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Fierce Gods: Inequality, Ritual, and the Politics of Dignity in a South Indian Village

Fierce Gods: Inequality, Ritual, and the Politics of Dignity in a South Indian Village Category: Ethnography and Areal Anthologies Fierce Gods: Inequality, Ritual, and the Politics of Dignity in a South Indian Village By Diane P. Mines. 2006. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 240 pages. ISBN: 0-253-34576-6 (hard cover), 0-253-21765-2 (soft cover). Reviewed by Mahendra K. …

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Popular Culture

Popular Culture by John Weaver Publisher Peter Lang 2009 Reviewed by Dr Mahendra Kumar Mishra The Peter Lang publication entitled Popular Culture PRIMER written by John A. Weaver is a commendable work in the field of understanding the paradigm shift from conventional definition of culture to popular culture cutting across the history of human civilization. …

Stories about Posts: Vedic Variations Around the Hindu Goddess

Stories about Posts: Vedic Variations Around the Hindu Goddess By Madeleine Biardeau. Translated by Alf Hiltebeitel, Marie-Louise Reiniche, and James Walker. Edited by Alf Hiltebeitel and Marie-Louise Reiniche. 2004. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 0-226-04595-1 (hard cover). Reviewed by Mahendra K. Mishra, Independent Scholar [Review length: 988 words • Review posted on May 4, …

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Indian Folktales from Mauritius

Translated by Dawood Auleear and Lee Haring. Edited by Dawood Auleear and Lee Haring. 2006. Nungambakkam: National Folklore Support Centre. 116 pages. ISBN: 81-901481-7-6 (soft cover). Reviewed by Mahendra K. Mishra, Independent Scholar [Review length: 917 words • Review posted on October 10, 2007 In Journal of Folklore Research, Indiana University Press, Bloomington] This collection …

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Seditious Histories: Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts

Seditious Histories: Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts By Craig J. Reynolds. 2006. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 376 pages. ISBN: 0-295-98610-7 (softcover). Reviewed by Mahendra K. Mishra, Independent Scholar [Review length: 1305 words • Review posted on June 18, 2009] The book is comprised of eleven well-researched essays on various aspects of Southeast Asian …

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Denying Mother Tongue: Silencing the Child

Now a day’s news are coming that teachers of English medium schools punish the children for speaking in mother tongue in classroom. This should be condemned. This is violation of child’s linguistic right. This kind of treatment to the child reminds of the colonial mindset of the teachers who love teaching, but don’t love children. …

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The Magic of the Mother tongue: Lessons with Koya children

By Mahendra Kumar Mishra, PhD In 2006 October I went for a field visit to Malkangiri, the southern most district of Orissa. In Malkangiri I went to Kambeda, whose population is comprised of 100% Koya speakers. There I found an upper primary school where 6 teachers were teaching 180 children from seven classes. (As a …

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Learning from the community

Dr Mahendra Kumar Mishra I went to Kondhmal , a tribal district of Orissa in 22- 26 February, 2010 to visit some tribal area schools where the Multilingual Education Programme is going on. The district is populated with 51 % scheduled tribes belong to the Kondh – a Dravidian language group. There are more than …

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Ramkatha in Oral Narratives and folk performance of Orissa

Mahendra Kumar Mishra, Orissa The number of Ramayanas and the range of their influence in South and South east Asia over the past twenty-five hundred years or more are astonishing. Sanskrit alone contains some twenty five or more tellings belonging to various narrative genres.(epics,Kavya or ornate poetic compositions, puranas or old mythological stories ands forth.) …

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Sacred worldview in tribal memory: sustaining nature through cultural actions

Mahendra K Mishra State Tribal Education Coordinator Orissa, India et’s imagine a tribal habitation without a road. Before the road, no jeep or truck could reach there. No forest contractors, forest officers were in the forest. The worldview of the people was of the forest as eternal as the earth and the universe. Huge resources …

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