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6 days ago
- Politics
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For historian Jim Masselos (1940-2025), Mumbai was a city that was both his archive and his muse
In a seminal collection of essays published in 1978, the Cambridge historian Eric Stokes heralded the 'return of the peasant' in South Asian studies. He was particularly pleased to note that 'among students of the colonial revolution in South Asia the city slickers were at last quitting town'. With the benefit of hindsight, one might justifiably regard the eminent historian's celebration as premature. Recent years have seen a pronounced 'urban turn' in the study of modern South Asia. Indeed, of late, there has been a veritable flood of doctoral theses, journal articles and monographs on urban centres in the subcontinent. Significantly, Bombay has loomed large in this burgeoning historiography. Regarded as a 'totem of modern India itself', the city has attracted an ever-growing number of scholars. They have explored its evolution as the dynamo of Indian capitalism; the making and unmaking of its myriad communities; the exercise of power at different levels; the political economy of its urban infrastructure; patterns of land use and the conflicts over 'heritage'; the mutual imbrication of spaces and identities; and its contentious public culture, which has spawned the competing politics of nation, caste, class, religion and region. Yet many of these themes were first addressed by one of Stokes' younger contemporaries, who appears to have altogether ignored his pointed remarks on the future of South Asian history. For the better part of six decades, Jim Cosmas Masselos has written prolifically about Bombay, a city that has served both as his archive and his muse. In recognition of his pioneering contribution to the history of urban South Asia, the Department of History at the University of Mumbai, in association with the University of Leicester and SOAS University of London, hosted an international conference in January 2017. This volume comprises essays that were first presented on this occasion, as well as two specially commissioned contributions, by an international group of scholars whose own research has uncovered new aspects of Bombay's palimpsestic pasts. In the 1960s and 1970s, Australia emerged as a major hub for the study of South Asia. Historians were at the forefront of this Antipodean contribution to South Asian studies. At the Australian National University in Canberra, Anthony Low supervised a new generation of doctoral students in South Asian history that included, among others, Stephen Henningham, Andrew Major, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Imran Ali. Other prominent historians of South Asia based in Australian universities included AL Basham, Hugh Owen, SN Arasaratnam, Ravinder Kumar, Richard Cashman, Peter Reeves, Ian Catanach, Michael Pearson and Marika Vicziany. Jim Masselos was part of this constellation of scholars who played a leading role in establishing and promoting South Asian history in Australia. A graduate of the University of Sydney, he first came to Bombay in 1961 on a studentship funded by the Indian government under the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan. His research, supervised by Professor William Coelho at the Heras Institute of Indian History and Culture, St Xavier's College, was submitted as a doctoral thesis to the University of Bombay in 1964. The study presented a detailed account of the origins of nationalist associations in late 19th-century Bombay and Poona. A noteworthy feature of this work was its comparative approach and the close analysis of the urban context within which nationalist politics took root. Indeed, it still remains the most detailed and authoritative account of how nationalist associations emerged and evolved in colonial India. At this time, Masselos shared with many of his peers a scholarly interest in the institutional origins of early Indian nationalism. But in the following years, his research heralded a new kind of urban social history. In a series of essays published in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Masselos explored how 19th-century Bombay was made from below by a range of social actors. These writings traversed a range of themes: the world of the urban mohalla, crowds and popular culture, and the changing rhythms of everyday life in the city. Masselos's changing intellectual concerns were part of a global trend that saw social history emerge as the dominant framework through which historians tried to view the past.6 At the same time, he was deeply attentive to the specifically Indian constructions of the 'social' and the ways in which these were shaped by, and in turn helped fashion, urban spaces and identities. Importantly, too, Masselos's interest in the realm of the social did not entirely displace his longstanding interest in local constructions of power. Thus, his essays on the Muslim neighbourhood in late 19th-century Bombay showed how the mohalla was 'a field in which many kinds of forces operated and with varying degrees of intensity'. This locale could be best grasped by 'first of all concentrating upon the field in its own right and then of following such contacts as there were, not upwards so much as outwards'. By the 1980s, Masselos's interests as a historian had shifted from the realm of the neighbourhood to the Gandhian Congress's efforts towards popular mobilisation in interwar Bombay. His writings on this theme considered how the idea of the nation was forged through newly invented collective political rituals staged in urban spaces. In particular, Masselos underscored the ways in which, for the ordinary Indian residents of the city, dramatic episodes of mass protest on the streets gave a tangible identity to the nation. Importantly, too, he drew attention to the role of the urban crowd as a crystallisation of the city's protean energies. As Bombay's modern identity seemed to dissolve with the rise of archaic visions of the social in the early 1990s, Masselos's writings turned to other visions of the political that threatened to undercut its secular fabric. Thus, shortly after the 1992–93 riots in Mumbai, he published an essay that examined the first Hindu–Muslim riots in the city a century earlier and drew attention to the ways in which the urban communal riot was an ethnically territorialised phenomenon at the micro-level of the neighbourhood. 