Course Overview | locations | map | German

Summary:

This study aims to trace and investigate various conceptualisations of leisure, idleness, and otium in modern Bengali and Urdu prose. While it acknowledges that concepts are created and established through encounters, interactions, and translations, the project aims to rethink what a conceptual study of related concepts in a multilateral and multilingual landscape like colonial and post-colonial South Asia can bring to the field of conceptual history. Locating modernity and its associative shifts in the way time, space, and attitudes towards the literary are felt as central to understanding otium in this context, it proposes that the literary and the leisurely are deeply entangled. The project goes on to read this complex conceptualisation through an investigation into the emotional manifestations of leisure and idleness in Bengali and Urdu literary texts. Claiming emotions as central to the study of such dynamic concepts, this study attempts to engage with some of the elusive and understudied leisurely feelings that are intricately associated with the literary in modern South Asia.

Team Member:

Farha Noor

Summary:

The objective of this research is to historicise and find ways to go beyond the polarities of a socially and politically committed "progressive" literature and a "modernist" literature celebrating the autonomy of art and the artist, which began to emerge in the literary-critical imaginary of South Asia from the late 1930s. By comparing and closely looking at the works of Sanaullah Dar 'Miraji', Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh and Jibanananda Das – three of the most important voices of modern Bangla, Hindi and Urdu poetry in the twentieth century respectively – this research will try to argue that focusing on the complexities involved in the question of poetic expression can be a methodologically fruitful way to avoid falling into the trap of established (though obfuscating) polarities and also to enquire after the relationship between poetry and society/culture/politics in more engaging ways.

Team Member:

Judhajit Sarkar

Summary:

My work attempts to trace the Bengali satire of the late 19th century, especially concentrating on Indranath Bandyopadhyay and his works. Though Indranath was a representative of the orthodox group of writers of his time, he himself was a product of the colonial education system. His opinions and thoughts found adequate expression in the figure of the popular narrator, Panchu Thakur, one of his many pseudonyms.

Indranath is also believed by many literary historians to be the author of the first satirical novel in Bengali. Keeping in mind these considerations, his works seem to be apt for analyzing the reactions of, and repercussions among the middle class Bengali intelligentsia, especially of the more conservative social strata, towards the constant cultural flows taking place during the colonial rule in late 19th century Bengal.

Team Member:

Chaiti Basu

Summary:

Text-image relations in colonial Bengal´ is a research project about how text and image function together in a particular historical context. Colonial Bengal is especially interesting as it can be seen as one of the most intense moments of cultural interaction between Asia and Europe in a colonial setting. A major impetus behind this interaction was due to the dramatic expansion of communication methods and growing print technologies. Introduction and rapid growth of modern print forms created a special platform for communication between 'pre-existent' and indigenous traditions and foreign influence; which in its turn gave rise to the new styles of combining text and image. What happens within the text-image units (e.g. if a new language of expression is formed or it is a representation of one medium through the other)? What were these units intended to do and how do we look at them now? What are the effects that evolved out of intercultural synergy for this text-image idiom? These are the major questions that I am posing in my research while analyzing (a) satirical cartoons, (b) children's literature, and (c) collections of poems and paintings of colonial Bengal.

Team Member:

Elizaveta Ilves

Summary:

After ruling the country for about two centuries the British left India in 1947. Before departing, they partitioned the subcontinent into three parts and two countries: India and Pakistan, on the basis of religious majority. The eventuality of the Partition was traumatic, it permanently changed the demography and geography of that region. Few millions were uprooted, several hundred thousand people were killed, uncountable numbers were raped, converted, and faced the violent outcome of this event. The wound of the Partition is still present there; this is the reason for mistrust and suspicion among the countries and communities in South Asia. The tragic history of Partition was sidelined and silenced for many decades from the official history of this event. Memories of loss, trauma, and displacement as a result of the Partition are featured in a number of films, a range of literature, and oral history – but museums have kept such memories behind the curtain for a long time.

