Confronting the Body
Description
The human body in modern South Asia is a continuous political enterprise. The body was central to the project of British colonialism, as well as to the Indian response to colonial rule. By constructing British bodies as normative and disciplined, and Indian bodies as deviant and undisciplined, the British could construct an ideology of their own fitness for political power and defence of colonialism itself. The politics of physicality then manifested in reverse in many ways, not least through Gandhi's use of his body as public experiment in discipline, as well as becoming a living rejection of British rule and norms of physicality. This unique collection makes for fascinating reading.
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Persons
James H. Mills is Lecturer in Modern History at Strathclyde University, Glasgow.
Satadru Sen is Assistant Professor of South Asian history at Washington University in St Louis.
Content
Acknowledgements; Notes on Contributors; Introduction: James H Mills and Satadru Sen; 1. Body, Text, Nation: Writing the Physically Fit Body in Post-Colonial India; 2. 'A Parcel of Dummies'? Sport and the Body in Indian History; 3. Schools, Athletes and Confrontation: The Student Body in Colonial India, Satadru Sen; 4. Body as Target, Violence as Treatment: Psychiatric Regimes in Colonial and Post-Colonial India; 5. The Lotah Emeutes of 1855: Caste, Religion and Prisons in North India in the Early Nineteenth Century; 6. The Body at Work: Colonial Art Education and the Figure of the 'Native Craftsman'; 7. Making a Dravidian Hero: The Body and Identity Politics in the Dravidian Movement; 8. Describing the Body: The Writing of Sex and Gender Identity for the Contemporary Bengali Woman; 9. A Perfect 10 - 'Modern and Indian': Representation of the Body in Beauty Pageants and the Visual Media in Contemporary India; 10. Demographic Rhetoric and Sexual Surveillance: Indian Middle-Class Advocates of Birth Control, 1902-1940s
