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The Political role of ‘Bihu’ in Assam Movement (1979)

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Debajit Bora

Assistant Professor, Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research, Jamia Millia Islamia, debojeetbora@gmail.com, ORCID: 0000-0002-6424-2522

Volume 12, Number 1, January-March, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n1.02

Abstract

This paper aims to understand the political role of Assamese traditional performance ‘Bihu’ during Assam movement in 1979. It argues that beyond its role as Assamese cultural identity, ‘Bihu’ had transformed itself into a political space and fueled upon expanding the idea of Stage Bihu. While looking at the performance as medium of political messaging, the paper brings together the three specific case studies seemingly unknown in the documented cultural history and located in the rural Assam. The idea is to comprehend the larger scope of traditional performance in accommodating political events. The debates are being weaved together through theoretical frames of historian Eric Hobsbawm’s ‘Inventing tradition’ Thomas Postlewait’s ‘theatre event’ in order to see the transformation and changes within the repertoire of Bihu. The paper tries to resurrect an alternative historical discourse, often neglected by the dominant historical cannons.

Keywords: performance, identity, Assam movement, politics, Assam.

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An Indigenous Woman in the Apocalyptic City: Exploring the Multifaceted Urban Panorama in Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God

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Svitlana Kot

PhD student, English Philology Department, Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University, Mykolaiv, Ukraine. ORCID: 0000-0002-1462-1276. Email: svitlana.kot@chmnu.edu.ua

Volume 12, Number 1, January-March, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n1.01

Abstract

In light of rapidly spreading urbanization and the constant growth of indigenous populations living in cities, urban Indian narratives emerge as a means to battle simulations and invisibility of Native Americans in the city by demonstrating stories of resistance, survival and identity preservation. Native American literature written in the city and about the city plays an essential role in reimagining and redefining indigenous space and its representation in modern American culture. This study aims to contribute to this growing area of research by exploring urban space in novel Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich, a Native American writer. Despite apocalyptic symbolism and fictional nature, this novel is both an indigenous perspective on the city space and a reflection of urban Indian experience. By employing an interdisciplinary coordinate system and combining spatial analysis with the transcultural approach, eco-feminism and Foucauldian analysis of power distribution, this study offers some critical insights into Native American vision of urban nature and future, as well as culture, gender, politics, and ecology, while also demonstrating that indigenous people are active thinkers involved in urban discourse.

Keywords: dystopia, eco-feminism, Native Americans, transculturalism, urban space.

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Review Article: An Excellent Introduction to Diaspora Theory and Transnationalism

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Book Name: Diaspora Theory and Transnationalism

Author: Himadri Lahiri

Genre: Scholarly

Publisher: Orient Black Swan

Year of Publication: 2019

ISBN: 9789352876143

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviewed by

Suparno Banerjee

Associate Professor of English, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA. Email: sb67@txstate.edu

Volume 12, Number 1, January-March, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n1.10

Keep Reading

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Problematising ‘Indigeneity’ through Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey

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Amitayu Chakraborty

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Durgapur Women’s College, West Bengal, India. ORCID: 0000-0003-3999-448X. amitayuc@yahoo.com;

Volume 11, Number 3, October-December, 2019 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v11n3.19

Abstract

The article problematises dominant discourses on ‘indigeneity’ (within the context of India) through an analysis of the novel The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey (2014) written by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar (1983—). Those discourses are predicated on colonial and neocolonial ethnic stereotypes: at times ‘the indigenous’ denotes a reluctant subject of the nation-state, a primitive mindlessly opposing the ‘modernising’ corporate projects; at times, it constitutes a pristine innocence, an antithesis of the ‘corrupting’ urban life. Santhals, among various other indigenous communities in India, have been a victim of such reductivism. The article argues that Hansda’s novel offers a nuanced depiction of a Santhal community in India which is fraught with internal conflicts as well as external threats undercutting the grand narrative in which the adivasi is a cultural imaginary, either an embodiment of atavism and wildness to be curbed or vulnerable artefacts to be preserved. The tale of Rupi appears to be a critical departure from the monolithic images of adivasis as it blends the magical with the real.

Keywords: indigeneity, Santhal, adivasi, tribe, magical realism, subaltern, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar.

