Were Mughal Delhi’s city-dwellers docile sheep the emperor ruled over, or did even the humblest of them assert claims to participate in public affairs? How did politics, economics, and religion shape their claims?
Following events in the imperial capital from its founding to its devastation at the hands of Iranian invader Nadir Shah in 1739, Abhishek Kaicker (University of California, Berkeley) explores the interplay between popular politics and royal authority in 17th-century Shahjahanabad (Delhi) in his latest book, The King and the People: Sovereignty and Popular Politics in Mughal Delhi(Oxford University Press, 2020).
Join the author, in conversation with Tiraana Bains (History, Dartmouth) and Fariba Zarinebaf (History, UC-Riverside), to hear more.
Elizabeth Lhost (History, Dartmouth) will moderate the discussion.
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 from 12:15–1:15 pm (eastern)
The “Conversations on South Asia” series is sponsored by the Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund, the Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program, and the Department of History at Dartmouth College.
The South Asia Studies Collective and Conversations on South Asia Series at Dartmouth College are looking to hire an undergraduate student to serve as the Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund South Asian Studies Fellow. The fellow will work (approximately) 6–10 hours per week to help plan, promote, coordinate, and execute the monthly “Conversations on South Asia” series and contribute to other South Asia related events and programs on campus during the 2021–22 academic year (September 2021–June 2022).
Ideally, the student fellow will be available to serve as fellow for the entire academic year and will be able to attend most, if not all, of our (online) events this year. Events in the “Conversations” series will take place virtually (as Zoom webinars) on the second Tuesday of the month from 12:15–1:15 pm (eastern). The student fellow should be available to assist with the events between approximately 12 pm and 1:30 pm on event days.
The fellow will be compensated at an hourly rate of $15/hour. Preference will be given for students who will be on campus during Fall and Winter terms, when most of the planning and preparation work will take place.
We are looking for someone who is eager to
Learn about the newest and most exciting developments in the field of South Asian Studies (including the latest books and research trends)
Work closely with and learn from some of Dartmouth’s South Asian Studies faculty and scholars and support their research and professional activities
Develop skills in organizing events with audiences that extend beyond the Dartmouth campus and into the field of South Asian Studies more broadly (including in North America, Europe, and South Asia)
Communicate and interact with scholars throughout the world
Help build the South Asian Studies community and curriculum at Dartmouth
Contribute ideas for current and future programs related to South Asian Studies at Dartmouth that would appeal to and attract communities on campus
Application Process
Students who are interested in applying for this position should complete the Google form application and submit their transcripts (via upload or email) by Friday, September 10, 2021. (Unofficial transcripts are acceptable.)
We plan to interview candidates (most likely via Zoom) during the first week of classes (September 13–17). The position is expected to begin around September 22, 2021.
For more information about the Bodas Fellowship, please contact Elizabeth Lhost (elizabeth.lhost [at] dartmouth.edu) or Douglas Haynes (douglas.haynes [at] dartmouth.edu).
Additional information about the Conversations on South Asia series and the South Asia Studies Collective are available on our website: https://sites.dartmouth.edu/southasiastudies
Position Description
Responsibilities will include:
Planning and Organizing Events
Manage the calendar and schedule for the “Conversations on South Asia” series
Assist with planning, advertising, promoting, and executing other South Asia–related events on campus
Coordinate with authors and discussants before events
Assist with paperwork and payment processing after each event
Work with series coordinators and program assistants during the events
Keep the South Asia Studies Collective Website (a WordPress site) up to date
Monitor the “Conversations on South Asia” Gmail address and manage the MailChimp account for the series
Produce and distribute publicity emails to the series listserv and other outlets
Promotion and Publicity
Develop copy text for flyers and promotional materials
Strategize and execute on-campus event promotion
Coordinate promotional activities at Dartmouth (emails, flyers, direct messaging)
Coordinate with authors and series organizers to cultivate an expansive and inclusive audience
Liaise with authors and series coordinators to target event-specific audiences
Track audience growth and engagement
Conduct surveys to gauge audience interest and involvement
Engagement and Development
Develop new strategies for audience attendance, participation, and involvement (especially strategies to boost Dartmouth student involvement and participation)
Coordinate with student groups and other campus entities for greater on-campus engagement (and to boost student awareness of and participation in South Asia related events)
Compose and publish event summaries to showcase depth and breadth of the series
Track new publications and author activities before, during, and after series events to develop deeper engagement with the field and our series contributors
Check automated event transcripts for accuracy, making necessary changes before posting
Edit and trim audio recordings for online distribution
Required skills and experiences:
We are looking for someone with an interest in South Asian studies and a passion for learning about the field. (Previous coursework or experience with South Asian studies is preferred but is not required.)
