Papers by K. Kalyani
Cambridge University Press, 2023
Cambridge U~iversity Press & Assessment has no responsibility for rhe persistence or accuracy of ... more Cambridge U~iversity Press & Assessment has no responsibility for rhe persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-parry internet websites referred ro in this publi_cacion and does nor guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Social change, May 21, 2024
This article aims to understand the acts of resistance in the everyday music of oppressed caste c... more This article aims to understand the acts of resistance in the everyday music of oppressed caste communities and the repertoire of anti-caste musical performances in specific moments in history. The everyday soundscape has the potential to bring together shared experiences of displacement, casteism, and social exclusion. For dalit-bahujan singers, an engagement with music is a resource with which to 'talk back' to the structures of caste and to recast their identity. The practices of such musical form have also been part of the cultural transmission of an anti-caste narrative. Using printed material and oral narratives collected during fieldwork in selected regions of North India, this article explores anti-caste musical practices. It engages with the concept of 'counterpublics' and the implications of the term 'anti-caste counterpublics' for an understanding of anti-caste movements.
Routledge, 2023
This volume represents the first exploration of caste in the field of curriculum studies, challen... more This volume represents the first exploration of caste in the field of curriculum studies, challenging the ongoing silence around the issue of caste in education and curriculum theory. Presenting comprehensive critical examination of caste as a category of domination and oppression in the colonial power matrix, chapters confront Eurocentric educational epistemologies which deny the existence and influence of caste. The book examines the impact of such silence in educational policy, praxis, and curriculum, and draws from leading scholars to illustrate the fluidity of power and oppression in the caste system. By challenging historical, cultural, and institutional origins of caste and foregrounding perspectives from outside Western epistemological frameworks, the book pioneers a critical approach to integrating caste in educational debate to interrupt social and cognitive injustices. In so doing so, the volume advocates for an alternative, non-derivative curriculum reason, through an itinerant curriculum theory as a path toward the emergence of a critical Dalit educational theory. As such, it makes a vital contribution for scholars and researchers looking to refine and enhance their knowledge of curriculum studies by highlighting the importance of theorizing caste in the role of education.
Contemporary Voice of Dalit, 2022
CASTE / A Global Journal on Social Exclusion, 2020
This paper intends to understand music as a form of cultural expression that has enabled mobility... more This paper intends to understand music as a form of cultural expression that has enabled mobility to Dalit-Bahujan and their cultural production. This cultural production can be seen in the form of popular songs that are widely circulated among Dalits and is part of their religion, identity, as well as a cultural assertion. Tathagata Buddha songs, which this paper studies, has been specifically enabling for Dalit women as it gives them not only a sense of religiosity but it also opens them to the possibility of rationalizing their beliefs and practices. The paper will bring up an ethnographic account of some of these Dalit women singers and look into some of their composition and songs that have a specific invocation to Gautam Buddha and of political icons like Babasaheb Ambedkar, whom they revere. A study of Tathagata Buddha songs and Bhimgeet can provide an insight into how music has departed from being just an aesthetic sensibility to a language of resistance against the oppressi...
Journal of Social Inclusion Studies, 2022
The Dalit-Bahujan visual representation is uniquely constituted through cultural artefacts, symbo... more The Dalit-Bahujan visual representation is uniquely constituted through cultural artefacts, symbols and iconography. The pictorial representations of cultural artefacts are meaningful as they signify and symbolise resistance. The new emerging visuality of the marginalised communities is questioning the dominant regimes of visuality. A calendar as the site of visuality is a signification of resistance to the Brahminical culture by the Dalit-Bahujan community. The Calendar art has engaged with a reiteration of anti-caste social icons that has generated a visual effect on the collective memory of the community. This article has traced the shifts that have happened in calendar art with the rise of anti-caste consciousness in North India. The article has methodologically engaged in observing and doing a content analysis of calendars that are gaining popularity among the Dalit-Bahujan community. The article has also presented an in-depth case study of the Samyak Prakashan calendar in North India. Through the study of the calendar's iconography and symbols, the article reflects on the cultural practices of the Dalit-Bahujan community. The article also looks into the epistemological and historiographical gaps that are bridged through the reiteration of culturally significant dates in the calendar.
Emergence of Dalit Art entrepreneurs: Exploring anti-caste songs as the new-creative industry in North India
Local Development and Society, 2022
Indentured and Post-Indentured Experiences of Women in the Indian Diaspora, 2020
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Journal of Media and Communication, 2020
The paper attempts to develop arguments around concepts like 'Gaze' and the understanding of 'bod... more The paper attempts to develop arguments around concepts like 'Gaze' and the understanding of 'bodies' within popular culture. In its discussion on the 'male gaze', it raises pertinent questions of ways in which, with the rise of consumerism, the women's representation, particularly in the popular media, has become more vulnerable. This paper has tried to problematise the existing notion of popular women's magazines as 'best companion for women', as they are fraught with contradictions of what they claim to be and represent. The paper further explores the changing meanings of representation particularly with the advent of globalisation and the rise of the beauty industry.
