Vedita Cowaloosur

There is growing conviction that the nation, language, and religion are one. Hindi ideologues see only Hindi as authentically Indian and Hindu. The current rhetoric is reminiscent of the 'Hindi-wallahs' in the early 20th century. This article traces that history in today's political rhetoric.

hen, on 2nd February 1835, Thomas Babington Macaulay, then serving on the Supreme Council of India, presented his (in)famous 'Minute on Indian Education' to Lord Bentinck to argue for the adoption of English as the teaching medium in Indian institutions from sixth form onwards, he envisaged, through the fruition of his plan, the birth of a class of English-educated native people who would help to 'lead' the rest of the native population by their example and through their superiority; people who would be 'Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect'. To this end, he pushed for the teaching of the English language and its literature, methodically discouraged the teaching of both bhasha or indigenous Indian languages, such as Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, and classical languages, such as Sanskrit and Persian. Again and again, he emphasised the moral imperative of the English language and its literature. Yet, despite all ...

Although they have cohabited in India for centuries, critical analyses of contemporary Indian literature and culture often seem to draw a distinction between the "world" of the English language and that of the bhashas (or Indian regional languages) — as though the two are sealed off from each other with no conceivable overlaps. Even sixty-six years after independence, the debate over the contested linguistic terrains of "home" and "world" - and whether these seeming dichotomies are mappable as "Indian"/"non-Indian” or "provincial"/"cosmopolitan" — continue. Through a study of contemporary and modern Indian literary and cultural discourses, I analyse the historical and ideological roles played by English language — the ways in which it has interacted with bhashas, and the importance of the literary representation of English and bhashas in the politics of Indian cultural and linguistic nationalism(s). Along with canonica...

Abstract In this hybrid piece of life writing/criticism, ideas of colonial nostalgia, as marketed by the tourism industry in Mauritius, are prodded to open up conversations around the surviving stories of coolies among their descendants. Unearthing the networks of friendship that coolie-women formed in the colonies, through which large slices of the story of the making of modern Mauritius can be glimpsed, this article seeks not to produce a clear narrative or pronounce on the morality of indenture. Instead, it seeks to bring to light the bonds of sisterhood among coolie-women that have been elemental in the shaping of Mauritius, and explore how these networks were passed down as models for daughters to inherit and build upon.

In this hybrid piece of life writing/criticism, ideas of colonial nostalgia, as marketed by the tourism industry in Mauritius, are prodded to open up conversations around the surviving stories of coolies among their descendants. Unearthing the networks of friendship that coolie-women formed in the colonies, through which large slices of the story of the making of modern Mauritius can be glimpsed, this article seeks not to produce a clear narrative or pronounce on the morality of indenture. Instead, it seeks to bring to light the bonds of sisterhood among coolie-women that have been elemental in the shaping of Mauritius, and explore how these networks were passed down as models for daughters to inherit and build upon.

The pro-Kannada, anti-Hindi protests witnessed in Karnataka in 2017 once again drew attention to the perpetual tussle for power among languages in India. A personal anecdote reflects on these power dynamics, as well as the politicisation of language in different contexts, and reveals language to be a mere plot device in the greater conflicts fought over the markers of Indian identity.

From Frantz Fanon, via Edward Said, to Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy, we have learnt how, in instances of encounters between people of different national, ethnic and racial provenances, skin colour has been held up as a conspicuous marker of culture (or thereby lack of), as well as a parameter for measuring vice and virtue. There are, however, shades of difference among the people who thrive within this hierarchical arrangement of skin colour. These debates are analysed by looking at Indian popular culture, especially Hindi cinema.

When, on 2nd February 1835, Thomas Babington Macaulay, then serving on the Supreme Council of India, presented his (in)famous 'Minute on Indian Education' to Lord Bentinck to argue for the adoption of English as the teaching medium in Indian institutions from sixth form onwards, ...

This video was produced for “The Centre for Media and Celebrity Studies. (CMCS) is an international organization that helps coordinate academic research and media commentaries on celebrity                                                culture. CMCS carries a pedagogical philosophy that inspires integration of research and media skills training in academic and public discourses of fame”

The topic of this 20-minute roundtable chat was National Identity and we were to discuss how Mauritian Identity is influenced by celebrity culture and international media. Some of the themes discussed were
-the commodification and liminality of island spaces,
-celebrity stereotypes of Mauritius,
-the film Serenity (starring Matthew McCounahey and Anne Hathaway and filmed in Mauritius)
-how Mauritius is portrayed by international media.

This video won the best Celebrity Chat video at the Perth Centre for Media and Celebrity Studies Conference in 2017.

