Anjali Bhardwaj Datta | University of Cambridge (original) (raw)
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Papers by Anjali Bhardwaj Datta
South Asia-journal of South Asian Studies, Mar 4, 2021
Abstract Partition produced newer anxieties for Delhi’s Muslims as they became subject to the eve... more Abstract Partition produced newer anxieties for Delhi’s Muslims as they became subject to the everyday violence of both state and society, exacerbated by the rise of Hindu nationalism and the organised demarcation of Muslim-dominated areas as ‘exclusionary’ and ‘contested’ zones. While the city was fraught with violent conflicts and exclusionary politics, gender was also being redefined and renegotiated. This article will query the particular lived experience and embodied agency of Muslim women in order to study gender and space within the context of social, cultural, economic and political changes after Partition. It will explore the ways in which women exercised agency and claimed space and belonging in everyday negotiations and strategies for survival, thereby contributing to family income and small capitalism in the Old City. It will study their diverse experiences which were shaped by their social location and challenged by the political, religious, economic and social processes that impinged upon their lives. Rather than seeing them as passive subjects of history, it foregrounds Muslim women’s navigation of state, community and the household in independent India.
Indian Historical Review, 2008
However, the book suffers from some minor blemishes. For example, the author should have used the... more However, the book suffers from some minor blemishes. For example, the author should have used the nomenclature 'Siddhartha Gautama' in place of 'Buddha' at pages 1, 19 and 204 because after being blessed with Enlightenment, Siddhartha Gautama began to be called the Buddha. Again, the term 'discourses' should have been preferred to 'texts' at page 13. Also, inconsistency in spellings of Sanskrit and Hindi terms, such as Mahantha, has been observed. The author would have done well to show these terms in italics. Besides, page numbers are omitted in regard to references at pages 5 and 54; the year of publication and abbreviation do not match with the ones given in the Bibliography and the list of abbreviations at pages 3 and 42 respectively. Above all, typographical errors have occurred at pages 10, 56, 201, 208 and 254. These lapses, though minor, distract attention while going through the book.
Modern Asian Studies
The Indian state treated the partition of Punjab as a ‘national disaster’ and training for refuge... more The Indian state treated the partition of Punjab as a ‘national disaster’ and training for refugee women was deemed essential to restore the social landscape; yet the kind of help it offered to refugee women rested on its clear assumptions and biases about the kind of work that was appropriate for them: women were offered training in embroidery, stitching, tailoring, and weaving, as these are associated with feminine and household-based skills. This article will reveal that the state rehabilitation enterprise was primarily masculine in focus. The state treated women refugees as secondary earners and as guardians of hearth, kith, and kin; it did not see them playing a definitive role in nation-building in post-colonial India. In the absence of state supportive policies, refugee women were compelled to take up informal jobs like petty trading, domestic service, and labouring work. This article suggests that refugee women were handicapped in the labour market at their very point of ent...
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
This Introduction frames a collection of papers that explore the roles played by women-as volunte... more This Introduction frames a collection of papers that explore the roles played by women-as volunteers, organisers, bureaucrats, politicians and citizens-in shaping the emerging ideologies and structures of independent India. Although women's participation is both understudied and inadequately theorised in existing scholarship, the papers in this collection demonstrate that the decades following India's Independence witnessed the participation of women in every sphere of politics and nation-building. The introductory essay tracks the limits and possibilities of women's agency and gendered citizenship in these spheres to historicise the women's movement during the post-Independence decades, and to examine its fraught relationship with feminism, patriarchal society and state politics.
South Asia Journal of South Asian Studies, 2021
This Introduction frames a collection of papers that explore the roles played by women—as volunte... more This Introduction frames a collection of papers that explore the
roles played by women—as volunteers, organisers, bureaucrats,
politicians and citizens—in shaping the emerging ideologies and
structures of independent India. Although women’s participation
is both understudied and inadequately theorised in existing scholarship, the papers in this collection demonstrate that the decades
following India’s Independence witnessed the participation of
women in every sphere of politics and nation-building. The introductory essay tracks the limits and possibilities of women’s
agency and gendered citizenship in these spheres to historicise
the women’s movement during the post-Independence decades,
and to examine its fraught relationship with feminism, patriarchal
society and state politics.
Journal Article
This paper makes interventions in our understanding of the histories of Partition. Rather than tr... more This paper makes interventions in our understanding of the histories of Partition. Rather than treating 1947 as a moment of temporal rupture, it argues that processes that were set in motion during the two World Wars persisted into the post-colonial period and proved critical in determining the shape of contemporary Indian urbanism. While the post-Partition Indian state, obsessed with planning capital spaces, used rehabilitation as an instrument to gain control over the city, this paper argues that it was during the early 1940s, and particularly during World War II, that we can trace the genealogy of post-colonial urban governance. It will assess migration, urban planning, popular protest, war-time controls, and the political economy of land use during the 1940s in Delhi, which in many ways shaped how the city later responded to Partition.
