South Asian Studies

This paper attempts to find out the water issues between India and Pakistan and its implications over relations of these bilateral states. This study investigates the conflicts over constructing dams or water storages on cross boundary rivers for example the building of Baghliar Dam, Kishanganga Plant and Wullar Barrage by India and also investigates Pakistan's response to these projects, judgment of intercontinental Court of Arbitration, responses of both sides and confidence building measures signed regarding the issue. This study explores that the water issue would prove disastrous if it was not solved in time. For peace in South Asia, solution of this conflict is necessary as early as possible.

This article describes how Kamal Amrohi's Pakeezah distils the idioms of the historical courtesan film, poised as they are between the glorification of courtesan culture and lamenting the debased status of the courtesan; between a nostalgic yearning for the feudal world of the kotha and a utopian desire to escape from it. The article argues that Pakeezah self-consciously defines the particular " chronotope, " or space-time, of the historical courtesan genre by showing that nothing less than a transformation of the idioms of that genre is required to liberate the courtesan from her claustrophobic milieu—whose underlying state is one of enervation and death—into the open space and lived time of modernity.

Nitin Sinha's work is a significant contribution to the history of communication in modern India. Focusing on eastern India – Bihar, specifically, Sinha draws out the interdependence of spatial transformation and communication networks in nineteenth-century India. In addition to material aspects of geography and knowledge production, however, the author uses networks of exchange and flow to emphasize the physicality of space.

2016 Madison South Asia Conference Abstract - Indian Buddhist ritual texts (ca. 6th-7th centuries CE) detail a systematization of mantra families (kulas) through which female deities gain new importance in Mahāyāna ritual and soteriological contexts. These systems consist of a minimum of three ritual families: the Buddha (headed by the Buddha Śākyamuni or Vairocana), the Lotus (headed by the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara), and the Vajra (headed by the Bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi). They are populated by a range of male and female deities who both effectuate practitioners' mantras and personify the physical and mental attributes of their kula leaders. The Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa, perhaps the earliest of these kula-system texts to survive in Sanskrit, characterizes the kula goddesses as female Bodhisattvas who respond to the mantras of their respective families and simultaneously work to establish beings on the path to Enlightenment. This paper focuses on the structure of a specific maṇḍala (sacred deity diagram) that encompasses all or most of these three kulas. It examines the ritual functions of a little-studied class of mantra goddesses (vidyārājñīs) including their processes of embodiment, personification, and positioning in relation to their kula leaders and male counterparts (vidyārājas). Navigating issues of erosion and absence, my analysis compares cognate forms of this early maṇḍala across mediums. Examples include: a stone relief sculpture in situ at the Pandavleni caves in Nāsik, Maharashtra (with figures missing), the sole remaining complete redaction of the Sanskrit Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa, and the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra (a text that survives only its Chinese and Tibetan translations). Therefore, within this process of text-image comparison, my study emphasizes methodological points of difficulty due to the decay or erasure of my primary source materials (including lost sections of manuscript, manuscripts no longer extant, and the wearing away of sculptural imagery).

Religion and Orientalism in Asian Studies analyzes the role of religion in past and present understandings of Asia. Religion, and the history of its study in the modern academy, has exercised massive influence over Asian Studies fields in the past century. Asian Studies has in turn affected, and is increasingly shaping, the study of religion. Religion and Orientalism in Asian Studies looks into this symbiotic relationship - both in current practice, and in the modern histories of both Orientalism and Area Studies

