Meera Ashar | The Australian National University (original) (raw)
Papers by Meera Ashar
History and Theory, 2021
A diversity of discursive formations in the vernacular flourish on the margins of history, and ev... more A diversity of discursive formations in the vernacular flourish on the margins of history, and even outside it. To better understand these formations, particularly in postcolonial societies such as India, I argue that it is important to eschew the sole use of the lens of veracity. I explore alternative lenses through which to more fruitfully examine historical narratives in the vernacular: the contrast between the “historical past” and the “practical
past,” the complexities involved in cultural translation, and the lyrical and fictionalized nature of prior accounts of the past. I employ these alternative lenses to make sense of Gujarati author Nandśaṅkar Tuḷjāśaṅkar Mehtā’s use of the historical novel form in his pioneering historical work, Karaṇ Ghelo, Gujarātno chello Rajpūt rājā: ek vārtā (Karaṇ the Crazy, Gujarat’s Last Rajput King: A Story), the first novel written in Gujarati. Writing at a time when the demand for histories and history textbooks was burgeoning, Mehtā made the curious choice to write a vārtā, or “story”—a choice that becomes more comprehensible when seen from the alternative perspectives I propose.
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
Cultural Dynamics, 2015
What does it mean to decolonize? At one level, decolonization refers to the attainment of politic... more What does it mean to decolonize? At one level, decolonization refers to the attainment of political sovereignty. The transfer of power from colonial to regional and indigenous authorities, however, also involves a handover of political forms and institutions. This process leaves behind some of the narratives that accompany coloniality, even if refashioned versions of these. This enduring coloniality resides within and proliferates through the categories of political discourse. In India, we may find its continual hum in tirades against ‘corruption’ or in laments that Indians lack a ‘civic sense’. The decolonial project, having found expression in nationalist movements, in political and epistemic resistance, and in reform and revival, therefore continues to be undertaken in the language of coloniality, which obscures all that resides outside the colonial worldview.
Modern Asian Studies, 2015
Govardhanram Tripathi wrote the four-volume novelSaraswatichandraas an ‘instruction manual’ for a... more Govardhanram Tripathi wrote the four-volume novelSaraswatichandraas an ‘instruction manual’ for a people facing fundamental social and political change during colonial rule. This article examines a shift in the conception of instruction as the text progressed through its instalments—from a notion of learning as a process of deliberation about, and experimentation with, imitable actions, to the idea of education through the representation of action—a transformation that is made conspicuous by the discordance between the widely debated and highly influential initial volumes and the largely ignored final volume. It situates this shift in broader changes in the idea of instruction in Indian society, and investigates it in order to better understand the strains involved in attempting to codify or theorize certain types of domains.
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2015
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
This deliverable is the final report of Task 3.2. It reports on the activities of Work Package 3 ... more This deliverable is the final report of Task 3.2. It reports on the activities of Work Package 3 on the management and exploitation of context information and on learning algorithms for radio environment and traffic map prediction.
The 1974 Hindi-language film, Roti, features a song with the chorus: ‘Yeh jo public hai, yeh sab ... more The 1974 Hindi-language film, Roti, features a song with the chorus: ‘Yeh jo public hai, yeh sab jaanti hai, public hai (This is the public, it knows all, this public), Andar kya hai, baahar kya hai, yeh sab kuchh pehchaanti hai (What lies inside, what is outside—it recognises everything)’. The visuals that precede the song show the protagonists (the ‘hero’ and the ‘heroine’) gathering people into a walking mob, and it is this group of people that is referred to as the ‘public’. How does one understand this concept of the public?
Modern Asian Studies
Govardhanram Tripathi wrote the four-volume novel Saraswatichandra as an ‘instruction manual’ for... more Govardhanram Tripathi wrote the four-volume novel Saraswatichandra as an ‘instruction manual’ for a people facing fundamental social and political change during colonial rule. This article examines a shift in the conception of instruction as the text progressed through its instalments—from a notion of learning as a process of deliberation about, and experimentation with, imitable actions, to the idea of education through the representation of action—a transformation that is made conspicuous by the discordance between the widely debated and highly influential initial volumes and the largely ignored final volume. It situates this shift in broader changes in the idea of instruction in Indian society, and investigates it in order to better understand the strains involved in attempting to codify or theorize certain types of domains.
