- Department of Humanities & Social Sciences
National Institute of Technology Silchar
Silchar, Cachar
Assam 788 010
India
Avishek Ray
NIT Silchar, Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty Member
- B.A., Comparative Literature M.A., Comparative Literature PhD, Cultural Studies My research uses the figure of t... moreB.A., Comparative Literature
M.A., Comparative Literature
PhD, Cultural Studies
My research uses the figure of the ‘vagabond’ as a case study to illustrate how ‘modern’ perceptions of the ‘vagabond’ have depleted the diversity in ‘pre-modern’ cultures of itinerancy. I argue that the paranoia towards the ‘vagabond’ was inherited from the West out of the colonial contact leading to the birth of the nation-state and its liaison with ‘instrumental rationality’ during the high noon of advanced industrial capitalism, while (quasi-religious) itinerancy, had always been tolerated in ‘pre-modern’ India. How do we then politically account for the historic ‘ruptures’ in the vagabond being tolerated in the ancient 'Indic' thought [cf. Manusmriti, Arthashastra], encouraged in early Buddhist discourse [cf. Samannaphala Sutta], revered as the ‘holy Other’ in the Medieval period [cf. Bhakti-Sufi literature], but eventually marginalized in the ‘modern’? My research argues that the cultural baggage associated with the expression ‘vagabond’ is a product of a specific Western/Utilitarian value system, which is a distinct ‘cultural’ category of the ‘modern’ West that had no resonance in ‘premodern’ India, and hence cannot be necessarily universalizable.edit
How we perceive a certain concept is grounded in the 'language game': the values, prejudices, dispositions, and cultural baggage among its interpretive communities. In other words, there is no 'true meaning' inherent in a word per se;... more
How we perceive a certain concept is grounded in the 'language game': the values, prejudices, dispositions, and cultural baggage among its interpretive communities. In other words, there is no 'true meaning' inherent in a word per se; rather the meaning is derived out of what Derrida (1993) calls the 'chain' of signifi cation: the context, history, contingency, and often semantic contradictions that render a word polysemic. Taking off from here, this paper seeks to unpack the social 'constructivism' immanent in the a priori assumptions that cloak the idea of the 'vagabond'. While invoking the contingency in the genesis and semantic history of 'vagabond' as a case study, this paper illustrates how meanings of certain heuristic concepts-in this case, 'vagabond', without a fi xed referent-are often (re)confi gured, not because of reasons entirely linguistic, but rather due to changes in the prevailing epistemic paradigms.
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With the 'increasing formalization of knowledge,' ‘modern’ education/pedagogy inherited a separation between the study of ‘natural worlds’ (material/biotic) and the ‘world of humans.’ As a result, natural sciences (study of... more
With the 'increasing formalization of knowledge,' ‘modern’ education/pedagogy inherited a separation between the study of ‘natural worlds’ (material/biotic) and the ‘world of humans.’ As a result, natural sciences (study of natural worlds) and humanities/social sciences (study of human worlds) have developed as two insulated and divorced bodies of knowledge. This paper argues that this natural/human science binary is typical product of Rationalist western modernity and has no resonance whatsoever in context to 'pre-modern' India. The paper shows how this separation instituted during the Enlightenment was readily adopted in colonial Bengal within historical milieu that fueled interest in positivist-empiricist science.
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This is Bangla translation of the Iranian film-maker Tehmina Milani's interview that originally appeared in English on the PBS website (last accessed December 2007). The piece begins with a translator's foreword: a brief... more
This is Bangla translation of the Iranian film-maker Tehmina Milani's interview that originally appeared in English on the PBS website (last accessed December 2007). The piece begins with a translator's foreword: a brief introduction to Milani, her work and its impact. In the interview, however, Milani talks about her films, her motivations, hardships of going through Iranian censorship, reception of her films by the Iranians at a greater length.