In 2007, the Dera Sacha Sauda (DSS) guru Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insan wore an attire similar to calendar image of tenth Sikh guru, Guru Gobind Singh, and performed a ritual baptism, which became controversial. This article will show how this controversy opens up two significant issues: first, questioning the egalitarian ethos of caste equality upheld by the Sikh religion, and second, with regard to authenticity of religious practice – of what is deemed Sikh and non/un-Sikh practices. The controversy became the fulcrum for questions of visuality and material practices around imageries of Sikh gurus in the domain of popular religiosity and visual culture. This historically relates to the much-debated status of images around gurus in contemporary Punjab. The image and ritual become a crucial site of conflict with regard to questions of Sikh identity, religion and caste. Questions of iconoclasm, authenticity and representation have emerged around the images—largely audio-visual in nature--of the Sikh gurus. In this article I will analyse music video/s that engages with the genre of Sikhi (Sikh principles or faith) highlighting crisis in Sikh identity through lyrical and visual references, for instance to the institutions of popular religion, such as Deras. I then mainly argue that the DSS event cannot be grasped without understanding the modes of engagement and ritual practices around images of Sikh gurus. Such an analysis will not only underline contestations around the ‘vexed’ status of images comprising both Sikh and Dera gurus but will also critique the normative understanding of Sikh identity and religion.

How does a big cat in India come to be identified as the one guilty of preying on humans? Indian conservationist law stipulates that the big cat must be identified before it is hunted down. But as I demonstrate ethnographically, there is no possible means of establishing the correct identity of a big cat before it is killed. Through an account of the impossibility of beastly identification, this article demonstrates the limits of both bureaucratic action and conservation in the government of big cats. What operates, instead, is a form of knowing the nonhuman Other, a knowing that is localized, personalized, affective, and momentary. Such forms of knowledge and living-besides are called for by the Anthropocene. Indeed, an analytic potential of the Anthropocene lies in rendering untenable the continual disciplinary sequestering of the nonhuman and environmental from the political, bureaucratic, and legal.

Urban policy and particularly, the knowledge base and fundamental assumptions behind the same have rarely been the subject of scholarship in India. This book fills in this gap by de-constructing urban policy and asking some critical questions about knowledge of the urban and of policy from multiple perspectives. Economists, sociologists, geographers, planners, architects have contributed their insights to foundational premises such as the relationship between urbanization and growth, its relationship with inequality, issues of centralization vs decentralization, the issue of differing scales of policy application and when does policy seem to work and not work.

This is a slightly revised version of my doctoral thesis, in which I have attempted to assemble all the available evidence on the genesis and early development of the directional guardians in Indian culture (mainly Brahmanical / Hindu). The term "Ancient India" should not hide the fact that this group of minor deities continues to occupy an important place in Indic religious practices.

The New Global Politics of the Asia Pacific: Conflict and Cooperation in the Asian Century, 3rd Edition
©2017 Routledge: London & New York. 341pp. + x. Link: https://www.routledge.com/The-New-Global-Politics-of-the-Asia-Pacific-Conflict-and-Cooperation-in/Connors-Davison-Dosch/p/book/9781138647022

Now in its new and fully updated third edition, The New Global Politics of the Asia Pacific continues to provide a compelling analysis of a region undergoing dramatic changes. Based on new research and offering fresh interpretation, this edition evaluates the prospects for continuing US dominance in the ‘Asian Century’. Whilst presenting evidence for a multifaceted ‘Beijing Strategy’, which aims to counter the US by building an alternative regional order, it also explains Japan’s definitive departure from its limited military role. Key content includes:
- Intra-regional conflicts in the South China Sea and the Korean peninsula,
- The different responses within the Asia Pacific to globalisation and western ideas of democracy and political economy,
- The underappreciated success of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in building a regional identity
- The European Union’s soft power in the region.
A highly topical account, which offers an overview of the main actors, institutions and contemporary issues in the Asia Pacific, the book will be essential reading for students of Asian Studies, International Politics, and anyone interested in the region.

Michael K. Connors teaches at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus and is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University. He is the co-editor of Thai Politics in Translation: Monarchy, Democracy, Constitution (forthcoming).
Remy Davison holds the Jean Monnet Chair in Politics and Economics at Monash University. He is the author of The Political Economy of Single Market Europe (2011).
Jörn Dosch is Professor of International Politics and Development Cooperation at the University of Rostock, Germany, and Adjunct Professor at Monash University Malaysia. His recent publications include Malaysia Post-Mahathir: A Decade of Change (2015).

