Society and Culture in South Asia

The present investigation examines the hypothesis that contemporary pop music has caught ‘retromania’: infected by its own past, it will bring about its own downfall. It identifies this observation as retrology: a specific school of thought within pop history. The article first looks at the major premises on which retrology is founded. It then asks why these assumptions have been so widely accepted. Next, it offers a sociological approach to look at pop music’s increasing interest in the past without recourse to moralistic divisions. Pop is seen as a social system, and not as an opaque accumulation of individual activities. Reproducing itself by a specific form of communication—the concatenation of songs—its main goal is simply to continue; it therefore desires neither ‘advancement’ nor ‘retro-gression’. The conclusion is that retro does not indicate a crisis; rather the opposite—it allows pop to carry on.

Guru culture is a prominent phenomenon in contemporary South Asia. The guru is a charismatic figure and the bedrock of the concerned institution, which very often assumes the form of a movement. Recognition of the power of that charisma is the central aspect in the social and psychological dynamics of guru-led movements. They attract a large number of followers and social service engagements are a part of their common repertoire, reflecting and furthering the guru’s multiple societal entanglements. In this article, I focus on a prominent guru movement which originated in India, the Chinmaya Mission (CM), specifically with respect to its basic character and its interface with the Indian sociocultural fabric through compelling praxis, which I schematise through dimensions of its unique philosophical repertoire, sociality and habitus. Sociality in practice for CM is its mandate of social service. Social service is justified through the faith ideals. Habitus is generated by the Mission’s associates as an unconscious formation. Both sociality and habitus of the CM movement make a case for the resurgence of religion and the postsecular in Indian public discourse.

The paper begins with the contention that Hindi Cinema reflects a sharp bias towards the principle of monoculturalism while representing Muslims. This bias manifests in the trajectory of Islamophobic narratives, represented in its reductionist employment of Muslims as a synecdoche to signify a terrorist, religious extremist, Pakistan loyalist, anti-Hindu and a traitor. Such narratives can be situated within the subtext of Hindu majoritarianism and its monocultural agenda that visualises Muslims as barbaric fanatics. To understand this, the paper makes a discourse analysis of selected films produced by Bollywood since 1990s, for examining as to how Hindi cinema is engaged in representing Muslims as a metonymy for fear. Through films such as Fanaa, Kurbaan and New York, that have engaged in the cultural discourse of good Muslims and bad Muslims, or films like Shaurya, Sarfarosh and Charas, which have presented the imagery of Indian Muslim security officers’ softness towards Islamic radicals, the analysis in the paper takes into cognisance the context of majoritarian Hindu setting in which the stories of Hindi cinema are situated, and demonstrate as to how Muslim as a metaphoric figure of violence, barbarism and treason is constructed.

This essay is concerned with sexual violence against women. Taking a cultural studies approach, I focus particularly on the re/production of a culture of sexual violence in the South Asian region. Drawing upon Slavoj Žižek’s work, I argue that we need to discuss and disrupt objective forms of sexual violence if we want to resist its subjective forms. Then, I turn to Judith Butler’s work to show how violence occurs under certain conditions. To interrupt the conditions of sexual violence, I propose that teachers and students take a critical literacy approach to pedagogy. Finally, I propose four pedagogical principles that, I hope, will provide teachers with an actionable framework for use in school contexts.

This essay is a personal reflection of a teacher of sociology taking into account a life-time of decisions, experiences and nuances which have marked the personal and professional lives of the author. It shows the manner in which the situations in the invisible private worlds of family, kin and friends of a person often impact the relatively public worlds of professional life. In many ways, the colour, rhythm and anxieties of these worlds seep into the worlds and words of sociologists who are rooted to their circumstances and not merely restricted by abstractions of theory.

Looking at the recent social, religious and political history of Bangladesh as well as the enactment of specific constitutional provisions, this opinion reflects upon the conditions that might create an environment for intolerance of opposing opinions and difference in Bangladesh. It argues such conditions however, contradicts the country’s long-term traditions which fostered notions and practices of tolerance and co-existence.