Theatre and National Identity in Colonial India

Theatre and National Identity in Colonial India PDF Author: Sharmistha Saha
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789350025239
Category : Theater
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book

Book Description

Theatre and National Identity in Colonial India

Theatre and National Identity in Colonial India PDF Author: Sharmistha Saha
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789350025239
Category : Theater
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book

Book Description


Theatre and National Identity in Colonial India

Theatre and National Identity in Colonial India PDF Author: Sharmistha Saha
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811311773
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 175

Get Book

Book Description
This book critically engages with the study of theatre and performance in colonial India, and relates it with colonial (and postcolonial) discussions on experience, freedom, institution-building, modernity, nation/subject not only as concepts but also as philosophical queries. It opens up with the discourse around ‘Indian theatre’ that was started by the orientalists in the late 18th century, and which continued till much later. The study specifically focuses on the two major urban centres of colonial India: Bombay and Calcutta of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It discusses different cultural practices in colonial India, including the initiation of ‘Indian theatre’ practices, which resulted in many forms of colonial-native ‘theatre’ by the 19th century; the challenges to this dominant discourse from the ‘swadeshi jatra’ (national jatra/theatre) in Bengal, which drew upon earlier folk and religious traditions and was used as a tool by the nationalist movement; and the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) that functioned from Bombay around the 1940s, which focused on the creation of one national subject – that of the ‘Indian’. The author contextualizes the relevance of the concept of ‘Indian theatre’ in today’s political atmosphere. She also critically analyses the post-Independence Drama Seminar organized by the Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1956 and its relevance to the subsequent organization of ‘Indian theatre’. Many theatre personalities who emerged as faces of smaller theatre committees were part of the seminar which envisioned a national cultural body. This book is an important contribution to the field and is of interest to researchers and students of cultural studies, especially Theatre and Performance Studies, and South Asian Studies.

Cultural Identity in Hindi Plays

Cultural Identity in Hindi Plays PDF Author: Diana Dimitrova
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019286906X
Category : Group identity in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book

Book Description
This book deals with the interface between identity, culture and literature. It aims at studying questions of cultural identity and gender in Hindi plays of the 19th- and 20th- centuries and the interplay of poetics and politics, as revealed in the work of several influential playwrights. The book explores questions related to the ways in which seven representative playwrights imagine India and its identity and the ways, in which this concept is revealed in the "narratives of the nation", its postcolonial contentions and the politics of identity, as revealed in the production of various cultural discourses. The chapters explore various aspects of the ongoing process of constructing and narrating culture, gender, the nation and identity. There has been no monograph on the questions of cultural identity in Hindi drama. This is a pioneering project and a desideratum in the field of Hindi literature, South Asian Studies, and broadly, in the study of theatre of India and of South Asian cultures and literatures.

Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema

Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema PDF Author: Prem Chowdhry
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719057922
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Get Book

Book Description
"This book is an empirico-historical enquiry into the empire cinema made in Hollywood and Britain during the turbulent 1930s and 1940s. It shows how empire cinema constructed the colonial world, its rationale for doing so, and the manner in which such constructions were received by the colonised people".--Back cover.

Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850-1922

Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850-1922 PDF Author: Partha Mitter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521443548
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 538

Get Book

Book Description
Partha Mitter's book is a pioneering study of the history of modern art on the Indian subcontinent from 1850 to 1922. The author tells the story of Indian art during the Raj, set against the interplay of colonialism and nationalism. The work addresses the tensions and contradictions that attended the advent of European naturalism in India, as part of the imperial design for the westernisation of the elite, and traces the artistic evolution from unquestioning westernisation to the construction of Hindu national identity. Through a wide range of literary and pictorial sources, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India balances the study of colonial cultural institutions and networks with the ideologies of the nationalist and intellectual movements which followed. The result is a book of immense significance, both in the context of South Asian history and in the wider context of art history.

Shakespeare and Indian Theatre

Shakespeare and Indian Theatre PDF Author: Vikram Singh Thakur
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 9389812658
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book

Book Description
This book looks at adaptations, translations and performance of Shakespeare's productions in India from the mid-18th century, when British officers in India staged Shakespeare's plays along with other English playwrights for entertainment, through various Indian adaptations of his plays during the colonial period to post-Independence period. It studies Shakespeare in Bengali and Parsi theatre at length. Other theatre traditions, such as Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi, have been included. The book dwells on the fascinating story of the languages of India that have absorbed Shakespeare's work and have transformed the original educated Indian's Shakespeare into the popular Shakespeare practice of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the unique urban-folkish tradition in postcolonial India.

