Cinema and the Urdu Public Sphere: Literary imaginaries in the making of film cultures in north India (1930-50)

Urdu language and its literary culture had a considerable influence in shaping the narrative and aesthetic vocabularies of cinematic practice in India. While film scholars have recognized the role of Urdu in film dialogues and lyrics, few have attempted to understand the crucial processes by which film culture was fashioned within the Urdu public sphere. This dissertation aims to map the entangled networks of the literary with the cinematic and brings to light the vibrant debates of the Urdu public sphere on cinema from 1930 to 1950. Drawing on an interdisciplinary approach, extensive archival research was conducted to excavate previously undiscovered materials in Urdu on film. In the thesis, these marginalized texts in Urdu are juxtaposed with and studied alongside film sources in Hindi and English to complicate and diversify existing discourses on film in India. The thesis is divided into two sections. The first part focuses on the relationship between cinema and the Urdu public sphere through a study of printed texts such as Urdu film journals, translations of film theory, and biographical dictionaries of actresses and acting manuals. These textual artefacts highlight how cinema as an institution was formalized and disseminated in Urdu with an active engagement in values and codes of etiquette borrowed from an Urdu cultural milieu. I show how these texts were produced with serious pedagogical intent to refine the taste of the cinephiles and at the same time make accessible global film theories through translocation and translation. Part two engages with early sound cinema’s mobilization of the tropes from an Urdu imaginaire, a term I have coined to refer to an affective literary imaginary that provided not only narratives but also cultural frameworks for representation in north Indian cinema in the 1930s and 40s. The coming of sound technology in the 1930s was a momentous technological shift. The thesis demonstrates how cinematic aurality ensured that the Urdu imaginaire blossomed within the film texts through the strategic evocation of the semantics of authority, romance and reform. I employ speculative research trajectories to contextualize the place of the Urdu imaginaire within a heterogenous and variegated film aesthetic by discussing case studies of film personnel, genres, film styles, literary adaptations and codes of respectability in the cinema from 1930 to 1950

Magnetic behavior of spin-chain compounds, Sr3ZnRhO6 and Ca3NiMnO6, from heat capacity and ac susceptibility studies

Heat-capacity (C) and ac susceptibility measurements have been performed on the spin-chain compounds, Sr3ZnRhO6 and Ca3NiMnO6, to establish their magnetic behavior and to explore whether there are magnetic frustration effects due to antiferromagnetic coupling of the chains arranged in a triangular fashion. While the paramagnetic Curie temperatures have been known to be large with a negative sign, as though antiferromagnetic interaction is very strong, the results establish that (i) the former apparently undergoes inhomogeneous magnetic ordering only around 15 K, however without spin-glass anomalies, and (ii) the latter orders antiferromagnetically at a relatively low temperature (17 K). Thus, the magnetic frustration manifests differently in these compounds.Comment: J. Solid State Chemistry, in pres

The Relationship Between Values and Interests

Some writers equate values with interests. Philipp Heck defines interests, which he treats as synonymous with values, as “all things that man holds dear, and all ideals which guide man\u27s life. ”There are many writers who distinguish between the two concepts and go into the details of the distinction, as is explained below. There is an apparent relationship between interests, principles, rules, values, objectives and other similar terms. Our main purpose is to find the link between interests and values, because the term interest dominates all legal discourse. In simple terms, interests recognized and enforced by law become rights. To elaborate the meaning of interests in relation to values, we need to refer to the work of Roscoe Pound, however briefly

Long range magnetic ordering in a spin-chain compound, Ca3_3CuMnO6_6, with multiple bond distances

The results of ac and dc magnetization and heat capacity measurements as a function of temperature (T = 1.8 to 300 K) are reported for a quasi-one-dimensional compound, Ca$_3$CuMnO$_6$, crystallizing in a triclinically distorted K$_4$CdCl$_6$-type structure. The results reveal that this compound undergoes antiferromagnetic ordering close to 5.5 K. In addition, there is another magnetic transition below 3.6 K. Existence of two long-range magnetic transitions is uncommon among quasi-one-dimensional systems. It is interesting to note that both the magnetic transitions are of long-range type, instead of spin-glass type, in spite of the fact that the Cu-O and Mn-O bond distances are multiplied due to this crystallographic distortion. In view of this, this compound could serve as a nice example for studying "order-in-disorder" phenomena.Comment: Physical Review (in press

Superparamagnetic-like ac susceptibility behavior in a "partially disordered antiferromagnetic" compound, Ca3_3CoRhO6_6

We report the results of dc and ac magnetization measurements as a function of temperature (1.8 - 300 K) for the spin chain compound, Ca$_3$CoRhO$_6$, which has been recently reported to exhibit a partially disordered antiferromagnetic (PDAF) structure in the range 30 - 90 K and spin-glass freezing below 30 K. We observe an unexpectedly large frequency dependence of ac susceptibility in the T range 30 - 90 K, typical of superparamagnets. In addition, we find that there is no difference in the isothermal remanent magnetization behavior for the two regimes below 90 K. These findings call for more investigations to understand the magnetism of this compound.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Magnetic frustration in a stoichiometric spin-chain compound, Ca3_3CoIrO6_6

The temperature dependent ac and dc magnetization and heat capacity data of Ca$_3$CoIrO$_6$, a spin-chain compound crystallizing in a K$_4$CdCl$_6$-derived rhombohedral structure, show the features due to magnetic ordering of a frustrated-type below about 30 K, however without exhibiting the signatures of the so-called "partially disordered antiferromagnetic structure" encountered in the isostructural compounds, Ca$_3$Co$_2$O$_6$ and Ca$_3$CoRhO$_6$. This class of compounds thus provides a variety for probing the consequences of magnetic frustration due to topological reasons in stoichiometric spin-chain materials, presumably arising from subtle differences in the interchain and intrachain magnetic coupling strengths. This compound presents additional interesting situations in the sense that, ac susceptibility exhibits a large frequency dependence in the vicinity of 30 K uncharacteristic of conventional spin-glasses, with this frustrated magnetic state being robust to the application of external magnetic fields.Comment: Physical Review (Rapid Communications), in pres

Development of mouthparts in the tadpoles of Rana tigrina Daud

The morphology of the mouthparts of Rana tigrina tadpoles is studied. The development starts after hatching with distinct mouth opening and is followed by paired beaks and labial fringes. The horny teeth then start differentiating in both the labial fringes and by addition of successive rows of teeth the full complement of larval dentition is developed. The mouthparts persist upto stage 50 and by stage 51 both the beaks and teeth are shed and the labial fringes are considerably resorbed