We are looking for someone with excellent organizational skills, who is comfortable and enjoys managing multiple tasks and responsibilities simultaneously, is able to prioritize assignments, and can stay on top of time-sensitive deadlines.
We are looking for someone with an eye for detail who is able to work under pressure and at a fast pace—without sacrificing quality or accuracy.
We are looking for someone with strong communication skills who is able to manage direct email campaigns, subscriber mailing lists, and other forms of communication across platforms (at Dartmouth and online).
Desired skills and experiences:
We use several platforms to coordinate, organize, and manage the “Conversations” series. We will train the South Asia Studies fellow in the use of these platforms, but applicants with prior experience may wish to highlight their experiences when applying.
These platforms and skills include the following:
Collaborating via Google drive
Scheduling and hosting Zoom meetings and webinars
Designing posters and working in graphic design
Running WordPress websites
Editing, trimming, and mixing audio recordings for dissemination
Communicating via Slack (for internal communication)
Publicizing events via Twitter (and on other social media platforms)
Using MailChimp to reach and cultivate our audience
Drawing upon other event planning or administrative experience
We welcome applications from Dartmouth undergraduate students. History, ASCL, and Religion majors are especially encouraged to apply.
Applications are due via Google form before Friday, September 10, 2021.
Please direct all questions about the application process or the position to Elizabeth Lhost (elizabeth.lhost [at] dartmouth.edu) or Douglas Haynes (douglas.haynes [at] dartmouth.edu).
Join us on Tuesday, April 6 from 4–5:15 pm EDT for the final event in our series this year to hear Durba Mitra (Carol K. Pforzheimer Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute | Assistant Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard University) discuss her latest book, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton University Press, 2020).
Mitra’s work examines how so-called “deviant female sexuality” became foundational to the colonial knowledge-production project and identifies the concept of the “prostitute” as a key site for British and elite Indian men’s attempts to “know” India. Prachi Deshpande has praised the book for being “a valuable contribution to the global history of sexuality” and Omnia El Shakry calls it “an indispensable book for all scholars of gender and sexuality.”
Mingwei Huang (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Dartmouth College) and Jacqueline Wernimont (Digital Humanities and Social Engagement, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Dartmouth College) will be joining us as discussants, and Elizabeth Lhost(History, Society of Fellows, Dartmouth College) will moderate the discussion.
Support for the Conversations on South Asia series is provided by the Dartmouth Society of Fellows, the Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund, the Department of History, and the Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program.
This month, we’ll be discussing Chatterjee’s most recently published book, Negotiating Mughal Law: A Family of Landlords Across Three Indian Empires, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020 and is freely available as an open access book through Cambridge Open.
In the book, Chatterjee explores the textures, nuances, conflicts, and complications of Mughal law using an archive of legal documents and materials that she reconstructed from multiple sites and repositories in and beyond South Asia.
Dominic Vendell (History, Exeter University) and Samira Sheikh (History, Vanderbilt University) will join us for this conversation.
Elizabeth Lhost (History Department, Society of Fellows, Dartmouth College) will moderate.
Support for the Conversations on South Asia Series comes from the the Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund, the Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program, the Department of History, and the Society of Fellows at Dartmouth.
Using the idea of the “crowd,” Chowdhury examines the paradoxes, problems, and possibilities of democratic politics in Bangladesh—one of the world’s most crowded places. What are crowd politics? Who belongs to “the people”? And what can we learn from studying mass mobilizations?
Chelsey Kivland (Anthropology, Dartmouth College) and Rituparna Mitra (Liberal Arts, Emerson College) will join Chowdhury to explore these questions and offer some possible answers.
Elizabeth Lhost (Society of Fellows, Dartmouth College) will moderate the discussion.
Support for the Conversations on South Asia Series comes from the the Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund, the Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program, the Department of History, and the Society of Fellows at Dartmouth.
“An 1858 photograph by Felice Beato of a mosque in Meerut where some of the rebel soldiers may have prayed” (Wikimedia Commons)
The following participant’s report was submitted by Sri Sathvik Rayala, a ’24 at Dartmouth College, interested in South Asian History, Politics, and Economics.
On September 29, 2020, the South Asia Studies Collective at Dartmouth College hosted its first event in the new “Conversations on South Asia Series,” featuring Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont, discussing her book Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion: Religion, Rebels, and Jihad (I. B. Tauris & Company, 2017). Following the theoretical frameworks presented in the book, the conversation centered on the racialization and minoritization of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, particularly following the 1857 Rebellion against the British East India Company. During the event, which was moderated by the series coordinator, Elizabeth Lhost, Morgenstein Fuerst discussed several points related to her argument about the racialization and minoritization of South Asian Muslims and its implications for the study of race and religion today—drawing from and extending the central arguments of her recent book.
