South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies | Open Access Articles

The (No) Work And (No) Leisure World Of Women In Assi, Banaras, Nita Kumar Jan 2006

The (No) Work And (No) Leisure World Of Women In Assi, Banaras, Nita Kumar

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

In the riverside neighborhood (mohalla) of Assi, in the south of Banaras, families of the following professions are to be found: the preparation and retail of foods such as: milk, sweets, tea, paan, peanuts and snacks; clerical work in offices or shops; private professional work, such as priesthood, teaching, boating, cleaning toilets; and crafts, such as masonry, weaving, making and maintaining jacquard machines, carpentry, and goldsmithy. All this work is done by men in the public sphere. In Banaras, the observable and articulated sphere of activity called "work" (kam) largely exists for men only. Men are …

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A Postcolonial School In A Modern World, Nita Kumar, Som Majumdar Jul 2003

A Postcolonial School In A Modern World, Nita Kumar, Som Majumdar

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

This essay is about a school, taken not only as an educational project, but as an active historical intervention. A discussion of the school helps us to interpret the history of education, and perhaps all history, with new insight; to understand the nature of modernity in a provincial city; and to fashion an approach to both theory and practice that could be called postcolonial.

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History At The Madrasas, Nita Kumar Jan 2002

History At The Madrasas, Nita Kumar

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

Madrasas: In the archival records of the British colonial state, as well as in the private records of members of the Indian intelligentsia, the indigenous school of North India is referred to by the generic term 'madrasa'. There is no exclusive implication of this institution as Islamic. This is close to the literal meaning of 'madrasa' which is 'the place of dars': dars being teaching, instruction, a lesson, or lecture.

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Widows, Education And Social Change In Twentieth Century Banaras, Nita Kumar Jan 1991

Widows, Education And Social Change In Twentieth Century Banaras, Nita Kumar

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

In the first half of this century, some one dozen women in Banaras played key rotes in channelling the educational movement into new directions, expanding its agenda to include girls, especially poor girls. These women stand out as pioneering in that they founded schools, dynamic in the way they administered and expanded them, and radical in the vision they had for their students. What makes the case of these women particularly interesting is that they were mostly widows. They rejected the familiar stereotypes for widows through their activism, but in subtle ways that retained for them the respect of society …

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The Mazars Of Banaras: A New Perspective On The City’S Sacred Geography, Nita Kumar Jan 1987