Category: Books

Books, Reviews, Talks

A Shortcut to Tipperary Review

By JASON KEITH FERNANDES

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great pleasure for me to release A Shortcut to Tipperary this evening.

There is an interesting set of dynamics between the person who releases a book and the event of a book release. In some cases, it is the person who brings honour to the event, and in others it is the event that brings honour to the person invited to release the book. This afternoon is an example of the latter case and I thank Doutor Radharao for the opportunity. I could think of many others, some present in this gathering, who are more worthy of this task, but I am nevertheless delighted to be able to release the book and share with you my thoughts on the novel. (more…)

Books

Citizenship in a Caste Polity: Religion, Language and Belonging in Goa wins the Selva J Raj book award

The Al-Zulaij Collective takes great pride in announcing that its member, Dr. Jason Keith Fernandes has been awarded the Selva J. Raj Book Award (2017-2022) for his book Citizenship in a Caste Polity: Religion, Language and Belonging in Goa.

The Society for Hindu-Christian Studies is a Related Scholarly Organization of the American Academy of Religion and publishes the Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, an annual scholarly journal dedicated to the study of Hinduism and Christianity and their interrelationships. The Selva J. Raj Book Award is awarded every two years, for the “Best Book in Hindu-Christian Studies.” The award, which includes an honorarium, will be presented at a special session of the American Academy of Religion in November 2022 in Denver, USA. This session will also feature a panel discussion of the book by eminent scholars, with Dr. Fernandes who will be invited as respondent.

Previous winners of this award include eminent scholars like David Mosse, Diana L. Eck, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Francis X. Clooney, and others.

Recognising the book as “theoretically astute, rigorously researched, and lucidly argued,” the Award Committee recognises that Citizenship in a Caste Polity, which was published  by Orient Blackswan in 2020, “makes a pathbreaking contribution to Hindu-Christian studies by providing an analysis of Goa, a region… whose stories unsettle notions of a monolithic colonial and postcolonial Indian experience… [and] takes readers into the understudied plight of linguistically and culturally marginalized classes of Goans, and in so doing, casts light upon broader issues of citizenship, humiliation, and belonging among many classes of Indians.”

Citizenship in a Caste Polity studies the struggle of Konkani language activists to obtain official language status for Konkani’s much used Roman script. In discussing the demands for, and resistance against, the Roman script’s official recognition, Dr. Fernandes offers a well-researched history of the language, Goan politics, and demonstrates the experience of Catholics in Goa, especially those from labouring caste and class backgrounds, as that of second-class citizens.

The Al-Zulaij Collective is an association of scholars and professionals, who believe that Goa’s complex history and cultural encounters do not easily fit into the mainstream imagination of the territory. Goa has been a part of many ‘worlds’, but the Al-Zulaij Collective finds that many of those culturally enriching encounters are now being deliberately forgotten. Determined to rectify this misrepresentation, the Collective brings together diverse voices on Goa, and varied capacities to articulate issues about Goa, and to look at the world through Goan culture and history.

Books, Interventions, Talks, Webinars

Jason Keith Fernandes, ‘CONTEMPLATING CITIZENSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA’ Special Lecture at the Tamil Nadu National Law University,13 July 2021

Abstract

Citizenship has been at the heart of many of the more recent controversies within India – be it those linked with the revocation of Article 370 of the Indian constitution and the dismemberments of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, the National Register of Citizens, or the Constitutional Amendment Act. The polemics around these issues have demonstrated with uncomfortable clarity, however, that there is much confusion between the terms nationality and citizenship, with the latter often being understood to mean the same as the former. Drawing on the legal history of the subcontinent, including spaces from outside of British India, particularly Portuguese India, Dr Fernandes suggests that there is a fundamental distinction between the two terms and it is necessary to maintain this distinction if the citizenship rights of Indian nationals are to be preserved.

 

Books, Interventions, Interviews

Jason Keith Fernandes: The Suppression of Romi Konkani and the Shaming of a People

Courtesy: Joao Roque and Malavika Neurekar

The history of the Konkani language has been fraught with conflicts of all shades, including a complex relationship with the colonial Portuguese state, a movement to establish its existence as separate from Marathi in the 1960s, and a widespread controversy around the medium of instruction in state schools in the early 1990s. But its most interesting episode is perhaps also the least talked about.

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Books, Interventions, Interviews

Jason Keith Fernandes: Interviewed about “Citizenship in a Caste Polity”

Courtesy: Jane Borges, Mid-Day.

LONG after the Portuguese left Goa in 1961, the erstwhile colonisers were still in vogue in the coastal belt. Cars and three-wheelers displaying Portuguese flags, national colours and emblems would amble down the quaint gullies and streets, as if India was not mothership yet. Jason Keith Fernandes, who was pursuing his doctoral research then, remembers being intrigued by this practice, common among the working-class and lower middle-class Goan Catholics. This, he’d learn, was not just their attempt to demonstrate claim to Portuguese citizenship, but also distinguish themselves from the rest of the population in the state. (more…)

Books, Interventions, Interviews

Amita Kanekar: Fear of Lions

Courtesy: Christine Machado, Navhind Times.

Q. What made you choose the Satnami Revolt as the focus for your new book?

I wanted to write about social revolutions, or attempted social revolutions. And professor Irfan Habib mentioned in one of his books that this peasant rebellion of 1672 was one of the few overtly anti-caste movements that South Asia has seen. So, given that caste is the root evil at the heart of most of South Asia’s problems, it seemed an interesting topic, also because few people know about it. (more…)

Books, Reviews

Review: Fear of Lions

Courtesy: Percy Bharucha, National Herald.

A botched-up hunt and the summary execution of a rude peasant seem to be just another day in the life of a nobleman. Unbeknownst to them, this sets into motion a complex chain of events leading to an insurrection that questions dharma and challenges the very foundation of Hindustan. One so insidious that it forces the couch-potato badshah Aurungzeb out of the comfort of Shahjahanabad and into battle.

Amita Kanekar’s second novel, Fear Of Lions, chronicles a period of change and unrest 12 years into the rule of the pious Aurangzeb Alamgir. Having deposed of his father and brothers, he introduces austerity measures that disrupt the hedonistic lifestyle of his courtiers. Science had just begun making inroads – aided by the firangi traders and priests – into a society so far run by tradition and faith. Their insistence on aql rather than taqleed (proof over faith) found unwelcome appeal amongst those that had been relegated by birth as the lowest of the low. Under Aurungzeb, modernism clashed with the traditions that had formed the social fabric of India’s agrarian economy. The ancient Indian order that defined identity and kept the peace between the subjugated and the landowners, the menials and the noblemen, the unseeables and the Kshatriyas, the Mughals and the Rajputs; and allowed for the rules of unjust taxation, unpaid labour and lifelong debt was now forced to contend with a group of guerrilla peasants led by a mysterious priest and a witch, both followers of the mystic Kabir.

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