Panel Organizers:

Dr. Theo Damsteegt - Kern Institute, Leiden University, the Netherlands
Dr. Diana Dimitrova - Dept of Religious Studies, Michigan State University

Abstract

Papers are invited that discuss the interaction between religion and literature or film in South Asia. The papers are to deal with literary texts (dating from the medieval or modern period) or films that have their origin in the subcontinent and are studied in their original language. Discussions and interpretations should be based on a methodological analysis of the texts and films and consider the effect of narrative or cinematographic techniques on the presentation of the role of religion. Besides offering insight into the views and attitudes of the sources, the papers may also deal with public reactions in South Asia to the texts or films. They may discuss a single text or film, or compare different written texts, or compare films with the literary texts they are based on.

June 27: 14:00-18:30

Tatiana Dubianskaya, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russian Federation
The Concept of Karma: Its Structural Role in "The Skeleton" (Kankal) by Jayashankar Prasad

Karma - the sum of deeds - is one of the key concepts in Indian thought of the late 19th - early 20th cent. Revived and considerably revised by Vivekananda, Aurobindo and other religious thinkers, karma became a significant, if not a central, notion in Hindi literary prose in the first decades of the 20th century (e.g. "Karma-bhumi" by Premchand). The paper seeks to demonstrate the role this philosophical concept plays in Kankāl ("The Skeleton", 1928), the principal novel by Jayashankar Prasad. Prasad's approach to karma seems to be very close to neo-Hinduist: some ideas are most likely to be borrowed from Vivekananda's doctrine of karma-yoga and Aurobindo's conception of karma-yogin. The model character of his novel Yamunā personifies the idea of self-sacrifice and self-denying service (sevā) and truly follows the "way of works". The concept of karma not only proves to be essential part of Prasad's ideology, it also enters largely into the compositional structure of the novel, governing its plot-line building.

Alessandra Consolaro, University of Turin, Angera
Constructed Communal Identities and Religious Discourse in Geetanjali Shree's Hamara Shahar Us Baras

This paper will try to trace the process of construction of communalist identities based on religion as shown in Geetanjali Shree's Hindi novel Hamara Shahar Us Baras, through an analysis of the narrative and of the stylistic devices used by the writer.
Hamara Shahar Us Baras is a literary portrait of the point of view of the academic about nation and the construction of identity in contemporary India. Published in 1998, its plot is set in a town that could be any- and everywhere in north India and in a time that could be any time since the 1980s up to the demolition of the Babri masjid and its aftermath. The characters voice doubts and questions that worry the intelligentsia, all connected to the issue of defining one's own identity in a country where, whether one likes it or not, one is born into a religion and the very concept of citizenship is entwined to religion. The novel raises the issue of how it happens that during the insurgence of communalistic violence, even people who consider themselves as secularists and refuse the contraposition between "us" and "them" end up nolens volens applying it.
Written in a peculiarly fragmented style, the novel refuses the common prejudice according to which communalistic ideas and attitudes regard primarily illiterate or poor people, placing the story in a "privileged" setting that has since long been considered a nest for secular and progressive thinking. A very common assumption has for long been that if Indian intellectuals are not atheist, or agnostic, they do in any case consider religion as a private affair. The interaction of the main three characters of the novel - two intellectuals, who are both university professors, and a professional writer -, depicts the process through which the old secular, pluralistic identity is slowly substituted by a new, communalistic tinged one.

Hannelore Bauhaus-Loetzke, Humboldt University, Dept. of South Asian History
Berlin, Germany
Challenging Religious Bonds: Young Indians Between Disillusionment and Self-Confident Start into a New Life

Challenging religious bonds: young Indians between disillusionment and self-confident start into a new life

The paper will present an analysis of two modern Indian short stories. Both the texts by two well-known Hindi writers deal with young couples who dare to challenge the authority of religious boundaries and rules in their society.
In ‘Talaq ke bad' (1978, After Divorce) by Abdul Bismillah (born 1949) a young Muslim is forced by his father to divorce his wife against his own wish because of her alleged disobedience. For her a miserable time starts at her parental home until one day the young man comes to see her. He finally had decided not to accept the divorce, to leave his parents and start an independent life with his wife. She follows him against the opposition of her family.

