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This article probes the history of education and current pedagogical practices among Malayali physician-teachers, vaidya-gurus, of Ayurveda in central Kerala. Considering the sources vaidya-gurus cite as the bases of their teaching styles, especially a three-part method known as mukhāmukhaṃ (‘face-to-face’ instruction), I discuss the place, production, and practice of texts in the didactic arrangement of the ayurvedic gurukula, ‘teacher’s residence’. Unlike subject-specific textbook learning at ayurvedic colleges, where students attend lectures and take exams in subjects like anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, and so forth, mukhāmukhaṃ education entails a rigorous philological investigation of the Sanskrit medical classics and allied regional sources that, under the guidance and modelling of a vaidya-guru, empowers students to do things with the texts in their own clinical engagements with patients. During mukhāmukhaṃ training, the ayurvedic gurukula becomes a discursive space wherein formal rules concerning the interpretation and transmission of technical healing knowledge in texts are, by design, upended with improvisational inquiry and exploration, inter- and intratextual referencing, and an ongoing production of new texts to meet the healthcare needs of patients.

Since mid-second millennium BCE, glass bangles have been an item of mass consumption throughout South Asia. The archaeological community has spent considerable time and energy reconstructing ancien...

In 1943, Freda Bedi – a woman who was English by birth but who made her life in South Asia – wrote a pioneering weekly column “From a Woman’s Window” for a leading nationalist-minded daily newspape...

Reflexivity is not a new concept; however, the researcher’s reflexivity on caste and gender preconception in the South Asian context is an understudied area in qualitative studies. We know less abo...

Research concerning Indian American Christian college students’ experiences is virtually non-existent, leaving scholars and student affairs professionals lacking empirical data to support this popu...

In this study, we examined the relationship between marital violence(MV) and reproductive and sexual health outcomes of women of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. The lifetime MV inflicted by husbands on their wives was highest at 53% in Bangladesh, India(37%), Pakistan(28%) and Nepal(28%) respectively. Overall, our results in this study suggest that MV perpetrated by husbands on their wife is significantly associated with unintended pregnancy, pregnancy termination, current use of any modern contraceptive methods and sexually transmitted infections, but inconsistent associations are appeared across countries. Lifetime sexual violence and physical-sexual force were significantly and positively associated with unintended pregnancy and pregnancy termination respectively, whereas, all types of MV were significantly and positively related with the symptom of sexually transmitted diseases in the women. Appropriate measures should be undertaken to combat Violence against women(VAW) and necessary services should be provided to the victimized women to uphold their reproductive and sexual rights.

Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark examine Pakistan and India’s foreign intelligence agencies with attention to the interaction between intelligence and South Asian geopolitics. In particular, this ...

Acknowledging the overreaching importance of WHO guidelines of frequent handwashing with soap and water in battling COVID 19, this paper unravels the state of water supply in Indian cities and exam...

Environmental historian Ramachandra Guha greatly influenced the field of South Asian postcolonial ecocriticism when, at the end of the 1980s, after studying the Chipko and other peasant environment...

Declines in the number of foreign correspondents and bureaus have caused media to rely on freelance journalists, particularly on coverage of complex and topical issues such as climate change. This ...

Cross-border targeted radio is evident among listeners to South Asian and Christian stations in Vancouver, BC. Canada’s earlier restrictions on religious stations left Vancouver faithful with only ...

In 1921, Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) inaugurated Viśva Bhāratī as an institution of higher learning, an ‘uttarbibhāga’, as has been observed, based on the foundations of the brahmacaryāśrama, i...

A beautiful and culturally rich region, South Asia is also the epicentre of a wide array of threats to national, regional, and international security, including issues pertaining to terrorism, wate...

This article reports a study examining the impact of an internet-based meditation program (IMP) on socio-cultural adaptation, coping and quality of life of South Asian older widows emigrating in la...

Despite the increasing number of students on the autism spectrum attending regular schools worldwide, research on the knowledge and use of teaching strategies to support the inclusion of students o...

Flexible Bodies by Anusha Kedhar intimately traces the lives and labor of dancers and choreographers who were instrumental in the development of British South Asian dance between the 1990s and 2010...

An empirically driven consolidated framework is needed to help navigate the development of social inclusion of South Asian and Southeast Asian ethnic minorities in Hong Kong. A qualitative pilot st...

Low-resource communities that rely on the environment face challenges in the forms of climate change and the overuse of natural resources. Behaviour science offers methods and strategies to mitigate behaviours that contribute to environmental degradation, as well as promote the adoption of desirable behaviours. We investigated the attitudes and beliefs of vulnerable communities. We conducted surveys across five villages on Selayar Island, a small island in Sulawesi Indonesia. Our results suggest a willingness to participate in behaviour-based programmes and concern for families. When offering development programmes to communities, the needs of the community should inform the design and implementation process.

Undernutrition remains a wide spread problem, especially for women and their children. A wide body of research has identified women’s empowerment as a contributor to nutritional outcomes for childr...

