This thesis critically approaches the notion of nostalgia as a site for negotiating the way communities in Ladakh reproduce the past in the present. Multiple nostalgias are explored and the various...Show moreThis thesis critically approaches the notion of nostalgia as a site for negotiating the way communities in Ladakh reproduce the past in the present. Multiple nostalgias are explored and the various nostalgic postures are unpacked as they encounter and engage with modernity. The aim is to understand through ethnographic analysis, the temporalities within which nostalgia occurs and the interplay between nostalgia and cultural practices that provide a site to study how the past is maintained in the present.Show less
In the wake of The Supreme Court of India's decision to decriminalise homosexuality, this paper studies how British colonialism structured the perceptions and representations of same-sex intimacies...Show moreIn the wake of The Supreme Court of India's decision to decriminalise homosexuality, this paper studies how British colonialism structured the perceptions and representations of same-sex intimacies and sexual fluidity in India. Combining discourse analysis and historiographical approaches, this paper focuses on various aspects of Indian history and society, from the many examples of homo-eroticism in Indo-Muslim literature and Indian religious traditions to the medicalisation of sexuality and the internalisation of British ideals of masculinity and sexuality in the discourse around same-sex intimacies, as well as the parallels between this and the modern Hindutva movement.Show less
Jan Jacob Maria de Groot (1854 – 1921) was an important scientist who worked as a sinologist for the Dutch government and taught at the university of Leiden and Berlin. During his life, he studied...Show moreJan Jacob Maria de Groot (1854 – 1921) was an important scientist who worked as a sinologist for the Dutch government and taught at the university of Leiden and Berlin. During his life, he studied the religious customs of Chinese people in Indonesia as well as elsewhere. He was one of the great curators of the Leiden collection and also curated in Berlin, but his work was removed after his death. In this thesis, the progressive development of his works will be sketched; an attempt will be made to understand his relevance and function within the history of sinology in Leiden; and finally, his relationship to the Dutch colonial government will be put in a post-colonial perspective. Ultimately, the goal of the work is find out what Jan Jacob Maria de Groot’s goals and ambitions meant for the Dutch colonial government, and why his relevance in the history of sinology is often understated.Show less
People’s physical appearances and beauty ‘from the outside’ have been part of a variety of cultural discourses for a long time in history. Though, in more recent times, human bodies have...Show morePeople’s physical appearances and beauty ‘from the outside’ have been part of a variety of cultural discourses for a long time in history. Though, in more recent times, human bodies have increasingly fell subject to the democratization of social norms and values, and as a result the body has become a reflection of symbolic meanings (Baghel et al., 2014). In culturally-diverse India, the image of beauty has been changing continuously but it is argued that one perspective on Indian physical beauty has remained quite stable (or at least appears to exist in contemporary India): the aspiration of having lighter skin colors (Kumar, 2002; Glenn, 2008). Even though many researchers recognized that racial categorizations based on skin colors have been reduced in different parts of the world, there still appears to be a correlation between beauty, skin color and social identity among some people in the Indian society today (Glenn, 2008). In examining to what extent skin lightening practices and aspirations have shifted from India to the Netherlands in a transnational context, the goal is to find out the perceived sense of racial consciousness of first-generation Indian migrants living in diaspora in the Netherlands. Grounded in the theories of Social Constructivism by Berger and Luckmann and Racial Identity theory by Helms, this thesis concludes that 1. Migration to the Netherlands has not changed the racial awareness of first-generation Indian migrants consciously 2. Skin color does play a role - though marginal - in migrant’s Indian intracultural environment in terms of marriages, but it is not significant in their Dutch intercultural environment. 3. Most of the first-generation Indian migrants living in the Netherlands do not use fairness creams, and if they do, it is for medical reasons rather than to match cultural and aspirational expectations.Show less