Only very recently the museums and archives made a concrete attempt to commemorate the Partition. In 2017 the Partition Museum, in Amritsar opened its gate, and this museum aims to become the repository of Information and stories of the Partition. The city of Kolkata, India is also establishing the Kolkata Partition Museum. Delhi is also preparing to open up its Partition Museum this year. Besides museum, few online archives are coming forward to preserving and sharing the memories of Partition. Thus, in India, after a long silence, a few museums and archives are coming forward with commemorative practices of Partition atrocities. Besides India, the two other Partition-affected countries, Bangladesh and Pakistan, are not taking any notable initiative to recall the Partition, and Partition memories continue to be a side plot in the larger museal representations of national histories.

This research project combines the memories of India’s Partition with museums and digital archives. It is aimed to compare how the entangled memories of the event Partition of India are commemorated in the museums and digital archives of the three countries affected by the Partition: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. How are Partition memories expressed in the interplay of various media at the disposal of museums and archives in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh? Why were Partition memories silenced or in a state of amnesia for many decades? What are the politics of silencing/remembering the Partition in museums and digital archives? This project includes how the politics of remembering and forgetting influences the construction of nationhood in the museums in the South Asian context. By investigating all these points this study will provide a better understanding of the practices of remembering Partition memories.

Team Member:

Aniruddha Kar

Summary:

The dissertation project inquiries on the interplay of migration, mobility, changes in urban landscape, and beautification of the city of Delhi. In so doing, this research analyses a corpus of contemporary Hindi literary texts through a combined methodological approach that includes the methods of literary geography and literary anthropology. The texts of the corpus have been written between the 80s and nowadays and their stories are set in Delhi during this same timeframe. The project, therefore, aims to analyse the perception of the changes of the urban space in the last decades from the point of views of its residents, particularly focusing on the perceptions of bastī's residents and migrants. This research also wants to investigate the social role that contemporary Hindi literature plays in the current debate on migration and gentrification in contemporary metropolises by reporting and expressing the instances of evicted and relocated dwellers.

Team member:

Valentina Barnabei

Summary:

This doctoral thesis is about the importance of ‘Greater India’ as a concept, a movement, a set of institutions, and a framing idea in the formative years of Indian nationalism and state-building. It grew out of an Orientalist scholarship framework that dealt with the question of Hindu and Buddhist influences in South-East Asia. The theme, which arose partially as a justification for European colonization of South-East Asia, was renamed and popularized as ‘Greater India’ by Indian intellectuals, scholar-nationalists, and publicists. This idea of Indian civilization across the sea became the basis for claiming the greatness of (a Hindu) India in the past, and by extension the importance of a recognition of that past glory in order to revive it in the future.

Team Member:

Jolita Zabarskaite

Summary:

My project focuses on practices of obscenity in the Bengali anti-establishment literature of the 1960s, most notably on the Hungry Generation Movement (1961-1965). Assuming that the “aesthetics of obscenity” was seen as a form of political resistance by many anti-establishment writers and artists of Western counter-cultures, this study aims at showing how some practices of dissent were used in post-Independence Bengali literary culture to shape an alternative identity for the Bengali urban intellectual. Moreover, this very debate on obscenity and ensuing censorship made space for a wider discussion on freedom of speech which filled political newspapers and reviews throughout India. Despite the alleged “indigeneity” of the movement’s background, the study wants to show how the Hungryalists actually “filtered” through their writings some of the most typical practices of Western counter-cultures, as was the case for obscenity, in order to break with the Bengali cultural establishment.

