Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Contemporary Indian Politics'

Since the 1960s there has been a shift in social and cultural perceptions of women in Ireland and India which resulted in a proliferation of women's writing in English and other languages. Among the writers who came into prominence in the last fifty years, Anglophone poets Eavan Boland, Medbh McGuckian and Paula Meehan from Ireland as well as Kamala Das, Eunice de Souza, Melanie Silgardo and Sujata Bhatt from India have achieved national and, for some, international acclaim. Their publications and careers as editors, translators, educators and activists attest to the significance of female voices in shaping a contemporary poetic canon, yet the work of these writers remained largely unexamined until the last two decades. Contributing to the fields of Irish studies, Indian studies and comparative feminist research, this dissertation demonstrates parallels in women's texts, experiences and personal histories that extend across cultural and geographical borders. Irish and Indian poets who began publishing between the 1960s and 1980s have faced similar challenges in their careers due to institutional practices of the nation-state and publishing industry, yet, the intersections of each poet's sex, ethnicity, nationality, race, religion, class, caste and socio-economic background has led her to respond in ways that differ from her contemporaries. Using case studies of seven poets writing in English–Boland, McGuckian, Meehan, Das, de Souza, Silgardo and Bhatt–I create a transnational comparison of the personal, social and cultural pressures placed on women's poetry and their careers. This project examines poetry and book history through historical and political narratives, archival research, interviews, creative industry practices and feminist theories to explore how Irish and Indian women poets respond to and challenge the politics of writing in their home countries and abroad.

Following the end of World War II and the formation of the United Nations organization, indigenous minorities who had fought on behalf of First World nations--including record numbers of New Zealand Maori and American Indians--pursued their longstanding efforts to assert cultural and political distinctiveness from dominant settler populations with renewed vigor. In the first decades after the War, New Zealand Maori and American Indians worked largely within dominant discourses in their efforts to define viable contemporary indigenous identities. But by the late 1960s and early 1970s, both New Zealand and the United States felt the effects of an emerging indigenous "renaissance," marked by dramatic events of political and cultural activism and by unprecedented literary production. By the mid-1970s, New Zealand Maori and American Indians were part of an emerging international indigenous rights movement, signaled by the formation and first general assembly of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP). In "Blood As Narrative/Narrative As Blood," I chronicle these periods of indigenous minority activism and writing and investigate the wide range of tactics developed for asserting indigenous difference in literary and political activist texts produced by the WCIP, New Zealand Maori, and American Indians. Indigenous minority or "Fourth World" writers and activists have mobilized and revalued both indigenous and dominant discourses, including the pictographic discourse of plains Indian "winter counts" in the United States and the ritual discourse of the Maori marae in New Zealand, as well as the discourse of treaties in both. These writers and activists have also created powerful tropes and emblematic figures for contemporary indigenous identity, including "blood memory," the ancient child, and the rebuilding of the ancestral house (whare tipuna). My readings of a wide range of poems, short stories, novels, essays, non-fiction works, representations of cultural and political activism, and works of literary, art history, political science, and cultural criticism lead to the development of critical approaches for reading indigenous minority literary and political activist texts that take into account the complex historical and cultural contexts of their production--local, national and, increasingly, global.

