New Publications by CSA Affiliated Faculty

The Performance of Nationalism: India, Pakistan, and the Memory of Partition by Jisha Menon

Imagine the patriotic camaraderie of national day parades. How crucial is performance for the sustenance of the nation? The Performance of Nationalism considers the formation of the Indian and Pakistani nation, in the wake of the most violent chapter of its history: the partition of the subcontinent. In the process, Jisha Menon offers a fresh analysis of nationalism from the perspective of performance. Menon recuperates the manifold valences of "mimesis" as aesthetic representation, as the constitution of a community of witnesses, and as the mimetic relationality that underlies the encounter between India and Pakistan. The particular performances considered here range from Wagah border ceremonies, to the partition theatre of Asghar Wajahat, Kirti Jain, M. K. Raina, and the cinema of Ritwik Ghatak and M. S. Sathyu. By pointing to the tropes of twins, doubles, and doppelgangers that suffuse these performances, this study troubles the idea of two insular, autonomous nation-states of India and Pakistan. In the process, Menon recovers mimetic modes of thinking that unsettle the reified categories of identity politics.

India, Pakistan, and the Memory of PartitionDelivering public services effectively: Tamil Nadu & Beyond by Vivek Srinivasan

The book looks at how Tamil Nadu in Southern India developed a policy priority to delivering basic public services such as schools, child care, mid-day meals, public distribution, public health and other services.  Unlike most parts of India, these services tend to function remarkably well in Tamil Nadu, making a huge difference to the lives of people.

Thanks to these services, much fewer children tend to die within the first five years or women at birth.  The life expectancy of people has increased and the state has avoided major epidemics such as plague that have affected even well-governed states such as Gujarat.  The availability of meagre pensions, mid-day meals and highly subsidized food grains also go a long way towards reducing people’s sense of vulnerability towards the most basic needs of life.  Without doubt, Tamil Nadu has made major contributions to people’s lives by providing a wide-range of well-functioning services.

The first part of this book explores how this priority came to be.  In the second part, I discuss how the insights from Tamil Nadu can help us understand the performance of public services in other states of India.  In the process, I discuss questions such as why Kerala succeeded in providing services so effectively but the communists of West Bengal left government with a poor record of it.  I also discuss recent improvements in governance in states such as Bihar and Chhattisgarh, and I debate what the media dubs as a change from ‘politics of identity’ to the ‘politics of development’.

Singing a Hindu Nation: Marathi Devotional Performance and Nationalism by Anna Schultz

Singing a Hindu Nation explores how the political becomes devotional through musical performance. At the heart of author Anna Schultz's study is r=ashtr=iya k=irtan, a western Indian performance medium that combines song, Hindu philosophical discourse, and nationalist storytelling. Performers of r=ashtr=iya k=irtan have impacted the political environment throughout the last century, inspiring Marathi-speaking people to resist colonial domination both violently and non-violently in the early twentieth century, supporting state health and national integration projects in the early post-colonial era, and in the last decade of the century, using their performances to buttress the rhetoric of Hindu nationalists as these groups rose to power. By performing in regional idioms with rich associations for Maharashtrian congregations, singers of r=ashtr=iya k=irtan use music to combine political and religious signs in ways that seem natural and desirable, and as a result effectively promote embodied experiences of nationalist devotion. As the first monograph on music and Hindu nationalism, Singing a Hindu Nation presents a rare glimpse into the lives and performance worlds of nationalists on the margins of all-India political parties and cultural organizations. The book is an essential resource for ethnomusicologists, as well as scholars of South Asian studies, religion, and political theory.

Journal Articles by Stanford Faculty