Gitanjalisri (born 1957) focuses her short story ‘Belpatra' (1989, Leaves for Sacrifices) upon two college friend, a Hindu and a Muslim girl, who get married against the wish of their families. Both decide to leave their religions totally aside in their relationship. But daily life very soon shows the limits of this enthusiastic approach. Step by step the young woman enters into a state of identity crisis which leaves her mentally disturbed. She finds her only support in thinking back to her former religious ties and becomes completely alienated to her husband who is not able to tolerate this.
The paper will discuss and compare these two Hindi stories which give an impressive depiction of the internal conflicts of the main characters.

Christina Oesterheld, University of Heidelberg, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg, Germany
Religious Identities in Urdu Autobiographies from Pakistan

Pakistan owes its existence to the Two-Nation theory. It has to maintain a distinct religious identity vis-à-vis India to legitimate its very existence. The exact nature of this religious identity, however, has been a matter of constant debate right from the creation of the new state. In the present paper we will not engage in a discussion of the various ideological stands on the question of the role of Islam in Pakistan, but provide a glimpse of facets of individual religiosity in autobiographical texts from Pakistan which were published between 1993 and 2003. The authors - Bashir Ahmad, Mumtaz Mufti, Kishwar Naheed, Azra Abbas and Rashid Amjad - represent different generations and affiliations. Their texts offer an insight in factors such as family background, childhood experiences, social and historical circumstances which help to shape a person's religious outlook. An analysis of these very different texts will also demonstrate the variety of modes and techniques which are employed to deal with personal spirituality and religion as a public phenomenon. Despite pronounced differences in their religious persuasions, the authors share a critical attitude toward the instrumentalisation of religion for political or economic ends and a deep disillusionment with the role of Islam in Pakistan. Nevertheless they reveal divergent perspectives on particular elements of Islam in Pakistan, thus for instance on the role of Sufism as an antidote to ritualistic Islam or as a power factor which helps to manipulate and hold down the poor. In women writers we find an additional feminist perspective on religious identity and religious practice. As an important part of civil society, these writers exemplify the plurality of religious attitudes in Pakistan. At the same time their works are good examples of the richness and the diversity of literary styles in contemporary Urdu literature.

Mariola Offredi, University of Venice, Deptt. Eurasian Studies Lovere (BG), Italy
The Relationships between the Katha Upanishad and Kunwar Narain's Narrative Poem Atmjayi (The Self-conqueror, 1965)

The paper deals with the relationships between the Katha Upanishad and Kunwar Narain's narrative poem Atmjayi (The Self-conqueror, 1965), consisting of 2041 lines which are divided into 28 parts or poems. A few parts of Atmjayi are prefaced by mottos which are actually Sanskrit lines or fragments of lines from the Katha Upanishad, one of the ancient texts in which the story of Naciketa appears. Although the poet himself informs us that there is no close link between these Sanskrit lines and Atmjayi and, indeed, that a "fundamental difference" sometimes exists, they may be seen as a useful guideline for the reader. The story is adapted by the author to his own times, turning Yama into the "fear of death" which man carries within him and transforming the encounter between Naciketa and Yama into a battle between life and death within the inconscious.

Lucy Rosenstein, SOAS, Department of South Asia, London, United Kingdom
The Spiritual Quest in Amrita Bharati's Poetry

Amrita Bharati (b.1939) is one of the most gifted and prolific female poets of her generation: she has written seven books of poetry and a volume of prose. Yet, her name is no currency in the Hindi poetic circles or western scholarship: there are no studies of her poetry and some of her collections are out of print.

