Abstract
The work under review is better described as a conglomerate of essays rather than a mere collection. Though diverse in themes, they are closely held together by some growing concerns related to the writing of cultural histories of south Asia. Evidently, this volume has been inspired and energised by new visions and heuristic strategies; at the same time, however, it does not hesitate to express its sense of ‘discomfort with the available repertoire of disembodied practices, dematerialised objects, sovereign subjects and constative statements’ (Introduction, p. 14). As a statement of purpose, this looks pretty dense rather than something readily intelligible. This persuades me to further observe that in trying to meaningfully relate to most essays in this volume, the average reader will be called upon to exhibit at least three benign gifts or qualities. First, there would have to be an extraordinary felicity with the English language to help reduce confounding verbosity to plain and direct expression. 1 A second requirement would be the intellectual wherewithal that could successfully penetrate conceptual walls of considerable thickness. 2 The most pressing requirement though is a close familiarity with anthropological theory emanating mainly in contemporary Anglo-American scholarship. 3 That at least a few essays in this work were written with a non-Indian readership in mind is revealed by the authors having to tell us that ‘Bihar (is) a state in eastern India’ (p. 437) or the need to convert Indian public spending into its equivalent in US$ (p. 145).
Only some essays included in this work, I gather, were among those originally presented at the conference organised by the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC), in January 2010. Conversely, for reasons that I can only speculate upon, not all papers presented at the Conference find their way into this volume. From this it would be reasonable to conclude that the essays finally selected most effectively represented the agenda and academic convictions of the volume editors. The acclaimed ‘newness’ of this volume, as the editors rightly assert, is not simply about novelty in subject-matter but a purposive re-alignment of the ‘social’ and the ‘cultural’ in the writing of cultural histories. The avowed emphasis here is on materiality and practice, relocating objects within the complex processes of material production or even their material use and bringing back into intellectual reckoning, the corporeality of cultural practice. This, the editors hope, will produce a shift away from what is at heart only (the old fashioned) ideational and the representational, linguistic and discursive.
In their editorial introduction, Chatterjee, Guha Thakurta and Kar urge us to not to view cultural practices as mere representation of some cultural concepts as was hitherto commonplace. On the contrary, once fully materialised and embodied, such practices we are assured, turn ‘meaningful and efficacious in themselves’ (p. 15). Quite naturally, the ‘new’ cultural histories as put together for this volume carry an undisguised dissatisfaction with old fashioned intellectual history, allegedly for its narrow anchoring in mere discourse analysis. However, as it would seem, even Marxist cultural history writing is not spared, for, even when grounded in praxis and the processes of material production, these are known to pay little attention to the ‘specific density of objects’ (Introduction, p. 12). On the whole then, the present volume prefers to work along the lines of interrogating ‘public culture’, an expression vitally shaped by Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenbridge in their much celebrated work, Consuming Modernity (1996). It is the domain of this public culture, the editors insist that contestations around materiality and cultural practices are most actively enacted, albeit in vastly differentiated local and national settings. Based on this reading it seems reasonable to say that especially in the context of south Asia, modernity itself becomes a ‘diversely appropriated experience’ (p. 8).
The fourteen essays included in this volume are organised into five sections with each section given a name: Textual, Visual, Aural, Ritual and Spatial. By and large these are appropriate labels, even if somewhat tenuous. For instance, ‘Ritual’, when defined as ‘rule bound practice’ would ill fit Partha Chatterjee’s essay on locating rivalries on the football field between Europeans and Indians within the larger framework of anti-colonial nationalism. Again, while it may be possible to extricate ritual from its association with the religious (Introduction, p. 26), the essay by Gautam Bhadra on Bengali almanacs tends to support the view that rituals associated with everyday praxis are deeply intertwined with matters of religious belief or practice and further, that the religious could often be justly separated from the cultural. I am reliably informed that the Calcutta Christian Trust Society produced their own panjika in 1841 and a Vrihat Mohammadiya Panjika/Mussalmani Panjika was available by 1896–97.
What I attempt further in this review are only brief and brushing introductions to the several essays and their themes. There are two reasons that have led me to do this. First, in a work of this kind, it is always more be more important to critically examine the collective agenda rather than the various ways in which individual essays seek to uphold it. Second, given the number of essays included in this work and their complex narratives, detailed commentaries would take me far beyond the prescribed length of this review.
