Arpita Chakraborty

International relations must distance itself from its Eurocentric and masculine moorings if it is to address its increasing irrelevance in the modern world and become more "international" and truly inclusive. The theoretical position of postcolonial feminism gives the discipline the best chance of doing so. The effect of conflict on women in Kashmir and the North East illustrates how a postcolonial feminist perspective enriches an understanding of the issue and enables international relations to reflect the lived reality of the people. - See more at: http://www.epw.in/journal/2017/20/special-articles/can-postcolonial-feminism-revive-international-relations.html#sthash.YHvmoJy9.dpuf

This panel is a result of a feminist solidarity formed between three female scholars of Color who shared the experience of being the Sister Other. Through auto-ethnographic reflections on the marginalisation of females of Color in academia and the fatigue of belonging, we address the following questions:
1) Subject-formation—How does the process of knowledge production—which
constantly juggles with the process of identity confirmation and personality
amplification—interrelate with the constant process of negotiating unfamiliar spaces? (A. Chakraborty)
2) Representation—How can we challenge the power structure in Gender and Feminist Studies that still exercise a form of control of knowledge production and define what is valuable knowledge production? (L. Sirri)
3) Decolonizing feminism— How does the hierarchy of knowledge production deter the decolonization process? The Anglo-European theories are fed through the empirical data collected by the native informant, thereby replacing the guilt of Oriental gaze while maintaining the knowledge-power positions. Where does the researcher from the post-
colonial in her efforts to decolonize ‘belong’? (S. Chakraborty).

These questions contribute to the current discourses on power, and offer strategies of resistance and formations of solidarity. The panel will broaden the language and the scope of debate within feminism, gender and queer studies. We position ourselves on the footsteps of other feminist theorists such as Chandra Mohanty, Ella Shohat, Leila Ahmed and bell hooks who outlined a new basis for the theorisation of feminism, racism, immigration, Eurocentrism, heterosexism, and imperialism, and call for an honest exchange and flow of ideas between feminists around
the world.

The organisers are now accepting panel and paper submissions for this conference. They invite proposals for panels and papers from scholars and practitioners involved with but not limited to politics and international relations, history, culture, linguistics, economics and other aspects of South Asia. We are especially keen on having papers related to security this year. Proposals for panels should contain a title, a 300-word abstract and names of suggested panel members with their short bio, title, abstracts of their individual papers and email addresses. Each panel will have 4–5 papers pertaining to a common theme. We encourage panels to not limit themselves to the same organisation/university. Proposals for papers should include a title, abstract (300 words), author's name, email addresses, and a 150-word bio and has to be submitted to the conference organisers Arpita Chakraborty and Hari Krishnan at india.postgradconference@dcu.ie no later than 1 December 2017. When submitting a paper please indicate preferred theme(s) and/or up to 6 keywords. All authors will be contacted by the end of January.

Masculinity was one of the terrains on which the counter colonial aspirations had been expressed in nineteenth century India, as shown in the works of scholars like Mrinalini Sinha. This paper will look at the written works of Swami Vivekananda, hailed as one of the greatest spiritual minds of nineteenth century India who started the Ramakrishna movement or Vedanta movement in the nineteenth century, a movement which continues to be popular to this day. Being one of the most influence politico-religious leaders of India in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, his ideas of rebuilding the nation through reinvigorating its men gained huge popularity during the British colonial period.

Through a discourse analysis of his written works, this paper will attempt to look at not how the ideas of masculinity was imagined, but also the ways in which such a reimagination reflected the Christian Victorian ideas of masculinity in contemporary England. With an appreciation of physical strength, valour, altruistic service to the society and admiration of sexual abstinence (expressed in words like Pourush and Birjabaan in Bengali), these were reflections of some of the qualities greatly valued among the English. However, the appreciation of the role of women as mother on one hand, and the hailing of men for abstinence on the other, brought in a theoretical tension in his works around the issue of sex and sexualisation of colonised bodies. This paper will explore this very tension in his political and religious writings.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, is the largest voluntary organization of Hindu men in India. Created in 1925, it is currently estimated to have more than six million members spread among 40,000-50,000 Shakhas (branches) and more than a 100 affiliated bodies (Gandhi 2014), and has become one of the principle forces of right wing nationalist Hindu religion centred politics in India in present times. With its parental control over the daily workings of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is currently running the government, the influence of their ideology is deeply embedded in Indian politics.

