India

Imagining India / Hinduism from Chile

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Felipe Luarte Correa
Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Chile. Email id: fluarte@uc.cl

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 3, September-October 2022, Pages 1–7. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n3.18

First published: October 17, 2022 | Area: Latin America | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under the themed issue “Across Cultures: Ibero-America and India”)
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Imagining India / Hinduism from Chile

Abstract

Indian culture expresses itself in Chile’s daily life that, until recently, would have been unthinkable both for its real and mental remoteness. Undoubtedly, this is a consequence of globalization and the rapid flow of ideas and practices of the last decades, but it is also due to the sustained increase in the presence of the Indian community in Chile from the mid-’80s onwards, with the economic opening during that time creating favorable conditions for the increased number of Indian immigration in Chilean society. India’s cultural identity is marked by its religious way of life and in general, Hindu immigrants – as a result of the characteristics of Hinduism – have tended to reproduce their culture and religion while having to adjust to local circumstances. Consequently, both are renegotiated. This process implies an enormous effort of adaptability, which is necessary to be able to develop themselves in the new country without having to abandon the cultural baggage they bring with them, creating new strategies of action that at the same time imply and generate new ways of relating and redefining their identity referents.

Keywords: Chile, identity, Immigrant, India, Partial Scope Agreement

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From the observatory in India: Julio Cortázar´s Kaleidoscopic Gaze

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Lucía Caminada Rossetti

Tenured Professor, Universidad Nacional del Nordeste, Argentina. Email: lucia.caminada@comunidad.unne.edu.ar

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 3, September-October 2022, Pages 1–13. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n3.10

First published: October 8, 2022 | Area: Latin America | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under the themed issue “Across Cultures: Ibero-America and India”)
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From the observatory in India: Julio Cortázar´s Kaleidoscopic Gaze

Abstract

This article investigates two texts that the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar produced in relation to his experience and trips to India:  Prose of the observatory (1972) and the text Turismo aconsejable [Advisable tourism] included in Último round (1969). Both texts contain photographs, which generate a kaleidoscopic gaze characterized by cultural distance and closeness, as well as aesthetic experience. The hypothesis is that a kind of observatory is generated from which the writer observes, perceives and interprets the sensitivity of Latin American and Indian cultures in dialogue. The objective of this study is to identify the Cortazarian kaleidoscopic gaze that permanently generates both an approach and a distance, through the reading of these hybrid texts whose photographs and words produce a playful and experimental space.

Keywords: Julio Cortázar, Prose of the Observatory, India, kaleidoscopic gaze, photography

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Argentine Women’s Contribution to the Knowledge of India in Latin America

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Gustavo Canzobre

Headmaster, Hastinapur Foundation, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 3, September 2022, Pages 1–10. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n3.03

First published: September 20, 2022 | Area: Latin America | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under the themed issue “Across Cultures: Ibero-America and India”)
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Argentine Women’s Contribution to the Knowledge of India in Latin America

Abstract

Argentina has been interested in the Eastern cultures in general, and in India in particular, since the very beginning of the nation. Although often not taken into account, that interest, and its subsequent influence, does not begin in the 20th century but goes back to the first half of the 19th century. Argentine intellectuals were influenced by European Orientalism, but they developed their own approach toward the Eastern world, free from any colonialist influence. The first half of 20th century shows the strong influence of Indian culture in Argentine culture. The contribution of men in this process is well recognized, however, women’s fundamental contribution to spread knowledge of India’s culture in Argentina has not received proper attention nor rightly emphasized. Half a dozen Argentine women, from Victoria Ocampo, born in 1890, to Adelina del Carril, Indra Devi, Myrta Barbie, and Ada Albrecht, still alive, have significantly contributed to understanding India not only in Argentina but also in all Latin America. In the current paper, this aspect will be discussed and an attempt will be made to present a proper trajectory of Argentine women’s contribution to the dissemination of Indian Knowledge in Latin America.