Empire, Early Photography and Spectacle

Empire, Early Photography and Spectacle PDF Author: Elisa deCourcy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000209873
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Get Book

Book Description
James William Newland’s (1810–1857) career as a showman daguerreotypist began in the United States but expanded into Central and South America, across the Pacific to New Zealand and colonial Australia and onto India. Newland used the latest developments in photography, theatre and spectacle to create powerful new visual experiences for audiences in each of these volatile colonial societies. This book assesses his surviving, vivid portraits against other visual ephemera and archival records of his time. Newland’s magic lantern and theatre shows are imaginatively reconstructed from textual sources and analysed, with his short, rich career casting a new light on the complex worlds of the mid-nineteenth century. It provides a revealing case study of someone brokering new experiences with optical technologies for varied audiences at the forefront of the age of modern vision. This book will be of interest to scholars in art and visual culture, photography, the history of photography and Victorian history.

Performance Making and the Archive

Performance Making and the Archive PDF Author: Ashutosh Potdar
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000785777
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Get Book

Book Description
This book investigates theories and practices shaped by a performance’s relationship to the archive. The contributions in the volume examine how the changing nature of performance practices has made it imperative to understand how the archive and archival practices could add to the performance work. They explore a variety of themes, including artistic engagement with the archive in both conceptual and material terms; physical, virtual and digital forms; publicly and privately collected; oral, written and digital ways; or organized and unorganized collections. Finally, the volume examines how archives are modelled on existing structure and the ways in which they can be brought into discourses and practices of performance making through engagement and contestation. A novel approach to performance theory, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of performance studies, media and culture studies, studies of technology and art as also literature and literary criticism.

Indian Classical Dance and the Making of Postcolonial National Identities

Indian Classical Dance and the Making of Postcolonial National Identities PDF Author: Sitara Thobani
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315387336
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 203

Get Book

Book Description
Previous studies have analysed Indian classical dance as an expression of Indian religious and nationalist culture, examining the art form solely in the context of Indian history and culture. In investigating performances of Indian classical dance in the UK it is possible to argue that classical Indian dance has become a key aspect of the mutual constitution of not only postcolonial Indian and South Asia diasporic identities, but also of British multicultural and transnational identity. Indian Classical Dance and the Making of Postcolonial National Identities explores what happens when national cultural production is reproduced outside the immediate social, political and cultural context of its construction. The chapters in this volume addresses the questions: * What is the relation between the contemporary performance of Indian classical dance and the constitution of national, diasporic and multicultural identity? * Where/how does Indian dance derive its productive power in the postcolonial moment? * How do diasporic and nationalist representations of Indian culture intersect with depictions of British culture and politics? Based on an extensive ethnographic study of performances of Indian classical dance in the UK, this book should be of interest to scholars of anthropology, sociology, South Asian studies, Postcolonial, Transnational and Cultural studies and Theatre and Performance studies.

Toward a Free Economy

Toward a Free Economy PDF Author: Aditya Balasubramanian
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691205248
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book

Book Description
The unknown history of economic conservatism in India after independence Neoliberalism is routinely characterized as an antidemocratic, expert-driven project aimed at insulating markets from politics, devised in the North Atlantic and projected on the rest of the world. Revising this understanding, Toward a Free Economy shows how economic conservatism emerged and was disseminated in a postcolonial society consistent with the logic of democracy. Twelve years after the British left India, a Swatantra (“Freedom”) Party came to life. It encouraged Indians to break with the Indian National Congress Party, which spearheaded the anticolonial nationalist movement and now dominated Indian democracy. Rejecting Congress’s heavy-industrial developmental state and the accompanying rhetoric of socialism, Swatantra promised “free economy” through its project of opposition politics. As it circulated across various genres, “free economy” took on meanings that varied by region and language, caste and class, and won diverse advocates. These articulations, informed by but distinct from neoliberalism, came chiefly from communities in southern and western India as they embraced new forms of entrepreneurial activity. At their core, they connoted anticommunism, unfettered private economic activity, decentralized development, and the defense of private property. Opposition politics encompassed ideas and practice. Swatantra’s leaders imagined a conservative alternative to a progressive dominant party in a two-party system. They communicated ideas and mobilized people around such issues as inflation, taxation, and property. And they made creative use of India’s institutions to bring checks and balances to the political system. Democracy’s persistence in India is uncommon among postcolonial societies. By excavating a perspective of how Indians made and understood their own democracy and economy, Aditya Balasubramanian broadens our picture of neoliberalism, democracy, and the postcolonial world.