The Making of Brahmanic Hegemony

The Making of Brahmanic Hegemony PDF Author: Suvira Jaiswal
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789382381839
Category : Brahmanism
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
'The discipline of history in India is under attack--not only from those who adopt a pseudo-historical mode to popularize a mythical version of the past colored with their ill-concealed political objectives, but also from those who, posing methodological challenges through unbridled theoretical relativism emphasizing cultural specificity and difference, end up reorientalizing the Orientals. What is left unquestioned in both approaches is the hegemony of forms of thinking which underlie social and economic inequalities in the present. This book is a collection of essays - both published and unpublished - about the creation of Brahmanical hegemony through the institutions of caste, gender, and religious ideology in the history of early India. The essays focus on the role played by religion and mythology in the making of this hegemony. The studies in this book argue that myths reveal the stories of domination and resistance if we give attention to the process of their production and not take them as factual historical narratives. The idea is not to dismiss myths as false, distorted, or bad history but to examine the kind of reality they represent, to delve into the dynamics of their formation and their impact, and account for elements of continuity and change in them. Pursuing this line of argument, these essays build on the author's earlier classic study, The Origin and Development of Vaishnavism. The book has three thematic divisions: studies on caste-related social differentiation drawing on the sources for the history, society, and polity of early India as well as reviewing the work of R.S. Sharma, the eminent historian of the period; studies about the gendered development of Brahmanical hegemony; and studies on the historical valences of the various mythological incarnations in Vaishnava theology: Rama, Narasimha, and Hayagriva.

The Making of Brahmanic Hegemony

The Making of Brahmanic Hegemony PDF Author: Suvira Jaiswal
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789382381839
Category : Brahmanism
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
'The discipline of history in India is under attack--not only from those who adopt a pseudo-historical mode to popularize a mythical version of the past colored with their ill-concealed political objectives, but also from those who, posing methodological challenges through unbridled theoretical relativism emphasizing cultural specificity and difference, end up reorientalizing the Orientals. What is left unquestioned in both approaches is the hegemony of forms of thinking which underlie social and economic inequalities in the present. This book is a collection of essays - both published and unpublished - about the creation of Brahmanical hegemony through the institutions of caste, gender, and religious ideology in the history of early India. The essays focus on the role played by religion and mythology in the making of this hegemony. The studies in this book argue that myths reveal the stories of domination and resistance if we give attention to the process of their production and not take them as factual historical narratives. The idea is not to dismiss myths as false, distorted, or bad history but to examine the kind of reality they represent, to delve into the dynamics of their formation and their impact, and account for elements of continuity and change in them. Pursuing this line of argument, these essays build on the author's earlier classic study, The Origin and Development of Vaishnavism. The book has three thematic divisions: studies on caste-related social differentiation drawing on the sources for the history, society, and polity of early India as well as reviewing the work of R.S. Sharma, the eminent historian of the period; studies about the gendered development of Brahmanical hegemony; and studies on the historical valences of the various mythological incarnations in Vaishnava theology: Rama, Narasimha, and Hayagriva.

The Making of Brahmanic Hegemony

The Making of Brahmanic Hegemony PDF Author: Suvira Jaiswal
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788193926918
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This book is a collection of essays - both published and unpublished - about the creation of Brahmanical hegemony through the institutions of caste, gender, and religious ideology in the history of early India. The essays focus on the role played by religion and mythology in the making of this hegemony.

The Making of Early Kashmir

The Making of Early Kashmir PDF Author: Muhammad Ashraf Wani
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100083655X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
This is the first full-length history of early Kashmir locating it beyond its regional context, from pre-history to the thirteenth century. Drawing on a variety of sources—including conventional archaeological and literary sources, as well as non-conventional sources like philology, toponym and surnames—it presents a connected history of early Kashmir over the longue duree. It challenges tendencies towards nationalist historiographies of the region by situating it in the context of the shared histories of humanity. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, archaeology, anthropology and South Asian studies.

The Boundaries of Mixedness

The Boundaries of Mixedness PDF Author: Erica Chito Childs
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000197344
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
The Boundaries of Mixedness tackles the burgeoning field of critical mixed race studies, bringing together research that spans five continents and more than ten countries. Research on mixedness is growing, yet there is still much debate over what exactly mixed race means, and whether it is a useful term. Despite a growing focus on and celebration of mixedness globally, particularly in the media, societies around the world are grappling with how and why crossing socially constructed boundaries of race, ethnicity and other markers of difference matter when considering those who date, marry, raise families, or navigate their identities across these boundaries. What we find collectively through the ten studies in this book is that in every context there is a hierarchy of mixedness, both in terms of intimacy and identity. This hierarchy of intimacy renders certain groups as more or less marriable, socially constructed around race, ethnicity, caste, religion, skin color and/or region. Relatedly, there is also a hierarchy of identities where certain races, languages, ethnicities and religions are privileged and valued differently. These differences emerge out of particular local histories and contemporary contexts yet there are also global realities that transcend place and space. The Boundaries of Mixedness is a significant new contribution to mixed race studies for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Ethnic and Racial Studies, Sociology, History and Public Policy. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Intercultural Studies.