Keywords: Adelina del Carril, Ada Albrecht, Argentine women, India , Indra Devi, Latin America,  Victoria Ocampo

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Resistances to Autobiography: The Indian Experiment with life-writing

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Sanghamitra Sadhu

PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Cotton University, Guwahati, Assam & Former Fellow at Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Email: sadhusanghamitra@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.30

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Abstract

The article underlines that the epistemology of the self and the practice of life-writing in India marks a departure from the Western conventions and modes of expression. Although there are resistances to autobiography from the Western theoretical standpoint, the genre meets with a twofold resistance in postcolonial milieu in its negotiation with the Indian metaphysics of self. Autobiography in decolonising India negotiates complex pathways between an ardent adherence to Indian epistemology and a potent resistance to the Western modes of writing the self. In a framework to understand the phenomenon of resistance implicit in autobiography in general and the internal resistances to autobiography manifest in the genre during decolonisation in particular, the article argues that such resistances within the genre have redefined the very idea of the self in writing, generated a nuanced notion of the self in narration, as well as challenged the process of writing the self in decolonisation.

Keywords: autobiography, postcolonial life-writing, hybridity, decentering, decolonisation, India

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Flânerie in female solo travel: an analysis of blogposts from Shivya Nath’s the Shooting Star

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Sanchari Basu Chaudhuri

Research Scholar, Department of Sociology, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India. ORCID: 0000-0002-9414-9724. Email: sancharibasu84@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.35

Abstract

Contemporary travelogues have spilled over to social media through travel blogs. This paper explores the lens of flânerie to examine blogposts of the immensely popular The Shooting Star run by Shivya Nath, a proponent of Indian female solo travel. Concerns of risks associated with safety, sexual gaze and harassment often inhibit women from loitering. Such perceptible risks increase furthermore in the case of solo female travellers. The paper argues that travelogues of this blog construct travel experiences, motivations and obstacles through hybrid positions offered by flânerie. The study concludes that this construct is an important tool while negotiating public spaces which contributes towards narratives of subversive reading of gender writing in travelogues.

Keywords: flânerie, India, solo female traveller, travel blogs

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Cross- Culture Dialogue in R.K. Narayan’s My Dateless Diary

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Pulkita Anand

Assistant Professor, Department of English and Modern European Languages, Banasthali Vidyapith, Rajasthan. ORCID: 0000-0003-0586-3975. Email: pulkitaanand@ymail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.27

 Abstract

Man has desires to explore the unexplored, to chart the uncharted, and to know the unknown. R K Narayan takes us to different terrain in his work My Dateless Diary: An American Journey (1960). Though the book was written quite late by Narayan, it has an unmistakable stamp of his style and ease. Written in the first-person, it takes us directly to the core of the writer’s persona and his idiosyncrasies.  The book is about a journey to America and self in the act of writing, journeying inside and outside the world.  It is a conglomeration of fact and fiction, memories and desires, experience and observation, self and other, and the East and the West. The word ‘dateless’ is metaphoric in a way that many things are still prevalent in the present time.  In his witty and amusing tone, Narayan draws up the subtle difference in linguistic, cultural, social, economical, religious and professional aspects of American and Indian ways of life, which at once invites comparison and contrast. It seems to be a mingling of two cultures in literature. Narayan reveals how we Indians get easily adjusted and assimilated in any culture. He also depicts no desire on the parts of Indians to subvert this general representation. The paper aims to dwell on these aspects as reflected in the text. It also attempts to see how Narayan juxtaposed the Indian and American ways of life, and how they complement each other in their ways.

Keywords:  India, America, culture, life, travel, self.

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Defining the Japanese Gaze on India in Postwar Fiction: Analysis of Mishima Yukio’s Hojo no Umi

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Lakshmi M.V.

Jawaharlal Nehru University. Orcid: orcid.org/0000-0002-4038-207X. Email: mvlakshmi@mail.jnu.ac.in

Volume IX, Number 3, 2017 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n3.15

Received July 26, 2017; Revised September 11, 2017; Accepted September 18, 2017; Published September 20,  2017.