Caste: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion, 2020
This paper intends to understand music as a form of cultural expression that has enabled mobility... more This paper intends to understand music as a form of cultural expression that has enabled mobility to Dalit-Bahujan and their cultural production. This cultural production can be seen in the form of popular songs that are widely circulated among Dalits and is part of their religion, identity, as well as a cultural assertion. Tathagata Buddha songs, which this paper studies, has been specifically enabling for Dalit women as it gives them not only a sense of religiosity but it also opens them to the possibility of rationalizing their beliefs and practices. The paper will bring up an ethnographic account of some of these Dalit women singers and look into some of their composition and songs that have a specific invocation to Gautam Buddha and of political icons like Babasaheb Ambedkar, whom they revere. A study of Tathagata Buddha songs and Bhimgeet can provide an insight into how music has departed from being just an aesthetic sensibility to a language of resistance against the oppressive caste order. The paper also explores the material dimension of Tathagata Buddha songs understanding its circulation, production, and platforms through which these are popularized.
Understanding Caste violence against Dalit women and its mediatized representation
Understanding caste violence against Dalit women and its mediatized representation.1 In contempor... more Understanding caste violence against Dalit women and its mediatized representation.1 In contemporary Indian society, violence on women continues to remain a pathological social fact that needs attention and discussion. However, in order to do so one needs to first and foremost genuinely engage with the question that what the "gendered" violence is; as in how is gender-based violence different from other forms of violence that persists in society. In order to understand the 'gendered' dimension of violence the concept of 'power' structure that unfolds from a patriarchal society is important. The dimension of power can be understood simply as form of direct assertion of power, like an assertion of male dominance over female sexuality. The 'power' dimension can also be about not allowing space for women assertion, for instance, a perpetual silencing of women's demand for visibility within public space or her ability dissent or differ from existing social order. Thus, the question of 'power' and subversion of gendered identity needs a critical engagement and unfolding of multiple ways in which it operates within society. The process of gender violence is not a recent phenomenon within Indian society rather it can be historically traced back to practices like Sati, Devdasi practice, child marriage etc. Each of these practices involved forms of violence that the women were historically subjected to. However, tshe intersection of caste played important role in determining who were at the receiving ends of these forms of violence. For instance, Nair (1993), Tambe (2009), Chakravarti (1996) et. al. have talked about cruelties of Devdasi practices in history, which victimized women belonging to a particular community/caste. 1. This article has been previously published in journal 'The Voice', Vol.4 No.3: 94-108.
Book Reviews by K. Kalyani
South Asia Research, 2023
This book is a theoretical guide to understanding a lesser engaged concept ‘everyday resistance’,... more This book is a theoretical guide to understanding a lesser engaged concept ‘everyday resistance’, particularly in terms of how the everydayness of resistance by different marginalised identities questions multiple structures of power. Everyday life as an important sociological concept to understand the complex social processes embedded in seemingly mundane activities is examined by the authors through an analytical-theoretical approach to understand the complexities of relationships between power and everyday resistance.
Contemporary Voice of Dalit, 2022
The book is an interesting read as it has explored the many facets of social movement that had le... more The book is an interesting read as it has explored the many facets of social movement that had led to the formation of Telangana state. The book has tried to explore the ways in which Osmania University (OU) became a site of resistance for the formation of Telangana state. Pathania has traced the history of this struggle back from 1968, when the Telangana Non-Gazetted Officers' Association raised the issue of 'Telangana Safeguards' in jobs for indigenous Telangana people, who were often left out in jobs when compared to the Andhras. The issue was taken up by the OU students Union to rethink about indigenous identity that was compromised in the state of Andhra Pradesh. There was a realization of asserting for 'Telangana' identity through gaining a political mileage. Eventually, it was through the activism of student's politics that, in 1969, Telangana Praja Samithi (TPS) was formed. The book has explored different political facets of the Telangana movement that was rooted within the student's politics. The university spaces, one like OU, became an active stage for students' politics. The political narrative developed in these university spaces got echoed in mainstream politics as well. However, the most striking dimension of the book is that unlike the study of many other social movements, which have rooted their base in class-led movement, in middle-class or in NGO-led movement, this book has highlighted the cultural aspects that were unique for the Telangana movement. The Telangana movement witnessed a constant negotiation with multiple ideologies and cultural practices along with political resistance that eventually led to the formation of the new state. Thus, the culmination of the movement through the formation of 29th Indian state, Telangana, was not just a 'counter-narrative' that was to be pitted against a set of political demands; rather, it was the coming together of countless narratives from different participants including the leftist, Dalit-OBC's groups as well as from many other subgroups that had eventually emerged. Cultural dimensions such as folk, theatre and art together were important components of student-led Telangana movement. The book has discussed about folk performances like Gaddar, which were translated into a 'revolutionary genre' within university spaces. These performances became the contested space to bring up symbols of identity and oral tradition of the oppressed people. The coming up of such folk performances became a counter-narrative to celebration of festivals such as Ugadi, Sanskriti and Yeruvaka by Andhra state government that often used these festivals to keep united the Andhra identity. The other form of cultural resistance came in the form of celebration of Batukamma festival, which was mainly a Telangana festival, and it was ignored within the Andhra culture. The cultural assertion saw itself brimming within the university spaces where the student network worked closely with the cultural identities, particularly of the marginalized community. The usage of musical instruments like Dappu,
Uploads
Papers by K. Kalyani
Book Reviews by K. Kalyani