Aya Ikegame
Biographic Data
| ID | 281776 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aya Ikegame |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aya |
| FAMILY NAME | Ikegame |
| SIGNATURE | IKEGAME A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 32 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Slow Death of the Diorama: Tribal and Ethnographic Museums in India since Independence
During colonial times, dioramas were commonly used to portray the diverse peoples of India. They depicted essentialised human types through plaster models in rural settings, engaged in typical activities, and dated back to the exhibition of human beings in universal expositions held in Calcutta, Delhi and London. Since Independence, there have been determined efforts to move away from colonial stereotypes and to decolonise government-funded museu…
New Dalit Assertion and the Rejection of Buffalo Sacrifice in South India
Taking a cue from the recent prevention of a buffalo sacrifice to a powerful local goddess in Karnataka and the writings of Dalit activist-turned-spiritual-guru M. C. Raj, this article traces a history of how buffalo sacrifice has been witnessed, described and analyzed from the mid nineteenth to the twentieth century. This endeavor reveals how structural-functionalist understandings of the ritual obscured the voice of Dalit dissent while stressin…
Overlapping Sovereignties: Gurus and Citizenship
Political anthropologists have been arguing that the actual working of the state or sovereign-like figures such as big-men and gangsters are quite different from a normative understanding of a compact, centralized, and unifying sovereignty. The distinction should not, though, be drawn between a Western norm and an Eastern anomaly, as political orientalism has tended to do. The difference should instead be found between molar and molecular forms o…
The capital of Raajadharma
Thomas Metcalf once said that the British believed the new architectural style called Indo-Saracenic was well suited for princely buildings, as well as their own public buildings such as railway stations, colleges, and law courts. The blending of traditional and modern elements exactly fitted their conception of the princes’ role within India under the British Raj. The princes were simultaneously meant to embody India past and a vision of its fut…
Educating the maharajas
English-speaking Indians, with a love of gentlemanly manners, hunting, and cricket, were never created spontaneously. The particular class of society, sharing the language of command, manners, tastes, and westernised knowledge, that emerged in the late nineteenth century was a creation of colonial modernity. Indian princes and princesses were a decorative feature of this class. The British aristocracy and high officials who visited the palaces of…
Marriage alliances in imperial space
In March 2004, a friend of mine showed me a classy looking magazine called Society 1 , which he had borrowed from a mobile library in Mysore city. There was an interview, titled ‘People&s;s Princess’, which caught my eye. It was an interview with the former chief minister of the state of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje Scindia, in which she described her aristocratic background as ‘cosmopolitan’: I am as cosmopolitan as anybody can be. My mother was a…
The palace
The architectural beauty and the remains of the lavish lifestyles that the Indian maharajas once enjoyed divert everyone attention from the fact that the palaces were once influential political institutions in their own right. In the case of Mysore, the palace was still the centre of state administration until the British took over the state administration in 1831. The separation of the palace and its government, however, was never a clear-cut or…
The king is dead, long live the king!
The social impact of wealthy religious maṭhas , such as Adichunchanagiri, is hugely significant in Karnataka. One of the conspicuous aspects of the chaotic environment of Karnataka politics is that, although the locus may have shifted, the politics of honour and political ritual still remain a vital mechanism that connects people in the locality with larger political spheres. The widespread use of the ideals and values of kingship by political le…
From clansmen to gentlemen
The uniqueness of the Mysore royal caste, Urs, lies in the fact that despite their small population (several thousands in Karnataka, see Table 5.1 ), they managed to maintain social and politically influential positions for several hundreds of years. Their population is concentrated in the former Mysore princely state area, now called ‘Old Mysore’, which roughly corresponds to the southern half of the present state of Karnataka. Unlike other roya…
The politics of honour
This chapter re-evaluates the politics of honour as a vital politics of the early twentieth century in princely Mysore. It examines that the Mysore princely government tried to control the politics of honour by fixing the uniform order of honours. In the uniform order, only the guru of Sringeri matha, one of the prestigious seats of the Shankaracharyas of Shaiva Sumartha Brahmins, could enjoy the highest honours. The rest of gurus were classified…
Dasara, durbar, and dolls
Dasara ( dasarā in Kannada) is a festival celebrated on the first ten lunar days of the bright fortnight of the lunar month of āshvayuja (the seventh month of the lunar calendar which corresponds to the period from September to October in the solar calendar). 1 Dasara is celebrated all over India under different names and forms. In southern India, this festival, commonly known as Navaratri (nine nights), is a celebration of the mystical battle be…
Princely India Re-imagined: A Historical Anthropology of Mysore From 1799 to The Present
India's Princely States covered nearly 40 per cent of the Indian subcontinent at the time of Indian independence, and they collapsed after the departure of the British. This book provides a chronological analysis of the Princely State in colonial times and its post-colonial legacies. Focusing on one of the largest and most important of these states, the Princely State of Mysore, it offers a novel interpretation and thorough investigation of the r…
