable as depicted in The God of Small Things. It is hoped that by identifying and exploring the theoretical nuances of resistances in these generically diverse texts—autobiography, film, and fiction-- all set within the local realms of Kerala, this project will contribute a new scholarship in postcolonial studies that will recognize and problematize local instances of subversions and their representations within the Indian subcontinent.

Le Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a été fondé en 1980 par les nationalistes hindous, soucieux de légitimer leur option politique. Le parti s'est rapidement imposé dans le système politique indien en transition. De force marginale et marginalisée au début de la décennie, il est parvenu à devenir une réelle menace pour le parti du Congrès dès la fin des années 1980. Il a propulsé son idéologie, l'Hindutva, a participé à la communalisation du jeu politique et a dirigé l'Inde à la fin des années 1990, au moment même où paradoxalement l'idéologie nationaliste hindoue perdait du terrain. Ce mémoire s'interroge donc sur la relation entre le parti politique, le BJP, et l'idéologie, l'Hindutva. Comment un parti politique peut-il connaître une ascension fulgurante sans que l'idéologie sur laquelle il fonde ses idées et son programme en fasse autant? Nous concluons que les contraintes du système moderne indien de partis politiques, le manque de cohésion de la communauté hindoue et l'évolution de l'électorat indien à partir des années 1980 expliquent ce phénomène. En effet, si le système politique indien en transformation dans les décennies 80 et 90 a permis à l'Hindutva de s'imposer, par sa nouvelle structure, il l'a aussi contenu. La nouvelle dynamique politique de l'Inde ne permet plus à un seul parti politique de diriger le pays. Les coalitions s'imposent dans ce système fédéral et obligent les partis à nuancer leurs positions pour construire des alliances solides avec des formations qui évoluent sur la scène fédérale et d'autres qui oeuvrent au niveau régional, dans les États de l'Union. Le système jadis dirigé par un seul parti, celui du Congrès, a évolué à tel point qu'il s'est transformé en système multipartite avec deux pôles principaux, le Congrès et le BJP. L'Hindutva a connu ses moments de gloire, mais la communauté hindoue n'est pas suffisamment unie. Elle est trop diversifiée, elle est dispersée sur un vaste territoire, n'a pas d'autorité religieuse centrale et rassembleuse, et ses membres ne partagent pas les mêmes rituels et les mêmes références. Le BJP, dans un tel contexte, n'a eu d'autres choix que d'assouplir sa promotion de l'Hindutva. D'autant plus que l'électorat indien a bien changé depuis 25 ans. Il y a eu une révolution par les basses castes au cours des dernières décennies. Grâce à la régionalisation de la politique, ces groupes auparavant exclus se sont affirmés et ont réclamé leur part des récents progrès économiques. Ces Indiens moins nantis, n'adhèrent pas naturellement au nationalisme hindou, d'autant plus que cette idéologie les désavantage et tente d'entretenir leur soumission à la hiérarchie sociale défendue par les Indiens brahmanes. Les basses castes ont condamné le BJP en choisissant plutôt en 2004 la coalition dirigée par le parti du Congrès, davantage considérée à l'écoute des besoins des dalits. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Hindutva, Hindouité, Nationalisme hindou, Nationalisme culturel, BJP, Bharatiya Janata Party, Système politique, Partis politiques, Régionalisation, Coalitions, Castes, Communalisme, Nationalisme.

This paper is a study on the effect of caste on bench assignments on the Indian Supreme Court. The objective was to determine whether the Chief Justices have historically assigned associate justices to benches based on their individual castes – Brahmin or Non-Brahmin – in order to tilt the bias of the Court in either an elitist (Brahmin) direction or a non-elitist (Non-Brahmin) direction. Based on a probability analysis of panel assignments, I created a new model to determine the extant of castebased judicial selection bias on the Indian Supreme Court. Using a random sample of cases from 1950 to 2000, a two-sample test of proportionality was employed to test whether any bias was present in the Chief Justice’s bench assignments. No caste bias was discovered in either the fifty-year period of the Court or in a smaller data set of cases between 1977 and 2000 (a period after the emergency between 1975 and 1977).

Koṅku is the name of a distinctive geographic and social region in the west central corner of Madras State in India. The area encompasses much of the present Coimbatore District, plus parts of Salem, Madurai and Tiruchirappalli. It is roughly 8,500 square miles in extent and has a present population of about 5,000,000. Koṅku ia comprised of a single, broad upland plain. The area is dry and, in addition, rainfall varies greatly in quantity from year to year. The region is roughly bounded in each of the four directions by high hills, while the plain is cut into sections by three important tributaries of the Cauvery river. The peasant inhabitants can name these distinctive physical features. They further describe the area in terms of its sacred geography. Konku has seven sacred hills dedicated to Morukan and seven riverside temples built in the name of Civa. The region is further identified with a long epic or ballad which recounts the folk history of the area in some detail.

This study analyzes the role the Supreme Court of India has tried to carve for itself in the Indian political system. An introductory section describes institutional characteristics of the Court and assesses its troubled attempts to define a proper doctrine of judicial review. Subsequent sections discuss Court rulings concerned with the "right to property" and affirmative discrimination for Untouchables. It is shown that the Court garnered strong support among educated and propertied segments of the population for its defense of an independent adjudication of issues arising out of agrarian reform legislation. It is also shown that the Court was capable of imposing flexible and effective standards over affirmative discrimination, despite the incapacity of elected leaders to resolve inherent moral and political problems arising out of the identification of beneficiaries. These outcomes bring into question the tendency of existing research to ignore as inconsequential the role played by judicial institutions in rapidly developing societies. Examination of cases concerned with property rights reveals that the Court was faced with genuine affronts to its integrity as an institution. These affronts came in the form of constitutional amendments which would have enabled elected elites to bypass altogether judicial imposition of constitutional limitations. The Court's reaction to this threat radically departed from the passive role usually assigned by analysts to the courts in the Third World. Giving itself the unique power to reject amendments to the Constitution, the Court projected a militant ideological defense of its proper function. This study carefully analyzes the political setting which made such a defense possible. It is suggested that the Court achieved a temporary triumph precisely because of the growing incapacity of alternate institutions to process difficult social demands. This explanation for judicial assertiveness is reinforced in the decisions concerned with affirmative discrimination. The rise of Supreme Court dominance over standards governing policies in this area is traced to conceptual and practical difficulties which courts seem uniquely equipped to handle. It is shown that non-judicial institutions were utterly unprepared to resolve inherent conflicts between group and individual rights implicit within caste-based affirmative discrimination. The Court could "resolve" such conflicts by deliberate obfuscation of legal categories identifying beneficiaries. Not faced with the practical implementation of programs under its scrutiny, the Court was required only to devise a legal language which would satisfy the need to legitimize such programs while keeping them limited to the genuinely needy. Detailed examination of these policy conflicts shows that it is possible for judicial institutions to articulate and act upon their own prerogatives in a country undergoing instability and institutional decay. Comparable research for other countries is suggested in the conclusion.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [172]-181).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-237) and index.

Originally submitted as author's thesis, Agra University, 1963. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Columbia University, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-237) and index.