Histories of Untranslatability in South Asia: Historiography, Debates, and Problems, 1980–2010

The Eighteenth Century in Indian History Robert Travers Seema Alavi , ed., The Eighteenth Century in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002). Pp. 261. Rs 495. Indrani Chatterjee , ed., Unfamiliar Relations: Family and History in South Asia (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004). Pp. 302. $60.00. Rajat Datta , Society, Economy and the Market: Commercialization in Rural Bengal, c. 1760-1800 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000). Pp. 376. Rosie Llewellyn-Jones , ed., A Man of the Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century India: The Letters of Claude Martin, 1766-1800 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003). Pp. xi, 412. Rs 695. P. J. Marshall , ed., The Eighteenth Century in Indian History: Evolution or Revolution? (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003). Pp. vi, 456. Rs 650. Prasannan Parthasarathi , The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India, 1720-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Pp. xii, 165, $70.00 (hardback). $56.00 (E-book). Norbert Peabody , Hindu Kingship and Polity in Precolonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Pp. xiii, 190, $60.00. Muzaffar Alam , The Languages of Political Islam in South Asia (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004). Pp. 200. $25.00 (paperback). In a famous review essay first published in 1940, the Dutch scholar J. C. van Leur challenged the relevance of the eighteenth century in Asian history. The eighteenth century, he wrote, was a "category for the periodization of time borrowed from western European and North American history," which evoked "the world of baroque and old fashioned classicism," on the one hand, and the "new bourgeois civilization," on the other. Reacting against a tendency by Dutch historians to portray eighteenth-century Indonesia through the records of the Dutch East India Company as a distant outpost of the European "age of enlightenment," van Leur urged that Asian history in the eighteenth century was still autonomous and vital. "That century did not know any superior Occident, nor any self-isolating Orient no longer progressing with it," he wrote. "It knew a mighty East, a rich [End Page 492] fabric of a strong, broad weave with a more fragile Western warp thread inserted into it at broad intervals" (van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society [Dortrect, 1983], 269, 289). J. C. van Leur may have been surprised by the resilience of the eighteenth century as a category in Indian (more often now styled South Asian) history. In truth, van Leur's strong aversion to the idea of an eighteenth century in Asia, which grew mainly out of his expertise in Indonesian history, always seemed odd from a South Asian perspective. The eighteenth century has long appeared as an obvious historical turning point in India, marked by the dramatic collapse of the Mughal empire at its start, and the equally dramatic expansion of the British empire at its end. Thus, van Leur's assertion that in eighteenth-century India "the establishment of local, even regional power by France and England did not disturb the power of the Mogol Empire more than fleetingly" was somewhat quixotic (van Leur, 273). Nonetheless, recent writing on eighteenth-century India has often gone with the grain of van Leur's determination to attend to the autonomous dynamics of Asian history, questioning the view that European expansion was necessarily the decisive motor of historical change. Even though the power of the Mughal emperors declined, new regional powers emerged, powers that could be fitted into van Leur's sense of the "rich fabric" of Asian history. If van Leur's notion of an "unbroken history in the state of Asian civilization" from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century now seems excessively monolithic and static, his conception of early modern Asian history as something more than the history of European expansion was ahead of its time. For much of the 1980s and 1990s, revisionist work about the eighteenth century formed one of the poles around which South Asian history revolved. This work was dominated by social and economic history, strongly inflected by Marxist and "Annaliste" perspectives, which sought to uncover the deep structural transformations of Indian society from the dead weight of the political history of empires. Writers on the eighteenth century tended to focus on processes of regional state...