This sentence to silence is even more unpalatable when one encounters Amrita Bharati's unique poetic world. Her poetry is a witness to a complex spiritual journey which takes her from a land of intense existential angst, agony and anger to a refuge of serenity where ‘the mind stops' and the anguished protagonist finds her self and ‘Him'. The visionary power of her poetry is all the more astounding as she treads totally new ground. Unlike, her main predecessor - Mahadevi Verma  - whose poetic "I" is a stylised, idealised image of the eternal woman in love, a product of the poet's imagination rather than a reflection of her experience, Amrita Bharati has the  "courage to probe into [the] inner world, and to make it public property".
Amrita Bharati's poetry is undoubtedly informed by her studies of Sanskrit (she did an MA and a PhD in Sanskrit at Benares Hindu University) and her intimate knowledge of Sri Aurobindo's work (she has translated several of his poems in Hindi). Her poems contain numerous references to Vedantic ideas, Tantric images and Krishna bhakti.

This paper will chart Amrita Bharati's spiritual journey by focussing on three of her collections: Mittii par saath saath, ‘Together on earth' (1976), SannaTe me duur tak, ‘Far into the stillness' (1992) and Man ruk gayaa vahaaN ,‘The mind stopped there' (2000) which represent distinct stages of her path. In the process it will investigate Amrita Bharati's use of classical Indian religious thought and imagery.

Gajendra Kumar, University of Agra, Department of English studies and research, Agra, India
Theorising Secularism; Reading Taslima Nasrin's Lajja (Shame) as a Postcolonial Nationalist Representation

The paper aims at making an attempt to read in short, lajja'[shame], a novel by Bangladeshi [settled in India] Muslim writer taslima nasrin, to show how the contemporary literature addresses the discourse/question of secularism in the cultural context of the sub continent. Taking this route, the effort is also to concentrate in short, on the majority/minority syndrome, and its bearings on literary representations. It is worthwhile to note that taslima's discourse questions the causes of religious fundamentalism, and pleads for adopting a more liberal and humanitarian approach to the task of nation-making. her alternative for the menace of majority fundamentalism in Bangladesh is' national [Bengali] identity. relying on various  conflictual and wide ranging attitudes to nationalism in ''postcolonialism'', the paper aims to examine here the use of  nationalism[as a secularist answer to the religious fundamentalism] as a profitable idea, '' as a postcolonial nationalist representation where taslima seems to trust with frantz fanon, that, as with the construction of national consciousness before independence, writers have an important role to play in maintaining this vigilance after the indepedence is achieved.

June 28, 08:30-12:00

Ruth Laila Schmidt, University of Oslo, Department of East European and Oriental Studies, Oslo, Norway
Transformation of a Nagaraja Tale in a Tribal Muslim Society

Indus Kohistan (Pakistan) is a tribal society which has never come under any central government control. It adheres to a strict interpretation of Islam (primarily Deobandism, somewhat modified more recently by Tablighi missionaries from the Punjab). These teachings have taken from women most of the freedoms they enjoyed in the pre-Islamic past. Most girls receive no education, and women do not have decision-making power outside the home. Although women are not veiled, sexual misconduct is punishable by death and normally leads to blood feuds.

I expected traditional oral narratives from Kohistan to ignore women completely, or depict them as passive objects of male actions. I was surprised to find a striking character emerging in some narratives, the wise woman, who correctly understands events, acts independently, and embarks on quests.

This paper performs a narrative and folkloristic analysis of a long folktale or qása transcribed from Kohistani Shina, which features a brave princess who confronts many dangers to rear, then marry, then rescue her snake-fairy prince: first from ordinary bewitchment, then from enchantment in the kingdom of the snake-fairies. The analysis reveals that the core motif of the tale is a Nagaraja tale type, best known from Kashmir and best exemplified by the tale of Nágráy and Himál, recorded by Knowles 1893. In Kashmir, the Nagaraja or Snake King was worshipped; in Kohistan, serpent-worship survives as a constellation of folk beliefs about snake-fairies.