Under the theme ‘Textual’, we have contributions by Francesca Orsini, who argues that multilingualism (as against mono lingual cultures) was the historically established practice in medieval north India; by Prachi Deshpande, who deals with the manipulative shifts in the use of documents inscribed in the Modi script and by Rosinka Chaudhuri, who brings out the realism in poems of Iswar Gupta (1811–58), a talented if also conservative literary figure from nineteenth century Bengal. Speaking of poetic realism, I was a little puzzled to find Chaudhuri omit a couplet from Gupta that some take to be quintessentially his. This couplet, reportedly written as a child, complains of how daily life in contemporary Calcutta was mostly taken up in combating flies during the day and mosquitoes at night! I also thought that Chaudhuri did not stress enough the self-conflicted opinion of Bankimchandra on the poetic qualities of Iswar Gupta. In any case, perhaps Bankim was not entirely typical of the bhadralok response to the poet since some subtly different opinions were also articulated, one exactly around the same time as Bankim by the writer–journalist, Akshay Chandra Sarkar (in the paper, Sadharani, 1885) and the other, some twenty years later, by Durgadas Lahiri in his classic Bangalir Gaan (1905).
The section ‘Visual’ has essays by Tapati Guha Thakurta, who reveals the interesting autonomy that architectural replicas and recreations assume over time in respect of the original; by Christopher Pinney, who suggests new ways of looking at the relationship between the material and the cultural, between an image and the discourse that gathers around it; and by Kajri Jain, who unfolds the fascinating iconopraxis that is employed in the service of Dalit–Chamar self-assertion in post-colonial Uttar Pradesh.
The section ‘Aural’ has two contributions by Rajan Kurai Krishnan and Lakshmi Subramanian. Of these, the first is a study of cinematic dialogue in advancing claims of political representation by prominent actor–heroes of the Tamil screen. Subramanian, on the other hand, builds upon her earlier work on the disciplining of classical south Indian music, dealing more intensely and insightfully with the public contestations that follow attempts at disciplining cultural performances and practices.
The section ‘Ritual’ has three captivating essays by Gautam Bhadra, Partha Chatterjee (both of which I have briefly referred to earlier) and Bodhisattva Kar. Bhadra traces the genealogy of the Bangla printed panjika (almanac) from its humble beginnings in the early nineteenth century to an environment where stiff competition brings about important changes in production style and content. Bhadra’s essay, I felt, was especially enriched by the copious use of illustrations (mostly lithographs from the mid- and late-nineteenth century). Chatterjee dwells on the clash of different styles of playing football employed by Indian and European teams, the former playing barefoot as against the booted European. He also briefly recounts the sensational victory that Mohan Bagan Club secured over a European football team in 1911, the birth of new community-based clubs such as Mohammedan Sporting and the larger political implications that these developments had for contemporary Bengal. Bodhistattva Kar’s study of head hunting among Nagas reveals how both the British colonial state and its successor state used the head as a political metaphor to chastise and control ‘unruly’ tribes.
Finally, there is the ‘Spatial’, once again incorporating three contributions from Swati Chattopadhyay, Sanjay Srivastava and Srirupa Roy respectively. In each of these essays, space is shown to play a critical role in fashioning middle class lifestyles and identities, especially in the metropolitan towns and cities of India. Chattopadhyay studies Art Deco residences of old Calcutta between the 1930s and 1960s, at a time when Bengali middle class lifestyles were subjected to important structural and aesthetic changes. Of particular interest here is her use of ladies journals from the period that offered ways of reorganising domestic space. Srivastava deals with the dynamic at the heart of contemporary urbanisation and somewhat in the manner of Chattopadhyay, makes an intensive study of a particular institution and locale, in this case, the Delhi Land and Finance Company (popularly, DLF), that contributed much towards the commodification of urban real estate in the National Capital Region. Srirupa Roy relates the history of media liberalisation to the mediatised identity politics (the manipulative role of ‘stringers’ who worked for local TV channels) in a small town in Bihar whereby subaltern subjects visibly gain a degree of social mobility.
This body of essays easily overcomes what is often an inherent shortcoming in works of a comparable nature: the unevenness of quality. All essays included are of excellent quality and unevenness, if any, lies not in the analytical skills that the author employs but in the ways in which content and analysis were formulated and sought to be communicated. I remain puzzled by the fact that Chatterjee, whose essay is arguably the most lucid among the essays included in this work should also be associated with an editorial with which this reviewer could proceed only haltingly. It would also be a remiss if I did not mention the ways in which the wealth of illustrations included (over 90 in all) have greatly embellished this work and added to reading pleasure.
The new ought always to lurk behind the old for it is that which rejuvenates and sensitises us equally to our present day shortcomings and to the gravity of the tasks ahead. What is especially heartening about this book is the way most of its intellectual burden has been carried so successfully on the shoulders of scholars who are relatively young. This certainly augurs well for history writing, be this on culture or something else. This work, even though it might raise a few eyebrows or trigger some reaction from those still steeped in conventions is clearly indicative of the shape of things to come. My first task therefore would be to especially alert those who were caught off guard in the present instance only so that they might joyously receive and with greater conviction, what is clearly in the offing.