To watch the video, follow the link on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6KbCSRfNeM&feature=youtu.be

In the fifth podcast in this series Dr Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee, from the English department, discusses contemporary interpretations of the term “cosmopolitanism.” He starts by giving an overview of the topic, with emphasis on its literary significance, and then considers the implications of being perceived as one. He demarcates cosmopolitanism from its often-mistaken twin, “internationalism” and discusses various other tropes, phrases and stereotypes that often get erroneously ascribed to cosmopolitanism.

Dr Mukherjee also discusses the impact and reach of cosmopolitanism in such spaces as the university campus, both in relation to academics and students.

He reveals, at the end, whether he sees himself as a cosmopolite or not.

Dr Mukherjee is interviewed here by PhD student, Vedita Cowaloosur.

The postsecular imagination: postcolonialism, religion and literature, by Manav Ratti, New York and London, Routledge, 2013, 270 pp., £85.00 (hardback), ISBN 978 0 4154 8097 0 In January 2015, a print advertisement issued by the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on the occasion of the 66 th anniversary of the Indian Republic omitted the words " Socialist " and " Secular " while quoting from the preamble of the Indian Constitution. This rekindled the debates that set secularism against religion in India. There is nothing new in these debates. They are ongoing, and have remained unresolved, since the conception of the very idea of India. This is one of the reasons why The Postsecular Imagination is such a welcome, and long overdue, book. It offers a vision that moves beyond the dichotomies of secularism versus religion and explores their alternatives. Daring, fine and nuanced, Manav Ratti's book is probably the first monograph of its kind to raise important questions that probe the potentials and limits of both religious and secular thought in India. He offers " the postsecular " , caught in a double-bind between religion and secularism, as a substitute. " The postsecular " , to quote Ratti, " neither proselytizes secularism nor sentimentalizes religion " (xxi). Instead, as it emerges from his analysis, the postsecular preserves the best aspects of both religion and secularism, while siding with neither. With a sweep that encompasses literature from India and Sri Lanka, Ratti reads contemporary writers such as Michael Ondaatje, Allan Sealy, Shauna Singh Baldwin, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and Mahasweta Devi as upholding and representing postsecular affirmative values, in the ways that they negotiate instances of violence, communalism, partition and majoritarianism (which often mark the failures of both religion and secularism) through love, friendship, a sense of community and hybridity. Ratti centres his discussions around one novel in each of his seven core chapters (except in the last two chapters where, in one case he reads Rushdie's post-fatwa books together, and in the other analyses Ghosh's The Hungry Tide alongside Devi's novella " Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha "). In each case, his meticulous analysis of the context and politics enriches his reading of the text. In fact, one of the fortes of this impressive and scrupulously-researched book is its interdisciplinarity, and the way that Ratti moves between the lenses of social and cultural criticism, political theory, and literary criticism, to flesh out how it is in literature that the work of the postsecular is actually taking shape. The coda, though succinct, is powerful, and attests to the newness and provocativeness of these thoughts in the Indian and Sri Lankan context. The book also deserves praise for the author's involvement with the project at more than just the literary and theoretical levels. This is reflected in the stories and anecdotes that Ratti reproduces, as well as in the style of writing. The photographs that precede each chapter (taken by the author) are both illustrations of, and apt commentaries on, the content that he discusses in the accompanying chapters. One of the greatest achievements of the book is perhaps the way in which it raises uncomfortable questions about the significance of certain values that we do not question (such as the desirability of secularism, or the enchantment of religion), and forces us to rethink and rework those values. The book remains, to borrow a sentence from the author, " not a manifesto for a new beginning; it is a courageous and modest imagining of how to make a difference " (210): Ratti's book is a compelling demonstration of this imagining.

Language is a major obsession in Indian literature, and Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy is becoming increasingly central to the study of languages in the evolving academic canon of Indian and Indian Ocean literature. But how can we effectively teach these polyglossic novels which feature and flit across more than a dozen recorded and unrecorded, contemporary and ancient languages, in standardized and creolized forms? Should we teach the language aspect of the trilogy with a view to assess the authenticity of each of the words and phrases from the different languages used? Should we teach the novels as subscribing to the needs of the global market, which seems to favour the linguistically experimental style of postcolonial novelists? I suggest here that the language of the Ibis trilogy should be taught as a crucial component of the narrative itself, whereby the trilogy makes a commentary on the politics that it espouses through language. Ghosh does not merely experiment with language in order to represent linguistic diversity and the polylingualism of characters and settings in the texts, but also as a way to rethink and reimagine the power equations between the Anglophone world and the Indian Ocean world that he writes about. Using the 19th century setting to reflect on real time, the trilogy also provides a range of competent deliberations on current and future linguistic mutations, commenting on the strengthening of links between India, China and their Indian Ocean diasporas in the contemporary era. Teachers of the language aspect of the Ibis trilogy therefore have the important task of encouraging readings of the trilogy that move beyond linguistic and etymological analysis, to look at the way in which language politicizes equations in the Indian Ocean, both in the 19th century and now.