The study of the relationship between Hindu nationalism and Hindu activist traditions of seva (selfless service) has been principally organised into three approaches: firstly, the instrumentalist deployment of the practice, secondly, the political appropriation of traditions of seva, and thirdly, that these related associational spaces are internally homogenous and distinct from alternative ‘legitimate’ religious arenas. These frameworks largely reflect approaches to Hindu nationalism which place emphasis on its forms of political statecraft and relationship to spectacular violence. These approaches raise manifold concerns. This thesis retheorizes the relationship between Hindu nationalism and seva with reference to primary and secondary sources, together with field research in the seva projects of the Vanavasi Kalyan Kendra (VKK), a Hindu nationalist association. Through deploying a reworked understanding of Fraser’s (1990) approach to associational space and Butler’s (1993, 2007) theorisation of performative acts and subject formation, this thesis contributes to rethinking Hindu nationalism and seva. I demonstrate firstly that the colonial encounter worked to produce a series of social imaginaries which were drawn upon to transform traditions of seva. Through their articulation in shared religious languages, practices of seva were productive of porously structured Hindu activist spaces in which the tradition was contested with regard to ‘radical’ and ‘orthodox’ orientations to Hinduism’s boundaries. Increasingly, articulations of seva which invoked a sangathanist ‘orthodoxy’ came to gain hegemony in Hindu activist arenas. This influenced the early and irregular Hindu nationalist practices of seva. Fractures in Hindu nationalist articulations developed as a result of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) sangathanist organisational idioms, allowing the association to inscribe its practices with pro-active meanings. In the post-independence period the alternative arenas of Hindu nationalist seva projects expanded greatly, a point evident in the degrees of dialogue between the Sangh and the sarvodaya movement. The importance of porous associational boundaries is further demonstrated through noting how engagement in visibilized arenas of popular Hindu religiosity worked to both broaden the fields of reference and vernacularize Hindu nationalist practices of seva. With reference to field research, I demonstrate that central to the expansion of the VKK’s arenas of service into spaces associated with Ayurvedic care is the incorporation of both refocused and transgressive practices. In the educational projects of the VKK, I note how seva works to inscribe daily practices of hygiene, the singing of bhajans and daily assemblies with Hindu nationalist meanings, and so works to regulate conduct through the formation of an ‘ethical Hindu self’. However, arenas of seva are also a location where we can witness subjects negotiating power. I demonstrate this through examining how participants in the VKK’s rural development projects rearticulate Othering practices of seva, with actors using the discourse to position themselves as active subjects, break gendered restrictions on public space, and advance an ‘ethically Hindu’ grounded claim on development and critique of power. This work illustrates that far from being of inconsequence to the circulation of Hindu nationalist identities, alternative arenas of seva operate as spaces where discourses are performatively enacted, refocused, transgressed and rearticulated. These acts contribute to the consolidation and disturbance of Hindu nationalist subject formations.

The General Allotment Act of 1887 was a two-pronged policy aimed at assimilating American Indians into the dominant Euro-American society by allotting individual plots of land to Indians, thereby creating surplus lands which would then be opened up for non-Indian settlement. The process of allotment officially ended in 1934 with the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act, however, it was used again in the late-1900s to gain an individual trust allotment. Ann-Marie Sayers, a Mutsun Band Costanoan Indian, used the General Allotment Act of 1887 to gain her allotment in 1988. Ms. Sayers appropriated this assimilationist act to promote cultural survival. That is, the General Allotment Act was used to obtain an individual trust allotment, but assimilation was not the outcome. Rather in this case, the outcome was the maintenance and promotion of cultural survival.

My doctoral thesis analyses the political ideology of Islamism by taking the case study of a major Islamist organization, namely the Jamaat-e-Islami in contemporary India and Bangladesh. In doing so, I try to understand the similarities and differences of the ideological articulations of Islamism in a Muslim minority context of India and in a Muslim majority context of Bangladesh. The thesis is written from a political theory perspective in general and within the realm of ideology studies in particular. The study analyses how and why the Jamaat is responding to the economic and cultural issues of neoliberal India and Bangladesh. One cannot possibly ignore the neoliberal context within which Islamists are generating markedly new kinds of political articulations with an unprecedented set of political demands, never seen before in the history of Islamist movements. The ideological articulations of Jamaat have been studied by analyzing various primary sources—organisational literature, the party constitution, policy resolutions, press releases, election manifestos and political pamphlets of Jamaat-e-Islami. In addition, this dissertation has also relied on field interviews with the Jamaat leadership in India and Bangladesh. Magazines and internet sources have been also helpful for this study. My thesis analyses Islamist responses to neoliberalism by discussing the contrasting conditions of contemporary India and Bangladesh. In doing so, I conclude that in India, Jamaat is opposed to neoliberalism whereas in Bangladesh, it has a ambiguous character vis-à-vis neoliberalism. However, Islamists in both these countries are opposed to cultural issues like atheism, ‘blasphemous’ views, live-in relationships and homosexuality, which they construe as the products of ‘western cultural globalization’. In this respect, I try to analyse why the Islamists are opposed to ‘western cultural globalization’. Finally, I also explain how Islamism, as a politico-ideological project of populist mobilization is facing a crisis in contemporary India and Bangladesh.

