English

The article analyses the multiple and contrasting realities present in the city of Delhi as depicted in Tabish Khair's novel An Angel in Pyjamas. In the novel, the city serves as a canvas for a profound exploration of human experiences. Set against the backdrop of contrasting landscapes of a fictional small town Phansa and the metropolis of Delhi, Khair delves into the complexities of urban life. This article explores the novel's multilinear narrative and geographical settings, which provide readers with an intimate understanding of the characters' mindsets, dreams, and aspirations, shaped by the unique essence of their places of origin. The two central characters in the novel, young journalist Yunus and naïve migrant Sukhbir, exemplify the various facets of Delhi's allure and complexity. This article explores the allure and contradictions of the city, where hope and despair coexist, through the lens of the characters' dreams, despair, and illusions.

This book has its origin in increasing usage of the word Bhakt in Indian public discourse, especially in relation to the political following. Bhakt, originally implies a devotee, a spiritual seeker of God. However, its contemporary usage in Indian public discourse has nothing to do with its etymological meaning. Rather it refers to the hyper-active followers of any political leader. Political bhakti, which is perhaps equivalent to political fandom, initially intended to constitute the core argument of this book. However, there are other kinds of bhaktis as well, which were originally planned to be a part of this book. The spiritual fandom of trans-national and regional babas/gurus (spiritual leaders) — which differs from the membership of organised religions like Hinduism, Islam or Christianity in its nature and structure— along media fandoms of ‘superstars’ from the cinema and cricket and the emotional over-investment of the audience in the consumerist culture of today, originally intended to constitute the fundamental premise of fandom discourse in India. Despite its limitations, the focus of the book has been throughout on understanding the fandom as a phenomenon and how it has found expression in the Indian public sphere.

The present paper is an endeavour to examine the nature of censorship. It is divided into three sections: the first section explores the definitional and historical aspects of censorship; the second section tries to look at the question of censorship vis a vis free speech; and the final section takes into account the rationale of film censorship in Bollywood. Through critical reflections on the nature of censorship and free speech by John Milton, J. S. Mill, Michel Foucault and Stanley Fish, the paper examines the tensions between the acceptable and the unacceptable in public culture. The paper not only explores what constitutes/curbs free speech in general, but also discusses the factors contributing to film censorship in Hindi cinema in particular. The paper argues that film censorship is mediated by the state, market and community in India.

Literary islands are rarely neutral. Their textual representation is marked by ambivalence and discursivity. Many of these 'literary islands' are both associated with savagery and wilderness, or with scenic beauty and immeasurable natural abundance. Such a binary construction of literary islands has been quite common in European literature. This paper is an endeavour to examine the representation of the island trope in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and William Golding's postwar masterpiece Lord of the Flies. The paper intends to offer a theoretical understanding into Euro-American cultural fixation with the island trope, which is laden with cultural/imperial meanings. What I propose in the paper is a postcolonial critique of islomania through Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and William Golding's Lord of the Flies with a view to critique the colonial understanding of civilization and savagery, which foregrounds symbolical and discursive figurations of islands within Western culture.

Mannu Bhandari (1931-2021) is one of the foremost indian novelists and short-story writers. she has been credited to have published four novels, two plays, and nine collections of short stories apart from writing screen plays and children's books. her first novel, ek inch Muskaan (1962), coauthored with the renowned hindi writer Rajendra Yadav, was an experimental story involving a man and two women whose lives crisscross each other. her next novel, aap Ka Bunty (1971), seen through the eyes of the titular child, recounted how a failing marriage and the parents' divorce affects the child. her stories provide unusual expression to the intimate experiences of women and their world. she has forcefully expressed the everyday concerns of postcolonial modern indian women, their search for agency and identity against patriarchal social stranglehold which does not allow them autonomy. Bhandari dares to touch unexplored areas of women's lives, direct and indirect taboos they encounter which are ranged against their emancipation. her creative power lies in the authentic representation of the lives of the middle class women looking for freedom from social and moral constrains. however, Bhandari's writing is not limited to the world of women alone. like other contemporary male writers, Mannu Bhandari has written powerful stories on almost all aspects of human life. this paper is a reading of Mannu Bhandari's third novel Mahabhoj (the great Feast, 1979) and examines how power operates in developing democracies caught between the contrary pulls of tradition and modernity. Borrowing