Introduction Prakash Kumar (bio) The history of technology of South Asia should justifiably reflect the particularities of South Asian colonial pasts and the trends that became palpable at its postcolonial moment. In what historically specific ways has coloniality intersected with technology in South Asia? The particular questions of colonial power and exclusions, the autonomy of the subaltern voice, and the imagined futures as India at independence grappled with a new socio-economic order in the midst of colonial legacies call upon historians to make purposeful selection of archives and to deploy specific methods. These choices should determine the nature of South Asian technological history. In other words, a technological history of South Asia cannot simply be a history of technology "in South Asia," a one-sided imposition of historiography of technology on a new geographical site.1 The contributors to this volume agree that South Asia should not be treated simply as an empirical site to which the already existing analytics and methodologies of the broader field of history of technology can be "extended." Our implicit claim in writing these technological stories is that South Asia should be (and it already is) also a location to unravel new analytics and methods. The contributors thus aim to demonstrate how looking at the history of technology from South Asia changes what it means to do history of technology. Calling the approach followed by the contributors to this volume post-Marxist and post-nationalist would be eminently inadequate, if a safe label. Just as much as they are distanced from older Marxist and nationalist [End Page 933] approaches, the contributors are also heirs to standard critiques of modernity within a certain mode of analysis in South Asia. Readers will find in these articles a direct engagement with the question of the modern and the place of technology in the construction of the modern. Political modernity and its various institutions, Dipesh Chakrabarty told us, "all bear the burden of European thought and history."2 In a sign that such questioning of modernity's universal claims have become mainstream, all South Asianists proceed with the assumption that the metanarrative of modernity may after all be inadequate to assess all of the lived experiences in South Asia. This reflexivity to "modern" defines all of the contributors' technological histories, and perhaps sets them apart. While questioning modernity is a staple in the historiography of technology, the contributors in this volume will critique modernity from a position firmly within South Asian scholarly conventions. Approach and Themes The articles in this volume display a distinctive crossdisciplinarity that is not out of sync with trends in the field of South Asia, and reflects the way the field has evolved and honed its disciplinary practices over the years. A distinct porosity of the discipline of history in South Asia can be traced to its earliest incarnations. The 1960s works of Bernard Cohn, a pioneer in the field, are instructive. Cohn's work is distinctive, among other things, for exploring conjointly the methods, practices, and theories of two disciplines, what Cohn referred to as "Anthropologyland" and "Historyland." Later, writing a foreword in an omnibus to Cohn's work, Dipesh Chakrabarty celebrated the ease with which Cohn was known to navigate the disciplines of history and anthropology and to call them both "home."3 The 1960s trend was further consolidated with the emergence of the subaltern studies in the 1980s that emerged as a critique of historicism across several disciplines. The active crossdisciplinarity of the subaltern and postcolonial arms of South Asian historiography accelerated the field's spread into disciplines of social sciences and invited the involvement of postcolonial theorists from multiple disciplines.4 The same crossdisciplinarity marks the [End Page 934] approaches in South Asian technological history broadly, which have come to incorporate the practice of radical social history, a new political economy, historical and cultural anthropology, ethno-history, and literary and textual analysis. Historians of technology in South Asia marshal this crossdisciplinarity to address a number of questions that can be seen as central to the historiography of technology. To review every pertinent question would be a herculean task even for a start. But in trying to keep the review of...

From South Asia to the world: embracing the challenge of global sustainable nitrogen management

Introduction: Beyond the Anglophone—Comparative South Asian Literatures

The South Asian diaspora is one of the largest racial/ethnic diasporas in the world. Limited psychological research and practice have focused on the traumatic experiences of South Asian individuals in this diaspora, and even less work has examined how these traumatic experiences are inextricably linked with historical and ongoing colonial context; migration and displacement; and intersectional identity based on religion, race, gender, nationality, and more. Additionally, scant research has focused on tangible solutions to these grave gaps in mental health care-how to best disseminate and implement culturally congruent interventions, enhance policy for trauma-informed work, and best attend to the culturally informed needs of South Asian mental health trainees. This narrative review examines the current psychological literature on trauma among South Asian individuals in the diaspora from a translational perspective. We review (a) South Asian history using a trauma-focused lens, (b) the types and prevalence of traumatic experiences, (c) trauma interventions, (d) trauma-related dissemination and implementation efforts, and (e) trauma-informed policy initiatives. We note from the outset that due to the limited work on the diaspora, much of this review inadvertently also reviews extant work on trauma among South Asians residing in South Asia, which is distinct but related to diasporic experiences. Recommendations for the traumatic stress field, community members and lay providers, and implications for the training of South Asian students preparing for careers in mental health are discussed.