Scholars of American Indian policy refer to the period from 1960 to present as the Self-Determination Era. However, President Richard Nixon is commonly credited with making self-determination the fundamental tenet of contemporary Indian policy through his 1970 message to Congress. The concept of self-determination embodies three main goals: tribal self-government; cultural survival; and economic development. Furthermore, Indian participation in tribal activities as well as the federal policy-making process is a key principle of self-determination. Self-determination, however, is not a single policy, but rather, a conglomeration of policy approaches originating in different branches of the federal government. There has been little uniformity in the executive and legislative approaches to contemporary Indian policy. As this thesis illustrates, congressional approaches to self-determination policy since 1970 have been more consistent than those of the executive branch.

With the changing significance of caste and caste identity, this thesis explores the role of affirmative action or "reservations" in Indian higher education. Specifically, it aims to reopen the debate on the dominance of a "creamy layer" among the OBCs in an increasingly nationalist India. Viewing caste through the lens of ethnic identity, this thesis draws comparisons between the identity of OBCs and Scheduled Castes and Tribes, OBCs of the "Hindi Belt" and OBCs of the South, followed by an analysis of the politicization of caste identity today. The thesis concludes with an evaluation of affirmative action today and possible policy avenues that the State must prioritize.

This thesis discusses the ideological and political composition of the contemporary queer community in India. It is specifically concerned with the ways in which transgender/gender variant identities are represented within Indian queer scholarship and queer organizations in the subcontinent. At present, transgender/gender variant studies of South Asia are primarily confined to research on hijra and other trans feminine gender communities. While this research is important, this thesis seeks to expand the understanding of transgenderism/gender variance in South Asia by examining other transgender identities, including trans masculine identities, as well as analyzing Indian discourses on gender and sexuality more broadly. By examining Indian queer scholarship and the politics of contemporary queer organizations, I find that transgender/gender variant individuals face greater forms of marginalization within the contemporary queer movement in India because of the silence surrounding their gender identities.
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This ethnographic and archival study offers insight into Dalit identity politics, Tamil ethno-nationalism, and affective understandings and experiences of sovereignty in contemporary Tamil Nadu, South India. It is an-depth exploration of the recent history and present moment of inter-caste conflict that plagues Tamil Nadu, despite the fact that it is India’s most urbanized state, and among its wealthiest and most industrially developed. Over the course of the past thirty years, spectacular and brutal murders, riots, and police repression have regularly characterized the relationships between groups of politically affiliated individuals we call castes. I historicize and contextualize such incidents, tracking the changing phenomenology of caste as it intersects with the gendered politics of Tamil ethnic identity. In order to do so, I examine the formation of caste conglomerations, which I define as intentionally incorporated political bodies attempting to situate themselves relationally in the context of rapid demographic and technological changes, and the breakdown of formal, intergenerational models of caste differentiation and hierarchy. The practices of intercaste relations in Tamil Nadu, are not disappearing, but are asserting themselves in new and sometimes violent ways as the economic realities and inhabitable spaces of many formerly distinguishable castes become increasingly alike. Responding to the anxiety of disintegrating hierarchy, what were once localized, relatively independent castes are uniting as political bodies that attempt to identify themselves in relation to each other, competing mimetically in a cycle of recursive opposition. I focus on two increasingly visible caste conglomerations – the Devendras and the Thevars – who have been embroiled in a violent conflict in Tamil Nadu since the late 1950s. The recent experiences of the Devendras who are officially