Their Stories, Their Voices: The Orphans of the British Raj

The global evolution of the postcolonial era across diverse spatio-temporal zones generated a highly debatable paradigm: did postcoloniality generate a new epistemological and ontological framework that disentangled from the colonial patterns or did these patterns continue with the pre-existing colonial ideologies? With the end of colonization in India, the physically visible colonial empires of patriarchy were replaced by what we can refer to as “metaphysical empires”, which are physically invisible, but which operate ideologically in a very systematic and convincing manner, reproducing many of the hierarchies entrenched during the colonial period. The interpretation of postcolonial histories has been fractured with gendered, inter-racial, caste and communal hierarchies that have promoted specific (his)tories[1] and have demolished innumerable narratives by women. Even existing historical narratives by women in India are mostly written from a patriarchal gaze, underpinned with definite caste, communal, geographical, demographical and racial preferences, demonstrating the hegemony of patriarchy and the assurance of persistent patriarchal-colonial ideologies, through the self-centered socio-political designs of indigenous groups. As the theoretical backdrop, this essay explores the documentary focused on the contemporary Anglo-Indian women residents of Bow Barracks in Calcutta. The project sought to record and archive the undocumented socio-historical narratives of those women. The film was funded by the Journal of International Women’s Studies, Bridgewater State University, Massachusetts

Role of river bathymetry in hydraulic modeling of river channels

Accurate geometric representation of the river channel is required for accurate hydraulic modeling of rivers. These are generally obtained through remote sensing techniques such as Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR). However, these techniques lack the ability to model the submerged channel bed effectively and need to be complemented with surveyed bathymetric data for complete representation of the channel bathymetry, which can be time and cost prohibitive. An alternative to address this issue is to develop conceptual models that can estimate bathymetry. This study aims to evaluate the potential of a conceptual model, the River Channel Morphology Model (RCMM) which estimates the channel bathymetry by relating channel planform to channel bathymetry. Channel DEMs are estimated from RCMM based algorithms and compared with those estimated from LIDAR and interpolation based algorithms to evaluate the importance and applicability of RCMM. Each of the five channel DEMs is used to develop hydraulic models for three characteristic low and high flows. They are assessed to study the propagation of errors in channel DEM to the hydraulic outputs such as inundation maps, water surface elevation (WSE), flow velocity and shear. The analysis shows that the error in hydraulic modeling due to inaccurate bathymetric representation is significantly reduced by RCMM. The error in hydraulic model outputs decreases with increasing flow. The RCMM exhibits the ability to model channel bathymetry at reaches with reliable accuracy. Results indicate that the RCMM can even outperform bathymetry estimated from interpolation of surveyed data over large distances and, hence, is an admirable prospect for channel bathymetry estimation

Voices of the Dead: A Documentary Research on the Scottish Women of Calcutta

The process of writing, understanding and interpreting the histories of the European colonizers have always been infected with different forms of social, cultural, gender, and racial hierarchies. With respect to the gender perspective, usually, it is observed that historical narratives that are associated with European colonization in general and the colonization of India by the Europeans in particular are highly heteronormative and patriarchal in nature. In other words, the various socio-historical narratives that make an effort to eulogize the ‘contributions’ and the ‘sacrifices’ of the European colonizers mostly talk about European men and systemically and epistemically fail to acknowledge the ‘contributions’ and ‘sacrifices’ of the women. As a result, such forms of historical narratives only unfurl a half-baked picture of the actual reality. With respect to these arguments, this documentary research makes an effort to unpack a set of ignored and undervalued historical narratives that are associated with the Scottish women of Calcutta. Most of the existing historical documents that focuses on the functioning of the British East India Company in Calcutta hardly talk about the Scottish in general and/or the Scottish in particular. Thus, this documentary research, which has been funded by a Journal of International Women’s Studies (JIWS) fellowship, has made an effort to selectively bring forth the various social and cultural roles that were played by Scottish women in Calcutta during the time of British colonization. In the process of shedding light on these select Scottish women, this documentary has also made an effort to complicate the histories of colonialism and the challenges of the decolonial gaze

A note on electromagnetic and gravitational perturbations of the Bardeen de Sitter black hole: quasinormal modes and greybody factors

