This volume explores the history of the Delhi college - considered the centre of Delhi Renaissance and the meeting ground between British and Oriental culture before 1857 - against the background of both traditional scholarship and the British education policy in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The spatial turn in humanities and social sciences has contributed towards a significant discourse on the city and urban spaces, and street art is widely accepted to be one of the ways in which one can analyse and unravel the cityscape. The utilization of the public domain of the city, its entanglements with urban authorities and its diverse potential has sparked several debates, and I seek to engage in the same, and interrogate the role of street art in modifying the (...) cityscape. Through the course of my paper, I seek to interrogate the changing cityscape of Delhi and the role that street art has played in the same, post the events of 13th and 15th December 2019. The walls of Jamia Millia Islamia serve as a canvas for the articulation of resistance against the State and its excesses, its personal testimony of the same, and the graffiti on the same covers a plethora of topics, ranging from assertions of revolution, encouraging slogans and ominous warnings by literary figures, and is a dynamic form of subversion of State Power, unlike the street art projects at Lodhi Art Districts that are aimed at gentrification. The murals have been painted by students but the anonymity of the artists is retained, and thus belongs to no one but the multiplicity. I seek to study the reorientation of the cityscape of Delhi by the protest sites of Jamia and Shaheen Bagh that is not just limited to street art but the rerouting and diversion of traffic, creation of temporary structures like classrooms and libraries outside the institution and on the roads through the works of Henri Lefebvre, and weigh the significance of this protest. (shrink)

This article is based on qualitative research conducted in Delhi between May 2019 and October 2019 with children from the Salaam Baalak Trust (SBT) as part of a PhD. Data were collected from 30 children in focus group discussions using participatory methods, followed by semi-structured interviews. As the research was conducted among a vulnerable population (migrant street children), every effort was made to conduct the study ethically, including obtaining informed consent and upholding confidentially and anonymity. Careful consideration was given (...) as to how to tackle sensitive issues should they arise during data collection. The children agreed that the interim findings of the research would be shared with them through SBT. In addition, the researcher considered her position in the research and applied a reflexive approach to address ethical issues as they emerged. This article sets out the ethical principles applied in this research and the process followed to uphold each principle during data collection, taking into account the vulnerability of the group being studied and the context of the study (India). (shrink)

Grounded in long-term ethnographic fieldwork in New Delhi’s fashion industry, this article explores the pressing question on the designer’s mind, namely: how do I align the desires of others with my (master)-desire? This question points us towards an investigation of how people’s affects are mobilized and directed through commercial rituals such as fashion shows set within hyper-designed theatrical play-spheres. Translating the invisible or covert mobilization of affects into profit has been on the mind of advertisers for the last decade. (...) However, analysing such deliberately covert strategies of capture employed in two cases – JJ Valaya’s haute couture shows and Nitin Bal Chauhan’s youth brand – we realize that it is precisely their failure at being covert that makes them effective; clients know full well about them. Robert Pfaller’s theory of ‘illusions without owners’ can throw some light here on why clients passionately embrace the desire of capital precisely against their better knowledge. (shrink)

While living a life based on universal principles is well accepted by many, the reality of living acts as a great detriment to those who want to centre their lives on these timeless truths. Further, institutional mechanisms and work environments do not conform in general to such principle-centred living. The agents of the state, especially those in the police, have to work under tremendous obstacles and pressures from within and without, and often get a bad reputation, sometimes undeservingly. Moreover their (...) value systems may also degrade in these environments, a direction that requires to be altered by the ‘guardians of the law’. It is important to bring about alignment of values and ethical perceptions of state administrators with some universal laws. The Buddhist practice of vipassana mediation can play a significant role in such transformations, as is evident from the responses from Delhi Police personnel who underwent vipassana in one of their training programmes. Vipassana has made significant differences in the lives and perceptions of these trainees—both at the professional and personal level. This paper introduces these concepts and cites evidences from the feedback sheets of trainees to recommend worldwide adoption of such practices for those who occupy seats of power and responsibility. The feedback shows positive and very encouraging trends in all dimensions—work related, humanitarian, family and self—in other words, in professional, personal and deep inner lives. (shrink)

Here presented are three singular, philosophical perspectives on the Delhi student protests which took place in 2019 and 2020, before the coronavirus pandemic. The writers hail from India, England...

The proportion of the world’s population living in urban areas is increasing rapidly, with the vast majority of this growth in developing countries. As growing populations in urban areas demand greater food supplies, coupled with a rise in rural to urban migration and the need to create livelihood options, there has been an increase in urban agriculture worldwide. Urban agriculture is commonly discussed as a sustainable solution for dealing with gaps in the local food system, and proponents often highlight the (...) many social, environmental, and economic benefits. We argue that the sustainability of urban agriculture should not be assumed. There is a need for research to take a bottom-up approach, exploring the influence that city-level conditions have on livelihood decisions by farmers and how this shapes the practice of urban agriculture. This paper uses a case study for an in-depth look at urban agriculture in Delhi, India to understand from the farmers’ perspective how urban agriculture is practiced and what factors influence farmers’ livelihood decisions. Using a team-based, multi-method Rapid Assessment Process, data were collected through preliminary key informant interviews, field observations, semi-structured interviews with urban farmers, and geographic information systems mapping. This research provides an in-depth description of market-oriented urban agriculture in a developing country, explores how farmers’ livelihood decisions are embedded in the urban context, and discusses the potential of urban agriculture as a sustainable city-system. (shrink)