The study will focus on the Bengali Hungry Generation movement by investigating its “little magazines” and other kinds of small publications (i.e. bulletin, leaflets, anthologies) which were seen as an alternative cultural practice intended to reshape the Calcutta postcolonial literary space. These little publications represented in fact the only press promoting new literature and socio-political protest whereas the big publishing industry remained silent due to government censorship. The Hungryalist movement exemplifies the wave of postmodern experimental writings of the 1960s – which was widespread in little magazines – attempting to subvert the urban (Calcutta) cultural establishment that was still imbued with colonial influences. Despite the trial that sentenced the authors to jail for obscenity in their poetry, the movement had a great impact on the shaping of literary counter-cultures in Bengal. The research therefore raises questions about the much debated search for a postcolonial cultural identity which constantly evolved throughout the decades after the Independence of India. Following this assumption and using written, oral and visual sources, I intend to explore this subversive literary culture of post-Independence Bengal.

Team Member:

Daniela Cappello

Summary:

Oyndrila's doctoral project explores the antecedents of the construction of the Indian state through a study of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India (GTSI) and its survey operations. It studies the work and the working relationships the GTSI entailed, and inanimate objects viz. the tools and instruments of surveying seen as relevant social actors in these survey networks, and looks at the men, materials and the non-methodical methods of state formation on the borderlands of what became the Indian state.

Team Member:

Oyndrila Sarkar

Summary:

Die Untersuchung der Aligarh-Bewegung, die in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts durch Sayyid Ahmad Khan gegründet wurde und sich durch eine intensive Auseinandersetzung mit der christlichen Mission und der Wissenschaft auszeichnet, steht im Fokus dieses Projekts. Sowohl Mission als auch Wissenschaft wurden als Bedrohung für den Islam wahrgenommen. Die Aligarh-Bewegung strebte in dieser Situation anders als andere kontemporäre Reformbewegungen eine komparatistische Methode an, die den vollständigen Einklang des Islam mit der Wissenschaft und damit seine universelle Überlegenheit belegen sollte. Dieser komparatistische Weg erforderte eine einheitliche Terminologie, die Übersetzungsprozesse mit europäischen Religionskonzepten nach sich zog. Das Projekt soll diese Übersetzungsprozesse, die keineswegs als schlichte Übertragung von Konzepten vom einen in den anderen Kontext missverstanden werden dürfen, sowie die Wechselseitigkeit der Austauschprozesse über Religion aufzeigen und analysieren. Ziel des Projektes soll es darüber hinaus sein, die der Aligarh-Bewegung häufig vorgeworfene These einer reinen „Verwestlichung“, die auf der Annahme eines essentialisierten Standardislams gründet, kritisch zu hinterfragen und die Pluralität des Islam herauszustellen.

Team Member:

Arian Hopf

Team Member:

Johanna Hahn

Summary:

Conversion to Christianity has never easily lent itself to visions of the Indian nation. Christianity in Bengal has been habitually read as an external stimulus which fostered the Bengal Renaissance, but ironically had negligible contributions in the internal struggles of the colonial public. Reading into the silences of this assessment has been used as an incentive in this dissertation. To this end, the literary production of the Hindu upper caste converts to Christianity has served as a case in point. The complicated socio-political location of theChristian converts—ostracized socially by the Hindu majority but privileged in terms of education and class/caste—in an age of political turmoil and vigorous social reform allows a unique entry point into the literary culture of colonial Bengal. Examining the English and the Bengali writings of the convert authors, this work makes a strong case for re-introducing the religious as a crucial axis of enquiry for studying entangled literary cultures.

Team Member:

Dhrupadi Chattopadhyay

Team Member:

Sukla Chatterjee

Team Member:

Jürgen Schaflechner

Summary:

In recent years, scholarship on Islamic preaching has emphasised the importance of the sensual process of mediation and the multitude of forms of preaching far beyond the Friday sermon. In contemporary Bangladesh, much of Islamic preaching takes place in “preaching gatherings” (Bg. oẏāj māhˡphils, *Ar. waʿz maḥfils) held in tents erected on harvested fields and public space in towns, continuing late into the night. The audience varies in size but always follows the discourse of the preacher along protocols known from poetic and religious assemblies, closely interacting responding to the sermons vocally and emotionally.

