South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 2015
Whether or not the name of God is translatable has been a controversial issue for a very long tim... more Whether or not the name of God is translatable has been a controversial issue for a very long time. 1 Egyptologist Jan Assmann cites vocabularies found in ancient Mesopotamia that list and translate names of Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, and Hellenistic gods in two, three, and in some cases even four languages. 'During the last three millennia B.C.E.-he summarizes the findings-religion appears to have been a promoter of intercultural translatability. [...] Peoples, cultures, and political systems may be sharply different. But so long as they have a religion and worship some definite and identifiable gods, they are comparable [...] because these gods must necessarily be the same as those worshipped by other peoples under different names' (Assmann 2008: 140-1). Anthropologist Richard Burghart (1989) highlights a comparable insight from the world of Hinduism. Hinduism, he shows, is capable of integrating into its fold a wide range of theological and ritual traditions by attributing to the divine a particular translation-like quality. Brahma, Rama, and other Hindu gods, we learn, manifest themselves in multiple forms, and the Buddha is recognized as an incarnation of Vishnu. The facilitating concept behind this versatility is the idea that the essential nature of the divine is nirguṇa, formlessness that can manifest and transform itself in any form. The underlying rationales, we can see, are varying. The divine may be seen as the ideal resort of multiple meanings, or the ontic location of no meaning at all. Related presuppositions regarding the conceptualization of religious plurality also differ widely. 'Comparative religion emerged in the West only when various religions could be compared from a non-religious (e.g. humanist) point of view. Indian religion [in contrast] is unique in that various dharmas are [...] compared from a religious point of view [...]' (Burghart 1989: 220). These differentiations notwithstanding, it is a common understanding that the names of gods and, by extension, essential religious expressions are powerful intercultural mediators when they become part of translation or translation-like operations.
This article presents the biography of a mystic, known as Sufi Baba, who was a member of the Ansa... more This article presents the biography of a mystic, known as Sufi Baba, who was a member of the Ansari weavers of Barabanki, a district in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. In presenting his life story and the circumstances of his death, the article argues that the mystic's mode of worship was conditioned by the affects produced by the demolition of the Babri mosque in December 1992. The article first describes the mode of worship and then shows the range of affects by which this mode was recast. In this recasting the singularity of the mystic's practices could not be substituted. As a result, the article describes a world that was lost following the demolition of the mosque.
We have been working in Dharavi since 1994. Along the way we have incurred debts too numerous to ... more We have been working in Dharavi since 1994. Along the way we have incurred debts too numerous to be listed. We would, however, like to acknowledge the vital aid of institutions, groups and individuals that have exercised a formative influence on the writing of this volume.
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 2015
Many thanks to the anonymous referees for their meticulous comments and important suggestions. I ... more Many thanks to the anonymous referees for their meticulous comments and important suggestions. I would also like to thank Pratiksha Baxi and Yasmeen Arif for criticism and for inviting me to present this work in the respective research colloquia run by them. The generosity of Jacob Copeman and Veena Das is more than matched by their acute insights and observations regarding this paper. 'When you were young you were called Ramabhadra. As you grew older and looked beautiful, the people named you Ramachandra; when you commenced to speak, they called you Vedha-Brahma; Raghunatha on your ascension to the throne, and Janaki-pati when you were married to Janaki. I bow to you, O king of the gods, Mahatma, and the life of Janaki' Ayodhya Mahatmya 1875: 142-43 'The mystical analysis of the word Ayodhya has its roots in the doctrine of the eternity of sound, combining in itself the iconography of the terrestrial city and the sound of divine reality… The linguistic etymology that follows this mystical one explains the word "a-yodhya" as meaning unconquerable'
