Indian Discourse Research Articles

Public health perspectives on mental health: Reflections from teaching.

The mental health discourse in India has been primarily viewed through a biomedical lens that often overlooks the cultural context and social inequalities. To ensure equitable access to preventive, promotive, curative, and rehabilitative mental healthcare, India needs practitioners who combine a social perspective with an empathetic approach. To address this need, we designed a course titled "Critical Perspectives on Mental Health" that aims to introduce the relevant perspectives and community-based approaches to mental health. In this article, we share our reflections on designing this course and facilitating it in the form of a post-graduation programme.

RAM MANOHAR LOHIA'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOCIALIST THOUGHT IN INDIA: A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE

This research paper critically evaluates Ram Manohar Lohia's contributions to socialist thought in India, examining the practicality, relevance, and impact of his socialist ideals on Indian society and politics. Through an analysis of Lohia's key principles, socio-political context, and historical legacy, this study provides a nuanced understanding of Lohia's role in shaping the socialist discourse in India. The paper explores Lohia's emphasis on economic equality, decentralization, and village-centric development, highlighting how these ideas were shaped by his experiences in the Indian independence movement. While Lohia's ideas resonated with many and influenced post-independence socialist thinking, they also faced criticisms regarding their feasibility and practicality in the diverse Indian socio-economic landscape. The conclusion offers a final assessment of Lohia's contributions, acknowledging their significance while also recognizing the complexities involved in implementing socialist principles in India. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research, including exploring the enduring relevance of Lohia's ideas in contemporary India and conducting comparative studies with other socialist thinkers and movements globally.

The (im)possibility of a term: ‘Pasmanda’, the (non-)addressability of the state, and the ghettoization of communication

‘Pasmanda’ is arguably the most explosive term that the more recent anti-caste discourse in India has produced. It is assembled from the Persian words pas (‘back’) and manda (‘left behind’), thus describing somebody ‘at the back’ (of society), who ‘has been left behind’. Like ‘Dalit’, ‘Pasmanda’ is essentially a political term, which means that it only comes into being and develops significance if people decide to acquire it and to identify themselves as different and as discriminated—in this case as lower-caste and ‘Dalit Muslims’. ‘Pasmanda’ is hence intrinsically reliant on being communicated and mediated so as to enable its acceptance among the signified and to normalise the creation of a respective reality through a newly collectivising identity. This essay approaches ‘Pasmanda’ as ‘a term to think with’, in tracing the very possibility, among deprived and discriminated groups, to openly communicate, negotiate, and mediate this identity that challenges claims of religious (comm)unity and demands for national loyalty. This possibility varies greatly even across north India. As I examine ‘Pasmanda’ through three different local prisms, the term thus also becomes a dialectical index for the political conditions of its realisation: the conditions of its emergence and, however increasingly precarious, its thriving (in the state of Bihar) as much as the conditions for its suppression (in the capital Delhi) and even of its complete absence (in the state of Gujarat)—i.e. of the conditions that render Pasmandas non-existent. A different form of regional comparison thus emerges.

Familialization of the ‘deviant’: a hindrance to queer community building?

Abstract Familial acceptance of queer relationships has long been at the centre of the same-sex marriage discourse in India. This is no coincidence since in India family as an institution represents caste, religious, class and other social privileges. Developing on Bordieu’s work on family, this paper examines three Hindi films—Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga (2019), Shubh Mangal Zaada Savdhaan (2020) and Badhaai Do (2022)—to formulate the ‘ideology of familialization’ as the basis of the queer narratives in these popular film texts. Through narrative analysis of these texts, this paper argues that these narratives function at two levels: one, at the level of inducting the erstwhile subjects of developmentalist economy into the neoliberal economy; and two, they selectively transform the familial space of these subjects to make it conducive to integrate LGBTQ persons. The narratives perpetuate a consensus about the importance of selective co-option of queer individuals within the socially dominant traditional families, to keep the cycle of social privilege undisturbed by producing what Bordieu calls ‘unproblematic inheritors’. This, I argue, prevents the individual queer characters from building a modern queer community, a radical collective with intersectional politics at its heart, at the cost of alienating those who do not come from such caste/class privilege. This serves the interest of both the neoliberal market/State and the Hindu upper caste dominated social, perpetuating the Ideology of Familialization which eventually has the power to function as a governmental tool of transforming the ‘deviant’ lovers into ‘model’ queer citizens.