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Surveillance en la Frontera: the Subversive Installations of Mexican Digital Artists Raphael Lozano-Hemmer and Alfredo Salomon

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Reynaldo Thompson, Jorge A. Martinez-Puente, Diana Marañon, Jessica Andrea Sanchez

School of Digital Arts, Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico. Email: thompson@ugto.mx

Volume 11, Number 3, October-December, 2019 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v11n3.18

Abstract

Political ideology is now made manifest and even palpable with a perverse articulation of digital technique, for once on its own, and without the need of any kind of narrative. Art by itself is enough. The ideologue is relegated to an unimportant location following a praxis that evades primordial dependence on the conventions of any discourse. Starting from a discussion of two important video installations by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, this article proposes how the critical use of technology in contemporary art establishes a space, in an interpretive manner. The first section of the paper deals with the notion of subversion of technological devices deriving partially from Lozano-Hemmer’s exploitation of technological praxis as a means of unmediated valorization of ideology. We analyze the metamorphosis of symbols into “fact” within the image, as a detonator of the simulacrum. The second section deals with Justicia Infinita of Alfredo Salomon, based in Puebla, Mexico and perhaps the most ingenious ideologue and artist of the digital era. In Salomon, just as in Lozano-Hemmer the process of subversion of technological devices and its bizarre yet comical inversion is still so powerfully visible. To conclude we shall turn to the implications of the critical use of technology in contemporary art and their ability to allow us to assume their ontological consequences.

Keywords: Contemporary art, metamorphic image, simulacrum, digital art, video installation, control societies, visibility, critical space, individuals, relational architecture.

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In the Castle of My Disease: an In-depth Study of Lorde Audre’s The Cancer Journals

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Rakhi Gupta1 & Richa Arora2

1Research Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Manipal University Jaipur.

2Professor & Head, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Manipal University Jaipur. Email: Richa.arora@jaipur.manipal.edu

Volume 11, Number 3, October-December, 2019 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v11n3.17

Abstract

 The present study is an attempt to explore a mysterious voice: a voice which has been covered by multiple layers of darkness with excruciating pain, (the voice) which is fighting not for freedom but at least for a hope to live a common life again.  Lord Audre, an African-American feminist writer and civil right activist, described her journey of breast cancer from the stage of ‘diagnosed to recovery’ and made her internal struggle visible to the reader by using the genre of interior monologue (William James) and ‘Confessionalism’ (Robert Lowell’s Life Studies) which help to reveal her thought process or internal experiences clearly about her struggle throughout her journey.  Therefore, this paper aims to tell the story of a determinate black African-American woman who is suffering not only from identity crisis or trapped in the world of homophobia but also struggled from cancer and is ready to reveal her personal account that is packed with heart-wrenching pain, grief, anguish, strength, perseverance, and the importance of maintaining self-identity even in the face of grave adversity.

Keywords:  Confessional Writing, Enlightenment, Stream of Consciousness, Memory, Phobic Disorder

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The Representation of Bangladeshi Migrants in Transit and the Question of Cultural Difference: A Critical Perusal of Ronny Noor’s Snake Dance in Berlin

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Ritushmita Sharma

Ph.D Research Scholar, Department of English, Dibrugarh University, ritu92oct@gmail.com, Orchid id: 0000-0002-2979-6810

Volume 11, Number 3, October-December, 2019 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v11n3.16

 Abstract

Migration can be conceived as one of the strongest and remarkable signifiers in order to describe the distinguishing features of human beings in the present scenario. With the rapid increase in industrialisation and urbanisation, thousands and thousands of people from the third-world countries are seen to be migrating in search of a new life or opportunities. So, it can be said that the phenomena of migration appear to exert influence upon every nook and crannies of the world thereby becoming the crucial part of contemporary societies. However, the experience of migration brings forth the emergence of migrant identities that undergoes displacement and deracination not only in terms of geographical boundaries but also in terms of cultural bereavement. This as a result enables us to understand the intricacies of hyphenated and hybrid migrant identities that they become due to their realisation of cultural difference. It is on this ground that the present analysis aims to throw light to the case of Bangladeshi migrants in the German city as depicted by Ronny Noor in his novel Snake Dance in Berlin (2009) and thereby to identify the subtle nuances of immigrant psyche. While doing so, the research paper also attempts to observe the circumstances under which the Bangladeshi migrants lived or the strategies deployed by them in order to adjust with a socio-cultural environment which seems to be in sharp contrast to the country of their origin

Keywords: migration, immigrant, displacement, Bangladesh

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Imagining India / Hinduism from Chile

Felipe Luarte Correa Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Chile. Email id: fluarte@uc.cl Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 3, September-October

Ethnic Renewal: Identity Formations among Current Generation Hindu Migrants of Punjab of 1947 Partition

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Shaifali Arora1 & Nirmala Menon2