The governing guru
Using a highly elaborate theoretical schematisation, Louis Dumont re-asserted in the 1970s the long-held colonial assumption about Hindu society that there is a clear distinction between the religious domain (authority) and politico-economic domain (power), that the former always dominates and encompasses the latter, and that the latter always needs to be legitimised by the former (Dumont 1980: 33–49, 65–72, 152–8 and especially 287–313). This vi…
The guru in South Asia new interdisciplinary perspectives: New interdisciplinary perspectives
This book provides a set of fresh and compelling interdisciplinary approaches to the enduring phenomenon of the guru in South Asia. Moving across different gurus and kinds of gurus, and between past and present, the chapters call attention to the extraordinary scope and richness of the social lives and roles of South Asian gurus. Prevailing scholarship has rightly considered the guru to be a source of religious and philosophical knowledge and mys…
Mathas, gurus and citizenship: The state and communities in colonial India
This article is an attempt to acknowledge various forms of citizenship whose existence as political subjectivity has been systematically subjugated by Eurocentric political theory. Indeed, these forms were not simply ignored but regarded as an obstacle to the development of modern civil society. Strong religious, communal and kinship ties in non-European societies were treated as evidence of their inability to produce modern citizenship. How then…
Guru logics
This commentary highlights the diversity of thematics and conceptual schema generated by guru-ship, and its capacity-as a set of principles as much as specific persons-to participate in, and move between, multiple social and conceptual domains. The aim is to reassess some of the key existing literature on guru-ship while developing a kind of analytical toolkit in order to aid future studies and stimulate new thought on the phenomenon. The guru, w…
Why do backward castes need their own gurus? The social and political significance of new caste-based monasteries in Karnataka
Jati matha, as people of Karnataka call it, is a monastery that culturally and religiously represents a specific caste or sub-caste group, most of which are non-Brahmin, backward castes. From the Kuruba (shepherd caste, the largest amongst other backward classes) to Dalits (former untouchables) and Adivasis (tribals), the number of such caste-mathas is believed to be more than 100 in the state. This phenomenon presents interesting but problematic…
Space of kinship, space of empire: Marriage strategies amongst the Mysore royal caste in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
This article centres on perceptions of ‘space’ amongst members of the Mysore royal caste from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. There were several perceptions of space coexisting at the time. One was based upon a traditional idea of space that prohibited the aristocracy, especially the king, from travelling beyond a certain area. Another was the imposed perception of empire, which gave Indian royals the idea that parts of their …
The Capital of Rājadharma: Modern Space and Religion in Colonial Mysore
Mysore Fort, now situated in the centre of Mysore city, former capital of Mysore princely state, was effectively the city itself in pre-modern times. During the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, however, the fort changed its form from a residential town into a modern garden or empty space where now only the palace and several temples remain. This transformation was intended to serve not only to improve the sanitation and hygiene …
Guru logics
This commentary highlights the diversity of thematics and conceptual schema generated by guru-ship, and its capacity-as a set of principles as much as specific persons-to participate in, and move between, multiple social and conceptual domains. The aim is to reassess some of the key existing literature on guru-ship while developing a kind of analytical toolkit in order to aid future studies and stimulate new thought on the phenomenon. The guru, w…
Princely India Re-imagined: A Historical Anthropology of Mysore From 1799 to The Present
India's Princely States covered nearly 40 per cent of the Indian subcontinent at the time of Indian independence, and they collapsed after the departure of the British. This book provides a chronological analysis of the Princely State in colonial times and its post-colonial legacies. Focusing on one of the largest and most important of these states, the Princely State of Mysore, it offers a novel interpretation and thorough investigation of the r…
Why do backward castes need their own gurus? The social and political significance of new caste-based monasteries in Karnataka
Jati matha, as people of Karnataka call it, is a monastery that culturally and religiously represents a specific caste or sub-caste group, most of which are non-Brahmin, backward castes. From the Kuruba (shepherd caste, the largest amongst other backward classes) to Dalits (former untouchables) and Adivasis (tribals), the number of such caste-mathas is believed to be more than 100 in the state. This phenomenon presents interesting but problematic…
Mathas, gurus and citizenship: The state and communities in colonial India
This article is an attempt to acknowledge various forms of citizenship whose existence as political subjectivity has been systematically subjugated by Eurocentric political theory. Indeed, these forms were not simply ignored but regarded as an obstacle to the development of modern civil society. Strong religious, communal and kinship ties in non-European societies were treated as evidence of their inability to produce modern citizenship. How then…
Space of kinship, space of empire: Marriage strategies amongst the Mysore royal caste in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