Between Appeal to Citizenship and Biopolitical Fracture: Islamophobia and the New Politics of Muslim Citizenship in India

This article aims to analyze the Islamophobic politics at the heart of citizenship denial in the context of India’s CAA-NRC legislation in December 2019 by the Indian Parliament under the leadership of the BJP. The politics of citizenship denial in India thus emerges in appearance as a legal tussle between the Muslim minority citizenship rights and Hindu nationalism in India. However, the biopolitical fracture of the Indian nation-state makes the legal ideal of citizenship further complicated for Muslim minority citizens in India. Tracing the logic of the paradoxical position of Muslim citizenship discourse in India by following its contradictory existence in law, state, and nationalism, this article reveals the limitations of appeal to citizenship, and the necessity need for the question questioning of the biopolitical fracture, wherein the distinction between citizen and non-citizen translates into those with rights and without rights. This article further proposes that rather than sticking to the idealism of citizenship, a critical analysis of Islamophobia and its political correlates must attend to the negative position of the Muslim subject in with respect to the biopolitical fracture at the core of Indian nationalism and the modern nation-state.

Restructuring of banks and financial deepening: tracing the Indian discourse

Restructuring of banks and financial deepening: tracing the Indian discourse

Breaking the Silence: A Critical Analysis of Dalit Women's Worldview in Urmila Pawar's Motherwit

The Dalit group is among the most oppressed under the contentious but widely accepted social structure known as caste, but some Dalit women have experienced even worse subjugation. The perspective of oppressed Dalit women is examined in this essay. Not Dalit women in isolation, but rather Dalit women collectively. In doing so, Motherwit, a collection of short stories by Urmila Pawar, is the main subject of this essay. It aims to initiate a conversation about the worldview of Dalit women, which is situated at the nexus of gender, caste, and class. It also aims to address the worldview that has largely gone unchallenged in both the well-known Dalit and feminist discourses in India. The article has been divided into three sections. The first section provides a brief biography of Urmila Pawar and then discusses the rise of Dalit women writers, focusing on her collection of short stories Motherwit. The second section discusses the text's themes, offers a commentary on how it uses language, and ends with a statement on Dalit feminism. Women from various castes and social classes may identify with Pawar's feminism since it is not exclusive to any one lady.

Consumers’ perception of plant-based alternatives and changes over time. A linguistic analysis across three countries and ten years

Aiming to minimise environmental impacts, diets with reduced consumption of animal products have increased strongly in recent years. These changes give rise to innovative developments in the plant-based market. In this study, we aimed to investigate these changes by looking at the linguistic discourse on plant-based alternatives in three countries. We chose the USA as the country with the highest meat consumption and India as the country with the highest percentage of vegetarians. For both countries, we analysed linguistic data from the most read English newspapers over the last two years. As a third country, we chose Switzerland, where a lot of plant-based innovation is currently happening. Additionally, we performed a longitudinal analysis on Swiss data from the last ten years to more closely examine this recent period of plant-based innovation. With that, we focused on consumer perception of plant-based products by analysing the linguistic discourse and thereby contrast the available data from the literature that was mainly obtained through interrogation of consumers. Cross-cultural comparison reveales that in all three countries, there is a distinct focus on meat (alternatives). Dairy alternatives seem to play a minor role in the discourse. In the USA, appearances matter (food stylist), the Indian discourse includes the aspects health (“skin”, “hair”) and wealth (prices) and the Swiss discourse includes sustainability. Longitudinal analysis of the Swiss discourse over the last ten years revealed that there was an overall increase of the discourse and a connection to the ongoing political debate. Our study suggests that plant-based products are not only part of the sustainable transition but can also be a lifestyle choice. Overall, the study highlights cross-cultural differences and similarities in the language used about plant-based alternatives and discusses some implications.

Memory, Identity and Deindustrialization: Reflections from Bygone Mill‐scapes of Bangalore, India

ABSTRACTThis study takes a closer look at the deindustrialization of the South Indian city of Bangalore with respect to its former cotton mill sector, nearly two decades after the closure of the first three composite cotton mills in the city. The study views deindustrialization from sectoral, city‐ and community‐centric perspectives. As well as identifying Bangalore as a significant site within the ‘bygone mills’ discourse in India, the article contributes to the less‐researched theme of deindustrialization in the global South. It provides a detailed look into the city's mill‐scapes, from their rise in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to their demise in the early 21st century, through a mix of archival evidence, spatial analysis and an interrogation of the collective memory of millworkers and their families.

