REL 246
India's Identities: Reproducing the Nation,Community and Individual
Last Offered Fall 2017
Division II Writing Skills Exploring Diversity Initiative
Cross-listed ANTH 246 / REL 246 / WGSS 246 / ASST 246
This course is not offered in the current catalog

This course considers India’s contradictory legacy as a booming Asian democracy and fragile society built upon deep and enduring divisions. Why is India’s growing population so often described in terms of multiple identities or fragmenting oppositions — Hindu/Muslim, rich/poor, high caste/outcaste, male/female? What are the historic roots and ongoing causes that produce structural violence around these axes of difference? We pay particular attention to key moments (Partition, communal riots in Gujarat in 2003, Hyderabad in 1990, Delhi in 1984), and places (Punjab, Bengal, Jammu & Kashmir) for our analysis of how religion, gender, and caste intersect to produce a landscape of communal violence, social hierarchy, and fragmented subjectivity in India today. We are as interested in discourses and practices that shore up these binaries as well as the third terms that attempt to transcend or diffuse them. For instance, we look at how Buddhism is and is not a middle path between Hindu/Muslim conflict in Indian Kashmir. Our course readings include ethnographic, sociological, and historical analyses, as well as oral histories and popular media.