This dissertation examines China’s and India’s military modernization since 1980 demonstrated by advancements in major weapons systems. It examines the impact of four key variables on military modernization—two demand-side variables, i.e. the security threat environment and the …
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Kelvin waves are internal ocean waves that balance the Earth's Coriolis force against a wave boundary such as a coastline or the equator. In the Indian Ocean, Kelvin waves originate from Wyrtki jets off the east African coast and propagate along the equatorial wave guide until r…
This thesis examines the events which followed the publication of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses and which culminated in the social and political crisis known as the Rushdie Affair, as well as the novel itself, from the perspective of Comparative Literature and Cultural Stu…
This dissertation pursues the literary-historical tracks of the image repertoire of "boy-love" (amradparasti) versified for over two centuries in the Urdu ghazal. It critically engages with key positions in sexuality studies and ghazal criticism that have reduced this theme to v…
The southern Indian city of Bangalore is extolled as India's "Silicon Valley," emerging over the past decade as a premier site for capital flows into India's Information Technology (IT) sector. In the dominant narrative of globalization Bangalore is lauded as an aspiring "global…
This dissertation explores the lives, thought-worlds, and struggles of migrant workers working in a metal polishing export factory in the Okhla Industrial Area of Delhi. The factory employed about sixty male migrants, largely from villages in the states of Uttaranchal, Uttar Pra…
Political communication scholars argue that language and images are often used to highlight only certain aspects of a social or political reality. This is the reality that the political elites of a nation want their public to believe so that they can further their own political …
Health inequalities exist in many societies and mostly reflect inequalities between social and ethnic/racial groups. This dissertation consists of three independent studies of health inequalities. Each study examines a different source of inequality and focuses on a particular h…
As proposed by recent work in literary theory, literary and language genres are now considered to have been and to be in continuous flux as they respond to social, historical, and cultural factors. Many contemporary British writers have been acting on this premise by changing re…
This dissertation is a study of how Buddhism informed development projects as they were emerging in Bodhgaya, located in the Indian state Bihar. Bihar had a national reputation for being corrupt, prone to outbreaks of violence, and for having high rates of illiteracy, poverty, a…
In 1966, President Lyndon Baines Johnson declared, "India is a good and deserving friend. Let it never be said that bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap that we turned in indifference from her bitter need." The sweeping presidential rhetoric did not match the re…
This study surveys a century of commercial opium production in Iran, from 1850 to 1955. From an insignificant contributor to the global opium market, Iran became within a few decades an important exporter, turning to the market between 5-10% of the entire global production of op…
This study tries to understand how the postcolonial state in India has treated its religious minorities since independence (1947-1997) by examining the official policy of secularism which, in the Indian context, stands for 'equal respect for all religions.' I argue that since th…
This study seeks to better understand the uses and functions of chenta drum ensembles in the religious festivals of Kerala, India, along with the social structures that must be in place in order for these drummers to move seamlessly between different religious and social context…
For the Hindi film cineaste, the star often functions as the focal point of his/her filmic experience, dominating almost all realms of the cinematic idiom, from its economic structuring to its textual and narrative conventions. However, despite their significant cultural and cin…
The Partition of the Indian subcontinent – into India and Pakistan in 1947 – was one of the crucial moments marking the break between the colonial and postcolonial era. My project is invested in exploring the Partition not merely in terms of the events of August 1947, but as an …
In this dissertation, I focus on literary representations of the partition of British India in 1947 during which approximately one million people were massacred, eight to ten million people were displaced, and women of minority communities were systematically raped, mutilated an…
This dissertation addresses the political-economy implications of income distribution within a society. The first essay studies inter-group conflict driven by economic changes within groups. We show that under some conditions, increasing group incomes raises violence against tha…
In linguistically heterogeneous societies, language planning constitutes core institutional practice for maintaining social cohesion as well as unique cultural identities. This critical sociolinguistic and comparative analysis examines education language policy process in India,…