Mobilizing India , livre ebook

285

pages

English

Ebooks

2006

Écrit par
Niranjana Tejaswini Niranjana

Publié par
Duke University Press

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285

pages

English

Ebooks

2006

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

12 octobre 2006

Nombre de lectures

EAN13

9780822388425

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

Descendants of indentured laborers brought from India to the Caribbean between 1845 and 1917 comprise more than forty percent of Trinidad's population today. While many Indo-Trinidadians identify themselves as Indian, what "Indian" signifies-about nationalism, gender, culture, caste, race, and religion-in the Caribbean is different from what it means on the subcontinent. Yet the ways that "Indianness" is conceived of and performed in India and in Trinidad have historically been, and remain, intimately related. Offering an innovative analysis of how ideas of Indian identity negotiated within the Indian diaspora in Trinidad affect cultural identities "back home," Tejaswini Niranjana models a necessary project: comparative research across the global South, scholarship that decenters the "first world" West as the referent against which postcolonial subjects understand themselves and are understood by others.Niranjana draws on nineteenth-century travel narratives, anthropological and historical studies of Trinidad, Hindi film music, and the lyrics, performance, and reception of chutney-soca and calypso songs to argue that perceptions of Indian female sexuality in Trinidad have long been central to the formation and disruption of dominant narratives of nationhood, modernity, and normative sexuality in India. She illuminates debates in India about "the woman question" as they played out in the early-twentieth-century campaign against indentured servitude in the tropics. In so doing, she reveals India's disavowal of the indentured woman-viewed as morally depraved by her forced labor in Trinidad-as central to its own anticolonial struggle. Turning to the present, Niranjana looks to Trinidad's most dynamic site of cultural negotiation: popular music. She describes how contested ideas of Indian femininity are staged by contemporary Trinidadian musicians-male and female, of both Indian and African descent-in genres ranging from new hybrids like chutney-soca to the older but still vibrant music of Afro-Caribbean calypso.

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Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

12 octobre 2006

EAN13

9780822388425

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

Mobilizing

India











 



Women,

Music,

and

Migration

between

India

and

Trinidad *        

       MOBILIZING

INDIA

Printed in the United States of

America on acid-free paper 

Typeset in Quadraat by Tseng

Information Systems, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-

Publication Data appear on the last

printed page of this book.

CONTENTS Acknowledgments*vii *Note on Usage*xi

Introduction*

1‘‘The Indian in Me’’: Studying the Subaltern Diaspora*

2‘‘Left to the Imagination’’: Indian Nationalism and Female Sexuality*

3‘‘Take a Little Chutney, Add a Touch of Kaiso’’: The Body in the Voice*

4Jumping out of Time: The ‘‘Indian’’ in Calypso*

5‘‘Suku Suku What Shall I Do?’’: Hindi Cinema and the Politics of Music*

Afterword: A Semi-Lime*

Notes*

Bibliography*

Index*

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A book that has been so long in the making * accumulates debts without number. My initial visit to the Caribbean was made possible by the Homi Bhabha Fellowships Council. A crucial follow-up visit was en-abled by grants from the Indian Council for Social Science Research and the University of Hyderabad faculty travel fund. The Sephis Programme for South–South Research pro-vided generous support for the research and travel, and I am especially grateful to Ulbe Bosma and Ingrid Goedhart for their warm and friendly assistance. Additional library work in the United States was supported by fellowships from the Chicago Humani-