classified as Dalit (“untouchable”), and the Thevars who were once socioeconomically dominant in much of Southern Tamil Nadu, exemplify the changing socioeconomic dynamics that foster caste conglomeration. Although the ancestors of many landowning castes ruled over the laborers they relegated to untouchability, their recent economic decline relative to the “untouchables” has unsettled what were once clearly demarcated social hierarchies. A new and unstable economy of collective rank is developing to fill this vacuum, as the self-fashioned leaders of caste conglomerations construct their identities. The process of caste conglomeration dissolves antecedent boundaries of caste even as it reconstitutes castes as larger and therefore more powerful groups, thus simultaneously demonstrating both the fluidity and intractability of caste logics.  The identitarian claims of caste conglomerations are carved into the new urban spaces they inhabit with visual and auditory signifiers, which are heightened during memorial celebrations of recently remembered caste history. Caste heroes who embody the often conflicting Tamil masculine ideals of selfless courage and refined civility play an important role in such acts of representing history through which caste conglomerations proclaim the dignity they are owed in the present through the glories of their past. I explore this process as it is energized by the antagonistic power struggle between the Devendras and the Thevars. The still tenuously united Devendras fight back against their relegation to Dalit status by claiming that they have been misclassified in the caste order, and that they are not, in fact, Dalits. Instead, they are the original people, and therefore rightful rulers, of the Tamil country. The Thevars who are a slightly older conglomeration of three previously endogamous but similarly ranked castes, counter such claims with their own claims to Tamil sovereignty, contributing to the unintended fallout of Tamil ethno-nationalism, or Dravidianism. Dominating state-level politics since the middle of the twentieth century, Dravidianism has attempted to configure a united non-Brahmin identity, which might have dissolved the boundaries between the vast majority of Tamil castes. It has instead resulted in widespread, caste-based competition over Tamil identity. The Devendras are increasingly vying for power through the idiom of Tamil identity, distancing themselves from Dalits (themselves an enormous caste conglomeration founded on the disavowal of caste), despite the Dalits’ electoral success. In tracing the Devendras’ strategy, my dissertation locates the boundary of pan-Indic Dalit political identity, suggesting that the Dalit category inadequately describes the experiences of formerly “untouchable” groups who are drawn, like many others, to the powerful calls of ethnicity. Such struggles of caste, entangled with ethno-nationalism, demonstrate the yearning for sovereignty that has arisen alongside the distrusted state. The parties and caste organizations of the Devendras and Thevars, like those of other rapidly multiplying caste conglomerations, reflect the desires of the disempowered, and operate as parastate authorities offering material benefits, collective pride, and transactions with government agents, which are troubled by the conglomerations’ need for legitimation that only the government can offer. These complicated processes of negotiating new and relatively unstable economies of power drive the questions of my dissertation, which unfold through the stories of Tamil men who experience the forces of caste identity and the government in their everyday lives. Caste conglomeration is not another example of Sanskritization through which castes ascend the social ladder by emulating those above them. Instead, the process I examine is competitive, mimetic, and recursive, presupposing the relative equality brought about by economic changes and by the promises of the democratic nation-state. While one generation ago, there were stark differences between landowning castes and the laboring castes now known as Devendras, today, Devendras have the resources to compete in terms of their public visibility, levels of education, and historical claims. In fact, their assertions are so resounding that Thevars sometimes follow Devendras in their strategic calls for recognition. I do not, however, discount the brutalities of Thevar violence against Devendras, but instead aim to shed light on the social context of such acts. It is the profound anxiety of growing similarity, rather than difference, that erupts in the excess of violence.