Suchergebnisse

Contributed seminar articles on some of the founding figures of anthropology and sociology in India, held at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, Apr. 19-21, 2000

Leela Dube (1923-2012) was an Indian social anthropologist / sociologist whose primary interest was in the field of family and kinship studies. This essay traces the zig-zag process of her intellectual evolution over five decades into one of the leading feminist anthropologists of her day – in India, in the Asian region, and indeed globally. Crucial turning points in this evolution were: (i) her self-initiated field study of the accommodation of the matrilineal kinship system of the Lakshadweep islanders with the androcentric legal apparatus of Islam; (ii) her role as the 'sociologist' member of the famous Committee on the Status of Women in India, an experience that convinced her that the best contribution she could make to the emerging women's studies discourse was through the conceptual and methodological resources of her own discipline, anthropology; and (iii) her self-conscious deployment of the so-called 'comparative method' of anthropology to explore the contrasting patterns of gender relations in strongly 'patrilineal' South Asia versus 'bilateral' Southeast Asia. She saw this ambitious comparative exercise, largely ignored by both her admirers and her critics, as enabling an emancipatory rethinking of some of the dominant paradigms of Western feminism. It was also, incidentally, a bold step in the disciplinary evolution of Indian social anthropology.

This article takes a critical look at the new Chinese 'One Belt, One Road' (OBOR) or 'Belt and Road Initiative' (BRI) for 21st century Eurasian connectivity and economic integration from the perspective of the proposed Bangladesh–China–India–Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM-EC). The BCIM-EC is a sub-regional cooperation project that aims to link the land-locked provinces of southwest China with eastern India and the Bay of Bengal through northern Myanmar, India's northeast region, and Bangladesh. However, within months of being mooted in May 2013, the BCIM-EC was yoked to another connectivity initiative, the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and the two encompassed within President Xi Jinping's grand vision for a new overland and maritime Silk Road. As of now, India has (i) endorsed the BCIM-EC, (ii) rejected the CPEC and (iii) maintained studied silence on the OBOR initiative per se. Where does that conundrum leave the BCIM-EC? And to what extent, if at all, can India leverage OBOR to its own advantage?

This article engages sociologically with three different academic discourses. The first pertains to the field of international relations, referring specifically to an enduring aspect of India-China bilateral relations over the last half-century or more that is known in shorthand as the 'trust deficit'. The second has reference to the field of cinema studies, in particular to the generic characteristics of the Hollywood/Bollywood 'war film'. The third reflects on issues of territoriality in the modern world of nation-states: on national borders and the 'borderlanders' of the contact zones, and on sacred and secular carto-graphies. In attempting to understand the nature and mode of production and reproduction of the Indian public's mistrust of China, the article takes up Chetan Anand's iconic 'war film', Haqeeqat, released in 1964 very shortly after the disastrous 1962 India-China border war which formed its subject matter. Unlike many films of the last two decades on India-Pakistan and Hindu-Muslim relations, briefly referred to by way of comparison and con-trast, Haqeeqat's stereotypes of Indians, Chinese, and borderlanders have yet to be over-written or complicated by countervailing images. They remain effectively frozen in time, leaving the dominant public perception of China as it was in the early 1960s––an image of both menace and duplicity.