The South Asian subcontinent contains a vast mosaic of environments and lifeways. Agriculture and pastoralism are important food producing systems within this mosaic but coexist alongside hunter-gatherer-fisher-forager groups, shifting cultivators, and nomadic pastoralists that are often marginalized. This interplay between different lifeways has deep roots in South Asian history and prehistory. Despite this, discussions of early South Asian agriculture and pastoralism often depict a limited and narrow dataset, confined to a few sites. As a result it has been argued that the origins of agriculture and pastoralism in South Asia are hard to pinpoint. However, archaeobotanical, zooarchaeological, and genetic data, alongside the growing archaeological record, are showing that the South Asian subcontinent is a rich ground for exploring the complexity and nuance of changing lifeways during the transition to agro-pastoralism. People in South Asia incorporated both nonnative crops and animals from southwest Asia, Africa, and China into existing systems, domesticated local taxa in multiple regions, and continued to exploit wild resources throughout periods of established agro-pastoral systems. A diversity of Neolithics are therefore demonstrated within the subcontinent, and the mixing of traditions is a hallmark of South Asia and is critical for discussions about what early agriculture and pastoralism looked like and what the impacts of changing lifeways and economies were over time.

Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) model outputs of the South and East Asian summer monsoon variability and their tele-connections are investigated using historical simulations (1861-2005) and future projections under the RCP4.5 scenario (2006-2100). Detailed analyses are performed using nine models having better representation of the recent monsoon teleconnections for the interactive Asian monsoon sub-systems. However, these models underestimate rainfall mainly over South Asia and Korea-Japan sector, the regions of heavy rainfall, along with a bias in location of rainfall maxima. Indeed, the simulation biases, underestimations of monsoon variability and teleconnections suggest further improvements for better representation of Asian monsoon in the climate models. Interestingly, the performance of Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator version 1.0 (ACCESS1.0) in simulating the annual cycle, spatial pattern of rainfall and multi-decadal variations of summer monsoon rainfall over South and East Asia appears to more realistic. In spite of large spread among the CMIP5 models, historical simulations as well as future projections of summer monsoon rainfall indicate multi-decadal variability. These rainfall variations, displaying certain epochs of more rainfall over South Asia than over East Asia and vice versa, suggest an oscillatory behaviour. Teleconnections between South and East Asian monsoon rainfall also exhibit a multi-decadal variation with alternate epochs of strengthening and weakening relationship. Furthermore, large-scale circulation features such as South Asian monsoon trough and north Pacific subtropical high depict zonal oscillatory behaviour with east-west-east shifts. Periods with eastward or westward extension of the Mascarene High, intensification and expansion of the upper tropospheric South Asian High are also projected by the CMIP5 models.

This historiographical review engages with recent works in British colonial and South Asian history that shed light on the emergence of the concept of ‘society’ or the ‘social’ in South Asia. The review explores three main areas for the study of the social concept including: scholarship on liberalism and colonial law; histories of colonial sociology and knowledge production; and materialist histories of political economy and concept formation. The review then outlines some avenues for further research, focusing particularly on questions of form, language, and translation that have largely been overlooked in existing scholarship. It suggests that while there are robust accounts of the uses of the social concept in South Asia, what is missing is a consideration of the vernacular histories of this concept, including how it came to be articulated in South Asian languages. Ultimately, the review makes the case that conceptual history must take into account both the historical transformations that produced certain concepts as well as the languages and aesthetic and documentary forms through which we come to know those concepts.

As someone who entered the United States as a foreign student in the late 1980s, my academic career was intensely shaped by the then burgeoning discourses on colonialism and postcolonialism.1 The triumvirate of Said, Spivak, and Bhabha functioned like a citation machine; and despite Said’s Orientalism, South Asia, especially India, dominated as the colonial/ postcolonial site par excellence. Much of this had to do not just with the presence of many a South Asian scholar studying, writing, and teaching in U.S. universities but also with the fact that some of the most brilliant work was being undertaken on India: Lata Mani’s work on the discourses on sati, the work of the Subaltern Studies historians, Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” and her famous essays on the Rani of Sirmur, and of course Bhabha’s legendary essays “Sly Civility” and “Signs Taken for Wonders.” The outpouring of anglophone fiction from South Asia, topped off by the publication of Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, made certain that there would be no dearth of work on South Asian (read Indian) postcolonial fiction, and even today, despite a fairer distribution of attention to other parts of the ex-colonial worlds, works on South Asia continue to dominate the scene. Much has been written about this privileging of South Asia (again, read India) and its incarnation as the quintessential postcolonial site, and I am not going to rehearse the debates here. But suffice it to say that while my teaching spans continents, my first book was part and parcel of the work on the discourse of gender and nationalism in colonial and postcolonial literary representations by British, Bengali, and anglophone South Asian writers. But, in another sense the book was comparative because it brought into play writers working in different languages, and I remember getting a report from Cambridge University Press asking me why there was no chapter on Rushdie.

