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Kāvya is literature as art. Few modern scholars have suspected such aesthetic and affective literature to possess an impulse for capturing human history, and certainly not in any form consistent with modern notions of the discipline. Interrogating anew the remarkably long-lived misconception that early India did not/could not write history, and moving beyond interpretations that identify 'embedded' rather than overt forms of historicity in our antiquity, this essay pioneers the argument that Sanskrit poetics (alam˙kāras´āstra) and its theories of representation may have conceived of poetry as in fact an ideal vehicle for writing history. And, taking seriously Kāvya 's traditional narrative modes may yield an alternative, more cohesive notion of historicality in early India that invested in the epistemic authority of the poet (kavi) and, in a constructivist vein, in history itself as a poetic production (nirmān˙a) underwritten by a deeply ethico-political discursivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the fictional outputs of Janice Pariat, a Khasi Anglophone writer from India’s Northeast, as distinctive narratives that moot a counterpoint to the postcolonial dispensation of the region and provokes a new way of reading it. Pariat takes on the amenable geographies she inhabits as ephemeral spaces of relational entanglements and induces a self-reflexive and diffusive dimension of representation within the historicity of Northeast Indian writing. Resisting earlier homogenizing narratives, Pariat’s unmappable agencies (the human and the non-human) explicate the nuances of experiential decoloniality. Her locales move fuzzily from the jagged terrains of the Northeast through the (sub)continental metropolis and back, leaving diffusive traces of a presence that is supra-regional. The discursivity getting consolidated thus validates a narrative gnoseology that debunks the postcolonial episteme of the Northeast as an introverted discursive space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the intersections of memorialization practices and politics throughout a period of emergent social differentiation during the Neolithic and Iron Age periods in the Deccan region of southern India. Rather than focus on how mortuary architecture and grave assemblages might correlate with the status, rank, or class of the deceased individuals—as has often been suggested—we place emphasis on how mortuary practices and the production of megalithic places contributed to the establishment and maintenance of social collectives among living communities. More specifically, we identify at least two modes of political practice associated with megalithic production in prehistoric South India: one related to the constitution of collectives of labor and shared consumption activities involved in the process of making monuments; and a second related to the material legacy of monuments in constituting cultural and historical places of social affiliation. In making these arguments about the social significance of megalithic places, we also critically consider new materialist and posthumanist theoretical frameworks in archaeology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Territorial disputes between India and Pakistan got a new dimension with the release of a new political map by the latter on 4 August 2020, apparently in response to India's move to administratively reorganize the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Widely described as 'cartographic aggression' against India, the new map lays claim over many parts of India. The article traces the historicity of map-making as a nation-building project for Pakistan and seeks to decipher the strategic objectives behind this move. The article argues that this cartographic aggression is essentially an expression of its longstanding territorial desires against India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Katakarajavamshavali is a Sanskrit text, which has been edited by Hermann Kulke and Gaya Charan Tripathy. It is a comprehensive study on the history of Orissa from the early phase to the end of the Khurda Bhoi rule. It was compiled in the early part of the nineteenth century from older records available in the archives of the Jagannath temple, and/or with the functionaries like Tadhau Karana and Deula Karana who are responsible for keeping records of various nature connected with the Jagannath temple. Its contents are similar with that of Odradesha Rajavamshavali—another important text on the history of Orissa. The main emphasis of this article will be to review the opinion of the two learned editors on this traditional text and to evaluate the historical side of this account. The genealogical and the chronological aspects of this text need to be carefully studied to utilise it as an important source for the history of Orissa. In this article, I have taken into account the nature of Kala (Time Concept) as studied by Romila Thapar in her important papers on genealogy. Apart from an analysis of the Vamshavali pattern, here I would like to focus on the authenticity of this text as a genre of historical literature. My study would concentrate on the nature of construction of the past of Orissa on the basis of certain hard facts. This demands a look at the invention of traditional accounts in medieval Orissa for the compilation of the history of early and medieval Orissa. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The visible emergence of gender/sexual identities in many postcolonial societies has raised complex questions regarding the relation between historical precursors of same-sex desire and gender variance and emergent forms of gender/sexual identification. In this context, this article examines the relation of hijra and kothi, two vernacular and putatively indigenous categories of gender/sexual difference in India, with postcolonial processes of identity formation. Through multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, the article proposes that collusions between subcultures and postcolonial institutions result in the translocal consolidation of gender/sexual identities like hijra and kothi. This continuity between subcultural and institutional processes of identity formation results in historical discontinuities where emergent standardised definitions increasingly elide local variations in community and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dalhousie Square of Kolkata later named Binoy-Badal-Dinesh (BBD) Bagh is one area of the city which has been termed the historic urban core. Within this historic urban core, there exist numerous areas which are under severe stress in terms of loss of historical character, rupture of historic fabric and tremendous economic pressure trying to make an indentation into the historicity of the area. There also exist numerous buildings of historical importance which are under bad state of preservation and utilization, many of which are also dilapidated. This paper takes a look at one of the few identified areas within the historic urban core and proposes sensitive infill which intends to establish the approach towards construction of historically sensitive buildings such that the thriving historicity of the area may be maintained on the one hand but on the other more economy may be generated adhering to the existing municipal byelaws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the initial articulation and the later re-articulation of adivasi identities in their struggles for re-claiming land rights. Adivasis - meaning original inhabitants - are the indigenous communities that have been living in the forested highlands of Kerala since time immemorial. Colonial anthropologists and administrators chose to describe these communities as tribes in the process of 'othering' them, and the post-colonial state created a 'scheduled tribe' slot to include them in the constitution for affirmative action purpose. Their collective subjectivity as indigenous peoples is, however, articulated in terms of adivasi. Their identity as adivasi, and hence their attachment to place, has been projected in their struggles for reclaiming rights in land and forests. The adivasis are a highly heterogeneous group with differential relation to land and forests. The law passed by the government of Kerala to restitute the land claims of adivasis treated the indigenous peoples as a monolith, which had grave consequences for the land claims of the majority of the adivasi population. The subsequent struggles were marked by a re-articulation of the sub-identities, that is, specific identities of each adivasi group linked to specific historicities connecting them to particular places within the landscape. Using Stuart Hall's conception of identity as an articulated positioning, the article attempts to analyse the dynamic articulation of indigenous people's identities in the process of their protracted struggle for land. The article raises the imperative for a new class politics sensitive to difference and place which is vital for the sustained liberation struggles of subjugated and exploited social groups such as the adivasis. The challenge for Kerala's left movement is to articulate such a class politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]