ties Institute at the University of Chicago and the International Institute at the University of Michigan. The ﬁnal manuscript emerged out of a writing grant from the Prince Claus Fund, where Geerte Wachter and Els van der Plaas oﬀered timely support. The music collaboration project I embarked on in  also beneﬁted from the fund’s innovative grant-making policies. Rohini Nilekani of the Aarghyam Trust, Bangalore, provided additional ﬁ-nancial assistance for the music project. The research and writing of the book would not have been possible without reprieves from my teaching and administrative duties, ﬁrst at the Department of English, University of Hyderabad, and then at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Ban-galore. A semester at Yonsei University, Seoul, also gave me much needed time for revisions. Arguments from the book have been presented in many places: Banga-lore, Beijing, Cape Town, Chennai, Chicago, Durban, Hong Kong, Hyder-abad, Kingston, Kochi, Mumbai, New Delhi, New York, Palo Alto, Rio de Janeiro, Santa Cruz, Seoul, Shimoga, and Taipei. I have only myself to blame if I have not made full use of my interlocutors’ suggestions. I express my deep appreciation to Arjun Appadurai, Homi Bhabha, James Cliﬀord, Nicholas Dirks, and Mahmood Mamdani for their intellectual and institutional support, and to Stephen Chan, Akhil Gupta, Miriam Hansen, Kim Hyun Mee, Sheldon Pollock, Arvind Rajagopal, J. S. Sadananda, , andfor hosting presentations of material from my ongoing research. I am indebted to Brinsley Samaroo for discussions about Trinidad politics and refreshing drives through the countryside; Rawwida Baksh-Soodeen, Kusha Haraksingh, Merle Hodge, Kenneth Parmasad, Rhoda Red-dock, and Cathy Shepherd for their stimulating conversations and keen interest in my work; to Gordon Rohlehr for helping me understand the time-space of calypso; to Hubert Devonish and Patricia Mohammed for sending me oﬀ to Trinidad in search of chutney winers; and to those Trinidadians who consented to be interviewed and whose words enrich my analyses. My thanks to the library staﬀ of the West Indiana collection at the Uni-versity of the West Indies, St. Augustine, and to the staﬀ at the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action, Tunapuna, for their prompt and eﬃcient assistance. For oﬀering their friendship and making me feel at home in the Carib-bean, and for endless hours of fascinating discussion, my inadequate thanks ACKNOtWoLESDhGeiMlEaNTRSampersad, whose own work on race and gender in Trinidad has

viii *

been inspiring; to Christopher Cozier, whose artistic practice has illumi-nated for me the trajectory of Caribbean nationalisms; to Sheila Samiel, who apart from great conversation provided Jamaican Blue Mountain cof-fee in Port of Spain; to Kirk Meighoo, who was a rich source of ideas, jokes, and contacts in my early forays; to Vasanti Boochoon, whose quiet presence and warm hospitality I turned to time and again; to Carolyn Cooper, whose work on sexuality and Jamaican music has been pioneering; and especially to Annie Paul, for all the innumerable occasions on which she has been indispensable. My gratitude to those who read drafts of the manuscript and provided aﬀectionate but trenchant criticism: Uma Maheshwari Bhrugubanda, Nadi Edwards, Naresh Fernandes, Mary John, Ritty Lukose, Ding Naifei, Seeman-thini Niranjana, Rekha Pappu, and S. V. Srinivas, and to the Anveshi Re-search Centre for Women’s Studies—in particular, Susie Tharu—for space to try out my initial ideas. Thanks to Anita Sharma for the translations of chutney songs, to P. Rad-hika for painstakingly transcribing my interviews, to H. M. Ali for valuable technical assistance, and to Malathi de Alwis and Indira Chowdhury for helping me obtain rare material. Warm thanks to Ashok Dhareshwar for pit stops, and for his interest in all kinds of music. Surabhi Sharma was willing to be drawn into my enthusiasm and script a ﬁlm from my Caribbean dreams. The Caribbean posse—George Jose, Suresh Rajamani, R. V. Ramani—gamely wandered around Jamaica and Trinidad with me. Carla Foderingham and Romita Bocas of the Tourism and Industrial Development Corporation provided invaluable assistance with the ﬁlm production in Trinidad, as did Sonjah and Jalani Niaah in Jamaica. My thanks to the Copyright Organisation of Trinidad and Tobago for help with copyright issues. Remo Fernandes’s enthusiasm for the Caribbean set me oﬀ on a new track. I record here my continuing appreciation for his brilliant music and his brave negotiation of a diﬃcult journey. Warm thanks to Rikki Jai for his sparkling performative presence in my project; to Drupatee Ramgoonai for the gracious interviews; to Ataklan for taking us through Laventille and introducing us to rapso; to Denise Belfon for showing us how to wine; and to Mungal Patasar for his many insights into Trinidadian music. I am also indebted to Rishi Gayadeen and Kapil Gayadeen of the Gayatones and to Kenny Phillips and Kasey Phillips of Music Lab for helping me understand the setting of contemporary music

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ix *

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