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Whenever we refer to ourselves by means of token-reflexive pronouns, ‘I’ in case of English, the problem is that we tend to assume it yields the same referent both for the narrator and the narratee. But the fact is that the subject is a... more
Whenever we refer to ourselves by means of token-reflexive pronouns, ‘I’ in case of English, the problem is that we tend to assume it yields the same referent both for the narrator and the narratee. But the fact is that the subject is a subject to, and of, others; in fact, it is often an ‘Other’ to others, which also affects its sense of its own subjectivity. Second, the subject is also a subject of knowledge, most familiarly perhaps of the discourse of social institutions that circumscribe its terms of being. Third, the subject is a body that is separate (except for those pregnant) from other (non-)human bodies; and the body, and therefore the subject, is closely dependent upon its physical/cultural environment. The problem with consciousness is that it, unlike all other states, viz. the physical, chemical, biological etc., can be known from the inside as well as from the outside, which is to say some knowledge about ‘I’ is amenable to myself only, while some others to others.This paper examines the ‘gap’ in the dichotomy between the Self been thought of as Heideggerian Dasein – the resolute way of emerging from the anonymity of the mass of ‘they’ – and, as the changing but distilled core of essentially embodied experiences. Now that we are all ‘cyborgs’ (c.f. Harraway) and ‘quasi-objects’ (c.f. Latour), is object-oriented ontologizing of the Self the answer to reducing the Self to objective, non-culturally embedded, neuro-biological generalizables based on a bundle of corporal matter(s)? The Self is not material, but understandably material-dependent. Again, the Self is not entirely subjective/experiential either, but understandably conditioned upon embodied experiences. In that case, the paper speculates the (im)plausibility of an ocular Self: the impact of the ocular on (the materiality of) the Self.
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This article examines ‘instaworthiness’ as a classificatory category in discourses of place-making. It engages in social-semiotic analyses of the selfies clicked at instaworthy cafes and pubs in Kolkata to highlight how the photographic... more
This article examines ‘instaworthiness’ as a classificatory category in discourses of place-making. It engages in social-semiotic analyses of the selfies clicked at instaworthy cafes and pubs in Kolkata to highlight how the photographic performativity of selfie-taking reconfigures the notions of placemaking. It accounts for: how is an ‘instaworthy’ spot made and consumed? What ramifications does showcasing the self within these specific sites have upon perceptions of identity, both of the self and the space in question? In locating photographic practices of selfies within the wider shifts of the heuristics of ‘instaworthiness’, this article teases out how the self interacts with a diverse range of non-human actors toward conferring visual apartness upon certain spaces. Thus, producing and circulating selfies as a performance warrant thinking through how discourses of the self and that of spatiality co-constitute each other.
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Hinduism, in the writings of Indian (Hindu) intelligentsia in the nineteenth century and beyond, right from Radhakrishnan to Amartya Sen, has been eulogistically portrayed as very tolerant and receptive of other religions-cultures. No... more
Hinduism, in the writings of Indian (Hindu) intelligentsia in the nineteenth century and beyond, right from Radhakrishnan to Amartya Sen, has been eulogistically portrayed as very tolerant and receptive of other religions-cultures. No knowledge is ever neutral; rather it serves the purpose of those who produce it. This article, therefore, re-examines these (often hyperbolic) claims and the underlying motivations involved therein. This is not however to say Hinduism is/was intolerant. But the objective of the paper is to scrutinize the politics of the truth claim in saying that Hinduism is tolerant and the nature of identity politics inherent therein. The article demonstrates ‘how one [read: the ‘modern-secular’ Indian] construes oneself in the present expresses the continuity between how one construes oneself as one was in the past and how one construes oneself as one aspires to be in the future’. (Weinreich & Saunderson, 2004: 120) It points to how in the collective memory (of the ...
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of the work’, while Rashid imputes this to the Taliban’s ‘way of thinking’ (front and back covers). By attributing the Taliban’s emergence to convenient alliances with notorious warlords, drug barons and al-Qaeda, Zaeef’s work stands as a... more
of the work’, while Rashid imputes this to the Taliban’s ‘way of thinking’ (front and back covers). By attributing the Taliban’s emergence to convenient alliances with notorious warlords, drug barons and al-Qaeda, Zaeef’s work stands as a historical corrective for many analyses that often highlight their apocalyptical ideology. He reveals more about their modus operandi and motives but, most tellingly, their willingness to seek support from anybody whether single radical groups or global terrorists to further their cardinal cause. For this reviewer, however, there is more to Zaeef’s professions than the yearnings for the Taliban’s selfless imposition of an arcane socio-cultural credo: consolidating the Deobandi-Ghilzai domination over Durrani elites and other Turkic-Shi’a minorities, while reaching out to the broader Arab World, to the United States, China, Russia, or Iran, whichever patron served the cause. Labouring over a key point about the Taliban’s (or Zaeef’s) standing above the squabbling, corrupt Mujahedeen or Northern Alliance warlords and immunity from the vices of diplomacy or worldly gains, the casual reader may empathize with post-2001 Afghan tragedies, with the Taliban’s fatalism, or Zaeef’s idealism. Whether it is Reuben’s determinism: ‘Do I need to be this man’s enemy? ... But the world where Zaeef and I cannot live in peace is not the world I want to inhabit’; or Jonathan Steel’s refusal to challenge the Taliban as ‘nationalists, reformers and liberators rather than Islamist ideologues’. Serious readers cannot dismiss Zaeef before demanding that he answer Reuben’s cardinal question: ‘what Zaeef and those like him, would do if they once again had access to power’ (p. xxxviii).