In this autoethnographic study, I negotiate my identity as a mixed-caste South Asian woman, drawing on a Buddhist-humanist spiritual approach to examine the development of global citizen identity. ...

Social location involves multiple axes of gender, work, ethnicity, migration status, age and access to networks; and can be manipulated when the individual determines to change it. These axes of di...

Transnational higher education (TNHE) has been characterised as a crude form of market-driven internationalisation, often targeting immobile student populations in countries with high demand for in...

The cultural construct ‘shame’ (sharam) is cited as an oppressive force that controls and perpetuates patriarchal structures within particular cultures. ‘Shame’ and the related construct ‘honour’ (...

This essay explores an unusual vernacular source of poetic writings by Asim Randeri (1904–2009), a Muslim poet from a merchant family of Gujarat, in order to understand how the imagination—particul...

The Partition of 1947 remains an important reference point for Hindu nationalist political discourse in India, defining its relationship with Pakistan and Muslims in South Asia. This article invest...

Unhealthy dietary practices have increased among college students in South Asia. Higher intakes of energy-dense foods may increase health risks such as weight gain in college students. The purpose of the study was to gather evidence on fast food consumption patterns and factors that influenced fast food consumption among college students in South Asia. Electronic databases (CINAHL, PsycINFO, PubMed, and ScienceDirect) were used to find relevant potential English-written articles. We followed the standard process of identification, screening, eligibility assessment, study quality assessment, and data extraction from the included articles in this review. In total, data were synthesized from 28 articles. Factors such as gender, being younger, higher socio-economic class, higher body mass index (being overweight or obese), study groups such as students from Humanities, low nutrition knowledge, and the internet addiction played the roles as positive determinants (all

This article interrogates local engagement in protected area development as a mechanism for peacebuilding in Afghanistan. Using interviews with representatives from the Band-e-Amir Protected Area C...

Anderson argued that it was not just the ‘innovation’ of nations as an entity that is important but also the material conditions. The extent of nationalism and patriotism used as a tool in mass med...

Spercheus stangli Schwarz and Barber, 1917 (Coleoptera: Spercheidae) is distributed in South Asia and Southeast Asia. Its Japanese population is known only in one pond on the Iriomote Island. To be...

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted all wakes of lives in many countries including Sri Lanka, an island nation in the South Asian region. Among severely hit community groups due to COVID-19 have be...

Alongside recent publications from O’Connor and Gu (2020), Gu et al. (2020) and Kawashima and Lee (2018) these two recent books are part of a long overdue focus on creative industries development i...

The library of Tipu Sultan of Mysore is one of the most important in the history of South Asian Islamic collections. Unlike many collections which can be regarded as dynastic libraries, Tipu’s was ...

Since the introduction of museums in South Asia during the colonial period, there has been one troubling factor – the visitors. Colonial museum administrators/curators continuously failed to compre...

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), according to Chinese policymakers, is a “Project of the Century.” At the same time, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is its flagship project to develo...

This article investigates how Arabic texts reached multilingual audiences in North India in the eighteenth century. Drawing on a remarkable treatise on translating the Qur’an into Persian by the Delhi intellectual Shāh Walī-Allāh (d. 1176/1762), it argues that so-called “interlinear” translations functioned to preserve the sound of Arabic utterances as well as their meaning. By anchoring another language to Arabic utterances, these translations also reified symbolic hierarchies between Arabic and languages used to translate it. Walī-Allāh’s understanding of translatability was closely tied up with notions of Qur’anic structure (naẓm) and the sonic qualities of the Arabic language, but also informed by a sensitivity to linguistic difference in the multilingual society he lived in.

This article provides a theoretically informed examination of migrant women’s responses to domestic abuse in the host country. It departs from an analysis of research on South Asian women in Englan...

The article attempts to explain India’s contrasting strategic choices with regard to China-led initiatives in South Asia. While India chose to join the AIIB, it has opposed the BRI. While the India...

On 9 March 2020, Dietmar Rothermund, one of the leading historians of South Asia, passed away at the age of 87 at his residence near Heidelberg, Germany. He will be remembered by his friends, colle...

wWe use the urban political ecology perspective to explore how communities of homo religiosus (re)configure politics of COVID-19 in India and Pakistan. This urban health crisis unfolds in five para...

After Dipesh Chakrabarty’s 2015 The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and the Empire of Truth, Sumit Guha’s History and Collective Memory in South Asia offers the most recent reflection on hi...

This article focuses on Tagore’s translations of medieval saint-poets, writing in different Indian languages, to examine his attempts at “impossible” boundary crossings, from the medieval to the mo...

This essay focuses on contemporary artworks that hark back to Mughal examples. In particular, there is an underlying formal arrangement shared by traditional and contemporary art, which I would lik...

This viewpoint essay provides an introduction to the special section, ‘Lived Religions of South Asian Hindu and Muslim Women' and context on the issues for the readers. The section draws on the wor...