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
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
The means of identification of the population determine the institutional practice. The census in India led to the institution of the caste-system in order for the British to better manage the...Show moreThe means of identification of the population determine the institutional practice. The census in India led to the institution of the caste-system in order for the British to better manage the population. Under the Foucauldian governmentality paradigm, this thesis argues that the modern practices used by the government for identifying the population are a continuation of the earlier census method of identification. The extrapolation of characteristics to determine the structure of Indian society was a system that relayed information from the population back to the government through the census. Segregation or exclusion of people who fell outside of the proposed structure presented in the census were homogenised within castes. Contemporary systems for the population to relay information to the government may move beyond the earlier traits of structure. However, as the government becomes increasingly dependent on technology to identify and gain insight into the issues facing the population, the role of technology in providing the government with data becomes an issue. Essentially, the government is in a process of increasing automation in institutions in order to better assess the population. It is capable of putting in place the systems that register the issues facing the population. Yet, as the institutions begin to provide an assessment of the data to the government in order for them to act. Those people within the population who are not registered in- or providing relevant data to – institutions therefore fall outside of the assessment of the government. As they do remain part of the population this thesis will argue that the big data systems (1) are dependent on the means that the government to collects data, (2) do not include the whole population and thus policy recommendations, based on big data assessment, require the government to extrapolate the perceived issues to the whole of the population, (3) the welfare of the population as the end-goal of the government will see a changing role in citizenship when the policy of the government becomes increasingly determined by the information the citizen provides.Show less