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The experience of the Partition (1947)—the contexts of migration and the experience of refugeehood—in East-India is assumed to be different from that in the West. But, even after some 70 years after the Partition, there has been no... more
The experience of the Partition (1947)—the contexts of migration and the experience of refugeehood—in East-India is assumed to be different from that in the West. But, even after some 70 years after the Partition, there has been no substantial study on the difference in the ontology of refugeehood across the two sites. More to it, narratives from the North-east (Meghalaya, Assam, Tripura), which again differ significantly from their western Indian or West Bengali counterparts, are under-represented in the existing database of oral narratives and ethnographies on the Partition. Departing from here, this paper engages in a critical comparative study—across three spatial axes: western India, West Bengal, and North-east India—of the third generation’s experience of “growing up refugee” in India. It offers a nuanced, but empirically-grounded, insight on how memories and narratives of the Partition are grounded in the linguistic registers of those who “grew up refugee” (not the refugees p...
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Caught between a serious dichotomy: whether to believe in western Enlightenment as a panacea, or to ‘re-invoke’ ethnic-cultural indigeneity, the nineteenth century ‘Indian’ intelligentsia started to fence off an assorted chunk of their... more
Caught between a serious dichotomy: whether to believe in western Enlightenment as a panacea, or to ‘re-invoke’ ethnic-cultural indigeneity, the nineteenth century ‘Indian’ intelligentsia started to fence off an assorted chunk of their heterogeneous inheritance in the name of the ‘folk’ towards historicizing a ‘presentable’ past to re-inscribe their (racial) identity brutally thwarted in the thoroughly racist ‘outer domain’. This paper questions the legitimacy of folklore as a discipline and seeks to understand the politics of in/exclusion in the ‘order of things’ of the canon of ‘Bangla Literary History’. Pointing to the contestation on the ‘literary’ worth of what has been in/excluded in the canons officialized by two rival schools spearheaded respectively by Dineshchandra and Sukumar Sen, the paper sheds light on the stakes in the nineteenth ‘literary historians' sanitizing the corpus of (Bangla) literature against ‘folk’ literature and argues that it is symptomatic of their 'exclusionary' identity politics in their envisioning of 'Bengali' as an 'imagined community'.
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In December 2019, the Indian parliament implemented the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that gives non-Muslim immigrants from the neighboring countries an easy access to Indian citizenship. Across India, the CAA has garnered support and... more
In December 2019, the Indian parliament implemented the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that gives non-Muslim immigrants from the neighboring countries an easy access to Indian citizenship. Across India, the CAA has garnered support and provoked protests in equal measure. This paper examines how #SupportCAA constantly negotiates between two parallel objectives: first, to achieve a pan-national unification of non-Muslim “Indians” (practically, Hindus); and second, to reconfigure India as a site for the pan-Hindutva communion against the Muslim Other. It seeks to understand: How does #SupportCAA as a platform furnish pan- Hindutva discourses, while rendering agency to an “imagined community” of pan-national CAA supporters? How do the CAA ideologues function as “networked publics,” and then go on to territorialize certain online spaces/fora? What does the CAA bequeath to the “imagined community” in question? What vocabulary of political partisanship does such territorialization furnish? How does it draw on the discourses of religious nationalism and remain nearly impervious to any dissent?