Gender in the Making

Gender in the Making PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004649980
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description


In the Valley of Historical Time

In the Valley of Historical Time PDF Author: Abhinav Sinha
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004693491
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
The descent of working class movements that began with neoliberal globalization is nearing completion. However, the ascent is yet to begin. This period is witnessing novel forms of organization and resistance. For students, activists and academics, it is imperative to understand changes in the modus operandi of capital since the 1970s to explain the crisis of conventional trade unionism, as well as the spontaneous outbursts of creativity in movements of informal workers in recent times. Delhi has been a centre of such innovative experiments. In the Valley of Historical Time attempts to understand these new forms and strategies and possibilities of resurgence of working class movements.

Caste, Culture and Hegemony

Caste, Culture and Hegemony PDF Author: Sekhar Bandyopadhyay
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761998495
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
It is widely believed that, because of its exceptional social development, the caste system in colonial Bengal differed considerably from the rest of India. Through a study of the complex interplay between caste, culture and power, this book convincingly demonstrates that Bengali Hindu society preserved the essentials of caste discrimination in colonial times, even while giving the outward appearance of having changed. Using empirical data combined with an impressive array of secondary sources, Dr Bandyopadhyay delineates the manner in which Hindu caste society maintained its cultural hegemony and structural cohesion. This was primarily achieved by frustrating reformist endeavours, by co-opting the challenges of the dalit, and by marginalising dissidence. It was through such a process of constant negotiation in the realm of popular culture, argues the author, that this oppressive social structure and its hierarchical ideology and values have survived. Starting with an examination of the relationship between caste and power, the book examines early cultural encounters between `high' Brahmanical tradition and the more egalitarian `popular' religious cults of the lower castes. It moves on to take a close look at the relationship between caste and gender showing the reasons why the reform movement for widow remarriage failed. It ends with an examination of the Hindu `partition' campaign, which appropriated dalit autonomous politics and made Hinduism the foundation of an emergent Indian national identity. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay breaks with many of the assumptions of two important schools of thought - the Dumontian and the subaltern - and takes instead a more nuanced approach to show how high caste hegemony has been able to perpetuate itself. He thus takes up issues which go to the heart of contemporary problems in India's social and political fabric. This important and original contribution will be widely welcomed by historians, sociologists and political scientists.

Representing the Margin

Representing the Margin PDF Author: Ajay S. Sekher
Publisher: Gyan Publishing House
ISBN: 9788178356907
Category : Caste in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The work explores the representation of socio cultural margins of caste and gender in Indian contexts in works of fiction written in various Indian languages in the twentieth century, taking representative samples from Hindi/Urdu, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam and English. The focus of enquiry is the narrativization of these important cultural and political questions in representative texts of fiction. What are the socio political and cultural implications and underpinnings of the representation of marginalization in the medium and genre of fiction, what could be the politics, ethics and aesthetics of such narrating, how far such representations are subversive or consensual/complicit, what are the limitations and pitfalls of such intervening radicalism in fictional narration all these questions are taken up in detail in the analyses. In the greater sense this study is also a critique of modernity and its discontents as it analyses the dialectics of modernity, its radical as well as reactionary aspects. A problematic premise of contextualizing the text and textualizing the context would also be prominent in the attempt. Fictional texts from five Indian languages including English (two texts from each language ) are incorporated in the study to ensure regional and linguistic representation within the limits of the availability of works in translation. Questions of class analytical perspectives in the context of Brahmanic patriarchy are explicated and critiqued. The need for a subaltern hermeneutics and the urgency of epistemological democratization are also discussed as a political and emancipatory outcome of the study. Both the formal as well as thematic concerns of the novel in the Indian languages are found to be shaped and determined by the material realities and associated attitudes and worldviews of caste and gender hierarchy emanating from internal imperialism. Though the ten texts chosen attempt intense critique of the gender question, the more profound and specific cultural question of caste evades comprehension and critical understanding. Caste often escapes as the un-representable in narration as it is in conversion.

Castes of Mind

Castes of Mind PDF Author: Nicholas B. Dirks
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400840945
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization. Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus. Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.

Caste

Caste PDF Author: Suvira Jaiswal
Publisher: Manohar Publishers
ISBN: 9788173043345
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This Comprehensive Study Is Divided Into Five Chapters. The Introduction Looks At The Definition Of Caste, The Evidence In Vedic Texts, And The Class Role Of Caste And The Elite. This Is Followed By A Detailed Chapter On The Historiography Of Caste And Gender Issues. Other Chapters Examine Stratification In Rigvedic Society And Early Buddhism. The Concluding Chapter Provides An Overview Of The Changing Paradigms Of Brahmanical Integration.