Mithilesh Kumar Jha
Biographic Data
| ID | 1380734 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mithilesh Kumar Jha |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mithilesh Kumar |
| FAMILY NAME | Jha |
| SIGNATURE | JHA M K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1664-2959 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 61 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Indian Sociology, Village Structures, and Regional Imagination
This chapter explores Hetukar Jha's sociological contributions, focusing on village structures, caste dynamics, and regional imagination in India. Jha criticised the disconnect between elitist, Western-oriented sociology and vernacular, region-specific approaches, advocating for the use of Indian languages and local histories to ground sociological inquiry. His innovative use of colonial “village notes” reconstructs historical narratives of India…
Towards a limited and ‘quality’ population
Maternity benefits are historically envisioned as a means to promote maternal and infant health in India. It was a major rationale for the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961. However, maternity benefits also came to be increasingly questioned in the mid-1960s for allegedly leading to more births and ‘derailing’ the national family planning programme. Limiting maternity benefits as a disincentive strategy for population control was proposed through vario…
United front, divided lives
(Mis)Trust in Representative Institutions and the Role and Limits of Protest Politics
Gandhian Conception of Swaraj and its Post-Independence Re/Interpretations by Jayaprakash Narayan and Rammanohar Lohia
Swaraj has a prominent place in modern India's socio-political imagination. Its multiple interpretations by the leaders and organisations, often on the opposite spectrum of political ideologies, have shaped the nation's socio-cultural, political, and economic thinking and intellectual life. This paper examines the Gandhian conception of swaraj by comparing it with other equally important concepts in Gandhian lexicons of politics, such as truth, n…
Conclusion
This chapter argues about language as a marker of identity and also as a conceptual category that can be a powerful tool for exploring the varied experiences of different linguistic communities with modernity or our ‘colonial modernity’. Besides, it also allows us to revisit some of the important concepts like nation, nationalism, tradition and how these terms were used and understood by different linguistic communities in India particularly in t…
Maithili Language and the Movement, Part–I
This chapter examines the ways through which the Maithili movement became more provocative and assertive from the beginning of the 1920s until the independence of India. It begins with not just a categorical refutation to Hindi’s claim of Maithili being its ‘dialect’, but by invoking the cultural and historical figures like Vidyapati, Govinda Das, which led to controversy between the supporters of Bengali and Maithili, it tried to galvanize and b…
Maithili Language and the Movement, Part–II
This chapter examines the unfolding of the Maithili movement in post-independent India. One of the major characteristics of the movement in this period has been its gradual shift from a predominantly literary and cultural movement to a more politicized movement. A number of political parties and leaders joined in and have played critical roles in the expansion of the movement. One can divide the Maithili movement in this era into four phases. In …
Language, History, Nation, and the Imaginary of Maithili Identity
Using the category of language and history, the present chapter attempts to explore the incongruities, persistent ambivalences and challenges to the formation of nationalist consciousness in the context of India’s ‘Hindi heartland’ in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Within the ‘Hindi heartland’, we do not find any serious challenges to the pan Indian identity formation, at least not in the beginning. But a w…
British Rule and Classifications of Indian Languages
This chapter examines the ways through which Christian missionaries and British officials attempted to classify Indian languages. How these exercises turned out to be the basis for different groups in India to forge various identities? How that led to competing claims and counter claims by various communities and groups? In particular, language turns out to be a powerful marker of group identity. The question of ‘chaste’ versus ‘standard’, writte…
Language Politics and Public Sphere in North India
Moving beyond the existing scholarship on language politics in north India which implicitly or explicitly focuses on Hindi–Urdu debates, this book examines the formation of the Maithili movement in the context of expansion of Hindi as the ‘national’ language. For a long time, the Hindi–Urdu debate has provided an important source to critically asses various facets of the nationalist movement in north India. But much emphasis on this debate has un…
Language Politics and Public Sphere in North India