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শরৎচনদর চটটোপাধযায়, যিনি কিনা গোটা ভারতে না হলেও অনততপকষে বাংলায়, তার সময়ের জনপরিয়তম কথাসাহিতযিক, তার সাহিতয বিষয়ে পনরালোচনাই এই পরবনধের উদদেশয। হামেশাই তার সাহিতযকে সোশযালিসট এবং (সেই কারণেই) পরগতিবাদী তকমা দেওয়া হ’লেও, এই নিবনধের... more
শরৎচনদর চটটোপাধযায়, যিনি কিনা গোটা ভারতে না হলেও অনততপকষে বাংলায়, তার সময়ের জনপরিয়তম কথাসাহিতযিক, তার সাহিতয বিষয়ে পনরালোচনাই এই পরবনধের উদদেশয। হামেশাই তার সাহিতযকে সোশযালিসট এবং (সেই কারণেই) পরগতিবাদী তকমা দেওয়া হ’লেও, এই নিবনধের বকতবয, শরৎসাহিতয আসলে বেশ অনিশচয়তায় ভোগা। কষমতাহীনের পরতি অবিচার, দরবলের যনতরনা, হিনদ গোড়ামির কফল, সমাজচযতদের পরতি বৈষমযর মতো বিষয় নিয়ে লিখলেও, নিজের শরেণী এবং জাতের অবসথান থেকে নিজসব বাধা ছিল তার।This article revisits the works of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay (1876-1938), arguably the most popular literary practitioner of his time in Bengal, if not India. Often projected as socialist and (hence) progressive, Chattopadhyay's works, this paper argues, are in fact very ambivalent. His works do address the injustice to the powerless, the suffering of the weak, the ills of Hindu conservatism, the discrimination towards the outcasts, but he too has restraints arising out of his class-caste location.
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কাকে বলব ‘লোক’, বাংলা সাহিতযের মলধারায় তাদের জায়গা আদৌ হবে কিনা, এই বিষয়ে দিনেশচনদর সেন এবং সকমার সেন, বাংলা সাহিতযের দই মসত ঐতিহাসিকের পরসপরবিরোধী বিচারই এই পরবনধের মল দরষটবয বিষয়। এই পরবনধের বকতবয, বসততপকষে, তাদের ‘হযাবিটাস’(বরদিও-র কথা... more
কাকে বলব ‘লোক’, বাংলা সাহিতযের মলধারায় তাদের জায়গা আদৌ হবে কিনা, এই বিষয়ে দিনেশচনদর সেন এবং সকমার সেন, বাংলা সাহিতযের দই মসত ঐতিহাসিকের পরসপরবিরোধী বিচারই এই পরবনধের মল দরষটবয বিষয়। এই পরবনধের বকতবয, বসততপকষে, তাদের ‘হযাবিটাস’(বরদিও-র কথা ধার করেই যদি বলা যায়) থেকে তারা যেভাবে বাংলাকে একটা ‘কালপনিক গোষঠী’র আদলে কলপনা করছেন, সেটাই ছায়া ফেলছে তাদের বাংলা সাহিতযের ঐতিহাসিকায়ন সংকরানত বোঝাপড়া এবং তার পরচেষটার ওপর। সমসত পরসপরবিরোধিতা সততবেও, (বাংলা) সাহিতয আর ‘লোক’এর উচচাবচটা তারা সমসবরে মেনে নিচছেন। পাশচাতয এপিসটেমোলজিকাল কাঠামো অনসরণ করে ধরেই নিচছেন যে এটা ‘এপরায়োরাই’ বা বিচারের উরদধে।This paper shows how Dineshchandra and Sukumar Sen, two towering historians of Bangla literature, contradicted in their assessment of what they purportedly called 'folk' elements and in their opinion of whether it should be included in the canon of Bangla literature. The paper argues that what they envisaged the ‘Bengali' as an 'imagined community’ from their respective ‘habitus’, to borro...
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How law perceives the world is often grounded in systems of values and beliefs adopted by the legal practitioners: their interpretive frameworks, prejudices and dispositions, which shape the very ‘paradigms’ upon which they choose to see... more
How law perceives the world is often grounded in systems of values and beliefs adopted by the legal practitioners: their interpretive frameworks, prejudices and dispositions, which shape the very ‘paradigms’ upon which they choose to see the ‘facts’ and frame their methods of inquiries. In other words, ‘truth’ in the eyes of the law is but ex post facto (re)construction of ‘reality’ achieved through narratorial articulation of relevant events and chosen facts. Taking off from here, this article sets out to understand: how do we unpack the social ‘constructivism’ of the a priori assumptions that cloak the idea of the ‘vagabond’ in the legal imagination? How does law ‘frame’ the vagabond as a subset within the ‘human’? What conflates this idea with the notion of the ‘abject’? Why at all is vagabondage perceived as a punishable in the eyes of the law? Invoking a few case studies, both from India and beyond, this article points to the arbitrariness in the juridico-political imagination and the ambiguity in the legal articulation of the ‘vagabond’.