This Paper looks at the writings of Madhavrao Sadashivrao Golwalkar, the second Sarsanghchalak (Chief) of this organization. With almost three decades of being Sarsanghchalak (1940-1973), it was under his leadership that RSS built up its organizational framework. Golwalkar’s vision has become the vision of the RSS; and hence, his work has become an important source of social influence in contemporary Indian society – of course in matters communal and political, but also gender and sexualisation. Through a feminist analysis of his work using standpoint theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of ‘symbolic struggle’ (1989), this paper will look at the construction of the ‘Hindu male self’ and the ‘other’ as a vision of the future Indian society in Golwalkar’s works, specially his most popular book, 'Bunch of Thoughts', and how that construction as found resonance in the contemporary Indian society.

The Ireland India Institute is hosting its first Postgraduate Conference on South Asia in Dublin City University, 26 May 2017. The conference is hosted in collaboration with the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS).

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Dr. Faisal Devji and Meena Kandasamy have kindly accepted our invitation as keynote speakers at the conference.

Organisers: Arpita Chakraborty, Hari Krishnan

Masculinity was one of the terrains on which the counter colonial aspirations had been expressed in nineteenth century India, as shown in the works of scholars like Mrinalini Sinha. This paper will look at the written works of Swami Vivekananda, hailed as one of the greatest spiritual minds of nineteenth century India who started the Ramakrishna movement or Vedanta movement in the nineteenth century, a movement which continues to be popular to this day. Being one of the most influence politico-religious leaders of India in the nineteenth and ear twentieth century, his ideas of rebuilding the nation through reinvigorating its men gained huge popularity during the British colonial period.

Through a discourse analysis of his written works, this paper will attempt to look at not how the ideas of masculinity was imagined, but also the ways in which such a reimagination reflected the Christian Victorian ideas of masculinity in contemporary England. With an appreciation of physical strength, valour, altruistic service to the society and admiration of sexual abstinence (expressed in words like Pourush and Birjabaan in Bengali), these were reflections of some of the qualities greatly valued among the English. However, the appreciation of the role of women as mother on one hand, and the hailing of men for abstinence on the other, brought in a theoretical tension in his works around the issue of sex and sexualisation of colonised bodies. This paper will explore this very tension in his political and religious writings.

In this paper, I will be looking at the history of the women’s movement in India, as documented by the women studies researchers, to see how oppression has received a degree of hierarchisation within the movement as well as within the public discourse in the country. Differentiating between the good violence and the bad violence, the urgent and the not-so-urgent, and the ethically more acceptable and less acceptable have led to a steady degree and form of hierarchical understanding of women’s oppression in the country within the movement itself.
Through a blend of discourse analysis and interviews, I will be using the secondary literature available on the history of the women’s movement as well as semi-structural interviews conducted with student activists from leftist organisations in an Indian university. The literature will show how this hierarchy is at work in areas as varied as legal counselling for domestic violence to issues at focus in conflict areas such as Kashmir. The interviews will show this differentiation in praxis in the progressive frameworks of student organisations. By using this two prong approach, I intend to reflect on how the hierarchisation of oppression has been affecting not only adversely affecting the strategy building process of the women’s movement, but real lives and experiences that should compel us to rethink.

In this article, I work with feminist standpoint theory to rethink Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of "symbolic violence" and "habitus." When read through feminist standpoint theory, the concept of symbolic violence may provide a missing link between subjective experiences and invisibilized forms of structural violence, and, I argue, can connect the structural and the immediate to form a powerful discursive methodological tool. This tool can help the broader women's movement to realign its strategies to focus on the operational forces behind violence. Bourdieu envisioned gender equality as a near impossibility, and masculine domination as the status quo for the foreseeable future. However, the achievements of the Dalit women's movement in India provide ample evidence that marginalized people can bring about sustainable and long-term political and social change. Shifts in the habitus of gender have indeed resulted in changes in the fields of caste and politics. Thus, this article explains how Bourdieu's concepts, while insufficient on their own, can be reconfigured to assist in emancipatory feminist projects.