Cultural Dynamics, Jul 2015
What does it mean to decolonize? At one level, decolonization refers to the attainment of politic... more What does it mean to decolonize? At one level, decolonization refers to the attainment of political sovereignty. The transfer of power from colonial to regional and indigenous authorities, however, also involves a handover of political forms and institutions. This process leaves behind some of the narratives that accompany coloniality, even if refashioned versions of these. This enduring coloniality resides within and proliferates through the categories of political discourse. In India, we may find its continual hum in tirades against ‘corruption’ or in laments that Indians lack a ‘civic sense’. The decolonial project, having found expression in nationalist movements, in political and epistemic resistance, and in reform and revival, therefore continues to be undertaken in the language of coloniality, which obscures all that resides outside the colonial worldview.
South Asia-journal of South Asian Studies, 2009
Girjashankar Badheka (1885-1939), or Gijubhai, as he was fondly called, collected a hundred and o... more Girjashankar Badheka (1885-1939), or Gijubhai, as he was fondly called, collected a hundred and one oral folk stories that have come to be known as Gijubhai ni Baal Vartao, or Gijubhai’s Children’s Stories. The delightful narratives in Gijubhai’s Children’s Stories create a microcosm of everyday life. The rendering of the everyday is, however, neither realistic nor fantastic, allegorical, utopian or normative. Through their peculiar illustration of the everyday, the stories create a ‘habitus of learning’. A close examination of some of these stories allows us to sneak a look into this rich living tradition of knowledge transmission and explain the role of stories and oral narratives in the social life of India.
Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, & Africa: An Encyclopedia, 2012
Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, & Africa: An Encyclopedia, 2012
History and Theory, 2021
A diversity of discursive formations in the vernacular flourish on the margins of history, and ev... more A diversity of discursive formations in the vernacular flourish on the margins of history, and even outside it. To better understand these formations, particularly in postcolonial societies such as India, I argue that it is important to eschew the sole use of the lens of veracity. I explore alternative lenses through which to more fruitfully examine historical narratives in the vernacular: the contrast between the “historical past” and the “practical
past,” the complexities involved in cultural translation, and the lyrical and fictionalized nature of prior accounts of the past. I employ these alternative lenses to make sense of Gujarati author Nandśaṅkar Tuḷjāśaṅkar Mehtā’s use of the historical novel form in his pioneering historical work, Karaṇ Ghelo, Gujarātno chello Rajpūt rājā: ek vārtā (Karaṇ the Crazy, Gujarat’s Last Rajput King: A Story), the first novel written in Gujarati. Writing at a time when the demand for histories and history textbooks was burgeoning, Mehtā made the curious choice to write a vārtā, or “story”—a choice that becomes more comprehensible when seen from the alternative perspectives I propose.
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
Cultural Dynamics, 2015
What does it mean to decolonize? At one level, decolonization refers to the attainment of politic... more What does it mean to decolonize? At one level, decolonization refers to the attainment of political sovereignty. The transfer of power from colonial to regional and indigenous authorities, however, also involves a handover of political forms and institutions. This process leaves behind some of the narratives that accompany coloniality, even if refashioned versions of these. This enduring coloniality resides within and proliferates through the categories of political discourse. In India, we may find its continual hum in tirades against ‘corruption’ or in laments that Indians lack a ‘civic sense’. The decolonial project, having found expression in nationalist movements, in political and epistemic resistance, and in reform and revival, therefore continues to be undertaken in the language of coloniality, which obscures all that resides outside the colonial worldview.
Modern Asian Studies, 2015
Govardhanram Tripathi wrote the four-volume novelSaraswatichandraas an ‘instruction manual’ for a... more Govardhanram Tripathi wrote the four-volume novelSaraswatichandraas an ‘instruction manual’ for a people facing fundamental social and political change during colonial rule. This article examines a shift in the conception of instruction as the text progressed through its instalments—from a notion of learning as a process of deliberation about, and experimentation with, imitable actions, to the idea of education through the representation of action—a transformation that is made conspicuous by the discordance between the widely debated and highly influential initial volumes and the largely ignored final volume. It situates this shift in broader changes in the idea of instruction in Indian society, and investigates it in order to better understand the strains involved in attempting to codify or theorize certain types of domains.
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2015
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
This deliverable is the final report of Task 3.2. It reports on the activities of Work Package 3 ... more This deliverable is the final report of Task 3.2. It reports on the activities of Work Package 3 on the management and exploitation of context information and on learning algorithms for radio environment and traffic map prediction.