Energy history is a burgeoning sub‐field focused on the role of a wide variety of prime movers—from solar energy, to animal labor, to water power, and diesel‐fueled engines—in shaping human societies. Although some energy historians consider “energy” a relatively constant feature of societies across time and culture, others have highlighted the specificity of the modern era as a unique period of energy history due to the globalization of fossil fuel dependency during the 20th century. This article puts forward South Asia as a critical site for understanding the past and future of the fossil fuel energy system. I argue that fossil fuels were central to the formation of colonial political economy beginning in the late‐19th century, and that in the context of decolonization, fossil fuels came to serve as a site of social and political contestation within South Asia's emergent developmental states. The second part of the article in particular focuses on the enduring role of fossil fuels in structuring relations between South Asian polities and global networks of both capital and neocolonial power. In the absence of an existing field of South Asian energy history, my article presents possible periodizations, conjunctures, and key issues that will animate future scholarly debate on fossil fuel energy transitions in South Asia and the wider postcolonial world.

Intimacies, Relationships and Socialities:South Asians and Racialist America in the Early Twentieth Century Ahmed Afzal (bio) STRANGER INTIMACY: Contesting Race, Sexuality, and the Law in the North American West. By Nayan Shah. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2011. BENGALI HARLEM AND THE LOST HISTORIES OF SOUTH ASIAN AMERICA. By Vivek Bald. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2013. COOLIE WOMAN: The Odyssey of Indenture. By Gaiutra Bahadur. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2014. Much of the scholarly research on South Asian Americans has focused on the post-1965 period. The landmark U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Act of [End Page 59] 1965 abandoned prior legislation that had used race as the basis of immigration to the United States. The 1965 legislation also discarded the national origins quota system that had favored European immigration and severely restricted Asian immigration to the United States until the end of World War II. Following the passage of the 1965 Act, Asia became a major source of immigration to the United States.1 Interdisciplinary studies about the South Asian experience have documented diasporic and transnational community formations and illuminated issues such as racism, class, gender roles, sexuality, and religious and national belonging. Pre-1965 South Asian immigration to North America has received comparatively little attention. Anthropologist and historian Karen Leonard’s Making Ethnic Choices: California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans (Temple University Press, 1992), historian Joan M. Jensen’s Passage from India: Asian Indian Immigrants in North America (Harvard University Press, 1988) and anthropologists Norman Buchignani and Doreen M. Indra’s Continuous Journey: A Social History of South Asians in Canada (McClelland and Stewart, 1985) are among the few book-length studies that have documented the South Asian immigrant experience in North America in the early twentieth century. This scholarship has focused on the mostly Punjabi agricultural workers in rural California, the U.S. Southwest, and Canada. The three books reviewed in this essay build on the above pioneering scholarship and also greatly expand our understanding of the diversity and breadth of pre-1965 South Asian immigrant experiences. Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America (2013) by comparative media studies scholar Vivek Bald elaborates the experiences of the mostly Bengali Muslim men who were peddlers and merchants in New Orleans and ex-seamen in New York during the early decades of the twentieth century. In Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality, and the Law in the North American West (2011), historian Nayan Shah explores the everyday life of South Asian farm workers in Canada, California, and the American Southwest. Journalist Gaiutra Bahadur’s Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture (2014) documents the experiences of male and female indentured laborers who traveled to the Caribbean and South America for work on sugar and rubber plantations. These three exemplary and eminently readable books are essential contributions to the literature on South Asians in the Americas, critical race and gender theory, and early twentieth century American history. The meticulous research yields a multitude of surprises and rewards for the reader. These books provide important insights into the political economy of international population movements in the shadow of severely restrictive, if not prohibitive, racialized immigration policies.2 Indeed, the two empires—Great Britain and the United States—provide a critical historical backdrop for understanding the economic circuits that structured South Asian migration. This scholarship shows how race, gender, sexuality, and the law were complexly intertwined in shaping pre-1965 South Asian immigrant experiences. [End Page 60] In spite of such important interventions, it is the exploration of intimacies, relationships, and socialities that makes these books deeply compelling, thoroughly engaging, and richly textured. In this review, I focus on this troika found in the three books as a lens for illuminating South Asian immigrant experiences in the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century. In so doing, the discussion here focuses on the production, transgression, and contestations of attachments, engagements, and community interactions that developed among mobile populations, and were shaped by a range of “verbal and gestural cues, ethnical codes, and cultural frames” (Shah 55). As Nayan Shah notes in Stranger Intimacy, “migratory work and transportation crossroads produced environments of compulsory sociality, but...