Opinion: as an electoral exercise, the Indian elections are awe-inspiring in the electorate's belief in their democratic rights The biggest political event of the year started on April 11th. The Indian elections are the largest democratic elections ever seen, with more than 900 million eligible voters. Electronic voting machines are used to register votes, and winners are decided on first-past-the-post basis. There are seven national parties, 26 state parties and more than 2,000 smaller political parties registered for this year's election. The voting process will continue in seven phases till May 19th and the results will be declared on May 23rd.

Kolkata : Mother of two from Poaturkuthi is contesting, hopes to change lives of others like her in the enclaves Between them, India and Bangladesh share the largest number of enclaves in the world — if there are around 106 fragments of Indian land inside Bangladesh, the latter has 92 Bangladeshi enclaves on this side of the border. Now, for the first time since Independence, those 92 Bangladeshi enclaves, in a way, are going to show up on the Assembly election map of West Bengal. Twenty­nine­year­old mother of two Mayamana Khatun, a resident of Poaturkuthi, has filed her nomination papers from Dinhata, Cooch Behar district, to become the first candidate from a Bangladeshi enclave fighting Assembly elections in Bengal. A Janabadi Forward Bloc candidate, she was born in the Indian village of Kalmati and is, hence, an Indian citizen by birth. She studied till eighth standard in the Kalmati High Madrasa before getting married to Rehman Sheikh, an enclave resident. She says it is the neglect of these enclaves as they remain out of reach of the governmental infrastructural support systems that prompted her to take the plunge. " The governments are not bothered about the humanitarian crisis that we have been facing for such a long time. If I am elected, I'll be able to change things, " says Khatun. As a Chit Mahal resident herself — as these enclaves are called locally — Khatun claims to have personally experienced the distress of being de facto stateless. " I have two children, a son and a daughter. During their birth, the delivery had to be done at home because the doctors at a hospital in official India refused to admit us. They said they could not treat us because we are not Indians. For how many more generations do we have to live like this? " Though there has been no official census conducted in the enclaves since Independence, an unofficial estimate by the Indo­Bangladesh Enclave Exchange Committee puts the population at around 1,13,000 in 84 of the Bangladeshi enclaves. Among them, around 11,000 people have the right to vote in the Indian elections by virtue of their Indian origin or land ownership. This vote bank is expected to play a crucial role as Khatun takes on Forward Bloc heavyweight Udayan Guha. A former Congress MLA who is contesting as an Independent from Dinhata this time, Muhammed Fazle Haque, had initially objected to her candidature saying she was a resident of an enclave in Bangladesh. However, her papers were found to be valid. Since she began campaigning, Khatun has found ample support among the residents of her enclave as well as the Bangladeshi enclaves of Karla, Mashaldanga as well as Najerhat in India.

http://cerebration.org/arpitachakraborty.html

There are more than two hundred geo-political enclaves in various continents across the globe. "Chhits" or Enclaves are small fragments of land owned by one country, inside the geographical boundaries of another country. India and Bangladesh share the largest group of enclaves in the world, a historical legacy that has retained its existence despite Partition during Independence in 1947 and the later fragmentation of Pakistan to form Bangladesh in 1971. There are about a hundred thousand people living inside these enclaves, with no access to either basic fundamental rights or any form of livelihood. In 2011, India and Bangladesh signed an agreement to absorb the enclaves within the host countries. It is yet to be realised.

Co-Editor of Cerebration, Amrita Ghosh talks to Arpita Chakraborty on her experience of fieldwork in six such enclaves.

The Hindu rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India has successfully enacted the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2019. The BJP-led government is creating a National Register of Citizens (NRC) which will divide the population into citizens and illegal immigrants. According to the CAA, non-Muslim illegal immigrants from the neighbouring Muslim majority countries will be allowed to apply for citizenship, while Muslims will become stateless. In a series of complicated administrative and legal manoeuvres, this act will lead to loss of citizenship of millions of Muslim citizens and render them stateless. Detention camps are already functional to imprison stateless former citizens.

It is the same government which passed the law against triple talaq, in
defence of the rights of Muslim women citizens. The popularization of public opinion against love jihad, the law against triple talaq, the beef lynchings in recent years, are the result of radical Hindu right populism in India. CAA is the culmination of that process, with the aim of complete isolation and statelessness of Muslim citizens of India. The use of gender and religion towards increasing right-wing populism has reshaped the primary criteria for citizenship. The move has led to
extensive non-violent protests from more than 250 million people across the country. In this article, I will discuss how the BJP is using CAA, tense gender relations and religious stereotypes to promote Hindu right populism in India. In doing so, this article will unmask the connections between gender, religion and radical Hindu right politics.