This work is a beguiling prospect for anyone who has been involved in South Asia or has an interest in the region. The idea of analysing so many distinct insurgencies and counter-insurgency (COIN) campaigns within the covers of a single book is both ambitious and tantalising. Unfortunately, and in spite of occasional good moments, this book provides few of the answers. It has a clunky structure, is peppered with editorial and factual errors and unsupported statements. The British General Templer in Malaya argued that COIN should only be 25% shooting. The remainder should be winning "hearts and minds". Sadly this has all too rarely been the case in South Asia where many of the COIN campaigns have been heavy-handed and brutal. Partly this is a function of capability; effective COIN needs excellent intelligence and highly trained and equipped Special Forces. Yet it is interesting to reflect that two "successful" COIN operations of recent years; the Indian defeat of the Khalistan movement and President Rajapaksa's suppression of the Tamil Tigers owed little to Templer or the proponents of minimum force

This is a pilot research of the life experiences of Pakistanis in Hong Kong, targeting working class Pakistani adults living in Kwai Chung, Tsuen Wan, Tsing Yi or the nearby districts. The research was conducted by Centre for Social Policy Studies of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and by S.K.H. Lady MacLehose Centre. Our aim was to explore the difficulties faced by the Pakistanis and delineate the macro forces shaping their lives. Through this, we see that ethnicity is one of the key dimensions of social stratification and inequality in contemporary Hong Kong society. We also hope that this research can well serve as a case to illustrate the relationship between ethnicity and social exclusion.

This research consists of a questionnaire survey and focus group interviews. The questionnaire survey was conducted between February and May of 2002. We have completed 200 questionnaires through snowball sampling. The questionnaire covered five broad areas: social activities and friendship, utilization of community resources, work and employment, children's education and sense of belonging to Hong Kong. The part on focus group interviews aims to further explore the complex dynamic of life experiences that could not be described by quantitative data in the survey, as well as to develop recommendations for improving social policy and social services. Two focus groups, with a total of ten male and female participants were conducted at the end of October 2002.

On social activities, we found that the major activities of the respondents are staying at home, meeting friends and going to worship. Participation in other social activities such as going to see arts and cultural programmes, engaging in sports activities, going to the library, and joining activities in a community centre, is limited. In terms of establishing friendships, most of the respondents interact only with their own people. They reflect that it is difficult to make Hong Kong friends. Cultural and language differences are some of the major barriers to making friends with Hong Kong people and to participating in social activities.

On housing, a majority of the respondents live in private rental housing. Some of them do not know how to apply for public rental housing and some believe that they are not eligible to apply, even though they are in need. Most of the respondents have had problems in looking for private housing, and identify expensive rent or housing prices as the main one. Some of them say that they have a problem communicating with agents in Cantonese and believe that they are rejected by landlords simply because they are Pakistanis. This shows that some Pakistanis have difficulties gaining access to housing resources, both in the public and private sector.

On social security resources, in fact, few respondents are receiving Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA). Most of them clearly state that they do not want to depend on the government or do not need to do so.
Almost all of the respondents were not engaged in part-time studies or in an employees retraining course. They are discouraged for various reasons, such as high course fees, the fact that the courses are taught in Cantonese, or because they do not know of any educational or social institutes nearby.

On access to social services and community resources, very few respondents have approached social workers for help on everyday needs; instead they rely almost solely on their family, relatives and friends. Some respondents do not even know of any nearby social service centres and have never brought their children there. Their poor access to various community resources is not only due to language problems, but also because many government departments, educational institutes and social service centres do not target non-Chinese.

On work and employment, many respondents encounter great difficulties. Twenty-three point nine per cent of the respondents are unemployed. About half of the respondents have been unemployed at some point in the past two years. Most of the employed respondents are engaged in elementary occupations where the working hours are generally very long. The median number of working hours is 60 per week. However, their monthly income is comparatively low.

On looking for jobs, most respondents identify not knowing Cantonese and low educational qualifications as the major difficulties. It is alarming to learn that about one-third of the respondents claimed that they are rejected because they are Pakistanis. Some employers systematically eliminate them from selection and treat them unfairly at work. In the workplace, the respondents face various difficulties including problems communicating with supervisors and colleagues, bullying by supervisors and colleagues, conflicts due to cultural and/or religious practices, and diverse forms of racial discrimination.