South Asia-journal of South Asian Studies, Mar 4, 2021
Abstract Partition produced newer anxieties for Delhi’s Muslims as they became subject to the eve... more Abstract Partition produced newer anxieties for Delhi’s Muslims as they became subject to the everyday violence of both state and society, exacerbated by the rise of Hindu nationalism and the organised demarcation of Muslim-dominated areas as ‘exclusionary’ and ‘contested’ zones. While the city was fraught with violent conflicts and exclusionary politics, gender was also being redefined and renegotiated. This article will query the particular lived experience and embodied agency of Muslim women in order to study gender and space within the context of social, cultural, economic and political changes after Partition. It will explore the ways in which women exercised agency and claimed space and belonging in everyday negotiations and strategies for survival, thereby contributing to family income and small capitalism in the Old City. It will study their diverse experiences which were shaped by their social location and challenged by the political, religious, economic and social processes that impinged upon their lives. Rather than seeing them as passive subjects of history, it foregrounds Muslim women’s navigation of state, community and the household in independent India.
Indian Historical Review, 2008
However, the book suffers from some minor blemishes. For example, the author should have used the... more However, the book suffers from some minor blemishes. For example, the author should have used the nomenclature 'Siddhartha Gautama' in place of 'Buddha' at pages 1, 19 and 204 because after being blessed with Enlightenment, Siddhartha Gautama began to be called the Buddha. Again, the term 'discourses' should have been preferred to 'texts' at page 13. Also, inconsistency in spellings of Sanskrit and Hindi terms, such as Mahantha, has been observed. The author would have done well to show these terms in italics. Besides, page numbers are omitted in regard to references at pages 5 and 54; the year of publication and abbreviation do not match with the ones given in the Bibliography and the list of abbreviations at pages 3 and 42 respectively. Above all, typographical errors have occurred at pages 10, 56, 201, 208 and 254. These lapses, though minor, distract attention while going through the book.
Modern Asian Studies
The Indian state treated the partition of Punjab as a ‘national disaster’ and training for refuge... more The Indian state treated the partition of Punjab as a ‘national disaster’ and training for refugee women was deemed essential to restore the social landscape; yet the kind of help it offered to refugee women rested on its clear assumptions and biases about the kind of work that was appropriate for them: women were offered training in embroidery, stitching, tailoring, and weaving, as these are associated with feminine and household-based skills. This article will reveal that the state rehabilitation enterprise was primarily masculine in focus. The state treated women refugees as secondary earners and as guardians of hearth, kith, and kin; it did not see them playing a definitive role in nation-building in post-colonial India. In the absence of state supportive policies, refugee women were compelled to take up informal jobs like petty trading, domestic service, and labouring work. This article suggests that refugee women were handicapped in the labour market at their very point of ent...
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies
This Introduction frames a collection of papers that explore the roles played by women-as volunte... more This Introduction frames a collection of papers that explore the roles played by women-as volunteers, organisers, bureaucrats, politicians and citizens-in shaping the emerging ideologies and structures of independent India. Although women's participation is both understudied and inadequately theorised in existing scholarship, the papers in this collection demonstrate that the decades following India's Independence witnessed the participation of women in every sphere of politics and nation-building. The introductory essay tracks the limits and possibilities of women's agency and gendered citizenship in these spheres to historicise the women's movement during the post-Independence decades, and to examine its fraught relationship with feminism, patriarchal society and state politics.
South Asia Journal of South Asian Studies, 2021
This Introduction frames a collection of papers that explore the roles played by women—as volunte... more This Introduction frames a collection of papers that explore the
roles played by women—as volunteers, organisers, bureaucrats,
politicians and citizens—in shaping the emerging ideologies and
structures of independent India. Although women’s participation
is both understudied and inadequately theorised in existing scholarship, the papers in this collection demonstrate that the decades
following India’s Independence witnessed the participation of
women in every sphere of politics and nation-building. The introductory essay tracks the limits and possibilities of women’s
agency and gendered citizenship in these spheres to historicise
the women’s movement during the post-Independence decades,
and to examine its fraught relationship with feminism, patriarchal
society and state politics.
Journal Article
This paper makes interventions in our understanding of the histories of Partition. Rather than tr... more This paper makes interventions in our understanding of the histories of Partition. Rather than treating 1947 as a moment of temporal rupture, it argues that processes that were set in motion during the two World Wars persisted into the post-colonial period and proved critical in determining the shape of contemporary Indian urbanism. While the post-Partition Indian state, obsessed with planning capital spaces, used rehabilitation as an instrument to gain control over the city, this paper argues that it was during the early 1940s, and particularly during World War II, that we can trace the genealogy of post-colonial urban governance. It will assess migration, urban planning, popular protest, war-time controls, and the political economy of land use during the 1940s in Delhi, which in many ways shaped how the city later responded to Partition.