How to analyse such congregations and their sermons and what do we learn from them? In my monograph, I trace processes that simultaneously involve, one, Islamic scholarship and hopes for religious salvation, two, imaginative processes triggered by the preachers’ narrations, three, bodily responses to the preacher’s vocal performance and patterns of call and response, and, four, the practice and learning of community consensus. All these levels come together in a process of reception.

I argue, on an abstract level, that expanding insights from literary studies to oral material can help us to understand the experience of contemporary Islam and public culture in Bangladesh and beyond. The advantage of literary and rhetorical studies is their focus on form and their ability trace multilayered processes of reception in necessary detail and depth. At the same time, I make a methodological intervention to widen the scope of these approaches by bringing them in contact with ethnographic research and the rhetoric of music and sound. This allows to grasp the interrelation of bodily sensations and imagination in public literary and religious practice. It opens up a unique window on the subject formation in what might be termed an Islamic fly-over-state.

Team Member:

Max Stille

Summary:

A new project on "Globalisation, Mobility and Migration - Transnational Identity Networks in the Bangladesh Diaspora and Integration", which is coordinated by Dr. Dieter Reinhardt and Prof. Dr. Hans Harder (Head of Department, Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures, South Asia Institute), is conducted in cooperation with the "Verein zur Förderung der Bildung" (Salzwedel). The project is co-financed by Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund of the European Commission (2020-2022) and deals with the transnational identity networks and diaspora groups on the example of the Bangladeshi diaspora. The global increase in migration is accompanied by new forms of self-organization by migrant groups and transnational identity networks. They are based on competing cultural, political and religious worldviews. Family and friendship structures, private financial transfers, continuous travel, associations and electronic communication techniques are constitutive elements of these self-organizations. Using the example of the Bangladeshi diaspora groups in Germany and other European countries, the project analyzes the internal socio-cultural and political dynamics of these groups as well as their perception and assessment of socio-cultural and political developments in the respective host countries. On the other hand, the effects of state "integration policies" on these dynamics are examined. The project takes into account the specific migration experiences of diaspora groups that have existed for several decades, newly immigrated migrants with different professional qualifications and entrepreneurial activities, as well as of students and politically persecuted persons.

Project leaders:

Dr. Dieter Reinhardt, Hans Harder

Project in cooperation between the English Department, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, and the Department of Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures, SAI, Heidelberg.

Summary:

Language Ideologies in South Asia

Among sociolinguists, language ideologies are understood as sets of assertions and beliefs about a language in a given milieu or society (Buchholtz and Hall). Languages are commonly invested with attributes (authentic, analytical, homely, difficult, soft, melodious, and so on) and set off from other surrounding languages. Speakers distinguish them from their environment by such attributions, often investing the languages with an additional value.

This take on ideology partakes of the general discussion by narrowing down the scope of the term considerably. In general sociology and history and also in common parlance, ideology is a far more comprehensive concept with much more stress on the political aspect. Ideology denotes the interplay of connected notions and assumptions about society in a systemized way. They are usually shared among groups or whole societies and relate to the political and social spheres of life. The critique of ideology, imbibed with the sense of distinguishing true from false consciousness, has sometimes been considered an outdated concept. Disentangled from such normative notions, however, a critical approach to ideologies remains highly relevant. Combining it with an investigation of “language ideologies”, we hope to make it a fruitful approach to our topic.

South Asian regional languages in colonial and postcolonial times, we argue, have come to coexist in a close neighborhood with English. Contact with English and the culture and literature connected with it have stimulated many features of their modernization in the 19th and 20th centuries. Simultaneously, anti-colonialism triggered in some cases a polemical response against the English language, asserting the vernacular as the true and authentic sphere of South Asian cultures. Post-Independence developments have significantly altered this set-up, leading in the direction of what has been called a vernacularization of English.