This article centres on perceptions of ‘space’ amongst members of the Mysore royal caste from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. There were several perceptions of space coexisting at the time. One was based upon a traditional idea of space that prohibited the aristocracy, especially the king, from travelling beyond a certain area. Another was the imposed perception of empire, which gave Indian royals the idea that parts of their …
The Capital of Rājadharma: Modern Space and Religion in Colonial Mysore
Mysore Fort, now situated in the centre of Mysore city, former capital of Mysore princely state, was effectively the city itself in pre-modern times. During the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, however, the fort changed its form from a residential town into a modern garden or empty space where now only the palace and several temples remain. This transformation was intended to serve not only to improve the sanitation and hygiene …
Space of kinship, space of empire: Marriage strategies amongst the Mysore royal caste in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
This article centres on perceptions of ‘space’ amongst members of the Mysore royal caste from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. There were several perceptions of space coexisting at the time. One was based upon a traditional idea of space that prohibited the aristocracy, especially the king, from travelling beyond a certain area. Another was the imposed perception of empire, which gave Indian royals the idea that parts of their …
Why do backward castes need their own gurus? The social and political significance of new caste-based monasteries in Karnataka
Jati matha, as people of Karnataka call it, is a monastery that culturally and religiously represents a specific caste or sub-caste group, most of which are non-Brahmin, backward castes. From the Kuruba (shepherd caste, the largest amongst other backward classes) to Dalits (former untouchables) and Adivasis (tribals), the number of such caste-mathas is believed to be more than 100 in the state. This phenomenon presents interesting but problematic…
The governing guru
Using a highly elaborate theoretical schematisation, Louis Dumont re-asserted in the 1970s the long-held colonial assumption about Hindu society that there is a clear distinction between the religious domain (authority) and politico-economic domain (power), that the former always dominates and encompasses the latter, and that the latter always needs to be legitimised by the former (Dumont 1980: 33–49, 65–72, 152–8 and especially 287–313). This vi…
The guru in South Asia new interdisciplinary perspectives: New interdisciplinary perspectives
This book provides a set of fresh and compelling interdisciplinary approaches to the enduring phenomenon of the guru in South Asia. Moving across different gurus and kinds of gurus, and between past and present, the chapters call attention to the extraordinary scope and richness of the social lives and roles of South Asian gurus. Prevailing scholarship has rightly considered the guru to be a source of religious and philosophical knowledge and mys…
Mathas, gurus and citizenship: The state and communities in colonial India
This article is an attempt to acknowledge various forms of citizenship whose existence as political subjectivity has been systematically subjugated by Eurocentric political theory. Indeed, these forms were not simply ignored but regarded as an obstacle to the development of modern civil society. Strong religious, communal and kinship ties in non-European societies were treated as evidence of their inability to produce modern citizenship. How then…
Guru logics
This commentary highlights the diversity of thematics and conceptual schema generated by guru-ship, and its capacity-as a set of principles as much as specific persons-to participate in, and move between, multiple social and conceptual domains. The aim is to reassess some of the key existing literature on guru-ship while developing a kind of analytical toolkit in order to aid future studies and stimulate new thought on the phenomenon. The guru, w…
The capital of Raajadharma
Thomas Metcalf once said that the British believed the new architectural style called Indo-Saracenic was well suited for princely buildings, as well as their own public buildings such as railway stations, colleges, and law courts. The blending of traditional and modern elements exactly fitted their conception of the princes’ role within India under the British Raj. The princes were simultaneously meant to embody India past and a vision of its fut…
Educating the maharajas
English-speaking Indians, with a love of gentlemanly manners, hunting, and cricket, were never created spontaneously. The particular class of society, sharing the language of command, manners, tastes, and westernised knowledge, that emerged in the late nineteenth century was a creation of colonial modernity. Indian princes and princesses were a decorative feature of this class. The British aristocracy and high officials who visited the palaces of…
Marriage alliances in imperial space
In March 2004, a friend of mine showed me a classy looking magazine called Society 1 , which he had borrowed from a mobile library in Mysore city. There was an interview, titled ‘People&s;s Princess’, which caught my eye. It was an interview with the former chief minister of the state of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje Scindia, in which she described her aristocratic background as ‘cosmopolitan’: I am as cosmopolitan as anybody can be. My mother was a…
The palace
The architectural beauty and the remains of the lavish lifestyles that the Indian maharajas once enjoyed divert everyone attention from the fact that the palaces were once influential political institutions in their own right. In the case of Mysore, the palace was still the centre of state administration until the British took over the state administration in 1831. The separation of the palace and its government, however, was never a clear-cut or…
The king is dead, long live the king!