The event began with a brief presentation by Morgenstein Fuerst outlining her argument that the Rebellion of 1857 marked a shift in how people, particularly the British colonial officials, talked about and saw Muslims and their religion. In particular, Morgenstein Fuerst suggested that the 1857 Rebellion caused British colonial officials to question the loyalty of Muslims, who they believed were religiously obligated to conduct “jihad” against the Crown’s rule. As Morgenstein Fuerst explained during her presentation (and elaborates in the book), one British official, Sir William Wilson Hunter, went so far as to claim that “Muslims are a problem to be solved” for the Crown, a remark that inherently and quite explicitly placed Muslims squarely in the camp of traitors to the Crown. Indeed, throughout Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion, Morgenstein Fuerst examines how Hunter framed this “problem” in his assertions that “it is hopeless to look for anything like enthusiastic loyalty from our Muhammadan subjects” (59). Simply put, Morgenstein Fuerst argues that the British saw South Asian Muslims, particularly those in North India, as inherently violent, disloyal, and untrustworthy—despite the evident loyalty of figures like Syed Ahmed Khan, another figure whose writings and reflections on 1857 feature in Morgenstein Fuerst’s work.
To provide evidence of this view, Morgenstein Fuerst opened her talk with a photograph of a mosque in Meerut taken by Felice Beato (see inset above), an Italian-British photographer, in 1858. The caption of this photograph, taken just a year after the 1857 Rebellion, read “a mosque in Meerut where some of the rebel soldiers may have prayed.” Analyzing this photo and its caption, Morgenstein Fuerst pointed out that there was no evidence to support the caption’s claim and that its glib reference to “rebel soldiers” perfectly encapsulates how British views framed Muslims of North India as disloyal and people prone to rebel due to their supposed religious commandments. Extending the photo’s implications, Morgenstein Fuerst suggested that instead of viewing this mosque as just a mosque, Beato made an unfounded interpolation to consider it a site that in some fashion aided rebellion, clearly indicating an implicit view that Muslims are supposedly commanded by Islam to conduct “jihad” against their British rulers. It is worth noting that Morgenstein Fuerst acknowledges that stereotyping of Muslims occurred before 1857 too, but that in the aftermath of 1857, two processes emerged that have immense ramifications today: minoritization and racialization.
To support her central arguments further, Morgenstein Fuerst explained her decision to use minoritization and racialization as theoretical frameworks. Minoritization, as she explains it in Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion, “does not refer solely to the demographic realities of a particular location, but instead to the systematic process by which elites deny power or access to a group through the implementation of power, be that local, linguistic, economic, or political” (6). In brief, minoritization is the process by which elites from a dominant group deny marginalized or minority communities access to various resources, strip them of power, or make them even more powerless. This was the experience of Indian Muslims in the post-1857 period. The process of minoritization impacted both rich and poor Muslims alike. To the surprise of some in the audience, as Morgenstein Fuerst explained, even wealthier and well-connected Muslims experienced minoritization as they, too, lost access to resources and positions that provided them with a stable place in society.
Racialization—a process precipitated by the British that adversely affected Hindus and Muslims and the second core concept in Morgenstein Fuerst’s monograph—accompanied the process of minoritization. In Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion, Morgenstein Fuerst describes “racialization” as “the process through which a group is made or marked as a race; it is the process through which individuals are made manifest as both belonging to one cogent group as well as possessing those inherent, hereditary, and prognostic characteristics” (7). British colonial officials racialized Muslims as inherently violent, dangerous, traitorous, and untrustworthy. (They equally racialized Hindus but classed them as weak, subservient, and effeminate.) Racialization, which Morgenstein Fuerst suggested during the “Conversation” was developed in part to further divide and inflame communal relations between Hindus and Muslims, still has ramifications today, reverberating in modern American politics as Islamophobia, for instance. To use Morgenstein Fuerst’s words in Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion, “a lasting and evident aspect of contemporary discourse about Muslims directly evokes assumptions that became solidified, popularized, and primary as a result of the Great Rebellion of 1857” (158).
By drawing attention to the emergence of “minoritization” and “racialization” in photographic, administrative, and scholarly sources, Morgenstein Fuerst draws parallels between anti-Muslim rhetoric surrounding questions of loyalty and rebellion in British India and discourses that evoke similar concerns today. For scholars and students interested in the origins of racialized and minoritized conceptions of Muslim minorities, her book, Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion: Religion, Rebels, and Jihad, is a recommended read.
(Page numbers refer to the paperback edition of the book.)
The Conversations on South Asia Series returns on December 3, 2020 for the second event of the year, featuring Dinyar Patel’s Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism (Harvard University Press, 2020).
To stay up to date with the series, follow us on twitter (@sasiaconverse) or subscribe to our email newsletter for updates about future events: https://tinyurl.com/y24fdrbx .
The Conversations on South Asia series is supported by the Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund | Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program | Department of History | and the Dartmouth College Society of Fellows.
