Social and Cultural History of Maharashtra

Published in Conference Souvenir of International Conference on
‘Sant-Mahatmyanchi Bhumi’ - Histories of Interactions, Connections and Subjectivities in Aurangabad Region' Sponsored by UGC, ICSSR New Delhi & BAMU Aurangabad & Organized by Urdu Education Society, Aurangabad, Chishtiya College, Khuldabad &  Aurangabad History Society, Aurangabad on 19th to 21st June 2015 at Khuldabad. ISBN : 978-81-930150-8-7

This paper examines a long-running debate over Marathi shuddhalekhan, or orthography. Efforts to standardise spelling conventions for Marathi words began in the colonial period and continued through the 1950s. In 1962, the new state of Maharashtra authorised a set of rules for public use. Critics of these revised rules persist, keeping the debate perennial in the public sphere. This paper locates these orthographic debates within colonial-era transformations in Marathi print culture and grammar, and examines the idea of the social and the popular within grammar discourse to examine how and why orthography became a persistent, and controversial issue within Marathi language reform. It explores how seemingly trivial questions at first glance of vowel signs and dots gradually emerge as part of larger ones about literacy, historicity, community and the public sphere. A Marathi version of this paper is available here: https://www.academia.edu/attachments/50532199/download_file?st=MTQ4MDA1NzA0NSwxMjUuMjIuMTA1LjUxLDk1Mjc3MQ%3D%3D&s=profile

Inscriptions play an important role in revealing the various activities done by the people of the past. Records engraved in temples throw a flood of light on several aspects like, the period of its construction, the gradual expansion of the components of a temple complex over a period of time, renovations made, the various donations made by its patrons, festivals and rituals, administration of the temple, etc. The Lakshmi Narasimha temple at Nira Narasimhapur, Pune district, Maharashtra is an important place of Vaishnavite pilgrimage in general and Lord Narasimha in particular. The present paper aims to examine 10 inscriptions of this temple, written in Marathi and Gujarati languagesdated between early decades of 17th to mid-19th century CE gleaning light on the construction and renovation of the temple and the patronage it received from the devotees.

Published in
‘मराठी बखर गद्य: ऐतिहासिक व वाङ्मयीन स्वरूप’ (Marathi BakharLitrature: Historical and Literary Form)-the Proceedings of National Seminar Sponsored by University Grants Commission, NewDelhi and Organized by Department of Marathi, Kasegaon Shikshan Santha’s Arts and Commerce College, Ashta, Tal. Walwa, Dist. Sanglion 23rd and 24th January 2015. ISBN :978-93-5196-698-2

In this thesis I compare the social history of movements against hydropower projects in two states of India, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, from 1921 to 2004 in three phases. The specific aim of this project is to demonstrate the shifting notion of subaltern political subjectivity and `state-formation' in postcolonial India. Here I argue that the subalterns played significant causal and constitutive roles in transforming the structure of postcolonial Indian state in a more democratic direction and in that process considerably changed their political discourses, practices and strategies. The two extended historical cases of movement against large dams illustrated in this thesis mark the different types of subaltern politics that emerged in postcolonial India.

The articles discusses Ramayana narratives appearing in the sculptural form on the Gondeshvara temples at Sinnar in Maharashtra. The panels are depicted on the Kakashasana, Varandika on the exterior and on the ceiling beam and on the pillars of the mandapa on the interior of the main shrine. There are few panels on the Kakashasana of the Nandimandapa and another subshrine of Vishnu. It highlights the episodes that are repeated and tries to explore its popularity in the sculptural depiction in general.

This paper deals with the transnationalism of racial anthropological frameworks and its role in the understanding of human difference during India’s decolonization and nation-building. With attention to the circulation of scientific objects, I focus on the practices and articulations of Irawati Karve (1905–1970), an Indian anthropologist with a transnational scientific trajectory and nationalistic political engagements. I argue that Karve’s adaptation of an internationally validated German racial approach to study caste, ethnic and religious groups contributed to the further racialization of these categories as well as to the racialization of nationalistic projects in Maharashtra and India. I conclude with a reflection on the transnationalization of the coloniality of racialization. https://direct.mit.edu/posc/article-abstract/30/1/137/108143/Racializing-a-New-Nation-German-Coloniality-and?redirectedFrom=fulltext

The above work deals with a regional study based on ivory as a product as well as marker of the socio-economic behaviour of a culture. It explores the socio-economic and cultural dimensions of early-historic Maharashtra based on the occurrence and absence of ivory in archaeological strata. For the said purpose, ivory artefacts were classified typologically, site-wise and period-wise. They were studied in the context of their contemporary material culture and also in iconographic terms wherever necessary. The study revealed a wide range of ivory objects belonging to early-historic Maharashtra and indicated the nascence and development of the ivory industry within the research period indicating a specialised craft with developed technical skills. It also highlighted ivory as a medium reflecting the religious spirit of the time and one responsive to contemporary economic trends.