Nobility, Interrupted: The Queer Poetics of Vandana Kataria’s Noblemen

This paper explores the role of noble kinship in Noblemen, Vandana Kataria’s adaptation of The Merchant of Venice. Noblemen is a 2019 Indian independent film written during the apex of gay decriminalization discourse in India. While Bollywood adaptations of Shakespeare have been well studied, independent films such as Noblemen that “speak back” to mainstream regimes of cinema and culture demand more attention. The film transforms the Christian Venetian setting of Shakespeare’s play to that of an all-boys boarding school in India dubbed “Mount Noble High.” I argue that the film depicts male dominated kinship networks that oppress queer difference to emphasize how mainstream kinship perpetuates and reinforces an oppressive and monolithic “imagined community.” Kataria transplants the oppressive kinship apparent in The Merchant of Venice to Noblemen’s Noble High to emphasize how kinship networks’ discrimination, particularly homophobia, results in an imagined community bonded by corrupt nobility and erasure of marginalized identity. Such kinship networks force Shay, Kataria’s Shylock, to renounce his queer identity and convert to a position of subordination. Shay is only able to escape this subordination and exact revenge against the bullies by enacting the lawful role of Portia. This victory, however, fails to restore his nobility as it further ingratiates him in societal structures that reinforce oppression and heteronormativity. By showing how mainstream noble kinship is built upon a foundation of oppression rather than virtue, Kataria encourages audiences to question the virtue of laws, societal practices, and Bollywood films that reinforce imagined community by marginalizing queerness.

Islamophobic Discourses in India During COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case of Tablighi Jamaat

ABSTRACT Islamophobia is a hot issue in the world nowadays. This study aimed to analyse the discourses which were produced against Muslims and Islam during the novel coronavirus outbreak in India, where the Muslim minority group Tablighi Jamaat was targeted and held responsible for spreading the virus. The study employed Critical Discourse Analysis to analyse selected tweets from Indian politicians, government dignitaries, and common Indian users to find out Islamophobic themes and ideological structures in their discourses. The researcher hypothesizes that Islamophobia is an integral feature of Indian political communication which is also obvious in their discursive and rhetorical devices. The researcher purposively selected 50 of the most controversial tweets by Indian politicians, government officials, and common Indian Twitter users against Muslims and Islam and carried out a critical discourse analysis through political discourse strategies by Wodak’s (2014). The findings of the study reveal that Indians use discriminatory language against Muslims and Islam to create a difference of “us versus them” and by using anti-Islamic strategies and Islamophobic remarks against the Muslims of India and propagating a common belief in Indians that Muslims and Islam are the main culprit of the COVID-19 outbreak in India.

‘Please Don’t Go Yet’: The Voice and Texture of Indian Women’s Campaign Rhetoric

724 women candidates from India campaigned for their parties in the lead up to the parliamentary elections of 2019, and yet none of them were appraised for their oratorical skills. The absence of attention on how and what women say during their political campaigns is in keeping with a widespread apathy towards women’s rhetoric in public discourses in India. Could that be the reason why electoral participation of women in India is alarmingly low and uninspiring? This article explores the gendered life of political speeches in India and the specific conditions within which the speeches of women candidates are assessed and promoted. To that end, the speeches of three political candidates are analysed, revealing an exhilarating battle of campaign rhetorics fraught with language restrictions and gender dynamics. Each of these speakers showcase a personal, idiosyncratic yet nifty tradition of political speeches through their use of domestic idioms, imagery, satire, and other feisty rhetorical claims. Most significantly, their speeches were covered by many media, catapulting to the forefront the so far neglected genre of women’s political speeches. Although refreshing, it is still an uphill battle for the candidates, as they establish themselves as rhetors on their own terms.