Abstract

This paper attempts to bring to light the fictional portrayal of India in a work of postwar Japanese novel-H?j? no Umi (Sea of Fertility), 1970, which paved the way for other works of contemporary Japanese fiction to follow a similar model of depiction of India, such as Fukai Kawa (Deep River) by Endo Sh?saku, 1993. The images employed by the author Mishima Yukio in the novel H?j? no Umi are instrumental in painting a picture of India in not just the eyes of readers of the novel, but also in the minds of contemporary Japanese writers. The paper illustrates the significance of the novel in providing the framework of motifs that are employed to portray India in fiction, through the many images used by the author, which influenced later fictional representations of India, as described above.

Keywords: India, Image, Literature, Mishima Yukio, postwar

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Stylistic Evolution of Wooden Idols: Changing Faces of History in Bengal Art

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Sanjay Sen Gupta

School of Fine Arts, Amity University Kolkata, India. Email: sanjaysg1974@gmail.com

 Volume 9, Number 2, 2017 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n2.37

Received April 28, 2017; Revised July 14, 2017; Accepted July 15, 2017; Published August 23, 2017.

Abstract

Idols, i.e., divine images for worship, have always been an important component of Indian sculpture. Throughout the ages, these idols have simultaneously been carved in wood and stone – however the history of wood dates back much earlier than the other. But, the perishable nature of the material and the hot-and-humid climate of the subcontinent didn’t allow the wooden-specimens to survive till date. Hence the rich and varied tradition didn’t get their due importance in the prevailing texts dealing with the history of Indian art. This paper hence attempts to come up with a comprehensive account on the same in order to enable a broader perspective of Indian art and enhance the scopes of further research and discoveries. The methodology included both field-study and academic-research that resulted into a comprehensive overview of this artistic evolution – through the ages – against the panorama of Bengal art.

Keywords: Wooden idols, Bengal, India.

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The Subaltern Voice in Kylas Chunder Dutt’s A Journal of Forty-Eight Hours of the Year 1945

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Paromita Sengupta

Sovarani Memorial College, Jagatballavpur, Howrah. ORCID: 0000-0002-3381-0726. Email: paromitaseng@gmail.com

 Volume 9, Number 2, 2017 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n2.23

Received April 11, 2017; Revised July 12, 2017; Accepted July 15, 2017; Published August 11, 2017.

Abstract

This paper reads Kylas Chunder Dutt’s short fictional text A Journal of Forty-Eight Hours of the Year 1945 (1835) as a postcolonial voice, engaged in the act of representation, and of interrogating colonialism much before postcolonialism took formal shape as a theoretical practice. The text represents the injustice of subaltern oppression, and, what is more crucial, more vital, prophetically uses the word “subaltern” in its present post-modern signification. Dutt’s writing enclosed within it the inescapable multi-tensions of the Bengal-British cultural negotiation, of which it was the product, but it was simultaneously implicated in the process of indigenous identity formation and in the formulation of subaltern consciousness.  The text not only suggests armed conflict as a tool of opposing colonialism, it is also prophetic in its use of the concept of the subaltern as far back as 1835- about a hundred and fifty years before Subaltern Studies was formally born.

Keywords: Identity, India, Nationalism, Subaltern

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The Promise and the Lie of Humanities

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Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil

Post Doctoral Fellow, Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities (MCPH), Manipal University, Karnataka. Orcid Id: 0000-0002-8163-0594. shafeeq.vly@gmail.com

Volume 9, Number 2, 2017 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n2.07b

Received May 20, 2017; Revised July 02, 2017; Accepted July 10, 2017; Published August 10, 2017.

Abstract

The rising regime of technocracy has generated a slew of self-appraisal on the role of Humanities in the contemporary world, and especially in the institutional location of University. The location of the university is not placed absolutely within the premises of learning but has from the colonial times imbricated itself with the question of social and economic mobility. The university in the postcolonial India continues to be a site of allocation of resources and as such is overdetermined by questions other than the purely academic. This paper delineates the twin concerns for Humanities in India and argues for Humanities which will creatively amalgamate the two concerns that have been worrying it in India – that of the rise of technocracy, and that of a non-complementarity between learner aspirations and institutional requirements. Towards this, the paper advocates on stressing the mutuality of the experience of modernity, thus stressing simultaneity over historicity.

Keywords: humanities, technocracy, India, Sarukkai

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

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