Ideology and Paradox in British Civil Service Accounts of Muslim ‘Conspiracy’ in 1857–1859

This analysis of British Civil Service accounts of Indian Muslim participation in the Indian uprising of 1857-59 assesses the widespread British conception of Muslim 'conspiracy' as the guiding hand behind the genesis and evolution of what is now commonly understood by historians as a series of competing and at times collaborative, cross-communal civil and military rebellions. Using contemporary correspondence, official accounts, and later published memoirs, this chapter argues that among a relative circumscribed and elite British official class (known as 'Civilians'), not only had these exaggerated perceptions of Muslim 'conspiracy' quickly become central to strategies of British self-presentation in India in 1857, but that these forms of narrative constituted an ideological subjectivity strongly marked by the workings of paradox and centred ultimately on the complex and troubled evolution of secular neutrality as a guiding doctrine of the colonial state

'The melting point of granite': Nationalist Tourism and the Reconstruction of Colonial Delhi

This article excavates one aspect of contemporary Hindu nationalism in the mid-nineteenth century mainstream Indian nationalist engagement with the archaeology and urban environment of Delhi. One of the first Indian narratives in English to offer a detailed account of North India in the age of railway travel, Bholanauth Chunder's 'Travels of a Hindoo to Various Parts of Bengal and Upper India' was published in London in 1869. Chunder describes himself as a 'liberal' and a republican. Taking up much of the second volume, his grand tour of Delhi's former Hindu and Muslim empires is conducted as an amateur's trail through its archaeological remains, and sits alongside his vivid descriptions of the cosmopolitan contemporary urban cultures of the city. This article draws on the theories of Henri Lefebvre to argue that Chunder's subversive intellectual engagement with these past and present spaces and his attempt to carve new and energising vistas for a vernacular modernity are significantly shaped by the divisive and deterritorialising imperatives of colonial and capitalist spatial production, out of which a new Indian strain of anti-Semitism can gradually be seen to emerge. In Chunder's deterritorialising prose, we find some of the earliest forms of the vicious contradictions contained in the later territorial concept of 'Hindutva', which has become so important to the current political and sectarian projects of Hindu nationalism

Rebirth of a nation or 'The incomparable toothbrush': the origin story and narrative regeneration in Sri Lanka

I examine the post-Independence role of Sri Lanka’s origin story, revealing the ways in which the foundational myth of the Mahavamsa functions as a conflicted site of cultural ‘encompassment’ (Kapferer) in literary and political discourse. Through an analysis of the fiction of Tissa Abeysekara, Carl Muller and the assassinated president Ranasinghe Premadasa, I show how the scripting of this myth in fiction reveals a shift from the celebratory drives of nationalism to a critique of patriotism in a way that both reflects and anticipates a broader paradigmatic shift in the construction of belonging and the outsider found in post-war Sri Lanka

The genome of the xerotolerant mold Wallemia sebi reveals adaptations to osmotic stress and suggests cryptic sexual reproduction

Wallemia (Wallemiales, Wallemiomycetes) is a genus of xerophilic Fungi of uncertain phylogenetic position within Basidiomycota. Most commonly found as food contaminants, species of Wallemia have also been isolated from hypersaline environments. The ability to tolerate environments with reduced water activity is rare in Basidiomycota. We sequenced the genome of W. sebi in order to understand its adaptations for surviving in osmotically challenging environments, and we performed phylogenomic and ultrastructural analyses to address its systematic placement and reproductive biology. W. sebi has a compact genome (9.8 Mb), with few repeats and the largest fraction of genes with functional domains compared with other Basidiomycota. We applied several approaches to searching for osmotic stress-related proteins. In silico analyses identified 93 putative osmotic stress proteins; homology searches showed the HOG (High Osmolarity Glycerol) pathway to be mostly conserved. Despite the seemingly reduced genome, several gene family expansions and a high number of transporters (549) were found that also provide clues to the ability of W. sebi to colonize harsh environments. Phylogenetic analyses of a 71-protein dataset support the position of Wallemia as the earliest diverging lineage of Agaricomycotina, which is confirmed by septal pore ultrastructure that shows the septal pore apparatus as a variant of the Tremella-type. Mating type gene homologs were identified although we found no evidence of meiosis during conidiogenesis, suggesting there may be aspects of the life cycle of W. sebi that remain cryptic.Keywords: Ion homeostasis, Aqua(glycero)porins, Solute accumulation, Electron microscopy, Xerophile, Halophil