Browsing by Subject "Punjab"
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Item Masters not friends : land, labor and politics of place in rural Pakistan(2013-05) Rizvi, Mubbashir Abbas; Ali, Kamran Asdar, 1961-This dissertation analyzes the cultural significance of land relations and caste/religious identity to understand political subjectivity in Punjab, Pakistan. The ethnography details the vicissitudes of a peasant land rights movement, Anjuman-e Mazarin Punjab (Punjab Tenants Association) that is struggling to retain land rights on vast agricultural farms controlled by the Pakistan army. The dissertation argues that land struggles should not only be understood in tropes of locality, but also as interconnected processes that attend to global and local changes in governance. To emphasize these connections, the dissertation gives a relational understanding of 'politics of place' that attends to a range of practices from the history of colonial infrastructure projects (the building of canals, roads and model villages) that transformed this agricultural frontier into the heart of British colonial administration. Similarly, the ethnographic chapters relate the history of 'place making' to the present day uncertainty for small tenant sharecroppers who defied the Pakistan Army's attempts to change land relations in the military farms. Within these parameters, this ethnographic study offers a "thick description" of Punjab Tenants Association to analyze the internal shifts in loyalties and alignments during the course of the protest movement by looking at how caste, religious and/or class relations gain or lose significance in the process. My research seeks to counter the predominant understanding of Muslim political subjectivity, which privileges religious beliefs over social practices and regional identity. Another aspect of my work elucidates the symbolic exchange between the infrastructural project of irrigation, railway construction and regional modernity in central Punjab. The network of canals, roads and railways transformed the semi-arid region of Indus Plains and created a unique relationship between the state and rural society in central Punjab. However, this close relationship between rural Punjab and state administration is not void of conflict but rather it indicates a complex sense of attachment and alienation, inclusion and exclusion from the state.Item The Sikh Gurmat sangīt revival in post-partition India(2015-05) Li, Wai Chung, Ph. D.; Slawek, Stephen; Dell'Antonio, Andrew; Mathews, Gordon; Ali, Kamran; Moore, Robin; Erlmann, VeitGurmat sangīt, literally sacred music of the Sikhs, is a religious marker of Sikhism. Sikh religious practice is oriented toward musical performance to worship God and evoke spiritual elevation. As a common religious practice at the Sikh temples, gurmat sangīt generally involves recitation of religious texts and devotional singing with instrumental accompaniment by professional musicians and/or the congregation. It also illustrates musical ways of uniting with God as found in Sikh scriptures. The major sacred text, the Guru Granth Sahib, contains a large number of verses in an arrangement organized by rāgas (musical modes). Gurmat sangīt has developed rapidly since the 1980s. The number of recordings, publications, and performances featuring Sikh religious music and/or musicians increased. Academic programs and organizations of gurmat sangīt were launched to train both professional and amateur musicians in India and abroad. At that time, a trend has developed to revive the authentic practice of Sikh devotional music with correct rendition of rāga performance and the re-introduction of stringed instruments such as the tāūs (a bowed-string instrument in peacock body sound box) and rabāb (a plucked-lute instrument). While exhibiting a tendency to standardize musical details and generate a historiography of Sikh music, contemporary practitioners also emphasize authenticity and tradition in re-imagining the devotional music performance at the time of the Sikh Gurūs. The revival is identified with not only professional Sikh musicians in Punjab but also overseas Sikh musicians and musicians of other religious and/or socio-cultural backgrounds. In this study, I adopt the case study approach to examine the phenomenon of the gurmat sangīt revival in 20th- and 21st-century Punjab. My research focuses on the annual performances of Sikh devotional music, and a Sikh religious institution in the city of Ludhiana, from where the trend of the music revival has been developed. For the revival’s aim to promote the “authentic” Sikh devotional music tradition, I argue that it involves a self-interpretation of combined authentic, invented, and westernized concepts in association with musical practice at the Sikh Gurūs’ times and Indian classical music, and being shown in the standardization, classicization, and hybridization of Sikh devotional music performance.