Such processes are often reflected and ideologically recast on a metalinguistic level. The formation of ideas about particular languages and reflections about their specific nature are arguably enhanced by diversity of languages and hierarchy amongst them. It is the drive to reassure the ground of the language in view of its border with other languages that triggers such reflections. Constellations between vernaculars are also part of this process, but arguably most prominently it is the position vis-à-vis English that calls for definition.

How are particular languages imagined and projected by their speakers and pedagogues? How do language ideologies link them to ethnic and religious belonging? What attributes do they claim? In Bengali, for instance, claims regarding a particular sweetness and melodiousness seem to be stock stereotypes since the nineteenth century. How do language ideologies serve political agitation, as for example in the Dravidian Movement or the Language Movement in erstwhile East Pakistan? And, most importantly, how do they deal with English?

Our project is designed to investigate South Asian language ideologies in colonial and postcolonial times within the framework sketched above. While some constellations, e.g. the so-called Hindi-Urdu Controversy, have been extensively studied, most are little known beyond their immediate environment. The aim of our collaboration is to bring together experts in various South Asian languages, including English, and probe deeper into this field.

A core team of scholars and students directly participating in the SPARC scheme will work on topics connected with this theme. The languages they concentrate on are Urdu, English, Hindi, Oriya, and Bengali. In an international conference to be held about mid-term of the collaboration, other experts will join the team and contribute work on additional languages. The result will be a jointly published volume on South Asian language ideologies and a jointly written monograph on vernacularity in South Asia.

Project members of the Department:

Hans Harder

Jürgen Schaflechner

Indian Principal Investigators:

Nishat Zaidi

Saroj Kumar Mahananda (Jamia Millia Islamia)

Duration

May 2019 - April 2021

Funding body:

Funded through SPARC (Scheme for Promotion of Academic Research Cooperation), a programme of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India

Keywords

South Asian regional languages, vernaculars, language ideologies, English in South Asia, vernacularity in South Asia

Subproject B1 Satire - Cluster "Asia an Europe in a Global Context"

Summary:

This project examines the production of satire in South, East and West Asian traditions during the high tide of European colonialism and imperialism, i.e. the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. We look at satire as a communicative tool of gauging cultural asymmetries. It is, we assert, the satirical mode of expression that is most apt to portray, measure and adjust the various upside-downs that occurred to traditional cultures in Asia in the course of their asymmetrical cultural contact with Europe. As an essentially moralist endeavour, satire is impossible without a (however hidden) statement about how things should be. In investigating Asian satire, we hope to be able to unearth and highlight textual and visual sources that tend to be ignored or at least downscaled in their respective canons, and to find gravitational points of identity around which topsy-turvy realities are made to revolve.

Team Member

Hans Harder

Duration

Jul 2008 - Nov 2011

Financing

Cluster of Excellence: "Asia and Europe"

Keywords

Satire; Bengali; Hindi; Marathi; Colonial Era

Further Information

Project Website

Subproject B13 Tamil-Speaking Muslims - Cluster "Asia an Europe in a Global Context"

Summary:

Home to diverse people from Southeast, East, and South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, and a node of the circulation of goods, people, ideas and information between 'East' and 'West', the city of Singapore played an important role in the cultural flows which connected Asia and Europe. Between 1819 and 1942, Singapore grew from a small port to one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the British Empire. The presence of such a diverse population soon forced various communities to talk not only amongst themselves, but with each other as well as with the colonial state. The result was the rise of a number of interrelated public spheres, whose relationship with each other was characterized by strong asymmetries. This project endeavours to trace the engagement of one particularly mobile (spatially and socially) segment of the Singaporean population, Tamil-speaking Muslims from South India, in Singapore's diverse public spheres, and to gauge the role played by them in the local translation of international transcultural flows.