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 2015
CONTENTS
* Veena Das and Jacob Copeman - Introduction. On Names in South Asia: Iteration, (Im)pro... more CONTENTS * Veena Das and Jacob Copeman - Introduction. On Names in South Asia: Iteration, (Im)propriety and Dissimulation * Jonah Steinberg - Remaining Nameless: Names, Hiding, and Dislocation Among Delhi’s Runaways * Vaibhav Saria - To Be Some Other Name: The Naming Games that Hijras Play * Deepak Mehta - Naming the Deity, Naming the City: Rama and Ayodhya * Jacob Copeman - Secularism’s Names: Commitment to Confusion and the Pedagogy of the Name * Alexander Henn - Kristapurāṇa: Translating the Name of God in Early Modern Goa * William Mazzarella - On the Im/Propriety of Brand Names * Luke Alexander Heslop - Signboards and the Naming of Small Businesses: Personhood and Dissimulation in a Sri Lankan Market Town * Aditya Bharadwaj - Badnam Science? The Spectre of the ‘Bad’ Name and the Politics of Stem Cell Science in India * Gregory Maxwell Bruce - Names and the Critique of History in Urdu Literature: From Manto’s ‘Yazid’ to Zaigham’s ‘Shakuntala’ * Veena Das - Naming Beyond Pointing: Singularity, Relatedness and the Foreshadowing of Death * Sean Dowdy - Reflections on a Shared Name: Taboo and Destiny in Mayong (Assam)
The Ayodhya dispute is located neither solely within the institutions of the nation state, nor wi... more The Ayodhya dispute is located neither solely within the institutions of the nation state, nor within networks of religious associations, but at the crossroads of secular and religious culture in India. At its heart lies the place of the Hindu god Rama, constituted in law as a jural person. How do we understand the emergence of this jural deity in the dispute? Focusing on appellate judgments that addressed the demolition of the Babri Mosque on 6 December 1992, the article argues that the legal evaluation of specific claims rested on a contest over asymmetric temporalities. Prior to the demolition, judicial accounts referred to the site as a 'disputed area' or the 'Ayodhya dispute'. After the demolition, this literature named the disputed area as the Babri Masjid. It was as if the Hindu deity, Rama, would fill in the space of the absent mosque. The author shows how the presence of the deity rested on an understanding of the sublime that was simultaneously political and religious. Situated in the district of Faizabad, in the state of Uttar Pradesh in north India, the temple town of Ayodhya is a place of pilgrimage for Vaishnavite Hindus, who believe that Ayodhya is the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama. A temple marks the birthplace, called janmasthan. Until December 1992 the birthplace was also the site of a mosque, known since the 1940s as the Babri Masjid. 1 From at least the middle of the 19th century, Ayodhya has witnessed longstanding and bitter violence between Hindus and Muslims regarding the exact status of this spot. This is because Hindus hold that the Babri Masjid,
If hate is understood as an operative function that extends outwards, how can it be recognized in... more If hate is understood as an operative function that extends outwards, how can it be recognized in its most simple form? This paper is a preliminary attempt to describe some of the contours of hate literature by focusing on the discursive relations between Hindus and Muslims in Mumbai (Bombay until 1994). My argument is that the plots, actions and narrative situations described in this literature do not remain fixed within the discursive boundaries of a particular text. Rather, there is a multiplication effect as stories about these books are carried into conversations, become subjects of political speeches, and are transformed into political actions of protest and sectarian slogans. This multiplication forms the bedrock of riot speech and is the linguistic counterpart of practices of violence between Hindus and Muslims. It is not uncommon to see that even after the events around the publication of a particular book, exhibition or cartoon have lost their immediate salience, they can reappear in new contexts. This dispersion and multiplicity, both spatial and temporal, is characteristic of the hate literature that I examine. What is marked in this literature is the conflation of the identities of Muslim and Pakistani and the simultaneous expression of anxieties about nationalism and masculinity.