Moving beyond the existing scholarship on language politics in north India which implicitly or explicitly focuses on Hindi–Urdu debates, this book examines the formation of the Maithili movement in the context of expansion of Hindi as the ‘national’ language. For a long time, the Hindi–Urdu debate has provided an important source to critically asses various facets of the nationalist movement in north India. But much emphasis on this debate has un…
United front, divided lives
Conclusion
This chapter argues about language as a marker of identity and also as a conceptual category that can be a powerful tool for exploring the varied experiences of different linguistic communities with modernity or our ‘colonial modernity’. Besides, it also allows us to revisit some of the important concepts like nation, nationalism, tradition and how these terms were used and understood by different linguistic communities in India particularly in t…
Maithili Language and the Movement, Part–I
This chapter examines the ways through which the Maithili movement became more provocative and assertive from the beginning of the 1920s until the independence of India. It begins with not just a categorical refutation to Hindi’s claim of Maithili being its ‘dialect’, but by invoking the cultural and historical figures like Vidyapati, Govinda Das, which led to controversy between the supporters of Bengali and Maithili, it tried to galvanize and b…
Maithili Language and the Movement, Part–II
This chapter examines the unfolding of the Maithili movement in post-independent India. One of the major characteristics of the movement in this period has been its gradual shift from a predominantly literary and cultural movement to a more politicized movement. A number of political parties and leaders joined in and have played critical roles in the expansion of the movement. One can divide the Maithili movement in this era into four phases. In …
Language, History, Nation, and the Imaginary of Maithili Identity
Using the category of language and history, the present chapter attempts to explore the incongruities, persistent ambivalences and challenges to the formation of nationalist consciousness in the context of India’s ‘Hindi heartland’ in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Within the ‘Hindi heartland’, we do not find any serious challenges to the pan Indian identity formation, at least not in the beginning. But a w…
British Rule and Classifications of Indian Languages
This chapter examines the ways through which Christian missionaries and British officials attempted to classify Indian languages. How these exercises turned out to be the basis for different groups in India to forge various identities? How that led to competing claims and counter claims by various communities and groups? In particular, language turns out to be a powerful marker of group identity. The question of ‘chaste’ versus ‘standard’, writte…
Language Politics and Public Sphere in North India
Moving beyond the existing scholarship on language politics in north India which implicitly or explicitly focuses on Hindi–Urdu debates, this book examines the formation of the Maithili movement in the context of expansion of Hindi as the ‘national’ language. For a long time, the Hindi–Urdu debate has provided an important source to critically asses various facets of the nationalist movement in north India. But much emphasis on this debate has un…
United front, divided lives
(Mis)Trust in Representative Institutions and the Role and Limits of Protest Politics
Gandhian Conception of Swaraj and its Post-Independence Re/Interpretations by Jayaprakash Narayan and Rammanohar Lohia
Swaraj has a prominent place in modern India's socio-political imagination. Its multiple interpretations by the leaders and organisations, often on the opposite spectrum of political ideologies, have shaped the nation's socio-cultural, political, and economic thinking and intellectual life. This paper examines the Gandhian conception of swaraj by comparing it with other equally important concepts in Gandhian lexicons of politics, such as truth, n…
Indian Sociology, Village Structures, and Regional Imagination
This chapter explores Hetukar Jha's sociological contributions, focusing on village structures, caste dynamics, and regional imagination in India. Jha criticised the disconnect between elitist, Western-oriented sociology and vernacular, region-specific approaches, advocating for the use of Indian languages and local histories to ground sociological inquiry. His innovative use of colonial “village notes” reconstructs historical narratives of India…
Towards a limited and ‘quality’ population
Maternity benefits are historically envisioned as a means to promote maternal and infant health in India. It was a major rationale for the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961. However, maternity benefits also came to be increasingly questioned in the mid-1960s for allegedly leading to more births and ‘derailing’ the national family planning programme. Limiting maternity benefits as a disincentive strategy for population control was proposed through vario…
South Asian Studies and Conflicts (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · South Asian Studies and Diaspora (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · History (5 works) · Linguistics (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Hindi (4 works)