On children’s education, the respondents encounter various difficulties including unreasonably long waiting times in finding school places, expensive school fees, conflicts due to cultural and/or religious practices, and being rejected because they are Pakistanis. The focus group participants also highlighted problems for Muslims involving food in school canteens and the dress codes of female Pakistani students.

Though they face numerous difficulties in Hong Kong, about half of the respondents like Hong Kong very much and treat the place as their home. However, this does not mean that they enjoy being with Hong Kong people. Some focus group participants also held ambivalent attitudes toward Hong Kong and Hong Kong people.

Based on the problems reflected in the questionnaire survey and the opinions expressed in the focus group interviews, we recommend policy changes in the following areas: employment, housing, and educational services, as well as a review of the policy on granting Hong Kong SAR passports to non-Chinese residents. To improve the general situation, we recommend anti-racial discrimination legislation to protect the right of ethnic minorities, and to promote a policy of multiculturalism in which cultural differences and ethnic diversity are respected. The aim is to build Hong Kong into a just and caring society.

This is the handout for a presentation I gave  in February of 2020 in Heidelberg at the workshop "Textual and Visual Sources on Buddhist Meditation: 56 Years after the First Publication of the ‘Buddhist Yoga Manual.’" The talk was entitled "The Deities of Others: Visionary meditation as inter-tradition critique in the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthāna-sūtra."

Realizing the constructed nature of gender is often described as a twentieth-century
Western phenomenon. Nevertheless, in several South Asian
religious traditions, practitioners are instructed through songs and oral teachings
to exchange and ultimately transcend gender identities. In this article
I discuss the practices aimed at transcending gender identity among some
contemporary Bengali lineages that have been defined as “heterodox” by
nineteenth-century reformers. Several lineages in West Bengal and Bangladesh
perform cross-dressing and meditative identification with the opposite
sex. I discuss such practices using songs, riddles, and oral sources collected
during fieldwork conducted between 2011 and 2015. I then briefly trace the
history of religious transvestism in South Asian literature, while contextualizing
this practice within Vaishnava and Sufi traditions. Finally, I discuss how
similar phenomena have been interpreted by modern and postmodern scholarship
to conclude with a conceptual framework for interpreting “pregnant
males” and “barren mothers” in light of contemporary gender theories, with
reference to performativity and ritual liminality.

P[art]icipatory urbanisms (please also visit www.part-urbs.com) is a web publication interrogating the “participatory turn” in contemporary urban studies, performance studies, and art practice. The bracketed [art] in the title of this publication refers to participatory urban aesthetic practices which could include community, social, or relational art initiatives, but also more general claims by city residents, city workers or activists on the visible and sensible aspects of public space. Bracketing the [art] in ‘participation’ also suggests a blurring of the conventional separation between the aesthetic and the political dimensions of urban participation.

The publication has two components. The first, is an interactive platform of interviews featuring the praxes of twenty participatory urban practitioners and collectives in the cities of São Paulo, Brazil and New Delhi, India. The interviews map the multiple and disjunctive ways in which ‘participation’ is enacted—from mobile performances of poetry and theater, to citizen journalism on gentrification in Sao Paulo’s old city center, to radical neighborhood pedagogical initiatives in Savda Ghevra, a New Delhi resettlement colony, and in Grajau, a southern periphery neighborhood of São Paulo. The interviews trace how urban actors create politico-aesthetic ruptures; experience and experiment with the material and affective force of participation; and potentially reshape the urban imaginary. The interviews also speak to the limits of participatory working processes in the face of small budgets and divided spaces. The cities of São Paulo and New Delhi were chosen as sites for this project for the comparisons that their similar size and positions in global urban imaginations and political economy enable, and for the enduring histories of participatory urban activity in both spaces.