Team Member

Hans Harder, Torsten Tschacher

Duration

Aug 2009 - Jul 2012

Financing

Cluster of Excellence: "Asia and Europe"

Keywords

Tamil-Speaking Muslims; Singapur; Colonial Era

Further Information

Project Website

Subproject B5 - Collaborative Research Center 619 „Ritual Dynamics“

Summary:

Subproject B5 researches the court ritual in the princely state of Jaipur (Rajasthan/India), from the 18th century until the dissolution of the state and its accession unto the Dominion of India in 1949, as well as the current performance of the mutated ritual. Its focal point is the function of the ritual as well as the reasons for its change, the characteristics of the change processes and its actors. Our work is based on the assumption that the court ritual is a structure-providing part of the ruling system, conveying the legitimateness of ruling and assuring loyalty towards the sovereign.

We will extend our investigation of the legitimation of sovereignty in the princely state of Jaipur to include the aspect of external legitimation by researching the design of ceremonies involving foreigners, such as European envoys, Jesuit priests and the British residents in 18th and early 19th century. Furthermore, we will take a look at the yearly celebrations in Jaipur which affirm the royal power (dasahara, vijayadasami) to then analyze the possible transfer of royal rituals from Vijayanagara to Rajasthan. To reflect the immediate present, we will select celebrations activating the court ceremonial and religious rituals and investigate their ritual dynamics. We will also document the voices of the actors who are involved in these dynamics with different interests and views. In this context, we will explore the intended function of the ritual after the dissolution of its initial objective, i.e. the princely state.

Team Member

Monika Boehm-Tettelbach, Jörg Gengnagel, Kerstin Sobkowiak

Duration

Jul 2009 – Jun 2013

Financing

SFB „Ritualdynamik“, Teilprojekt B5

Keywords

Höfische Rituale; Legitimation; Königtum; Krönung

Summary:

Hindi bolo. Hindi für Deutschsprachige. Teil 1.

This language manual for German-speaking learners published in autumn 2010.

Project Team

Gautam Liu

Duration

Until Oktober 2010

Subproject: A8, Collaborative Research Center 619 „Ritual Dynamics“

Summary:

In view of globalization, many scientists postulated the rise of a “borderless world of flows”, where the notion of identity has outgrown the outdated concepts of national-state models.
However, this seems to be a Eurocentric point of view. In Asia, Africa, and other countries, the meaning of borders und the number of associated rituals have grown. This is especially true for South Asia. However, at the same time, borders rooting in the times before the independence as well as the “princely states” have been abolished, leading the associated rituals to fade or disappear entirely. Our core question is: “How does establishing or abolishing borders and their associated rituals affect the reflective process of identity construction among the borderers?” To explore this question, we will compare three ritual systems: (1) the pilgrimages in relation to Hinglaj Devi, whose temple is located in Balochistan/Pakistan, (2) the temple of Sitakunda in Bangladesh, and (3) a ritual system in the central Himalaya that currently experiences the abolishing of hitherto existing ritual borders.

The first of our three case studies centers on the temple of the Hindu goddess Hinglaj, situated in what is today Balochistan. The separation in 1947 made it almost impossible for Hindu believers to pilgrimage to the temple. This was particularly hard for those groups for whom the pilgrimage is a “holy duty”. We will investigate how these groups reacted to the closing of the border. Our second case study explores Sitakunda, a temple complex in Chittagong consecrated to Hindu god Shiva. This temple complex is regarded as one of the most important contemporary Hindu shrines in the predominantly Muslim country of Bangladesh. The third case study concentrates on a region of the central Himalaya that is divided into a number of small territories, each ruled by a god by means of an oracle. The borders of these “divine kingdoms” were determined through rituals (such as processions and oblations) and forcibly defended. In the years following the independence, these borders became less and less important. Today, former archenemies meet to perform “heritage rituals” together, to arrange strategic marriages or to develop political strategies for elections. This has changed the content and meaning of processions, sacrifices and other rituals dramatically.

Team Member

Hans Harder

Financing

Collaborative Research Center 619 „Ritual Dynamics“, Subproject A8

Team Member

Monika Boehm-Tettelbach

Duration

2004 - 2007

Financing

DFG - German Research Foundation