1PhD scholar, Discipline of English, Digital Humanities and Publishing Studies Research Group, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Indore. ORCID id: 0000-0002-3547-7162. Email: arora.shaifali16@gmail.com

2Associate Professor, Discipline of English, Digital Humanities and Publishing Studies Research Group, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Indore (nmenon@iiti.ac.in)

Volume 11, Number 3, October-December, 2019 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v11n3.15

Abstract

The linguistic setup of Punjab was affected in 1947 partition and mass displacement, that changed the way people engaged with their spoken languages as linguistic identities were increasingly seen in political and national terms. It was mainly during the years of Punjabi Suba movement in the 1950s in India that was later followed by Indian Punjab’s trifurcation in 1966, that identities were projected into two rigid and contrasting categories as Hindi-Hindu and Punjabi-Sikh. Hindu migrants distanced from an ethnic-Punjabi identity towards a projection of an identity as Hindus that was followed by a language shift from native dialects to Hindi. The current generation of Hindu migrants in India, however, is interested in reviving an ethnic-linguistic identity, an identity that is linked to partition migrants’ lands and language of origin and one that illustrates an ethnic renewal. Through an analysis of non-fictional testimonies and ethnographic data, we demonstrate ethnic contexts of identity renewal among current generation Hindu migrants. We argue that a movement from ‘ethnic amnesia’ to ethnic renewal is one instance of a projection of identity that is currently revised to fulfil a collective identity void among partition affected families. The article presents a two-fold case study, one that engages with our respondent’s ethnic sentiments and second that engages with ethnic and language activism in community spaces. This paper, thus, elaborates a case of identity formations among current-generation partition migrants in India.

Keywords: language gap, project identity, cultural void, ethnic renewal, partition migrants.

Everyday Aesthetics in Indian Cultural Communities

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Tapaswi H M

Assistant Professor, Dr. NSA Memorial First Grade College, Nitte, Karkala Taluk, Udupi District, 574110, tapaswi.hm@gmail.com, 0000-0002-6867-6088.

Volume 11, Number 3, October-December, 2019 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v11n3.14

Abstract

In India the concept of “folk culture”, “folk literature”, “folk art form” and other forms of many indigenous folk cultures seem to be considered not aesthetic but quaint, due to the dominance of “classical” art forms which are valued more. One can witness the dearth of qualitative understanding of the experience of beauty in these actions and objects which are not considered as art objects or artistic performances in Indian context. A theoretical perspective which tries to understand these genres and even ritual forms is also rare. In the contemporary academics, many scholars both from the Indian tradition and non-Indian traditions are attempting to understand a different kind of aesthetics that the art forms of these people express. Thus, in this paper, I claim that understanding indigenous art is possible using theories of everyday aesthetics rather than through other special theories of aesthetics. While not arguing for a relative view of aesthetics, this paper uses the ideas of everyday aesthetics and beauty to understand art in folk and cultural contexts in India.

Keywords: Everyday Aesthetics, Symbolic Meaning, Rangoli, imagination, beauty

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The Nature and Concept of Meta-artistic Objects

Benjamín Valdivia Professor, Art, Architecture and Design, University of Guanjuato. E-mail: valdivia@ugto.mx  Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.03 Abstract This

Scape of Vulnerability and Resilience in Viramma, life of an untouchable

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Jebamalar. E

Research Scholar, Dept. of English, Pondicherry University, jeba.litmsw@gmail.com , ORCID id: 0000-0001-8468-9535

Volume 11, Number 3, October-December, 2019 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v11n3.13

 Abstract

Viramma, Life of an Untouchable (1997) is a telling of Viramma’s own life recorded in print wherein her life’s response to different forms of vulnerabilities was one of resistance which revealed resilience. Belonging to an economically disadvantaged, and socially marginalized community, Viramma’s narrative reached far across seas only with the support received from the purposive use of the tool of translation aided by transcripts collected from ethnomusicological research (1997, p. v). The objective of the paper is to analyse the variables of vulnerability and resilience in the life narrative of Viramma viewed through the lens of sustainable livelihood framework. Situated within the life narrative of Viramma are a number of themes which give rise to significant queries in relation to vulnerability induced due to circumstances. It is from analysis of instances from within Viramma’s life with the theoretical backing of Brene Brown’s shame resilience theory, this research paper seeks to find an answer to the query, if Viramma’s response to vulnerability challenged or reinforced gendered subjectivities?

Keywords: life writing/narrative, vulnerability, resilience, responses, sustainable livelihood framework, shame resilience theory.

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