I will discuss (1) the indentification of the tale type, (2) the transformation of the Nagaraja to a fairy, making it less incompatible with Islamic beliefs; (3) the shift in focus from the character of the fairy prince to that of the human princess, and (4) how the teller presents a taboo-breaking tale to an audience educated to observe Deobandi religious norms.

Kathryn Hansen, University of Texas at Austin, Montclair, United States
Ritual Enactment in a Hindi ‘Mythological': Betab's Mahabharat in the Parsi Theatre

This paper analyzes the text and performance history of a Parsi stage version of the Mahabharat, first performed in 1913. I argue that the performance was a significant moment in the evolution of the ‘mythological' genre, foreshading developments in the early cinema. Through a discussion of three rituals enacted in the drama, I show how prior forms are renegotiated to construct an Indian rather than a Hindu national subject. Examination of Betab's narrative innovations yields an understanding of the mythological as productive of radical social change, rather than merely reinforcing the existing social order.

Theo Damsteegt, University of Leiden, Kern Institute, Leiden, The Netherlands
Mahabharata and Emergency: Giriraj Kishore's "Praja Hi Rahne Do"

In 1977, Giriraj Kishore's drama "Praja hi rahne do" was published in book form. Like several other Hindi dramas written after 1947, foremost among them Dharmvir Bharati's "Andha yug", it is based on the Mahabharata and its questions of right conduct. In this paper, both the contents and the technique of the play will be analysed, and considered within the context of the author's other work, especially his dramas. The contents of "Praja hi rahne do", written and first performed during the Emergency (1975-1977), feature the themes of a ruler's responsibility, seen within the frame of Yudhisthira losing his dharm and satya while waging war; and the injustice of the class system and the necessity of a new relationship between ruler and subjects. In contrast to the Mahabharata, it is primarily Draupadi who verbalizes thse themes. As for dramatic technique and the way it contributes to the presentation of the contents, characterisation will be ana!
 lysed, as well as (as far as possible in a short paper) the dialogues with regard to features such as speech functions, coherence, turn-taking, politeness, the role of soliloquies, and vocabulary.

Diana Dimitrova, Michigan State University, Dept of Religious Studies, East Lansing, United States
Gender and Religion in Bollywood Film

The proposed paper will explore the intersections of religion and film. I will deal with the films as narrative texts, and will focus on the interpretation of gender and Hinduism in film. I will examine whether traditional notions of the feminine are endorsed or subverted. Some of the most recent Bollywood films that I will deal with are: Ham apke hain kaun  (Who am I to You), Khalnayak (Villain), Dil cahta hai (The Heart Wants), Devdas (Devdas), Candni (Candni), Ham Dil De Cuke sanam (I Have Already Given My Heart Away). All these recent films were blockbuster hits in India and have also won prizes abroad. It is characteristic of the films that no matter how "modern" the subject matter is the notion of the feminine is mostly conservative and traditional. How can we explain this fascination for traditional archetypes of the feminine? The paper will examine the ideological implications of the representation of gender and will also address questions of orientalism, colonialism and post-colonialism, and the ensuing conservative remythologization of contemporary Indian culture by the media.

Cecilia Cossio, Venice University, Department of Eurasian Studies, Venice, Italy
Religion and Identity in two Noteworthy Hindi Films

