Description
Book SynopsisAn innovative analysis of how ideas of Indian identity negotiated within the Indian diaspora in Trinidad affect cultural identities "back home" in India.
Trade Review“Tejaswini Niranjana listens to the tones and echoes of Indianness in the Caribbean and elaborates a South–South genealogy that obligates us to reconceive the cultural geography of modernity. From the ‘moral status of the coolie woman’ in British colonialist and Indian nationalist discourses to the figure of the ‘Indian woman’ in Afro-Trinidadian calypso, Hindi cinema musics, and female chutney-soca performances, she pronounces the gendered rhythms of popular music as subaltern cultural politics.”—Lisa Lowe, author of
Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics“Tejaswini Niranjana’s fine achievement in
Mobilizing India is to have given shape to a compelling way of rethinking the conceptual agenda for the comparative study of the Third World.”—David Scott, author of
Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment“
Mobilizing India. . . is a sophisticated, well-written, and engaging book which does indeed-as promised- provide a model for comparative cultural research across the global South. Those interested in Caribbean cultural studies, in the development of popular music in postcolonial societies, in identity and gender politics in a multiracial polity, will all find much that is valuable and original in this book.” -- Bridget Brereton * Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies *
“Niranjana . . . has written a sophisticated study of women, diasporic dynamics, and ethnic identity in Indo-Trinidadian society, using popular music as a lens though which to view these. . . . Her book is certainly recommended reading for students and scholars of South Asian diasporas and Caribbean studies.” -- Peter Manuel * Ethnomusicology *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Note on Usage ix
Introduction 1
1. “The Indian in Me”: Studying the Subaltern Diaspora 17
2. “Left to the Imagination”: Indian Nationalism and Female Sexuality 55
3. “Take a Little Chutney, Add a Touch of Kaiso”: The Body in the Voice 85
4. Jumping out of Time: The “Indian” in Calypso 125
5. “Suku Suku What Shall I Do?”: Hindi Cinema and the Politics of Music 169
Afterword: A Semi-Lime 191
Notes 223
Bibliography 253
Index 267