Applications are invited for a four-year PhD, fully-funded through the Irish Research Council. The student will be based at the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University with full access to the DCU Library, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Doctoral Hub, and other resources. This PhD position is part of the Project ‘They are Here Too: Gendered Violence in the South Asian Immigrant Community in Post-COVID Ireland’ led by Dr. Arpita Chakraborty.

The position is open for EU citizens and comes with a €18,000 stipend and fully paid fees for four years, flexible work hours, and graduate training and travel expenses for conference presentation. With previously determined work objectives and work plan, it is a unique opportunity to work towards the creation of a community space for migrant women as part of the project. Applications from non-EU citizens are very welcome, but the fees covered will be partial.

As part of the project, the PhD fellow will work along with the PI to achieve the objectives of the project in terms of conference organisation, presentation, publications and other forms of public dissemination. The fellow will co-author and publish articles and edited volumes with the PI, alongside working on their thesis.

Enclaves are small fragments of land owned by one country, inside the geo- graphical boundaries of another country (van Schendel, 2002). The country inside which the enclave resides is called the host country. There are more than two hundred geopolitical enclaves in various continents across the globe. India and Bangladesh share the largest group of enclaves in the world, a historical legacy that had retained its existence despite Partition during Independence in 1947 and the later fragmentation of Pakistan to form Bangladesh in 1971. There are about a hundred thousand people living inside these enclaves, with no access to either basic fundamental rights or any form of formal livelihood. However, what sets these enclaves apart is the unique role women play in mediating the interaction of the enclave residents with their host countries.

Drawing on empirical research, this chapter explores this dynamic and asks what happens when women are the mediators of citizenship for the rest of the community? The enclaves between India and Bangladesh provide a unique case study for such a situation. Did their access to citizenship alter the position of these women within the family? This research found that for women who have been born in India and have been married into the enclaves later in life, their access to state resources becomes a crucial enabler. This analysis is significant because, being based on the socially and politically excluded community at an international border area where women have such a unique position, it extends our knowledge of the gender-citizenship duality.

This paper examines the new feminist intervention in India against sexual harassment (SH) through the online weapon of anonymously listing sexual offenders. The publication of the list on Facebook-known as the List of Shame (or #LoSha)-was inspired by the #metoo campaign following the Hollywood Weinstein affair, and was composed through a collection of first hand survivor narratives. A list of 70 names of alleged academic sexual offenders was first shared by a lawyer based in USA, and became viral on Facebook. This paper will look at how this campaign used naming as a risk-taking tool to point at the lack of institutional frameworks within academic spaces. In doing so, it successfully used the online space of Facebook to create a feminist debate around the issue of sexual harassment transcending geographical and hierarchical barriers, and raising questions regarding the viability of the established feminist recourses against SH. Using the methodological tool of situated critique (Bannerji 1995), in this paper I will utilize my own experience of participating in the list as well as in the larger feminist debate to discuss the politics of risk-taking, solidarity, and the implications of list-activism. In doing so, it has re-established the role of cyberfeminism (Daniels 2009) in India and surfaced a new intersectional autocritique of the academia based on caste, class and gender. Though questions regarding the method remain, the use of Facebook for providing survivors a voice with anonymity promises new boundaries of empowerment and fear.

Religious ideas have played – and as this chapter will show, continue to play – a central role in Indian politics, and these ideas are gendered in nature. Some of these take a particular masculine form – violent, heterosexual and upper caste – and it finds expression in the political sphere through physical as well as symbolic forms of violence. One such form of masculinity gaining political capital is ascetic masculinity. I demonstrate in this chapter that the manifestation of ascetic masculinity traced in the works of Vivekananda,1 Golwalkar2 and Gandhi continue to be present and influence politics in India. A politics of appropriation in the contemporary Indian politics has seen right-wing Hindutva organizations applauding Gandhi and Vivekananda often. There is a growing trend within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to celebrate both Gandhi and his assassin, Nathuram Godse (Mukherjee 2019). This chapter will look at how ascetic aspects of the works of Vivekananda and Gandhi are taken out of context and appropriated by the RSS–BJP that helps them correlate their ideas of asceticism with that of Golwalkar, and how that appropriation is serving their violent masculinist tendencies.