The objective of this unit is to discuss the impact of the industrialisation and urbanization of Australia as portrayed by Patrick White in his novel The Tree of Man and how it brought significant changes in the social and moral structures of Australia. The unit begins with a brief synoptic history of Australia from its earliest Aboriginal past to the creation of the Commonwealth. The goal is to help students understand the economic and social structures of Australia to better appreciate cultural transformations in the aftermath of the industrial awakening of Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Copyright 2014 by Cristina M. Gámez-Fernández, Om Prakash Dwivedi and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying. recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

Ritual, a reflection of human nature, society, and culture, influences various performance traditions as a form of symbolism, a way of communicating and a vehicle of transformation. Additionally, performance as an embodied process characterizes the constitutive of culture signifying the study of man. This integration of ritual and performance is mirrored in the Chaitra Parva or the Spring Festival, celebrated annually in honor of Lord Shiva, invoking rain. During this ritual worship, the devotees undertake severe austerities through renunciation and self-mortification, and the Chhau dancers incarnate the gods, goddesses, and demons through their highly stylized masked dance. Drawing references to a series of rituals and performances, the present study explores the major events of the last four days of Chaitra Parva and its constitutive performing art of Chhau. The study also involves enquiring about the people of Purulia district in West Bengal and their cultural heritage to provide an empirical grounding to this study. It also introduces the background and context of the Hindu epics and focuses on the myth of Lord Shiva and the history of Shiva temple at Lohoria in Purulia. Finally, through a synthesis of performative rituals, performances and spirituality, the present study shows how the people find meaning, significance, and connection in those ritual rites and performances which bind them together with a sense of cultural identity and belongingness.

Referring to the social and cultural anthropological perspectives and employing a qualitative approach as the primary methodological tool, this PhD dissertation explores the performing art tradition of Chhau in Purulia, West Bengal, as a cultural/performance text. According to Richard Schechner (2006), the performance process as a time-space sequence consists of (1) proto-performance – training, workshop, and rehearsal; (2) performance – warm-up, public performance, events/contexts sustaining the public performance, and cool down; and (3) aftermath – critical responses, archives, and memories. Conflating these three-phase performance sequences, first, the dissertation finds out the correlation between dance habits and restored behavior and analyzes the proto-performance practices of Purulia Chhau. Second, it analyzes the connection between the performative cultures of Chaitra Parva and Purulia Chhau and establishes a synthesis among ritual, performance, and spirituality. It also understands the core performance gist of Purulia Chhau, deriving from the cultures of orality, performativity, and make-believe/make-belief. Third, the dissertation critically looks at the various performance aftermaths such as audience reception, critical responses, archives, memories, new normalization, and women’s innovations that take place in Purulia Chhau.

Due to the ongoing demands of technological inventions and digital storytelling and emerging awareness of Intellectual Property Rights, Purulia Chhau, a tribal, folk, martial, and dance-drama form of Eastern India, had to adapt to the changes in cultural practices, making it a new normal in understanding social, cultural and creative expressions. Therefore, during the onslaught of Covid-19, Purulia Chhau artists invented online performances, brought up contemporary dance repertoires for several awareness programmes, and made various improvisations in their dance movements. Nevertheless, a larger community of Chhau are unable to cope up with this idea of the new normal and cultural shifting, and thus they had to suffer economic losses and find it quite challenging to keep alive their respective dance troupes. In this line of socio-cultural milieu, the present paper seeks to address the challenges faced by the Purulia Chhau communities during Covid-19 and its further consequences. Followed by a select case study, this paper enquires how traditional bearers and producers of Chhau have redefined its intangible cultural heritage during and afterwards the Covid-19. Finally, the paper also aims to pinpoint various cultural changes that took place during Covid-19, which in turn, becomes a new normal as we progress through the pandemic.