Notes on Risley's Census of 1901: Caste and Race as a Locale for categorization by Moksh Kalra

ABSTRACT:

This essay seeks to understand the classificatory regime of the British Colonial State through a close reading of the 1901 Census, with particular focus on themes of Race and Caste. Through an understanding of the anatomical and enumerative nature of Orientalism as propounded by Edward Said, one can discern how the colonial state was constantly engaged in “the particularising and dividing of things Oriental into manageable parts.” The seminal essay on the Indian Census by Bernard Cohn sought to demonstrate how the Census was fundamental in objectifying cultural, social and linguistic differences within Indian society. He argued that this particular enumerative modality provided “an arena for Indians to ask questions about themselves” which transformed the unconscious into a conscious category identity. This further created “conditions for strategies of mobility, status politics and electoral struggle in India.”.

The Colonial State required a sense of a “controllable indigenous reality” which was provided through the sense of abstraction that enumeration allowed for. Arjun Appadurai locates the Indian Census and the British obsessiveness with enumeration in context of the recent historical experience of literacy for the colonial elite.

However, this process of objectification encountered an indigenous system of classification,

which Appadurai argues seemed “virtually invented by some earlier, indigenous system of

orientalism” that valorized group difference. Appadurai contends that caste as it came to be

understood in Modern India was the result of the confluence of two different knowledge

systems: the Brahminical and the Colonial. Oriental essentializing was thus contingent on the

fact that both theories of difference perceived “bodies of certain groups are the bearers of

social difference and moral status.”.

Author: Moksh Kalra

Full Paper: Notes on Risley's Census of 1901: Caste and Race as a Locale for categorization

Exploring the Complex Gendering of Cookbooks in Colonial India by Srishti Snehal

ABSTRACT:

The paper seeks to analyse the aspect of gender consciousness present in the culinary history of India. The author will briefly examine the ancient and medieval culinary spaces before delving into the numerous cookbooks that were published in colonial India to trace women’s history. While the central audience of these cookbooks were the emerging middle class Indian women, yet, in the public and professional spheres it was, in fact, the men who dominated these spaces. In a growing nation, cookbooks (such as those of Yashoda Devi) also revealed the innate connection that existed between food and nutrition. Moreover, factors such as caste and class discrimination have pervaded the discourse of culinary practices in India.

The work of the women was tied to the kitchen and inevitably, to the traditional domestic spaces. The cookbooks were part of a larger phenomenon that seeked to restrict women’s roles to those of wife, mother and homemaker. To go further was neither encouraged nor entertained. Such statements can be corroborated through famous cookbooks such as Pak Chandrika written by a male author which contains chapters like “the most important task of the housewife”. Alternatively, there were also instances of cookbooks being published by certain women’s groups and it is these sources that help in reconstructing a more nuanced history of gender roles. The paper will further examine the difference in expectations held for the British “memsahibs” as opposed to the Indian women. By questioning the foundation that these cookbooks were built on, the paper attempts to examine the role of women in the private and public spheres.

Author: Srishti Snehal

Full Paper: Exploring the Complex Gendering of Cookbooks in Colonial India

Situating Dalit Women in Grassroot Politics: Channar Revolt and the struggle for a Dignified Life

ABSTRACT:

Dalit women in India have had a long history of suppression and of leading lives of routine indignity and humiliation. The ‘Breast Tax’ (Mulakkaram or mula-karam in Malayalam), imposed on the lower caste, Dalit women by the Kingdom of Travancore (in present-day Kerala) if they wanted to cover their breasts in public, was one of the many ways of oppressing them. This indignity on the part of the dominant castes culminated into one of the most significant Dalit as well as female revolts in history – The Channar Lahala or the Channar revolt (also called the Maru Marakkal Samaram) - a relentless struggle of the Nadar climber women of Travancore for their right to wear upper-body garments. This historic revolt made news a few years ago, in the CBSE’s infamous decision (2016) to remove the section titled ‘Caste, Conflict and Dress Change’ from its social science curriculum, by labeling it as “objectionable content”. This amounted to an attempt to erase the history of this crucial movement. In this paper, I seek to examine the role played by Dalit women against casteism as well as male dominance, through the lens of the Channar Revolt, as well as their erasure from the pages of history.

Author: Shambhavi Jha

Full Paper: Situating Dalit Women in Grassroot Politics: Channar Revolt and the struggle for a Dignified Life