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The promise of ‘Digital India’ has, on the one hand, supplied a new vocabulary of political participation, and, on the other hand, consolidated techniques of statist control. Taking off from here, this article examines the constituency of... more
The promise of ‘Digital India’ has, on the one hand, supplied a new vocabulary of political participation, and, on the other hand, consolidated techniques of statist control. Taking off from here, this article examines the constituency of the Hindutva discourse online, and how the performativity of Hindutva reconfigures the digital public sphere. It seeks to understand: How do the ideologues of Hindutva territorialize certain online spaces? How does the Internet equip them with new imaginations and vocabulary of political partisanship? How does this provoke the political Other—the counterpublics—against which their identity is recast and amplified? These three questions constitute the central problematic of the article.
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This article reflects on the dissenting act of mobility as articulated by migrant workers in India, who, during the nationwide lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, are walking back home, hundreds of miles away, in lieu of public... more
This article reflects on the dissenting act of mobility as articulated by migrant workers in India, who, during the nationwide lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, are walking back home, hundreds of miles away, in lieu of public transport. Their mobility—precisely, the act of walking—has thus acquired a metaphoric status, and laid bare the ideological practices of territorializing the city-space. This article argues that the migrant worker’s mobility, from within the axiomatic of the prevalent “mobility regime,” can be read as a powerful metaphor of our tensions within the global political-economic order that the pandemic has so starkly exposed. The article provokes less literal, but more literary, understandings of mobilities in general, in order to come to grips with the manifold contradictions, paradoxes, and counteractions in the way the world moves.
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Zygmunt Bauman invokes the trope of vagrancy, wherein the "vagabonds" are squarely juxtaposed with the "tourists" who are, in sum, the global elite. For him, there are no vagabonds, they are only forced to be. This... more
Zygmunt Bauman invokes the trope of vagrancy, wherein the "vagabonds" are squarely juxtaposed with the "tourists" who are, in sum, the global elite. For him, there are no vagabonds, they are only forced to be. This article questions Bauman's classificatory categories, his dualistic views, and the explanatory apparatus of the "voluntary-versus-involuntary travel." If "vagabond" de facto means involuntary traveler, where in Bauman's schema are we going to place those itinerants—particularly, in the context of South Asia—who self-assert, and quite eloquently so, to be "vagabonds"? Using India as a case study, this article demonstrates how the trope of the vagabond has been perpetually leveraged—by certain political dissenters—to articulate a nonroutinized, noninstrumental, rhizomatic-style traveling, and by extension, political dissidence in the face of statist techniques of demographic control. Thinking in these terms, the imag...
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Despite the statist imagination of the ‘nomad’ pitted against an overtly instrumental understanding of space, ‘modern’ techniques of statist demographic control, and increasing surveillance on mobility, the trope of nomadology in the... more
Despite the statist imagination of the ‘nomad’ pitted against an overtly instrumental understanding of space, ‘modern’ techniques of statist demographic control, and increasing surveillance on mobility, the trope of nomadology in the context of India often characterizes ‘the return of the repressed’. The Buddhists in the Ancient, the Bhakti‐Sufi practitioners in the Medieval, and certain anti-imperialist ideologues in the Modern have perpetually latched on to the trope to articulate political dissidence. Thinking in these terms, the invocation of nomadology in Critical Theory ‐ by Deleuze and Guattari, Rosi Braidotti, Michel de Certeau and Edward Said, among others ‐ alluding to non-conformity, non-linearity and political subversion, has an intellectual history that is often purportedly grounded onto ‘India’. My article will explore how the dichotomy between the ‘good’ wanderer and the ‘bad’ wanderer in the ‘Indian tradition’ was premised upon a highly contingent process of religio-...
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How we perceive a certain concept is grounded in the ‘language game’: the values, prejudices, dispositions, and cultural baggage among its interpretive communities. In other words, there is no ‘true meaning’ inherent in a word per se;... more
How we perceive a certain concept is grounded in the ‘language game’: the values, prejudices, dispositions, and cultural baggage among its interpretive communities. In other words, there is no ‘true meaning’ inherent in a word per se; rather the meaning is derived out of what Derrida (1993) calls the ‘chain’ of signifi cation: the context, history, contingency, and often semantic contradictions that render a word polysemic. Taking off from here, this paper seeks to unpack the social ‘constructivism’ immanent in the a priori assumptions that cloak the idea of the ‘vagabond’. While invoking the contingency in the genesis and semantic history of ‘vagabond’ as a case study, this paper illustrates how meanings of certain heuristic concepts – in this case, ‘vagabond’, without a fi xed referent – are often (re)confi gured, not because of reasons entirely linguistic, but rather due to changes in the prevailing epistemic paradigms.