South Asia is undoubtedly home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. The region has such a complex historical, ethnic, geopolitical, and economic dynamics that the fact that religion has been an essential element of South Asian cultures remains overlooked. Muslims are overwhelmingly linked with violence and terrorism, particularly in the West, in the post-9/11 scenario. Various nationalistic and religious standpoints have installed many ambiguities and misapprehensions about Muslims within and outside South Asia. Some of them are taken for granted without factual accuracy and pave the way to misleading interpretations of the history of Muslims in South Asia, the character of historical Muslims rulers, and the Pakistan Movement. Islamic Civilization in South Asia by Burjor Avari of Manchester Metropolitan University is particularly welcome to prompt an exploration of Muslims’ history in South Asia and to find answers to some of the most intriguing and complicated questions.

Women as Subjects: South Asian Histories. Nita Kumar. ed Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1994.239 pp. From the Margins of Hindu Marriage: Essays on Gender, Religion and Culture. Lindsey Harlan and Paul B. Courtright. eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.250 pp. The White Woman's Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia during the British Rule. Kumari Jayawardena New York: Routledge, 1995.310 pp.

South Asia is home to a remarkable portion of the world’s population, with about 1.9 billion people, making up nearly 24% of the global total. This region, which includes countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, plays a vital role in shaping global demographics. One of the striking characteristics of South Asia's population is its youthful nature, setting it apart from many other parts of the world. In South Asia, roughly 28-30% of the population is under the age of 14, a larger proportion than the global average of 25%. This reflects a region with a high birth rate and a significant number of young people entering the workforce and education systems. Meanwhile, about 65% of South Asians fall within the working-age group (15-64 years), aligning with global trends. However, only 5-7% of the region’s population is over 65, compared to around 10% globally. This indicates that South Asia has a smaller elderly population, in contrast to many developed countries where longer life expectancy and lower birth rates are creating aging populations. These dynamics suggest that South Asia's youthful demographic will be central to its future development and economic growth. Introduction: South Asia is one of the most populous regions globally, and its population statistics are significant when compared to the global population. As of recent estimates: Percentage of Global Population from South Asia • South Asia accounts for about 25% of the global population. The region includes countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. • The total population of South Asia is around 1.9 to 2 billion people, with India alone contributing to a large portion (about 1.4 billion). Age Distribution South Asia has a relatively young population compared to the global average, with a higher proportion of younger age groups. Here’s a comparison of the age distribution in South Asia vs the rest of the world. South Asia • 0–14 years: About 30% of the population. • 15–24 years: Around 20% of the population. • 25–64 years: Approximately 45%. • 65 years and older: Around 5%. Global Average • 0–14 years: About 25% of the global population. • 15–24 years: Roughly 15%. • 25–64 years: Around 50%. • 65 years and older: Around 10%. Key Points • South Asia has a younger population, with a higher percentage in the 0–24 age bracket compared to the global average. • The rest of the world, particularly regions like Europe and North America, tends to have a more aging population, with higher percentages in the 65+ age group. These demographic trends have significant implications for future economic development, healthcare needs, and social policies in South Asia and globally. Obesity is increasing globally, and South Asians (SA’s) are particularly vulnerable due to a combination of genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors. Central obesity is prevalent among South Asians, leading to metabolic issues like insulin resistance and hypertension, even at lower body mass index (BMI) levels than seen in Western populations. This has prompted organizations such as the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) to adopt ethnic-specific waist circumference cut-offs for SAs. The "thin fat" phenotype, common in this group, refers to individuals who appear lean but carry excess visceral fat, raising their cardiovascular risk. Despite identifying some obesity-related genes like FTO and MC4R, research on South Asian populations remains limited compared to studies on Europeans. Traditional BMI cut-offs often underestimate health risks in this population, highlighting the need for targeted public health interventions to address rising obesity and metabolic disorders among South Asians.

Islam Translated, Literature, Conversion, and the Arabic Cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia