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Conference Presentations by Anamika Patel
The emergence of India as the world's largest democracy is indeed exceptional, and this has becom... more The emergence of India as the world's largest democracy is indeed exceptional, and this has become possible due to upholding the values mentioned in our Constitution. However, Indian democracy cannot be analysed in isolation as it is the part and parcel of our culture, and to be precise, democracy and popular culture are complementary to each other. According to British Marxist sociologist Stuart Hall, popular culture is a site where 'collective social understandings are created': a terrain on which 'the politics of signification' are played out in attempts to win people to particular ways of seeing the world. This paper attempts to formulate an understanding of the aspect of secularismwhich is one of the most important pillars on which Indian democracy reststhrough various calendar art representations, that has been a significant facet of popular culture in India. Also, we shall try to explore whether these representations portray the concept of secularism in the true sense of the term or are actually a threat to our democracy in the guise of deliberate endeavours for producing a 'majoritarian' understanding whereby other religions are appropriated to a Hindu order.
Papers by Anamika Patel
In order to understand the culture of India, we need to study both the written classics as well a... more In order to understand the culture of India, we need to study both the written classics as well as the oral traditions, of which folklore is an inseparable part. In this paper, an attempt has been made to study one of the folk traditions of storytelling – vrat kathas - which are a part of the larger category of the katha genre and are classifiable as religious tales. These tales have been used to propagate religious preaching not only in Hinduism but also in Jainism and Buddhism.
In the light of some popular vrat katha narratives prevalent in India, we shall try to discuss how the role of a woman is limited till the boundaries of just the socio-religious sphere, promoting kinship ties and practising ideal convention. Usually, the main purpose of the vrat-katha is to show how practising the vrat by following all the instructions properly helps the woman to fulfil her duties as laid down by the religion she follows. Also, we shall try to analyse how the woman, for not performing a particular vrat, is not only projected as being responsible for all the sufferings endured by her family, but also it is solely she who is supposed to bear all the pains and consequences of her acts in this world and the next – in spite of the fact that in the whole process, it is her own identity which is at stake. To what extent are the instances of “reward-punishment” dichotomy responsible for hypnotising the female to disempower them and what possible circumstances might this create in the future remains a relevant question to be considered.
Book Reviews by Anamika Patel
The emergence of India as the world's largest democracy is indeed exceptional, and this has becom... more The emergence of India as the world's largest democracy is indeed exceptional, and this has become possible due to upholding the values mentioned in our Constitution. However, Indian democracy cannot be analysed in isolation as it is the part and parcel of our culture, and to be precise, democracy and popular culture are complementary to each other. According to British Marxist sociologist Stuart Hall, popular culture is a site where 'collective social understandings are created': a terrain on which 'the politics of signification' are played out in attempts to win people to particular ways of seeing the world. This paper attempts to formulate an understanding of the aspect of secularismwhich is one of the most important pillars on which Indian democracy reststhrough various calendar art representations, that has been a significant facet of popular culture in India. Also, we shall try to explore whether these representations portray the concept of secularism in the true sense of the term or are actually a threat to our democracy in the guise of deliberate endeavours for producing a 'majoritarian' understanding whereby other religions are appropriated to a Hindu order.
In order to understand the culture of India, we need to study both the written classics as well a... more In order to understand the culture of India, we need to study both the written classics as well as the oral traditions, of which folklore is an inseparable part. In this paper, an attempt has been made to study one of the folk traditions of storytelling – vrat kathas - which are a part of the larger category of the katha genre and are classifiable as religious tales. These tales have been used to propagate religious preaching not only in Hinduism but also in Jainism and Buddhism.
In the light of some popular vrat katha narratives prevalent in India, we shall try to discuss how the role of a woman is limited till the boundaries of just the socio-religious sphere, promoting kinship ties and practising ideal convention. Usually, the main purpose of the vrat-katha is to show how practising the vrat by following all the instructions properly helps the woman to fulfil her duties as laid down by the religion she follows. Also, we shall try to analyse how the woman, for not performing a particular vrat, is not only projected as being responsible for all the sufferings endured by her family, but also it is solely she who is supposed to bear all the pains and consequences of her acts in this world and the next – in spite of the fact that in the whole process, it is her own identity which is at stake. To what extent are the instances of “reward-punishment” dichotomy responsible for hypnotising the female to disempower them and what possible circumstances might this create in the future remains a relevant question to be considered.