In Perspective

 In this episode, film studies scholar Dr. Ranjani Mazumdar joins us for a deep dive into film posters, the anti-hero, travel in celluloid, and the history of Bombay cinema.

‘In Perspective’ is The Swaddle’s podcast series where academics reveal little-known facts about Indian history, society and culture. 

Notes:

00:01:08:17- How did the film poster emerge in 20th century India? How has its artistic value and role in film publicity evolved since then?

00:03:05:23- Has the role of the movie poster diminished today? 

00:06:56:11- How did the cinema of the 1960s capture globalization in India and the anxieties that came with it?

00:12:27:12- What led to the rise of the vamp in Bombay cinema and what led to her merging with the heroine in the 1990s?

00:18:35:22- How did the ‘angry young man’ of the 1970s evolve into the psychotic anti-hero in the 1990s?

00:25:37:13- What do the interiors of consumerist family films of the 1990s tell us about the imagination of urban spaces and cities  at that time and the anxieties surrounding it? 

00:32:41:10- What role does cinema play in how we memorialize traumatic events that India has experienced collectively, especially in terms of the way the Babri Masjid demolition has been depicted in Indian cinema?

 In this episode, Dr. Tanika Sarkar talks to us about the first public debates on sati, widow remarriage and age of consent, and locating  the woman’s voice in colonial India.

‘In Perspective’ is The Swaddle’s podcast series where academics reveal little-known facts about Indian history, society and culture. 

Notes:

1:13- With the example of the Age of Consent debate or the debate around the Widow Remarriage Act in the 19th century, could you explain the complicated power dynamics that were at play when it came to framing laws around gender and family justice in colonial India? Was women’s perspective taken into consideration?

13:22- Was the public debate around the Age of Consent Act the first instance of a public discussion on the question of women's consent? 

15:11-Do you see similarities or continuities till today in the kind of discourse we are seeing around an issue like marital rape?

19:09- How do you think  public discourse and debate around women's consent has evolved over time? 

22:52- How did Hindu women become the symbols of the Hindu nation?

29:23- What sort of narratives come through in some of the early writings by Indian women in the 19th century? 

In this episode, historian Dr. Sanjam Ahluwalia talks to us about how middle-class men led India's birth control advocacy in the 19th century, how contraception is used to surveil women, and why reproductive rights is such a fraught issue around the world.

‘In Perspective’ is our podcast series where academics reveal little-known facts about Indian history, society and culture.

Notes:

1:16- In the late 19 and early 20th centuries in India, what kind of debates around contraception do we see within the medical establishment and among colonial authorities, and why was the colonial state hesitant to make active policy interventions to actually encourage birth control?

6:24- How did the rise of the Indian middle-class lead to the emergence of birth control advocacy at this time? 

14:04- Could you elaborate on what ‘eugenic patriotism’ means? 

18:30- What positions did first generation India middle-class feminists take on birth control in colonial India? 

23:52- How did British and American advocates of birth control get involved in Indian efforts in 20th century India, and what impact did this have on global campaigns on birth control?  

31:13- Why did Western birth control activists find it necessary to intervene in India? 

46:14- How did birth control become a tool of surveillance and control of women subaltern classes, and is this a legacy that remains strong till today?

In this episode, legal historian Dr. Mitra Sharafi talks to us about how racial differences shaped the development of forensic science in colonial India, why the anti-abortion law was poorly enforced back then, and how death by poisoning became common during epidemics.

‘In Perspective’ is our podcast series where academics reveal little-known facts about Indian history, society and culture.

Notes:

1:04 - What was the motivation behind setting up forensics departments, why were these set up to investigate crime in colonial India, and in what ways did notions of racial difference inform these motivations?

5:05 - What were the problems surrounding expert witnesses in criminal cases in colonial India?

11:44 - Was death by poisoning common in colonial India and what kind of narratives around poison do we see in forensic files?

19:59 - The discourse around the female poisoner, and when it came to European fear of getting poisoned by their servants, was there an emphasis on the aayah as a more likely poisoner?

21:52 - What led to the rise in murder by poison during epidemics?

28:21 - Why was the implementation of anti-abortion laws lax in South Asia during the late 19th and early 20th centuries?

35:00 - In what kind of sources do we see mention of  upper caste Hindu widows being at the centre of the debate around illegal abortions?

37:26 - Could we discuss some specific cases where the anti-abortion law was actually enforced in colonial India? 

In this episode, anthropologist Dr. Dolly Kikon talks to us about why the 2020 Baghjan crisis in Assam is a global issue, the exploitative politics of resource extraction in the Northeast, and why development often excludes local communities.

‘In Perspective’ is our podcast series where academics reveal little-known facts about Indian history, society and culture.

Notes:

1:25- Natural resource extraction projects and their impact on social relations in a region

6:48- The 2020 Baghjan gas blowout and oil and gas developments in Assam  

13:12- Oil and natural gas extraction in Assam and how it is exclusionary of the local communities

19:33- The politics of coal mining in Nagaland and Meghalaya

26:07- The role that militarisation plays in resource extraction and how it affects the mobility of people and resources differently

In this episode, historian Dr. Mrinalini Sinha talks to us about the emergence of the stereotype of the 'effeminate Bengali', why Katherine Mayo's 1927 book 'Mother India' became controversial, and how women got divided along caste lines in the fight for their right to vote in colonial India.

‘In Perspective’ is our podcast series where academics reveal little-known facts about Indian history, society and culture.

Notes:

1:27- The manly Englishman and the effeminate bengali 

7:40- Gendering of society and the ‘domestic manuals’ of 19th century Bengal 

12:50- Controversy surrounding Katherine Mayo’s 1920 book ‘Mother India’ and the reconfiguration of the relationship between the social and political spheres in India 

27:00- Discourse around child marriage shifting in early 20th century and how it became a political issue 

33:10- How Indian women got the right to vote 

41:52- Leela and Urmila’s marriage in 1987 and discussing the problems with how we understand queerness in India 

In this episode, Dr. Harini Nagendra, ecologist and Director of Research Center at Azim Premji University, talks to us about the need for re-imagining environmental sustainability, reframing the development versus environment binary, and creating more equal cities by fostering urban commons.

‘In Perspective’ is our podcast series where academics reveal little-known facts about Indian history, society and culture.

Notes: 

1:41- How have we created lived environments that have worsened the impact of natural disasters?

06:50- How do we responsibly grow urban economies while building sustainable living environments?  

10:34- Is there an ideal definition of what an environmentally and socially sustainable city looks like? Are there examples of Indian cities that have successfully built green infrastructure?

11:37- How do we resolve the conflict between development and sustainability?

22:13- Why are urban commons important?

28:50- What are some traditions of the 'Global South' that make cities ecologically sustainable?

In this episode, gender and sexuality studies scholar Dr. Ruth Vanita talks to us about narratives of same-sex love in early India, and the challenges of running one of India’s first feminist magazines back in the 1970s.

‘In Perspective’ is our podcast series where academics reveal little-known facts about Indian history, society and culture. 

In this episode, feminist scholar Dr. Mary John talks about the relationship between feminism and the nation, the skewed sex ratio in India, and changing attitudes towards sexual violence.

‘In Perspective’ is The Swaddle’s podcast series where academics reveal little-known facts about Indian history, society and culture.

In this episode, gender studies scholar Dr. Vibhuti Patel talks about the history of the autonomous women’s movement, gender-responsive budgeting, and the problems with women’s political representation in India.

‘In Perspective’ is The Swaddle’s podcast series where academics reveal little-known facts about Indian history, society and culture.