The social impact of wealthy religious maṭhas , such as Adichunchanagiri, is hugely significant in Karnataka. One of the conspicuous aspects of the chaotic environment of Karnataka politics is that, although the locus may have shifted, the politics of honour and political ritual still remain a vital mechanism that connects people in the locality with larger political spheres. The widespread use of the ideals and values of kingship by political le…
From clansmen to gentlemen
The uniqueness of the Mysore royal caste, Urs, lies in the fact that despite their small population (several thousands in Karnataka, see Table 5.1 ), they managed to maintain social and politically influential positions for several hundreds of years. Their population is concentrated in the former Mysore princely state area, now called ‘Old Mysore’, which roughly corresponds to the southern half of the present state of Karnataka. Unlike other roya…
The politics of honour
This chapter re-evaluates the politics of honour as a vital politics of the early twentieth century in princely Mysore. It examines that the Mysore princely government tried to control the politics of honour by fixing the uniform order of honours. In the uniform order, only the guru of Sringeri matha, one of the prestigious seats of the Shankaracharyas of Shaiva Sumartha Brahmins, could enjoy the highest honours. The rest of gurus were classified…
Dasara, durbar, and dolls
Dasara ( dasarā in Kannada) is a festival celebrated on the first ten lunar days of the bright fortnight of the lunar month of āshvayuja (the seventh month of the lunar calendar which corresponds to the period from September to October in the solar calendar). 1 Dasara is celebrated all over India under different names and forms. In southern India, this festival, commonly known as Navaratri (nine nights), is a celebration of the mystical battle be…
Princely India Re-imagined: A Historical Anthropology of Mysore From 1799 to The Present
India's Princely States covered nearly 40 per cent of the Indian subcontinent at the time of Indian independence, and they collapsed after the departure of the British. This book provides a chronological analysis of the Princely State in colonial times and its post-colonial legacies. Focusing on one of the largest and most important of these states, the Princely State of Mysore, it offers a novel interpretation and thorough investigation of the r…
Overlapping Sovereignties: Gurus and Citizenship
Political anthropologists have been arguing that the actual working of the state or sovereign-like figures such as big-men and gangsters are quite different from a normative understanding of a compact, centralized, and unifying sovereignty. The distinction should not, though, be drawn between a Western norm and an Eastern anomaly, as political orientalism has tended to do. The difference should instead be found between molar and molecular forms o…
New Dalit Assertion and the Rejection of Buffalo Sacrifice in South India
Taking a cue from the recent prevention of a buffalo sacrifice to a powerful local goddess in Karnataka and the writings of Dalit activist-turned-spiritual-guru M. C. Raj, this article traces a history of how buffalo sacrifice has been witnessed, described and analyzed from the mid nineteenth to the twentieth century. This endeavor reveals how structural-functionalist understandings of the ritual obscured the voice of Dalit dissent while stressin…
The Slow Death of the Diorama: Tribal and Ethnographic Museums in India since Independence
During colonial times, dioramas were commonly used to portray the diverse peoples of India. They depicted essentialised human types through plaster models in rural settings, engaged in typical activities, and dated back to the exhibition of human beings in universal expositions held in Calcutta, Delhi and London. Since Independence, there have been determined efforts to move away from colonial stereotypes and to decolonise government-funded museu…
Sociology (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · History (6 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · South Asian Studies and Conflicts (4 works) · Anthropology (3 works) · Art (3 works)