Politics And Nationalist Awakening In South India 1852 1891

The charged emotional politics of language and identity in India

In a cultural history which considers the transformation of south Indian institutions under British colonial rule in the nineteenth century, Pamela Price focuses on the two former 'little kingdoms' of Ramnad and Sivagangai which came under colonial governance as revenue estates. She demonstrates how rivalries among the royal families and major zamindari temples, and the disintegration of indigenous institutions of rule, contributed to the development of nationalist ideologies and new political identities among the people of southern Tamil country. The author also shows how religious symbols and practices going back to the seventeenth century were reformulated and acquired a new significance in the colonial context. Arguing for a reappraisal of the relationship of Hinduism to politics, Price finds that these symbols and practices continue to inform popular expectation of political leadership today.

In this book, the author sets out in detail the earlier domination of Urdu-speaking Muslim, their clash of interests with the Tamil Muslim traders and the ultimate takeover of the Muslim League in the south by the Tamil group. Narrated in an easy style, this study of the recent history of Tamil Muslims is an important contribution to sociological and historical analyses of the movement.

This book presents the only critical study of the public life and legacy of V. S. Azariah (1874-1945), the first Indian bishop of an Anglican diocese and the most successful leader of rural conversion movements to Christianity in modern India. Harper carefully explores Bishop Azariah's work, including his attempts to redress racism and improve social conditions in India, and documents -- for the first time anywhere -- the previously unknown controversy between Bishop Azariah and the great Mahatma Gandhi.

Debates about family, property, and nation in Tamil India

While Karnatic music, a form of Indian music based on the melodic principle of raga and time cycles called tala, is known today as South India’s classical music, its status as “classical” is an early-twentieth-century construct, one that emerged in the crucible of colonial modernity, nationalist ideology, and South Indian regional politics. As Amanda J. Weidman demonstrates, in order for Karnatic music to be considered classical music, it needed to be modeled on Western classical music, with its system of notation, composers, compositions, conservatories, and concerts. At the same time, it needed to remain distinctively Indian. Weidman argues that these contradictory imperatives led to the emergence of a particular “politics of voice,” in which the voice came to stand for authenticity and Indianness. Combining ethnographic observation derived from her experience as a student and performer of South Indian music with close readings of archival materials, Weidman traces the emergence of this politics of voice through compelling analyses of the relationship between vocal sound and instrumental imitation, conventions of performance and staging, the status of women as performers, debates about language and music, and the relationship between oral tradition and technologies of printing and sound reproduction. Through her sustained exploration of the way “voice” is elaborated as a trope of modern subjectivity, national identity, and cultural authenticity, Weidman provides a model for thinking about the voice in anthropological and historical terms. In so doing, she shows that modernity is characterized as much by particular ideas about orality, aurality, and the voice as it is by regimes of visuality.

This is a biography of Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah (1874-1945), bishop of the Anglican Church in India from 1912 until his death in 1945. His life sheds new light on the challenges and opportunities faced by religious minorities throughout the world today. As a Christian leader in a non-Christian culture, he negotiated complex cultural, social, political, and economic pressure with exceptional skill and diplomacy. As the first Indian bishop of an Anglican diocese, and as modern India's most successful leader of depressed class and non-Brahmin conversion movements to Christianity, Azariah was equally at home with the untouchables of rural India and the unreachables of the British Empire. From this platform Azariah inevitably came into contact - and, ironically, also into conflict - with the dominating presence of Mahatma Gandhi. Susan Billington Harper here reconstructs major events and issues of Azariah's public life, including a previously unstudied controversy with Gandhi over the issue of conversion and relgious freedom in the 1930s. Based on hitherto untapped primary sources, including diocesan records and vernacular oral histories expressed in both stories and songs, this fascinating volume not only provides the first critical study of Bishop Azariah's life but also offers important - at times challenging - insights for those interested in modern India and the place of Christianity within it.