In arguing for an ethics of curiosity and vulnerability, Veena Das draws our attention to the exp... more In arguing for an ethics of curiosity and vulnerability, Veena Das draws our attention to the experience of the limit, to skepticism, and to the ordinariness of violence. In a series of essays and writings (Das 1998c(Das , 2007(Das , 2010d she allows us to recognize new ethical and political possibilities offered by a close attention to the continual and dense interplay of different modes of life. What kinds of new reading practices, interdisciplinary knowledge formations, and forms of sociality may be elicited from her corpus? While it would be presumptuous of me to point to a new ethics of noticing, marking, and attending found in her work, I wish to focus on how a particular event of violence frames its writing, or, as Das puts it, how "words could reveal more about us than we are aware of ourselves" (2007: 7). Such words help to accrue hope and fellowship to the nation, but also unleash "poisonous knowledge," leading to alternate renderings of temporality, affect, and connectivity. In what follows I provide a reading of judicial and official writings that deal with the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhumi deadlock to explore how the violence associated with this long event enters into the prosaic texture of authoritative rendering.
This article presents the biography of a mystic, known as Sufi Baba, who was a member of the Ansa... more This article presents the biography of a mystic, known as Sufi Baba, who was a member of the Ansari weavers of Barabanki, a district in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. In presenting his life story and the circumstances of his death, the article argues that the mystic's mode of worship was conditioned by the affects produced by the demolition of the Babri mosque in December 1992. The article first describes the mode of worship and then shows the range of affects by which this mode was recast. In this recasting the singularity of the mystic's practices could not be substituted. As a result, the article describes a world that was lost following the demolition of the mosque.
In analysing the significance of circumcision for the Ansaris of Barabanki, this paper draws out ... more In analysing the significance of circumcision for the Ansaris of Barabanki, this paper draws out the discursive terrain of two terms: khatna, used to describe the ritual of circumcision; and musalmani, employed to discuss the range of meanings of circumcision in everyday life. ...
Work, Ritual, Biography: A Muslim Community in North India
Journal of Asian Studies, 2003
This book provides an ethnographic account of a community of Muslim weavers - the Ansaris - of Ba... more This book provides an ethnographic account of a community of Muslim weavers - the Ansaris - of Barabanki, central UP It analyses the place of weaving in th Ansari social structure, the work of Ansari womwn as quilt makers, the ritual of circumcision and the biography of an Ansari ...
Contributions to Indian Sociology http://cis.sagepub.com/ The Semiotics of Weaving: A Case Study ... more Contributions to Indian Sociology http://cis.sagepub.com/ The Semiotics of Weaving: A Case Study Deepak Mehta Contributions to Indian Sociology 1992 26: 77 DOI: 10.1177/ 0069966792026001004 The online version of this article can be found at: http://cis.sagepub.eom ...
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Papers by Deepak Mehta
* Veena Das and Jacob Copeman - Introduction. On Names in South Asia: Iteration, (Im)propriety and Dissimulation
* Jonah Steinberg - Remaining Nameless: Names, Hiding, and Dislocation Among Delhi’s Runaways
* Vaibhav Saria - To Be Some Other Name: The Naming Games that Hijras Play
* Deepak Mehta - Naming the Deity, Naming the City: Rama and Ayodhya
* Jacob Copeman - Secularism’s Names: Commitment to Confusion and the Pedagogy of the Name
* Alexander Henn - Kristapurāṇa: Translating the Name of God in Early Modern Goa
* William Mazzarella - On the Im/Propriety of Brand Names
* Luke Alexander Heslop - Signboards and the Naming of Small Businesses: Personhood and Dissimulation in a Sri Lankan Market Town
* Aditya Bharadwaj - Badnam Science? The Spectre of the ‘Bad’ Name and the Politics of Stem Cell Science in India
* Gregory Maxwell Bruce - Names and the Critique of History in Urdu Literature:
From Manto’s ‘Yazid’ to Zaigham’s ‘Shakuntala’
* Veena Das - Naming Beyond Pointing: Singularity, Relatedness and the Foreshadowing of Death
* Sean Dowdy - Reflections on a Shared Name: Taboo and Destiny in Mayong (Assam)