Beyond the technology-centric and citizen-centric binary: Ontological politics of organizing in Translation of the Smart City Discourse in India

Smart city (SC) experts in India often center-stage citizens as an alternative to a technology-led transformation. A substantial body of literature on smart cities sustains this resultant binary between techno-centrism and citizen-centrism. Mobilizing ANT sensibilities, we generate an ethnographic narrative on how the smart city discourse has translated into everyday processes of city administration and urban governance in India. Our account unmutes more-and-other-than-human actants—event-stage, glossy publications, ceremonial awards, conference producers, and decision-makers—in the translation of SC discourse, with following effects: the uncertainties in the translation process are foregrounded which potentially destabilize center-staged actor identities; and the work of heterogeneous actants in articulating the citizen as the center of their efforts is revealed, thereby de-naturalizing the binarized reality. Furthermore, when unmuted, more-and-other-than-humans spell out their ongoing collaborations and negotiations and generate a nuanced reading of the clashes and accommodations made in the process of translating SC discourse in everyday settings of city administrations. These effects lead us to emphasize the translation of SC discourse as an uncertain socio-material process proceeding through episodic clashes and tentative accommodations. They also invite a conceptual expansion of translation as constitutive of the ontological politics of organizing, which insists on attending to ongoing collaborations and negotiations among more-and-other-than-humans that compose organizational realities. Thus, we address critical organization and management studies’ concerns regarding ANT’s alignment with its objectives by locating politics in the performance of, and interference into, the multiple realities that are being enacted through practices that assemble experts, decision-makers and non-humans.

Revisiting the Minority Imagination: An Inquiry into the Anticaste Pasmanda-Muslim Discourse in India

AbstractThe article explores the emergent tension between the minority imagination and anticaste politics among India’s most significant religious minority, the Muslims. Since the late 1990s, the mobilization of lowered-caste Muslims in the form of the Pasmanda movement has increasingly challenged the hegemony of the so-called high-caste Ashraf Muslims. The nascent Pasmanda counterdiscourse has contested the critical elements of the entrenched Muslim-minority discourse: identity and the religio-cultural, security and interreligious (communal) violence, and equity and affirmative action. The monolithic image of the Muslim community has been dispelled, and the Muslim-minority discourse has been characterized as a machination for preserving and reproducing the Muslim elite interests. The article maps the Pasmanda discourse and locates it as an instance within the evolving literature on the analytical limitations of the concept of minority to address the justice claims of emergent political subjectivities. The Pasmanda contestations present a sharp anomaly to the existing Muslim-minority discourse and indicate a paradigmatic shift.

Covid-19, communalism, and Islamophobia: India facing the disease

ABSTRACT As threats to human security, epidemics cause fear and anxiety, thus generating conspiracy theories, fake news, and discrimination. In 2020, the most widespread xenophobic reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic was Sinophobia. In comparison, India’s response to the pandemic was both conventional and exceptional. Like other countries, India recorded a surge in Sinophobia; but –remarkably– in Islamophobia too. Turning to both history and theory, this paper investigates how Coronavirus got transformed into a ‘Muslim disease’ and connected to narratives of holy war and Islamization (‘Corona Jihad’). We contextualize the 2020 Covid-related Islamophobic wave within a longer process of demonization of the Muslim that is catalysed by the beliefs and policies of Hindu nationalism. In light of Muslims’ continuing relegation to the fringe of the Indian body-politic, we propose an interpretation of the 2020 disease-induced Islamophobia as scapegoating, based on René Girard’s mimetic theory. In conclusion, the case of Covid-19 in India confirms that in divided societies collective threats like epidemics are likely to exacerbate already existing forms of discrimination rooted in the society’s mainstream memory and norms, and highlights the role of beliefs in mediating between threat and violence. This case study also highlights the deep penetration of communal discourse in India’s everydayness and its far-reaching implications.

Right to be forgotten in case of search engines: Emerging trends in India as compared to the EU

In India, the right to be forgotten (RTBF) is relatively new and has been discussed in different courts. A timely discussion concerning RTBF in India is necessary as several judgments are beginning to shape its dimensions. Further, India is considering enacting comprehensive data protection legislation. Comparing the developments in India to the rich and long-standing jurisprudence on RTBF in the European Union (EU) can help shape the discourse in India. RTBF has been established and exercised in the EU for almost a decade. In fact, the EU has had a right to erasure since 1995. Thus, this paper examines how India and the EU have handled RTBF. The paper considers a data fiduciary in India (or a data controller in the EU), namely search engines. The paper compares India with the EU and suggests the way ahead for RTBF in India. It reflects on the fact that the implementation of RTBF would depend on the nature of data fiduciaries and their services.