At the present time, when we are experiencing one of the extraordinary conditions in which the basics of life are shaken, exceptional practices concerning the sources of the meaning of the world of life have become one of the urgent issues for the sociology of religion to consider. This study discusses the reactions of people to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the regularity of social life in the early stages in the framework of Muslim religious groups. Since the (...) forms of social organization reveal reactions in their own specific forms, a research design that considers the differences were preferred. The provision that ‘man is social by nature,’ which is the indispensable principle of social sciences, has been the main feature of important issues to elaborate in the restrictions of today’s pandemic. Religious socialization, which is important for the inquiry, is a phenomenon that is desired to be carried out on a continuous basis. Its performative dimension draws attention to important elements that affect the formation and the social ontology of the group, such as consciousness and solidarity. While some religious groups insist on face-to-face interaction and rituals, some of them prefer to use effectively digital tools and channels. This differing approach has become a public issue, especially during the pandemic process. On the other hand, there is a discussion in the context of the digital world of new media tools and the travel possibilities of transportation technology. The theoretical basis of this study, which deals with the insistence of religious groups on face-to-face interaction and rituals is represented from the scope of Erving Goffman. His analyzes face-to-face communication and his comments emphasizing the ritualistic nature of daily life are operationalized through two basic case studies: the first case is the persistence and practice of Tablīghī Djamā‘at, in its annual meetings in the early days of the pandemic. The discussion started with the practice of the religious group in Delhi (Nizamuddin Markaz), since they did not cancel their annual meeting despite the diagnosis of the disease. The second case is based on the ritual insistence of pilgrims in visiting shrines in the Iranian city of Qom. The insistence of the Shiite Islamic understanding on ritual and pilgrimage and the solidarity built with the consciousness based on it is a well-known phenomenon. In the Covid-19 pandemic, the risk of contamination caused by the mobility of the pilgrims coming to the city of Qom from countries such as Pakistan was discussed, as well as the contact and social distance during the Hajj. Two cases were handled with a qualitative design including case analysis method and descriptive analysis technique. The main purpose and intended contribution of the article are to reveal the insistence of face-to-face interaction through the performative based on rituals as an analytical explanatory on the social level. Inferences based on the analysis of religious groups’ response to restrictions in times of emergency build the importance of the issue. Case information identified in the context of the case study shows that groups with traditional interaction forms insist on their own practice in the field of uncertainty and initiative. Unless necessity eliminates the initiative, the determination of this insistence of traditional religious groups is not only theological but also ontological confirmation. It is understood that the members of the group took the initiative to represent their reputation within the group and their extent to dedicate to the group. The fact that Tablīghī Djamā‘at, the largest group of the transnational Islamic da‘wa (call), did not give up on a method based on demographic mobility, has been a matter of discussion. The insistence of the group is because of the methods that require every ordinary believer to accept to convey the da‘wa as his primary duty. On the other hand, Shiism, which stands out with its traditional structure and ritual intensity in the Islamic world, insisted on the initiative process in the pilgrimage phenomenon, on which it attached special importance and built its solidarity and identity on this phenomenon. This insistence aims preserving the dynamics and social ontology of the religious group in the performance of the membership system. Essentially, the individual in the group insists on his position in face-to-face interaction because having a role in a group also means having a face. Thus, this insistence performance by religious groups should also be read as a reflection of self-technologies. In the final analysis, the insistence put forward should be considered essentially in relation to the insistence on the position in social ontology. (shrink)

As a neo-liberal economy, India has become one of the new health tourism destinations, with commercial gestational surrogacy as an expanding market. Yet the Indian Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill has been pending for five years, and the guidelines issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research are somewhat vague and contradictory, resulting in self-regulated practices of fertility clinics. This paper broadly looks at clinical ethics in reproduction in the practice of surrogacy and decision-making in various procedures. Through empirical research in (...) New Delhi, the capital of India, from December 2011 to November 2012, issues of decision-making on embryo transfer, fetal reduction, and mode of delivery were identified. Interviews were carried out with doctors in eighteen ART clinics, agents from four agencies, and fourteen surrogates. In aiming to fulfil the commissioning parents’ demands, doctors were willing to go to the greatest extent possible in their medical practice. Autonomy and decision-making regarding choice of the number of embryos to transfer and the mode of delivery lay neither with commissioning parents nor surrogate mothers but mostly with doctors. In order to ensure higher success rates, surrogates faced the risk of multiple pregnancy and fetal reduction with little information regarding the risks involved. In the globalized market of commercial surrogacy in India, and with clinics compromising on ethics, there is an urgent need for formulation of regulative law for the clinical practice and maintenance of principles of reproductive ethics in order to ensure that the interests of surrogate mothers are safeguarded. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to describe the nonverbal communication patterns that passengers of the Delhi Metro use to manage density-induced territorial intrusions, and to identify some of the contextual variables that affect their deployment. After introducing the notion of “interrogative look” and the dataset, the following section depicts the techniques that passengers were observed to employ in order to solve the problem of territorial intrusion without breaking anonymity. The bulk of the analysis deals with the structure and (...) function of “interrogative looks”, an objectively defined pattern of nonverbal behavior that the touched uses to signal her discontent to the toucher. The rest of the section describes a less frequent pattern whereby passengers contagiously signal the playful character of their mischiefs. Next is examined if and how density, i.e., the number of individuals per surface unit, influences as a contextual variable the occurrence of interrogative looks. The closing discussion considers the main findings from the standpoint of their local specificity. (shrink)

