South Asia Research 2010 - 30,2

1. Sutanuka Ghosh: Expressing the Self in Bengali Women’s Autobiographies in the Twentieth Century, S. 105-123
DOI: 10.1177/026272801003000201

Abstract: This article discusses evidence from the autobiographical writings of three Bengali women to explore expressions of the self in such literature. Sarala Devi Chaudhurani, Santisudha Ghosh and Manikuntala Sen were contemporaries, all three active in different capacities in the various political formations that shaped the outcome of the struggle against colonial occupation. Their autobiographies lay bare the prescriptions they encountered as daughters and women and the choices they made, all the time straddling multiple worlds, occupying multiple subject positions.
The article contends that these autobiographies, along with other personal and public documents, reflect the construction of tortured, fractured female subjectivities that must continually negotiate with ‘modernity’ in early twentieth century Bengal. Consequently, the ‘female self’ in these autobiographies is not a securely rooted and stable entity but is constantly ‘becoming’, as the various fragments try to cohere around an elusive centre, ‘modernity’, which is itself a nebulous, unstable product of multiple discourses.

2. Laura Brueck: Good Dalits and Bad Brahmins: Melodramatic Realism in Dalit Short Stories, S. 125-144
DOI: 10.1177/026272801003000202

Abstract: This article examines the literary strategies that shape contemporary Dalit fictional prose in Hindi. Based on the analysis of two short stories by the prolific Dalit writers Omprakash Valmiki and Jaiprakash Kardam, it is argued that the contributions of Dalit literature arise today not only in the context of a social movement, but are increasingly apparent through the development of a new, hybrid melodramatic–realist literary aesthetic. New critical scholarship of Dalit literature in India is therefore needed to appreciate the ongoing expansion of such forms of literature across linguistic and geographical regions in India as a postmodern sphere of subaltern social protest. Such fresh analytical attention to Dalit strategies of artistic expansion and literary growth will undoubtedly enliven the hitherto largely bland sociological conversations about Dalit literature.

3. Birendra Raj Giri: Bonded Labour Practice in Nepal: The Promise of Education as a Magnet of Child Bondedness, S. 145-164
DOI: 10.1177/026272801003000203

Abstract: This article highlights that in Nepal, the promise of education seems to have become a magnet of child bondedness. After some government intervention in 2000, the haliya and kamaiya bonded labour practices have become a socially stigmatising matter for adults, and a legal hurdle for kisan (landlord) employers, but the practices continue. Both parties to these bonded labour practices seem to have found the idea of education as a safe meeting point. While parents send their children to work with the hope of obtaining education for them, besides other material benefits, employers seek to pay as little as possible and will often not give sufficient time to their young workers to study. Though most children have little or no say during the contract, they, too, are initially attracted by the promise of education. Based on detailed fieldwork, this article explores to what extent the largely unfulfilled educational aspirations for Musahar and Tharu working children can be seen as a restrained form of empowerment or a continuing system of bonded labour in Nepal.

4. Soumen Mukherjee: Two Accounts of the Colonised ‘Other’ in South Asia: Re-Exploring Alterity, S. 165-184
DOI: 10.1177/026272801003000204

Abstract: Taking examples from South Asia, this article shows how British colonial knowledge about the non-European ‘other’ hinged substantially on the participation of sections of that other, especially in the context of liminal groups, for whom no ready standardised formula of identification was available. Development of a colonial episteme often involved active intervention from the colonised body, thereby dispelling any strict notion of coloniser-colonised alterity and mere top-down governance. This process of identity construction took place in several arenas and also involved negotiations in courts of law, where rival sections of the amorphous colonised body fought for competing ideals of selfhood. Complementing this legal construction were ethnographic formulations, internally diverse, and often relating to broader politico-intellectual concerns and debates of the Empire, at different planes in different ways. The article explicates their theoretical bases and practical modalities.

5. Shantha Hariharan: Relations between Macao and Britain during the Napoleonic Wars: Attempt to Land British Troops in Macao, 1802, S. 185-196
DOI: 10.1177/026272801003000205

Abstract: This brief article, based on archival research, demonstrates how the various European mercantile and colonial powers fought proxy wars in Asia which endangered the early beginnings of British possessions in South Asia and risked the wrath of China. The article outlines an aborted attempt by the British to land troops in Macao to protect emerging British trade interests in the region and examines the reasons for this failed endeavour.