A second element of this publication is a peer-reviewed anthology of twenty articles expanding methodological and theoretical debates around the themes of urban participation and its entanglement with state power, aesthetic praxis, racialized and queer spaces, citizenship, temporality, publics, and infrastructure. Contributions to the anthology span a broad range of disciplines and engage research from diverse geographic and temporal sites–from the occupation of a theater in Athens amidst the Greek economic crisis, to agonistic politics and participatory video art in a New Delhi urban village, to the cartographic interventions of a Harlem mailman in Jim Crow-era America. The form of writing extends beyond traditional scholarly articles to include ethnographic reflections, case studies, and photo essays.

Membership in Newar Buddhist monasteries includes individuals from the Vajrācārya and Śākya castes who serve as Tantric Buddhist householder monks. Of this population, the ten eldest members of each monastery are known as the Daśa Sthavira Ājus (Ten Elders of the Highest Esteem). Because of their position, these Ājus are the ritual specialists for their communities and serve as exemplars of the monastic ideal in Newar society. This paper explores the ways in which Newar Buddhists at the Kwā Bahā monastic complex in Patan, Nepal, utilize ceremonial dress to reinforce their Buddhist identity and publicly reaffirm their ancient Buddhist heritage in Nepal. This study, the first to analyze the Ājus’ ceremonial regalia, provides an analysis of the garments, headdresses, and ornaments worn by these figures to explain the ways in which dress embeds Buddhist iconographic symbolism into Newar visual culture. Additionally, this paper demonstrates that the ritual veneration of the Ājus gives their regalia agency, reinforcing their public, ritual role as living embodiments of buddhahood. [PDF of article available in link]

Towards the end of the first decade of the new millennium ‘Bollywood’ can be seen as having gained unprecedented cultural legitimacy in India and worldwide. This is even apparent on the level of official representations of India, with stars dancing to film songs at the closing ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Australia. With the new extension of legitimate culture beyond the boundaries of classical or folk into the realm of the popular, there is a sense that the culture of ‘the people’, ‘the masses’, is embraced, validated, approved. However, that 75,000 ‘bar girls’ who danced to Bollywood numbers in beer bars in Mumbai were made redundant in August 2005 following a virulent moral campaign indicates that areas of Bollywood culture exist that are by no means legitimised. Beginning with an examination of the Bollywood dance craze that has become one of the trendiest parts of globalised India and then moving onto ‘other’ arenas of Bollywood dance starting with the bar girls, this chapter seeks to problematise the question of ‘the people’ in Indian popular culture through an examination of hierarchies and processes of inclusion and exclusion at work within the popular sphere.

Written for the centenary year of the presence of the Salesians of Don Bosco (SDB) in South Asia, this article looks back at their methods of communication during the pioneering years, describes  the many communication initiatives undertaken across the century, takes stock of the situation in the year of its publication, and proposes possibilities for the flourishing of SDB communication in South Asia beyond 2006.

The writing of this paper was prompted by the discovery of several manuscripts of mediaeval yoga texts which contain lists of more than eighty-four āsana-s, a canonical number mentioned in several yoga texts.  Until now, lists of eighty-four āsana-s have been found in only two recently published yoga texts, namely, the Haṭharatnāvalī and the Jogapradīpyakā.  The manuscript evidence presented in this article indicates that these published texts are not isolated accounts of mediaeval yoga systems with many complex āsanas. In fact, it is clear that more than eighty-four āsana-s were practised in some traditions of Haṭha Yoga before the British arrived in India.  The majority of these āsana-s were not seated poses, but complex and physically-demanding postures, some of which involved repetitive movement, breath control and the use of ropes.  When the āsana-s in the sources which I shall analyse in this article are considered in their totality, antecedents can be identified for many non-seated and inverted postures in twentieth-century systems of Indian yoga.

Otto and B.D.G., a black and desi gay couple in the film Loins of Punjab Presents (Manish Acharya, 2007), are an exceptional representation of interracial desire in South Asian diasporic cultural production. Beyond the novelty of their representation, they use a variety of black and South Asian performance styles to critique normative and disciplinary systems that surround them. This essay explores the unconventional ways through which Otto and B.D.G.’s intimacies are depicted, and analyzes the performance styles they use to express critical perspectives on racism, homophobia, and Islamophobia. I argue that Otto and B.D.G.’s performances offer alternative ways to think through contemporary conversations around cultural appropriation and interracial desire in ways that decenter whiteness or a white desiring subject. However, I also observe how their critical deployments of hypermasculinity potentially skew public conversations about racialized violence.