Bardeen de-Sitter (BdS) black hole is a spherically symmetric solution of Einstein's equation which is coupled to nonlinear electromagnetic field in a way that one gets a regular solution, devoid of any singularity at the origin. We compute the quasinormal (QN) frequencies for BdS black hole due to electromagnetic and gravitational perturbations. We analyse the behaviour of both real and imaginary parts of BdS QN frequencies by varying the black hole parameters and compare frequencies with Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m de-Sitter (RN-dS) black hole. Interestingly, we find that the response of BdS and RN-dS black holes under electromagnetic and gravitational perturbations are different when the charge parameter is varied, which can be used to understand nonlinear and linear electromagnetic fields in curved spacetime separately. A study on the dynamics of perturbation as well as the scattering from the BdS black holes using WKB approach is performed. Greybody factors and their variations with black hole parameters are investigated.Comment: 21 pages, 38 figure

Translating Contexts, Transforming Cultures: : A Bengali Adaptation of Mahesh Elkunchwar’s Vāḍā Cirebandī

The concept of translation is usually limited within the frontiers of languages, often conceived as words and phrases. It restricts the diverse possibilities of going beyond textual translation to analyze contextual translation, or “transcontextualization”. This argument attempts to realize a (normally) unrealizable perspective on translation through Sohag Sen’s Bengali adaptation of Mahesh Elkunchwar’s play Vāḍā Cirebandī (The Old-Stone Mansion, 1985), an adaptation which encompasses both the text and its context(s). The criticism of colonial legacies in postcolonial India, as unraveled through the rural-urban divide in this play, does not portray identical obstacles and grievances in Elkunchwar’s Maharashtra and Sohag Sen’s Bengal. Keeping different contexts in mind, this paper will elaborate the manifold ways in which transcreation/transcontextualization exposes the problem of generalized textual representations. It will also reflect upon the diverse ways through which transcontextualization incorporates geographical and ontological variants within specific spatio-temporal zones.&nbsp

Baine Maara-Indu Mama-Siddi Dhamal: Interwoven Performances of Epistemic Justice and Cognitive Freedom by the Siddis of Karnataka, India

The Siddis were brought to India from the southern and eastern parts of Africa by the Arab and Portuguese colonisers. At present, the Siddis in India can be found in parts of Gujarat (a state located in western India), Hyderabad (a state located in southeastern India) and Karnataka (a state located in southwestern India). They are habitually subjected to colonially reconfigured violence of epistemic and cognitive injustices by the mainstream colonial/modern governing institutions in India through dehumanising their cultural practices, racially invalidating their food habits, preventing them from receiving education, practising racial suppression at workplaces, etc. To counter such violence of the colonial/modern governing institutions, the Siddis interweave narratives of epistemic justice and cognitive freedom through performing their Indigenous traditional socio-cultural practices of hunting, cooking, eating, singing and dancing. The interesting aspect of these socio-cultural practices is that they are socially, culturally, thematically and contextually interlinked to each other. The title of this article is a synecdochic representation of the interwovenness of Siddi histories and cultures. With respect to these arguments, the research article will argue how these socio-cultural practices function as Indigenous performances of epistemic justice and cognitive freedom for the Siddis of Karnataka

Gender Empowerment in Transoceanic Feminine Folklore and Shrines: A Kin Study of Siddi Women’s Participation in Mai Misra Worship in Gujarat, India

The term Siddi refers to the African diaspora communities in India, who initially arrived in the 13th century with the Islamic invaders in Gujarat (then Sindh) as slaves, palace guards, traders, and musicians from the eastern parts of Africa, including Ethiopia, Zanzibar, Sudan, and Tanzania. In the 15th century, another group of Africans from South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique were brought to India by the Portuguese colonizers as slaves. The majority of the histories of the Siddi community are androcentric in nature, focusing on the contributions of African men and male spiritual figures towards the development of the Siddi community in India. However, this paper offers a more diverse and deeper analysis that uncovers the role of women spiritual figures like Mai Misra, Makhaan Devi, and goddess Luxmi, and the role of Siddi women in the cultural and spiritual evolution of Siddi practices. This article analyzes how women spiritual figures and spiritual practices contribute to Siddi culture in Gujarat and offer Siddi women empowerment and agency. The thematic and theoretical arguments in this article are supported by a kin study on the patterns and intentions of Mai Misra worship in Gujarat