The 1974 Hindi-language film, Roti, features a song with the chorus: ‘Yeh jo public hai, yeh sab ... more The 1974 Hindi-language film, Roti, features a song with the chorus: ‘Yeh jo public hai, yeh sab jaanti hai, public hai (This is the public, it knows all, this public), Andar kya hai, baahar kya hai, yeh sab kuchh pehchaanti hai (What lies inside, what is outside—it recognises everything)’. The visuals that precede the song show the protagonists (the ‘hero’ and the ‘heroine’) gathering people into a walking mob, and it is this group of people that is referred to as the ‘public’. How does one understand this concept of the public?
Modern Asian Studies
Govardhanram Tripathi wrote the four-volume novel Saraswatichandra as an ‘instruction manual’ for... more Govardhanram Tripathi wrote the four-volume novel Saraswatichandra as an ‘instruction manual’ for a people facing fundamental social and political change during colonial rule. This article examines a shift in the conception of instruction as the text progressed through its instalments—from a notion of learning as a process of deliberation about, and experimentation with, imitable actions, to the idea of education through the representation of action—a transformation that is made conspicuous by the discordance between the widely debated and highly influential initial volumes and the largely ignored final volume. It situates this shift in broader changes in the idea of instruction in Indian society, and investigates it in order to better understand the strains involved in attempting to codify or theorize certain types of domains.
Cultural Dynamics, Jul 2015
What does it mean to decolonize? At one level, decolonization refers to the attainment of politic... more What does it mean to decolonize? At one level, decolonization refers to the attainment of political sovereignty. The transfer of power from colonial to regional and indigenous authorities, however, also involves a handover of political forms and institutions. This process leaves behind some of the narratives that accompany coloniality, even if refashioned versions of these. This enduring coloniality resides within and proliferates through the categories of political discourse. In India, we may find its continual hum in tirades against ‘corruption’ or in laments that Indians lack a ‘civic sense’. The decolonial project, having found expression in nationalist movements, in political and epistemic resistance, and in reform and revival, therefore continues to be undertaken in the language of coloniality, which obscures all that resides outside the colonial worldview.
South Asia-journal of South Asian Studies, 2009
Girjashankar Badheka (1885-1939), or Gijubhai, as he was fondly called, collected a hundred and o... more Girjashankar Badheka (1885-1939), or Gijubhai, as he was fondly called, collected a hundred and one oral folk stories that have come to be known as Gijubhai ni Baal Vartao, or Gijubhai’s Children’s Stories. The delightful narratives in Gijubhai’s Children’s Stories create a microcosm of everyday life. The rendering of the everyday is, however, neither realistic nor fantastic, allegorical, utopian or normative. Through their peculiar illustration of the everyday, the stories create a ‘habitus of learning’. A close examination of some of these stories allows us to sneak a look into this rich living tradition of knowledge transmission and explain the role of stories and oral narratives in the social life of India.
Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, & Africa: An Encyclopedia, 2012
Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, & Africa: An Encyclopedia, 2012
Its about the ongoing struggle of people of Bhopal, India who were affected by the Bhopal Gas Tra... more Its about the ongoing struggle of people of Bhopal, India who were affected by the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, Dec.2,19884. On the night of 2nd December 1984, Methyl Isocynate, a lethal gas used in making ‘Sevin’ a pesticide leaked from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. On that day alone, more than 2000 people were killed. Conservative estimates of the death toll today have mounted to more than 20,000. Wanton and criminal negligence continues to kill more people each day. More than 500,000 have been affected and at least 50,000 people are left too sick to work.
Survivors of this disaster still await justice and continue to suffer even as you watch this film. ‘Bhopal – The Survivors Story’ explores the grim reality of lakhs of survivors and their children, caught between Dow-Carbide’s denial of liability and the Government’s reluctance to pursue Dow-Carbide, as they continue to face the unfolding hardships of the nearness of death and living poisoned everyday.
This documentary looks at the environmental impacts of thousands of tons of toxic wastes that lie abandoned by Dow-Carbide and the frightening reality of the continued migration of these chemicals into soil, the ground water, the vegetables and the people who live there. It is confirmed that even the human breast milk is contaminated, ensuring future generation with continued suffering. It explores the present day situation of the survivors and their demands and struggles to achieve them. This is not just the struggle of the people of Bhopal against Dow-Carbide; it marks the strife of a people against the forces of large Corporates, the MNCs and the State.