Lara Choksey

from The Statesman, Kolkata   Targeting a ‘videshi mahila’   19 April 2012 ravindra kumar IT is not unusual for the media to occasionally embark on flights of fancy. But for the past two days, a section of the Kolkata media has occupied itself with identifying a reporter on the staff of this newspaper as [...]

CPI(M): “Condemn the arrests and torture of Maoist activists in Kolkata and Mumbai!”

From Communist Party of India (Maoist) via A World to Win:   12 March 2012. A World to Win News Service. India has been on a fast track to playing a more major role in the global economy. Indian and international corporations are itching to tear up the land inhabited by tribal peoples to get their [...]

Social Fabric Symposium 10.3.2012

Social Fabric symposium Discussions, talks and performances around textile production from guest speakers including trade unionists, artists and academics Mill label, 1930s, courtesy of Jyotindra Jain and Mr. Abhishek Poddar How do textiles affect the way we think about art, society and politics? The Social Fabric symposium invites contemporary artists, art historians, curators and cultural theorists [...]

NDTV 24 x 7 The Hanging Channel

A text on NDTV 24×7. NDTC x 24 Hanging Channel - click for pdf scan.  ‘NDTV 24 X 7, the Hanging Channel: News Media or Horror Show?’ in Contemporary Indian Media and the Politics of Change, London: Routledge.  Published 2011. * A study of 24 hour Delhi based news channel NDTV’s reporting of the case of Mohammed Afzal [...]

Matilal and Mahabharata

In response to a request from Jai … Gayatri Spivak has also done work on Indian traditions/texts. This in particular was with Prof Bimal Krishna Matilal – on the Mahabharata. She has written somewhere about Karna, but maybe I am just remembering a conversation we had about it, that is more vivid. I remember her [...]

Guardian – corruption, diamonds, Hazare… tigers… toxic… : ‘Rio Tinto, which is investing £292m on what it calls the Bunder project, vehemently denies that the mine has anything to do with Masood’s murder’

Shehla Masood battled corruption in India. Was that why she was killed? The shooting of a prominent activist was ‘unfortunate’, says a minister. But her friends suspect that she knew too much to live Gethin Chamberlain guardian.co.uk, Saturday 24 September 2011 20.27 BST A family photograph of Shehla Masood, who was campaigning against plans to [...]

current research interests (draft)

Current research interests include: global knowledge production and the history of ideas, archives and collections; architectural style and urbanization; trade routes, ports and the administration of commercial(ized) lives with multiple ‘locations’ (co-constitution and triangulation of sites); history of work and technology, especially with regard to mode of production debates; illicit trade and ‘piracy’ as catalyst [...]

Hanging Channel

a draft for a round table discussion on television studies for the journal ‘South Asian History and Culture’ needs a bit more work…      Beyond television studies. The Kitchen Debate. The whole world is twitching and the study of television is in the final throes of a long generic isolation, becoming a fully integrated [...]

Arundhati Roy, Jan Myrdal, Basanta Indra Mohan 12.6.2011 Euston

Please join us for a public meeting and an audience with celebrated authors who will discuss their recent experiences in India with a special focus on the raging war against the poorest of the poor, the tribal people living in the heartland of India. Arundhati Roy From India and the author of recently published books [...]

A Complete System of Bayonet Exercise by Richard Francis Burton

Note to self:  Four years before the “Indian Mutiny” (first all India war of Independence), Richard F Burton published “A Complete System of Bayonet Exercise”, writing: “The Sepoy has not learned to trust to his musket as a European soldier does. The former, being inferior in physical strength, finds the firelock a cumbrous weapon, and [...]

Afzal farce in Delhi

Gadkari not sorry about ‘son-in-law’ remark on Afzal Guru Press Trust of India, Updated: July 09, 2010 13:04 IST Dehra Dun/New Delhi: Taunting the Congress over the delay in hanging Afzal Guru, BJP President Nitin Gadkari asked the party whether the Parliament attack death row convict was its “son-in-law”. In comments that could stoke a [...]

Games

From Partha Banerjee: India govt’s ghastly Commonwealth cleanup of the poor I’m deeply troubled. Very deeply troubled. An inconspicuous report in British paper Independent shows how the Delhi administration in India is sweeping up hundreds of thousands of poorest of the poor — men, women and children — from the city’s streets and jailing them [...]

sthaniya sambaad 19.3.2010 5pm

I am very pleased to announce a special screening of the feature film by Arjun Gourisaria and Moinak Biswas ‘sthaniya sambaad‘ (‘spring in the colony‘), (105 min. 2009, 35 mm, cinemascope, EST). Q & A with one of the directors. 5pm friday 19th March – Goldsmiths Cinema RHB please take a look at  www.springinthecolony.com and also [...]

National Instruments

On the initiative of Moinak Biswas, Film Studies Jadavpur Uni, Kolkata, and with great input from Rosalind Morris, but initially inspired by the Preservation in Globalization workshop convened by Gayatri Spivak and Jorge Otero-Pailos, an interesting redevelopment seems possible. A disused factory site adjacent the Jadavpur campus was toured by our group in early December. A documentation of the [...]

Journalism of a type.

Some may think the quality of – ehem – journalism about the Maoist struggles in India is somewhat lacking in style. Others may think that this over-worked topic really pushed a writer to find a unique angle, a way in to the jungle that is the Naxalite narrative tradition (of demonization and ‘counter). But I [...]

Another Asia: Rabindranath Tagore and Okakura Tenshin

I’ve not posted all that much of other people’s stuff lately, but I have been catching up on reading it. This short review of Rustom Bharucha’s Another Asia, by Shuddhabrata Sengupta, neatly conveys what is great about Rustom’s book. The review is from Inter-Asian Cultural Studies (here). Rustom was our guest at Theatre Border (here): Continental [...]

On Rajagopal

Arvind Rajagopal 2009 ‘Violence, Publicity, and Sovereignty: Lawlessness in Mumbai’ Social Identities 15(3):411-416 The always interesting Arvind Rajagopal starts his discussion of the terror attacks of Mumbai by evoking the ‘lawless violence’ of the East India Company of old, suggesting that ‘once more we are at a time’ when the territorial incursions of rampant ‘non-state [...]

Shimla – July 14-15 2009

An abstract for a talk at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, ‘Television in India’ conference -  July 14-15 2009 – Shimla News Media or Politics Show: Terror Reporting and the Box. If a regional encounter with the apparatus of television is to be approached critically, it may be the case that an exclusive use [...]

Bengali Cinema and class

I was asked for recommendations of films on Class and Caste by Dipa for her course in LA.  Just a few very quick suggestions of the top of my head. I’ve no idea if these are readily available in Hollywood, but I’d expect they should be: Bengali Films on class [and caste] would start with [...]

Ashis nandy – troublemaker (yay)

This just in from Meeta: Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 13:43:34 -0700 Subject: [Awaazlist] Enraged Modi seeks arrest of renowned social scientist Ashis Nandy Gujarat government intolerant, says Supreme Court Tuesday 1st July, 2008 (IANS) The Supreme Court Tuesday rebuked the Gujarat government for being ‘intolerant’ and stalled its bid to arrest political commentator Ashis [...]