Janaki Nair delivered the 23rd B. N. Ganguli Memorial Lecture on ‘Ways of Being Modern: The Making of the Mysore Matha as ‘anadhikrita sarkara’. It was chaired by Prathama Banerjee.
B. N. Ganguli Memorial Lectures are held in memory of the distinguished economist Professor B. N. Ganguli, former Chairman, CSDS Board of Governors. Earlier speakers in the series include Dipesh Chakrabarty, Claudio Lomnitz, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Sari Nusseibeh, Leela Gandhi, Lila Abu-Lughod and Francesca Orsini.
This year’s lecture was delivered by Janaki Nair.
How has the matha [monastic institution] become the preferred institutional form for channeling access to economic, educational, cultural and political resources, now overshadowing the caste association? This question arises from the enhanced visibility and widened sphere of activities of the matha in contemporary Karnataka, which call for a historical understanding of the matha’s engagement with modernity. The late 19th century subordination of the matha to modern bureaucratic control and scrutiny, as represented by the reorganized Muzrai department of Mysore, has in the 21st century been dramatically transformed as Lingayat mathas in particular have arguably assumed the form of an ‘anadhikrita sarkara’ (unauthorized government), especially in rural Karnataka. How did mathadishas at one Lingayat Matha, the Sirigere Matha in Chitradurga align the quest for legitimacy with the modern bureaucratic imperatives of a princely state order, which brought a different visibility and public accountability to the matha? How were historically forged relationships to state structures, and to a newly emerging caste public, renegotiated in the transition to a time of representative politics? This talk will focus on some key moments in a century of dramatic change, to uncover the extent to which the foundational imperative of taking a ‘society serving’ form has made the Lingayat matha an exemplary model, in functioning as a mobiliser of resources, but perhaps most significant, displacing associational practices while emerging as an important sharer of state power.
Janaki Nair retired as Professor of Modern History, Centre for Historical Studies, JNU and is currently Visiting Professor, Azim Premji University. In her research and writing, she has largely focused on the princely state of Mysore/Karnataka. Her fields of interest include labour, urban and legal history, feminism and visual culture. Her published works include Mysore Modern: Rethinking the Region under Princely Rule (2011); The Promise of the Metropolis: Bangalore’s Twentieth Century (2005) and Miners and Millhands: Work Culture and Politics in Princely Mysore (1998).
Prathama Banerjee is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
Friday, 25 March 2022, 5 pm, Zoom https://bit.ly/3JhwgsW
