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A Bengali Dalit religion called Matua emerged in the nineteenth century in East Bengal. It counts tens of millions of followers across the Bay of Bengal and the Indo–Bangladesh border. With the COVID-19 pandemic, Matua religious gatherings were shifted online. This paper asks what happened to multisensory and sonic-haptic religious engagements of the Matua community once ritual gatherings were transported to the cyberspace of digital media. Using data collected through remote ethnography and digital ethnography with the Matua community in 2020 and 2021, we suggest that the increased online visibility of the Matua community (1) contributed to reshaping Matua identity narratives as a global diasporic network, downplaying previous self-definitions of untouchability and displacement; (2) exacerbated inequalities along class and gender lines; and (3) shifted the sensoryscape of Matua ritual experiences, with important repercussions in the domains of embodiment, ritual authority and authenticity. As Matua experiences of increased online visibility clashed with their traditional aesthetics of resistance through shared sonic commingling, we argue, more broadly, that understandings of visibility must take into consideration culturally informed articulations of the senses and sense hierarchies, and how sensory ideology can manifest following the affordances of different media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many commentators believed that caste did not matter in West Bengal, in recent years it has emerged as a significant factor in electoral politics. The decline of the Left and the rise of the centrist-incumbent have fanned identity politics and the resurgence of caste-based political mobilisation. In this conversation, Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, a well-known expert in the history and politics of caste in Bengal, illuminates the complexities, uniqueness and dynamics of caste politics in colonial Bengal and contemporary West Bengal. The interview explores the evolution of the caste-system in colonial Bengal, its differences with the rest of India and the multiple manifestations of caste-based politics in contemporary West Bengal. Bandyopadhyay reflects on the intersection of caste with other categories of class and religion, the lower-castes' involvement, appropriation and neglect in the political spectrum, and the future of caste and politics in West Bengal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the political deification of Harichand and Guruchand Thakur, the founders of an anti-caste religion called Matua Dharma, in contemporary West Bengal. The religious community of the Matuas, who are mostly Namasudras (an ex-Untouchable caste), have drawn considerable public attention over the last two decades as a politically organised and electorally salient group. Drawing from fieldwork evidence and observations, the article shows that a key strategy behind the consolidation of Matuas as a political public has been the use of symbolic means and projection of Harichand-Guruchand as regional icons of Dalit politics by their community organisation, viz. the Matua Mahasangha, and other political actors. The article explores these processes of deification of Harichand and Guruchand Thakur and the consequent making of a Matua political public by looking at three areas – (a) Matua print literature, (b) community festivals, and (c) commemoration practices at the popular and official-institutional levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Periods of transition between phenological phases in different kiwi plant varieties: one of the most widely grown fruits today, kiwis are grown extensively in many subtropical and temperate nations. Kiwi farming has recently piqued the curiosity of many fruit producers and landowners in our nation. In order to study the morpho-biological traits of the growth and development of these fruit plant varieties in the soil and climate conditions of Uzbekistan and to scientifically support the possibilities of establishing industrial kiwi gardens on this basis, it is necessary to conduct special scientific research on this plant. In the article, the duration of phenological phases of Kiwi (Actinidia deliciosa (A.Chev.)) varieties Hayward, Monty, Bruno, and pollinator Matua were observed in the climatic conditions of Tashkent region at the Extension center of Tashkent State Agrarian University in Uzbekistan. The sum of active temperatures above 10 °C was calculated for the growth phases of kiwifruit cultivars.

Remoteness is an attribute that has often been negatively attached to island-spaces like the Andaman Islands, separated from the Indian mainland by the vast Bay of Bengal, located at the ‘liquid borderlands’ of South and Southeast Asia. The Covid-19 pandemic, on the other hand, has popularised the use of ‘remote’ methods of enabling religio-social interaction. The islanders of these geographically ‘remote’ locations use these ‘remote’ ways of connecting to perform their religious practices and maintain their faith networks, which is otherwise compromised due to the pandemic-induced restrictions on social gatherings. By exploring the ‘online’ global faith networks of the little-known Matua religion, as well as, the social, technical and logistical constraints in the devotees’ access to ‘remote’ religion, the paper addresses two questions: first, how do individuals play out their identities, both as islander and as devotee, ‘online’; second, what are the corresponding technological and logistical conditions that enable their ‘presence’ and who are the ‘absent’ actors. Drawing from remotely collected data, particularly online ethnography and telephonic interviews, the paper explores the mediating role of technology in destabilizing, as well as, solidifying concepts of remoteness and isolation, particularly in the peripheries of nation, during times of restricted mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article studies the Bangla hagiography of Harichand Thakur, the founder of the Matua sampraday, a sect that broke away from Brahmanical Hinduism in nineteenth-century Bengal. The paper explores how the hagiography takes on the added task of constructing the collective identity of the Matuas. It argues that for a vulnerable and marginalised community where the hagiography is among the few books published, the text serves to validate the community's aspirations and authenticates its legacy. The sect, founded in opposition to the dominant Brahmanical hegemony that had kept them suppressed for generations, has been an upwardly mobile community in the twentieth century. The essay examines the changing presentations of the hagiography over a century to explore how the Matua community walks a fine line between opposition and allegiance to the majoritarian Hindu faith, and how the indeterminate boundaries between myth and history, fact and fiction, are used in this project of the community's self-construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kiwi is a dioecious plant species, requiring cross pollination for fruit production. The objective of this study was toevaluate the in vitro viability and shelf life of pollen grains of two kiwi varieties. Flowers of the cultivars Matua and Tomuri werecollected and the pollen germinated in vitro, in culture medium containing agar (1 %), sucrose (0, 5, 10, 20 and 40 %) and boric acid(0 and 50 mg L-1H3BO3). Pollen grains were stored in a BOD incubator (25.0 °C), refrigerator (4.0 °C), freezer (-18.0 °C) and in liquid N2 (-196.0 °C), and evaluated after 0, 40, 120, 240 and 365 days. The culture medium enriched with 12 % sucrose and 50 mgL-1 H3BO3 was the most suitable. Pollen grains can be stored for a short period in the refrigerator or freezer, and cryopreserved for at least one year.

This study was carried out in Atatürk Central Horticultural Research Institute at Yalova in 1996 and 1997 in order to determine the frost resistance ability of fruit buds of Hayward and Matua cultivars by artificial freezing tests during winter months. Twig samples for artificial freezing tests were taken one week after defoliation, and at three-week intervals throughout the winter. The buds were exposed to temperatures of -10°C, -13°C and -15°C for 2, 4 and 6 hours. Then they were planted in a greenhouse for survival tests. It was found that -13°C and -15°C were very harmful temperatures for both cultivars even for the duration of 2 hours at -150C. On the other hand, both cultivars could resist to -10°C for the duration of 6 hours. In general, Hayward is more sensitive to frost than Matua. Both cultivars showed higher resistance in February. As a result, Hayward and Matua cultivars could be grown safely in areas with as low temperatures as -10°C in winter months.