South Asia Seminar Series

Marathi Varkari and Ramdasi kirtan was brought to Tamil-speaking South India during the earliest phases of the establishment of Maratha power in Thanjavur at the end of the seventeenth century. These practices survived largely through institutions known as Ramdasimaths in Thanjavur city and nearby Mannargudi, which received patronage from Marathi-speaking desastha Brahmins in the region and also from the Thanjavur court itself. In this presentation, I consider the process by which Marathi kirtan was “indigenized” by the Tamil smarta Brahmin community in Thanjavur by focusing on the development of a uniquely cosmopolitan practice that today is known as “bhajana sampradaya.” e codication of this multilingual, hybrid musical practice was no doubt a mirroring of the Thanjavur court’s own culture of literary polyglossia. e poems of Namdev, Chokhamela, Tukaram, Janabai, Samarth Ramdas and others are brought into a world of not only uniquely “South Indian” ragas and singing-styles, but also into a the distinct ritual and mnemonic culture of Tamil Brahmins that includes life-cycle events, temple-style domestic puja, purity laws, and contemporary identity politics. Today, the memory of Marathi kirtan is put to the service of the public identity of segments of the Tamil Brahmin community, largely through one of the community’s most cherished expressive forms, namely “classical Karnatak” music, fully inected with all its nationalist socio-historical resonances. I argue that the making of modern Karnatak music and the caste-based aesthetic it engenders cannot be disassociated from its Marathi kirtan and bhajana roots. I propose a complex genealogy for Karnatak music that foregrounds the co-opting of Marathi musical and literary traditions and takes seriously the powers of polyglossia in the world of music.

Kerala is one of India’s premiere destinations for leisure travelers. Aggressively promoted as “God’s Own Country” since the early 1990s, the state’s robust tourism industry has benetted from an educated workforce, tropical scenery, Ayurvedic treatment facilities, and distinctive performing arts, including classical dance-dramas like Kathakali and visually stunning rituals like eyyam in Malabar. While many studies have examined touristic encounters with stationary hosts, few have explored the mobility of the “toured.” In this paper I trace the passage of Malayan eyyam spirit-medium performers from ritual servants in communities of worship, to artists on proscenium stages in destination branding strategies of corporate Kerala. Drawing on conversations with diverse actors in the industry, including a double-reed player and his high-caste impresario, I examine how global tourism opened new avenues for cultural mobility, as well as how subaltern performers adapted their craft accordingly. At the same time, I also reect on the ways in which these avenues were contingent on ethnicizing caste identity and forging inter-caste alliances, strategies that would appear to run against the grain of socialist Kerala’s sublimation of caste in favor of class.

"Making a Portuguese-Language Herbal Speak: 'Local' Knowledge and the East India Company on the Malabar Coast in the 18th Century"

European knowledge, especially medicine, is usually presented as being "scientific" as opposed to the "empirical", non-theorised, "local" practices of non-European peoples. It is thus a commonplace amongst historians to consider that the former displaced the latter if not into total oblivion at least into marginality during the course of European expansion and colonisation. Preliminary research on a mid-18th Portuguese-language century herbal and pharmacopeia from the Malabar coast allows us to examine this widely-held assumption and helps throw new light on the interaction between European and "local" medical practices as well as on the languages through which they they circulated and interacted with each other. Finally, this research also contributes significantly to our understanding of the commercial, administrative and diplomatic practices of the English and other European East India Companies on the Malabar coast during this period.