Paper for the panel: The Viṣṇudharma and the Śivadharma: points of influence and divergence, 33. Deutscher Orientalistentag, Jena, Germany, 18–22 September 2017 

* Published now in the Introduction to the book "A Śaiva Utopia" on Academia * :
https://www.academia.edu/67886226/A_%C5%9Aaiva_Utopia_The_%C5%9Aivadharma_s_Revision_of_Brahmanical_Var%E1%B9%87%C4%81%C5%9Bramadharma 

In a recent papers examining the Śivadharma[śāstra], I analyzed that way the author of this work has recast several of the distinctive categories of Smārta Brahmanical dharma, particularly the four-āśrama model, affirming the varṇa (social class) categories but extending the range of ritual agency available to Śūdras and women through devotional observances (and in one verse, even to foreigners, 1.26), and generalizing acts of generosity and hospitality prescribed in Dharmaśāstra only for high-status recipients so as to benefit the needy regardless of status. In general terms, the Viṣṇudharma, apparently dating to roughly the same period, likewise adapts the varṇāśrama-dharma of early Dharmaśāstra to a sectarian religious orientation — in this case, Bhāgavata rather than Māheśvara — but with notably different results. First, where the Śivadharmaśāstra evidently presupposes the older non-sequential āśrama model of the Dharmasūtras, the Viṣṇudharma adopts the sequential model introduced in Manu's code (ca. 200 CE). Whereas the Śivadharma redirects the Smārta guest-reception rite and madhuparka meal for the benefit of Śiva-bhaktas (lay Śaivas adhering to a formal vow), no comparable rite appears in the Viṣṇudharma (where the elements of guest reception appear only as part of the ceremony of worshiping deities or ancient sages). Most notably, the Viṣṇudharma (especially in chapters 24–25, 66, and 105) enters into sectarian polemic against the threat posed in this decadent Kali age by " heretics " (pāṣaṇḍas) of many stripes, including Buddhists, Jains, Sāṃkhyas, skeptics, and false ascetics. Arguments framed in foreign languages (hetuvādair … mlecchabhāṣānibandhaiḥ) are singled out for condemnation (105.44), and Śūdras who become ascetics and go about without caste-markers provoke serious concern. The Śivadharmaśāstra makes no reference to " heretics " (and only the most circumspect allusion to other religious groups), and adopts a more inclusive social policy. In short, the Viṣṇudharma's conception of Viṣṇu-bhakti pointedly defends classical Smārta status hierarchy and its prerogatives, foregoing the Śivadharma's modest moves toward social inclusion. This paper concludes by setting these observations in the context of later trends in the two traditions.

The Colonial Public and the Parsi Stage is the first comprehensive study of the Parsi theatre, colonial South and Southeast Asia’s most influential cultural phenomenon and the precursor of the Indian cinema industry. By providing extensive, unpublished information on its first actors, audiences, production methods, and plays, this book traces how the theatre—which was one of the first in the Indian subcontinent to adopt European stagecraft—transformed into a pan-Asian entertainment industry in the second half of the nineteenth century. Nicholson sheds light on the motivations that led to the development of the popular, commercial theatre movement in Asia through three areas of investigation: the vernacular public sphere, the emergence of competing visions of nationhood, and the narratological function that women served within a continually shifting socio-political order. The book will be of interest to scholars across several disciplines, including cultural history, gender studies, Victorian studies, the sociology of religion, colonialism, and theatre.