Hindu-Muslim relations have been often dealt with by the Hindi cinema. Delicate and complex as they are, they have been mainly filtered through Rajput and Maratha sagas or through visions of the Mughal period, represented as an era of cultural syncretism, always enphasizing aspects of communal harmony. Until recently, the mainstream cinema has been less affected than other media by the increasing communal sectarianism of the last two decades. On the surface and on the whole, it used to show an impartial  - if not secular - attitude towards Hindus and Muslims, though a more accurate reading might reveal a subtler acceptance and legitimation of communal separateness and ‘majority rule'. In this context it is interesting to analyse how two Hindi films, Dharmputr (Son by Faith, 1961), directed by Yash Chopra, and Zakhm (The Wound, 1998), by Mahesh Bhatt, tackle the issue after almost forty years from each other. The two films have a similar theme: a militant Hindu discovers his Muslim origins during a dramatic event, the Partition of 1947, in the first case, and the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, in the second. Emerging from the two films, however, there is an even more challenging point that seems to push on the background the main theme : the quest for an individual identity.

Claudia Preckel, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany
India Partitioned - Religion and Violence in Hindi Films

It is only during recent years, that the Partition of 1947 has become a subject of Indian films. Some of these movies like "Gadar" ("Rebellion", Anil Sharma, 2001) have become examples cherishing Bollywood's anti-Pakistan and also anti-Muslim sentiments. But there are also some other films, which present a more balanced view of the Partition and the inter-communal relations. In this paper, two films will be analysed regarding their portrayal of religions. The first one, "Earth" (1998), is the second film the controversial trilogy by Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta. It is based on the novel "Cracking India" by Bapsi Sidhwa. "Earth" is the story of 8-year-old Lenny, who is born into a wealthy Parsee family in Lahore. The film finds its tragic end in the loss of love, family and childhood. 
The second film, "Pinjar" ("The Skeleton", Chandraprakash Dwivedi, 2003) is based on Amrita Pritam's novel of the same title. It is the story of Puro, a Hindu girl who is kidnapped by a Muslim man, Rashid, due to a family feud. As Puro's family is unwilling to take her back, Puro converts to Islam and marries Rashid. When Puro realises that the partition makes thousands of women victims of violence, she finds her inner strength and helps numerous women.
This paper analyses the depiction of the protagonists belonging to different religious communities. Special attention is given to the representation of Muslim heroes and heroines of the films. The paper further focuses on the question if any specific religion is blamed for the violence during the Partition. Another aspect of the paper is the depiction of riots and (sexual) violence against women during the tragic events of partition. It will further be shown that according to both films, not only women, but also men have become victimised by the circumstances and the politics of the time.

Perundevi Srinivasan, The George Washington University, American Institute of Indian Studies, Chennai, India
The Creative ‘Modern' and the Myths of the Goddess of Poxes

The second half of the twentieth century Tamilnadu in South India witnessed a proliferating growth in the production of popular films on the goddess.  At least, twelve Tamil films, produced between the years 1970 to 2003, contain ‘Mariyamman,' the name of the goddess of fertility and poxes, in their titles.  The narratives of theses films are woven around the figure of the goddess.  Some other films, which do not present the goddess as a main character although they depict the affliction of poxes as a gift or punishment of the goddess also appeared during that period. 
           
This contemporary trend in Tamil popular culture encourages me to situate the discourses of the goddess of poxes in the context of modernity.  My paper pays attention to the reworking of the myths of Mariyamman in films in order to understand how ‘modernity' is constituted in Tamil culture.  Drawing from Rex Ambler, I interpret ‘modernity' as an "attitude" or "ethos" of the subject that responds to a transforming world around it.  In my paper, I concentrate specifically on three Tamil films, namely, Atiparasakthi, Nattaiyil Muttu, and Samsaramatu Minsaram; these films employ the sacred framework associated with poxes for foregrounding the dynamics of relationship between the British and the natives, the upper castes and the lower castes, and a woman and her household respectively.  I observe that such discourses of poxes in the films draw certain key motifs from the myths of the goddess and poxes, conventionally narrated in the ritual space of temples.  Yet, inasmuch as the affliction of poxes is used in the films as a ploy to subvert authority and power in the transforming spheres of nation and home, it constructs ‘modernity' as a phenomenon, which creatively deploys conventional resources for new, strategic purposes in the changing world.