This paper interrogates the routine and unproblematic use of terms such as in biomedical and anthropological discourse. A typical depiction of the social factors that explain the practice of in India is to put together the supply side factors (such as protection offered by the government for the production of generic drugs, especially in the small scale sector, and expansion of the number of drug store outlets), with the increasing demand for allopathic drugs. The paper provides an ethnographic account of (...) the intricate connections between households and biomedical practitioners in urban neighbourhoods in Delhi. It breaks away from the conventional opposition drawn between the practices of physicians and the beliefs of their patients, and suggests that what constitutes the medical environments of these neighbourhoods is the product of medical practices, household economies and concepts of disease. Thus pharmaceutical use is determined as much by practices of dispensation and by how practitioners understand what constitutes therapy as by household understanding of the normal and the pathological. This paper uses both quantitative data and narrative interviews to provide an in-depth understanding of the circulation of pharmaceuticals within the life worlds of the urban poor. (shrink)

Review of Janz, B. B. (2023). African Philosophy and Enactivist Cognition: The Space of Thought. London, New York, Oxford, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic.

The new technologies of television viewership following the digital turn have introduced new anxieties and possibilities. While new screen cultures facilitate a transnational viewership, the importance of ethically and morally grounded representations cannot be overstated. In this context, Delhi Crime, the Emmy award-winning Indian series based on the Delhi gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi, will be instrumental in informing the ethico-political concerns that ought to be prioritized while representing the subaltern subject and (...) the novel socialites fashioned through the new viewership patterns. This article attempts to understand the way in which the emerging screen economies provide new terrains for ethical representation and engendering digital publics. Thus, this article is interested in understanding the intersection of media ecologies and ethico-political concerns to introduce new dialectical possibilities. (shrink)

The UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) in the 1990s becomes a landmark and has now been ratified by every other country of the world. Bring hope for a better world—for all children was highlighted as one of the most far-sighted human right instrument in the convention. Yet access to basic livelihood needs such as clean drinking water, primary health services, primary education, recreation and other urban infrastructure becomes a nightmare for millions of children and youth in (...) the developing world and particularly in metropolitan cities in India. The Indian children are living in varying residential environment, comprised of residential colonies of rich, high-raised flats of middle and low-income groups and the economically weaker sections living in slums and squatter colonies. The conventional method of planning residential neighbourhood lacks in indentifying the varying needs of children while building urban infrastructure. As a result there is a large gap in getting access to basic livetihood needs for children of rich and poor. The basic question becomes, is the urban child and youth population just as a numerical variable in planning infrastructure needs in metropolitan cities? This article attempts to analyse the situation in some of the selected residential areas in Delhi. (shrink)

Eight hundred and eighty-seven students from two major universities in Delhi, India, were surveyed, using a self-administered questionnaire, about their sexual knowledge, attitudes and behaviour. The data show that female students seem to be rejecting traditional Indian repressive sexual standards of premarital and non-procreative sex and the gender differences are beginning to narrow. Despite their sexual awareness, the students were highly ignorant of the facts of life. Being male and married did not make them more knowledgeable.

Symbols of Authority in Medieval Islam: History, Religion and Muslim Legitimacy in the Delhi Sultanate. By Blain H. Auer. Library of South Asian History and Culture, vol. 6. London: I. B. Tauris, 2012. Pp. xx + 237. £54.50.

This important and comprehensive work of 18th-century Islamic religious thought written in Arabic by a pre-eminent South Asian scholar provides an extensive and detailed picture of Muslim theology and interpretive strategies on the eve of the modern period.

Chishtī Sufis in the Sultanate of Delhi 1190–1400: From Restrained Indifference to Calculated Defiance. By Tanvir Anjum. Karachi: Oxford Univ. Press, 2011. Pp. xviii + 433. $31.95.

This book is the second volume of The Collected Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal and both should be on the shelf of any serious student of Indian philosophy and religion. I was especially pleased to review this volume because, in my thirty years of teaching Indian philosophy, I focused far too much on metaphysics and epistemology and not enough on ethics. Working back from Gandhi’s ethics of nonviolence, I have been able to repair this deficiency somewhat, but Matilal has now (...) helped me make a substantial improvement in my knowledge of Hindu ethics. (shrink)