China’s dazzling infrastructure and energy-driven Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a US$1 trillion investment across Eurasia and beyond, has lost its shine. Increasingly, China’s leveraging of the initiative is being perceived by a growing number of recipients and critics alike as a geopolitical power play, a tool to shape a new world order partly populated by autocrats and authoritarians, and progressively characterized by intrusive surveillance, potential debt traps, and perceived as a self-serving way to address domestic overcapacity

A rare bronze of dancing Ardhanari(svara), the Androgyne or Hermaphrodite, is in the Colombo museum. It was originally excavated in Anurådhapura, Sri Lanka, in 1982. Professor S. PADMANABHAN of the Peredenia University, who visited my alma mater (The Tamil University of Thanjavur) a few months ago, gave us a copy of the photo (Fig. 1) which is of great importance for research pertaining to Ardhanari. The most significant feature of the image is that it accommodates the feminine part in its right side. Though the figure under study has been published and discussed around nine times, the identification does not seem to be very apt. Even though ADICEAM (1968) wrote an exhaustive account of Ardhanarisvara, the credit of bringing to scholarly attention the concept of Ardhanari with the breast on the right side as against Ardhanari with the breast on the left side goes to Professor Raju KALIDOS (1992). The report of KALIDOS (1993) was followed by brief notes of his colleagues, GOPALAKRISHNAN (1994-95) and KANDASAMY (1994).
This article is based on the hypothesis accounted by KALIDOS (1993: 68), “when the breast happens to be on the left the emphasis lies on the Male principle and on the Female principle when the breast appears on the right”. The pratimalaksana of the Silpasastras brings Ardhanarisvara under Sivatattvanidhi, thus putting stress on Siva and not on Devï. The icon under study is depicted with the breast on the right and so here the androgyne deity is accounted under ‘she’ and not ‘he’.

Introduction and first chapter of a new book: Even though ‘the crisis of secularism’ was declared decades ago, it remains unresolved. This book argues that its roots are internal to the liberal model of secularism, which emerged from the religious dynamics of the Protestant Reformation. In Europe and India, this model has gone hand in hand with an intolerant anticlerical theology that rejects certain traditions as evil ‘political religion’. Consequently, liberal secularism often harms local forms of coexistence rather than nourishing them.

Purpose of the study: A systematic review of studies on factors in the suicide of South Asians in the UK was reviewed to enhance understanding by aggregating those factors contributing to suicide in this diverse group. Methodology: Digital databases PsycArticles, PsycINFO, PubMed, JSTOR, Science Direct, Web of sciences, and Google Scholar, were searched from 1990 to 2018 and, six studies were included for the review. Main Findings: Factors like cultural conflict, mental health issues, family relationships, and religious & other social aspects influence suicide in South Asians in the UK. Also, better family contact, culturally sensitive interventions & services, and educational pamphlets could support preventive strategies. Applications of this study: Future research needs to concentrate on the reasons behind high rates of suicide in social class 1 and disaggregation of factors in subgroups of South Asians in the UK to support the development of sound preventive strategies. Novelty/O...

ABSTRACT. Systems theory has been extensively used by social work practitioners to conceptualize an array of social and psychological problems at the level of clinical practice. Systems theory is complex and this complexity is believed to be advantageous for investigating the roots ...

The US–India nuclear deal, popularly known as the 123 Agreement, announced by George W. Bush and Manmohan Singh on 18 July 2005 was a defining moment in the relationship of the two countries, as also India’s relationship with the non-proliferation regime. Bush administration’s implied recognition of India’s nuclear weapons, and its abrupt reversal of three decades of sanctions to restore Indian access to nuclear fuel, and reactors and dual use technologies despite being a non-proliferation treaty non-signatory, led to contentious debates in both India and the USA.
A Debate to Remember emphasizes the multifaceted debate in India over the nuclear deal using concepts from science and technology studies. It focuses on the intense contestation over the civil-military mix of India’s separation plan, the competition between the Iran–Pakistan–India pipeline and the nuclear deal, the role of retired nuclear scientists, and the issue of liability that has stalled the full implementation of the nuclear deal.The impact of domestic factors on issues ranging from the civil-military status of breeder reactors to the Indian insistence on no restriction on future nuclear testing in the 123 Agreement is also revealed in this book.
About the Author
Chaitanya Ravi is an adjunct professor in environmental science and policy and biology at George Mason University, USA.