Mahashweta Devi-The Mouthpiece of Indigenous Crave for Identity and Existence

Mahasweta Devi has explored the unexplored world of subjugated Adivasis. She was a legend in the regional Adivasis literature, explaining the causes of tribal displacement, resistance and marginality. In a true sense, she had taken the responsibility to give the voices to the marginalized Adivasis who were suppressed for centuries by the imperialist mentalities. Devi’s translated novels Chotti Munda and His Arrow and Arenyer Adhikar were path-breaking novels in the Indian English Novel Writing. For the first time Birsa Munda, the legendary martyr and icon of whole Adivasis in India was known through her magnificent novel to all. The present research paper peeps into mainstream literary writing and representation of the realism of the Adivasis struggle and survival issues including the demeaning of tribal life. The research paper tries to examine the issues of displacement, acculturation and disparity of Adivasi life came out from the writings of Mahashweta Devi and regrets that hundreds of Adivasi revolts took place in colonial India but hardly those revolts could not become the subjects of literary, social and political discourses in India.

Welfare discourses in India

ABSTRACT This paper is an attempt to analyze the trajectories of welfare policy in India since independence. Four overlapping phases are outlined, keeping in mind the transformations in the political and economic contexts. The corresponding welfare discourses are: Paternalistic, Clientelistic, Basic Needs and Responsive. These concepts indicate broad strategies of policy and are not analytical categories. However, one can easily discern a general trend, perhaps a snapshot, of the ideas which shaped welfare policies in India. We assume that the changes are incremental and cumulative. The policy makers’ conceptualization of welfare during each time period, the interpretation of these policies in scholarly literature and a critical evaluation are presented. We have suggested that the responsive welfare policy in the recent times is a process of empowering citizens by converting their needs to demands. Democratic representation of the marginalized in the Indian state’s policy space is gradually getting recognized.

Human Rights & Protections Of Women Under The Indian Legal System

The protection of women and their empowerment are of paramount importance in the complex landscape of human right, especially within the Indian legal framework. The research document examines the many dimensions of the human rights, and legal safeguards that are designed to protect the dignity and well-being of Indian women.This exploration starts with a historical overview, revealing the progress of women's right in India. The journey begins with the ancient civilisations, and ends in the modern legal environment. This provides a deeper understanding of the social shifts that have taken place over the years.This paper examines the impact of key laws and judicial rulings on women's protection. The paper pays special attention to key acts, such as the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, and the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013. The effectiveness of these legislative initiatives in protecting women against various forms discrimination, violence and exploitation is critically evaluated. The research also explores how non-governmental organisations and the civil society can complement the legal framework. The research explores their collaborative efforts with government as crucial components to creating a comprehensive support system for the rights of women.This study examines the gaps and challenges within existing laws, making insightful policy recommendations. The Indian legal system will be able to better protect women's rights by addressing the shortcomings. This can help create a culture where women are free from discrimination and violence.This research paper hopes to add to the current discourse in India on gender equality and human rights. This paper advocates for an evolving and comprehensive approach which not only acknowledges women's inherent rights but also actively works to empower them, thus laying the foundations for a just and equitable society.

Inclusivism, Perspectivism and Pluralistic Tendencies in the History of Indian Culture

This article provides a survey of approaches and conceptual means elaborated in recent decades in the studies of pluralistic tendencies in Indian culture. The concepts of inclusivism, perspectivism, antologizing and polyphony are discussed in a close relation with the specific context in which they were introduced, as well as with the implicit presuppositions of the scholars who elaborated them. In particular, the interpretations of inclusivism introduced by Paul Hacker and Gerhard Oberhammer were inextricably intertwined with the views on Indian religions these scholars developed. The concept of perspectivism was introduced in a philosophical context, mainly with respect to Bhartṛhari’s and Jaina philosophy. Antologizing and polyphony can be characterized as a more cautious way to conceptualize pluralistic tendencies in Indian traditional discourse, because they focus on narrative strategies that enable expressing alternative views in the frames of a single text. From a historical point of view pluralistic tendencies might be stipulated by the diverse social reality in Ancient India where heterogeneous cultural phenomena coexisted in a process of mutual reinterpretation and adaptation. Another possible presupposition of perspectivism could be the cyclic concept of time that was predominant in Indian traditional discourse. In Indian intellectual systems pluralistic practices were usually legitimized with the view that there are different levels of truth. Though instances of inclusivism can be discovered in the cultures of different regions, it was in India that inclusivism became a dominant trend in the cultural history.