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This article subjects the varied meanings that Bengalis gave to their imaginations of Japan during the Swadeshi Movement (1905–11) to close scrutiny. It does so by contextualising it within the attempts made by Hindus and Muslims to use religion as a way of travelling globally. I use social hierarchy and embodiment as analytical perspectives to frame the ways in which invoking Japan provided opportunities to forge broader spiritual linkages and, in doing so, negotiate their histories as separate from colonial modernity. Further, this article problematises the categories of local/global and indigenous/foreign that are used to isolate these mobile acts of thinking, reading, negotiating and aspiring that were simultaneously located both beyond and within the nation. In turn, it suggests 'imaginations' and 'invocations' as a fruitful site of studying such fluid histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper covers the origin and functioning of ‘Mother India’ (Bharat Mata) – the goddess, who joined the ancient and vast Hindu pantheon only in the beginning of the XX century. ‘Mother India’ emerged as the embodiment of national territory, and the universal symbol of the country’s diverse communities. Paraded in various media, the new goddess swiftly changed her names (from the Spirit of Motherland through Banga Mata on to Bharat Mata) and appearances, incorporating the map shape of the subcontinent into the portrait of the original four-handed young woman.The new image reflected the nation’s patriotic trend of collective self-identification with Indian territory and the desire to surrender lives for its freedom. Exploiting the mutual entanglement of the cartographic and anthropomorphic images, Mother India is distinguished from from the other members of Hindu pantheon, which guarantees her unique status as the only embodiment and symbol of the national territory. The graphic integration of the woman and the map brought into existence the new phenomenon of ‘Geo-body’ to become yet another symbol of the Indian struggle for independence together with the saffron-white-green flag and ‘VandeMataram’ song. In addition to the traditional forms of devotion (statues and temples) across India, the image of Bharat Mata spread through mass media and became the first envoy of Hindu gods abroad.

By focusing on the nineteenth-century cotton trade, this essay examines how the circumstances affecting the cultivation of the cotton plant and consequently its manufacture into yarn and cloth – the ecologies of cotton, in short – variously inform literary and cultural texts that have hitherto been read as discrete and disconnected. Analyzing aspects of Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton (1848) and a poem/song by the late nineteenth-early twentieth-century Bengali poet-songwriter, Mukunda Das, the essay situates British industrial fiction alongside the literary and cultural production of the Indian swadeshi movement, which by the turn of the twentieth century, rejected the use of industrially-manufactured British products, particularly cotton textiles. In reading these texts alongside each other, the essay considers the importance of a denotative reading practice to ecocriticism. As the essay argues, twinning an ecological reading practice with one that is denotative is critical for several reasons, not least of which is that such a reading lays bare the transimperial nodes of labor and resource expropriation, the contingencies and specificities of which also significantly reconfigure our literary maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article theorizes the colonial problem of peoplehood that Indian anticolonial thinkers grappled with in their attempts to conceptualize self-rule, or swaraj. British colonial rule drew its legitimacy from a developmentalist conception of the colonized people as backward and disunited. The discourse of "underdeveloped" colonial peoplehood rendered the Indian people "unfit" for self-government, suspending their sovereignty to an indefinite future. The concept of swaraj would be born with the rejection of deferred colonial self-government. Yet the persistence of the developmentalist figuration of the people generated a crisis of sovereign authorization. The pre-Gandhian swaraj theorists would be faced with the not-yet claimable figure of the people at the very moment of disavowing the British claim to rule. Recovering this underappreciated pre-Gandhian history of the concept of swaraj and reinterpreting its Gandhian moment, this article offers a new reading of Gandhi's theory of moral self-rule. In so doing, it demonstrates how the history of swaraj helps trace the colonial career of popular sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a preliminary attempt to understand the dynamics of how Patanjali and Baba Ramdev represent 'Hindu nationalism', or Hindutva (Hinduness) in Nagaland, India. One can read Baba Ramdev's foray into the region through the promotion of yoga, Ayurveda, and national health, as a form of 'neo-Hindutva' that is increasingly diffuse and moves away from a more militant pathway of established Hindutva designs. If one considers the work of Patanjali in Nagaland as an attempt to homogenise and unify a set of practices surrounding food and health practices, then, one can read this as an attempt to assert a singular somatic imagination, increasingly influenced by Hindutva ideas about the body, 'the health of the nation', and the promotion of swadeshi (indigenous goods) as patriotic duty. This article highlights the way Ramdev and Patanjali's business empire is trying to move beyond the 'cow belt' of north India, comprising mainly of 'Hindu-Hindi' into regions that are more diverse linguistically and historically, and culturally viewed as 'un-Indian'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a preliminary attempt to understand the dynamics of how Patanjali and Baba Ramdev represent 'Hindu nationalism', or Hindutva (Hinduness) in Nagaland, India. One can read Baba Ramdev's foray into the region through the promotion of yoga, Ayurveda, and national health, as a form of 'neo-Hindutva' that is increasingly diffuse and moves away from a more militant pathway of established Hindutva designs. If one considers the work of Patanjali in Nagaland as an attempt to homogenise and unify a set of practices surrounding food and health practices, then, one can read this as an attempt to assert a singular somatic imagination, increasingly influenced by Hindutva ideas about the body, 'the health of the nation', and the promotion of swadeshi (indigenous goods) as patriotic duty. This article highlights the way Ramdev and Patanjali's business empire is trying to move beyond the 'cow belt' of north India, comprising mainly of 'Hindu-Hindi' into regions that are more diverse linguistically and historically, and culturally viewed as 'un-Indian'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new image was engendered in twentieth-century Bengal. The image clarified the direction of public opinion, whether it sanctified the actions of the colonizers or that of the colonized. In the process, those who chose to side with the colonized developed a close bond with the others who became a part of the camaraderie. The resultant image, envisioned by the people, did not come to them naturally; it was produced in their mind. The word of the age, printed and performed, helped produce this vision using the context as an index of reference. Words were transmitted and circulated among large number of people, who came to know, discuss and debate it. Despite the strict vigilance of the Raj that censured objectionable words, it nevertheless reached the public. Words found expression in ephemeral media that made the words disseminated untraceable. One such medium was the placard. This article analyses the placards circulated and posted, during the early twentieth century, and delves deep into the process of demonstration and persuasion adopted by the placards to invoke an image of nation among the Bengalis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the manner in which bhakti emerges as a politicotheological concept in the period of rising nationalism in colonial Bengal. It examines Śrī Amiya Nimāī Carita, a multivolume sacred biography of Kṛṣṇa-Caitanya (1486-1533) authored by Sisir Kumar Ghosh (1840-1911) between 1885 and 1910. Ghosh was a journalist and a publisher with a reputation for anticolonialism and Hindu revivalism. Ghosh's autobiographical and didactic prefaces attached to this sacred biography allow us to parse out a complex narrative of filial bonds and belonging that is integrally connected to an ambrosial ( amiya) Nimāī (Caitanya's nickname) and the devotional collective dedicated to him. Furthermore, these sacred biographies draw correspondences between the figure of Nimāī himself and the idea of Bengal-its history, culture, people, and society. This article systematically examines the evidence provided in this sacred biography of such overlaps between the figure of Caitanya and love for Bengal to argue that in the years leading up to the Swadeshi movement (1905-8), Vaiṣṇava bhakti, with its emphasis on love, loss, and femininity, arises as the idiom of comprehending and reifying ideas of intimacy and belonging to one's homeland. In this fashion, they intellectually prepare the ground for the emergence of the powerful notion of deś -bhakti in its modern form-as patriotic nationalism based upon love and devotion for homeland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the swadeshi agitation in Bengal the books presented in the performative space of Bengal became a source of instructing the public and for putting their mind and their imagination in order. The intellectual world of the Bengalis was in an uproar during this period due to the presence of a well-developed public sphere in Bengal. To legitimise these ideas as the social, moral and cultural authority of the popular bonding (the non-intellectuals of Gramscian analysis) attempts were made to create a homogeneous body of literature for the people. In this connection, the texts of popular performances like that of theatre, jatra and songs gained heightened importance. Texts of these popular media did not remain the mere framework of performance; they assumed the role of collecting and putting together of the stories and experiences of the people, establishing a degree of uniformity in it. In this article, I will look closely at the texts of the popular performative media of the age like theatre, jatra and song to gauge the process in which such media ordered the imagination of the people of Bengal in a homogeneous and seamless network of memory, laying the first step towards imagining a national community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the transformation of wrestling in colonial Bengal from a courtyard sport of the elite patrons to a mass sport. This landed aristocracy showered ample patronage to this sport until it achieved a final institutionalized shape in Bengal. The last decades of the nineteenth century saw the coming of the modern form of this ancient Indian sport. This also suggests the notion of national-masculine as a gendered materialization of the contemporary agency of Bengali masculinity. During the high tide of swadeshi movement in Bengal, the akhara culture mushroomed all over the province and wrestling got itself institutionalized. Numerous competitions were an added boost for the wrestlers who got some recognition in front ofnnumber of eyeballs who enthusiastically cheered the muscular competitors. Wrestling thus happened to be one of the most integral part of the physical culture movement in Bengal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present paper attempts to analyze the philosophical concepts given by Shri Bal Gangadhar Tilak - social and political. In this paper special concentration has been made upon Tilak's idea of Nationalism and Swarajya. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the pioneers among the 'Swadeshi' scholars during the early twentieth century Prof. Nirmal Kumar Bose was broadly identified as a social historian. Though he had specialized formally in cultural anthropology, yet he could be easily bracketed in many collateral academic disciplines. As a researcher in early life and as a research administrator a t a later phase he could curve out a special place for his meaningful contributions in the studies on tribes, peasants and urban cities in India, which were ultimately culminated in a singular frame of 'anthropology of Indian civilization'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay discusses the color symbolism of the so-called Swadeshi movement in early twentieth-century Bengal, India. In particular, the author highlights links between art, especially of the so-called Bengal School, and Indian and Hindu nationalism, as exemplified in the works and writings of such figures as artist Abanindranath Tagore, poet, artist, and art theorist Rabindranath Tagore, and the leader of the Indian anti-colonial movement, Mohandas Gandhi.

All the elements of twentieth-century politics in Tamilnadu cohere in 1918–1919: human and natural rights, women's rights, the labor movement, linguistic nationalism, and even the politics of caste reservation. Much has been written of how this politics was mediated by newspapers, handbills, and chapbooks, and the dominant narrative of such events privileges the circulation of print and print culture of vernacular language. This paper explores the relatively lesser-known story of the role and impact of vernacular oratory on the development of the mass political in Tamilnadu from the Swadeshi movement (1905–1908) to the formation of labor unions (1917–1919), and the explicit attempt to persuade non-elites into speech, action, and ultimately politics. I argue that Tamil oratory was an infrastructural element in the production of the political, at least the political as we understand it in twentieth-century Tamilnadu, where oratory became the defining activity of political practice. When elites made the conscious move to begin addressing the common man, when Everyman was called to join into the political, a new agency was formed along with a new definition of what politics would look like. The paper considers what such new agency and definitions entail in pursuit of a better understanding of what constitutes the political generally and the Tamil political in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Decolonization, as a post-colonial movement, attempts to dismantle colonial effects and imperialization of weaker countries. It is a process of uprooting colonial facade coated on the valuable Indian cultural legacy with the purpose to de-evaluable. Theatre is one of the glorious legacies of India. The seeds of decolonization were already planted during the freedom struggle by the freedom fighters such as Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose, Chandrashekar Azad etc. Gandhi's battle cry for 'Swadeshi', Hind Swaraj and 'Quit India Movement' enflamed the zeal for decolonizing the Indian mind. Literary writers such as Tagore, Tendulkar, Karnad, Anand and Raja Rao realized the need to decolonize, re-discover &. re-establish the glory of Indian culture, myths, language, religious ethos, democracy, Indian governance etc. and prepared an international stage for the textuality of Indian theatre. The plays of Badal Sarkar, Vijay Tendulkar, Tagore, and Karnad have dominated the world of theatre and proved the defiance against the effects of colonialism. Re-inventing Bharata's Natyashastra raises India to, at least, compete with the Aristotelian theatre. Kalidas's plays have sufficient theatrical flavour to dominate Shakespeare's plays. In post-modern period, the plays like Vijay Tendulkar's Ghasiram Kotwal and Girish Karnad's Hayavadana have evidenced the incomparability of Indian theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how Indians who were awarded degrees by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed a technological elite group of engineers in the last days of India's colonial period. Particular attention is paid to how their careers demonstrated a technological nationalism in India and foreshadowed the growth of the technology sector following independence. The connections between MIT-trained engineers and the nationalist movement in India are examined. It is noted that three families associated with Mahatma Gandhi sent nine sons to MIT. The work of engineers Devchand Parekh and Bal Kalelkar is discussed.

Gandhian contributions to the development of the green movement have been generally under-explored. This article seeks to re-examine key Gandhian themes in order to indicate their potential contribution to some contemporary debates. The emphasis on place-centred knowledge, tempered by a `post-relativistic ethic', is highlighted as a valuable resource for interpreting contemporary `environmental' activism. It is suggested that such a framework can provide grounds for further explorations beyond the limitations of the foundationalism-relativism debate. The Gandhian emphasis on swaraj and swadeshi also open considerable potential to link to wider debates on the nature of liberation, particularly in the context of post-colonial theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the swadeshi or indigenous goods movement inaugurated in India by nationalist leader Mohandas Gandhi to achieve home rule by establishing India's economic self-sufficiency from Great Britain. Encouragement of the production and exclusive consumption of hand-woven cloth called khadi from 1920 to 1930; Use of visual discourses and modern forms of entertainment by swadeshi proponents to reach out to the population; Discussion on swadeshi in the visual vocabulary of the nation.

An article is presented that is part of a roundtable in the issue of the journal on intellectual freedom, vigilantism, and censorship in India. Emphasis is given to the banning of the book "The Hindus: An Alternative History" by Wendy Doniger for allegedly containing hate speech against religious communities. Other topics include freedom of speech in the U.S., cotton as a colonial commodity, and India's postcolonial development.