'Bombay was always an Indian city; even in the days of the Raj Bombay was never merely a white enclave surrounded by an Asiatic universe,' Masselos observed in an essay published in 1992. It was a view that stood in stark contrast to prevailing notions of the 'colonial city', which regarded it as a largely European construct in whose fashioning Indians had little or no role. In this, as in other respects, Masselos anticipated many of the arguments associated with the 'urban turn' in South Asia. A noteworthy feature of Masselos's historical writings on Bombay is his sharp awareness of the ambiguities, contradictions and tensions that structure the social worlds of the city. His essays draw on the empirical density of the archive to document how the messiness of everyday life in the city undercuts the formal conceptual categories of social scientists and theorists. Equally, he shows how no single concept or criterion could capture the reality of an urban entity as complex as Bombay. For instance, in an early essay on crowd behaviour in the city, he critiqued social science theories that sought to view the phenomenon in the developing world as a function of 'traditional' attributes and identi- ties. Thus, he argued that 'to see a society against the benchmark of ascribed criteria and even to relate it to overall cultural religious traditions, to place it entirely under such overarching conceptual umbrellas, is to do so at the cost of misunderstanding the range of group behaviour present in society'. But Masselos's suspicion of overarching theoretical categories and concepts did not stem from a dogmatic empiricism. On the contrary, he consistently developed and deployed analytical frameworks that influenced scholars who followed in his wake. For instance, in his very first monograph, Masselos identified 'encapsulation and integration' as a key dynamic in Bombay's history. 'The city has many pockets and areas, each with an identity of its own, yet each is interrelated and integrated into the wider phenomenon that is Bombay,' he observed. 'The picture that emerges is not only of many groups co-existing within the broader fabric of the city's life, but also of many kinds of groups based upon qualitatively different criteria.' In later essays, Masselos explored how Bombay has been historiographically shaped by the interplay between the formal 'defined city' and the informal 'effective city'. Indeed, he contended, 'the city defies the intentions of its masters to impose an orderly planned pattern upon it. The contrast between the habitation wishes of its population and the plans of those who formally control the shape of the city remains a constant tension in the structure of the relationships which create the urban complex.' The interaction between the formal and the informal, Masselos suggested, also gave rise to 'two levels of identification, two ideas of the urban construct'. One construed the city as an overarching entity: 'Bombay Town, Bombay city, the urbs prima in India and also Bombay the city of commerce, the city of gold'. The other derived 'not from a defined exterior but from an experienced interior'. In this latter vision, the city was perceived as 'a series of subsets, reflecting the life and living of individuals and groups within the overall urban construct'. As they moved about the city performing their daily routines, Bombay's residents constructed the city as a series of familiar spatial milieus. This was 'accustomed space', which Masselos defined as 'a perception of urban space derived through accustomed activity and accustomed time'. But there were times when accustomed space 'might become a foreign universe'. In his essay on the first major Hindu–Muslim riots in the city, Masselos offered a memorable illustration of how habitual quotidian spaces could be swiftly transformed by a cataclysmic event. Early in the afternoon of 11 August 1893, a Hindu clerk named Bhasker Madhow Sett made his way home from the Bombay Court of Small Causes. He soon learnt that the outbreak of violence at the Jama Masjid had resulted in the closure of his usual route home to Nagdevi Street. Therefore, he 'took a roundabout way, by tram to Girgaum and Grant Road and another tram towards Pydhoni'. But the spread of the riot forced him to disembark at Falkland Road. Fleeing from an enraged Muslim crowd, Madhow Sett took shelter in Gosavipura, a neighbourhood inhabited by scavengers. Two women, Chanda and Tara, came to his rescue and 'hid him for five hours under a charpoy'. But when their menfolk returned from work that evening they were enraged to find the Hindu clerk in their home. Sett prevailed on them to spare his life and help him secure a passage home. Eventually, at the suggestion of 'two elderly women', Sett disguised himself as a woman and made his way to the house of a Parsi friend in Khetwadi. This man, in turn, 'gave him another guise, that of a Parsi' and escorted him safely home. 'During his odyssey through the streets of Bombay,' notes the historian, 'Madhow Sett metaphorically changed his class and gender, to say nothing of taking on two different religions in as many hours. He penetrated what were for him unknown parts of the city, and explored depths that were equally strange.' Sett's accustomed space was transformed into a malevolent labyrinth in which danger lurked at every turn. Jim Masselos's oeuvre as a historian has been marked by four recurrent themes. First, he has documented the ways in which urban communities, far from being manifestations of primordial cultural identities, were historically reconstituted in the modern city. Second, he has shown a remarkably keen and prescient awareness of the centrality of urban space and the 'templates' through which it is perceived, represented and experienced. Third, he has highlighted how diverse forms of power, operating at different scales, have structured social relations in the city. And finally, he has also been concerned with how one form of power – nationalism – sought to acquire and exercise hegemony in the city.
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
The boomerang is European, not Australian, study suggests
They are the quintessential hunting weapons of the Australian Outback, long thought to be a unique product of Aboriginal ingenuity. But now archaeologists have found that boomerangs were being wielded in prehistoric Europe thousands of years earlier than the Antipodean examples. A mammoth tusk boomerang dating from about 40,000 years ago has been discovered in Oblazowa Cave in southern Poland, the oldest ever found. The earliest Australian boomerangs found in Wyrie Swamp, South Australia, in 1973 date to about 10,000 years ago. Rock art paintings from Kimberley in Western Australia suggest the weapons were being used 20,000 years ago, but there is no evidence for their earlier use. Prof Pawel Valde-Nowak, of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, said: 'The Oblazowa specimen meets all the parameters of a Queensland-type boomerang used by the Aborigines. 'It is currently the oldest boomerang in the world. It can be cautiously assumed that the boomerang was known in different parts of the world in the past.' The researchers say the find is unusual because it was widely believed that Aboriginal hunter-gatherers invented the first boomerangs thousands of years ago as toys and weapons for survival in the challenging Australian environment For Aboriginal communities, boomerangs are as old as time itself, featuring in their 'Dreaming' creation myths when ancestral spirits roamed the Earth. According to legend, during the Dreamtime, rivers, rock formations and mountains were created when ancestral spirits threw boomerangs and spears into the ground. The boomerang's ability to return was believed to be a powerful symbol that represented the cyclical nature of time, and they were used to hunt birds, small mammals and fish. The mammoth tusk boomerang was found in a cave in the western Carpathian Mountains above the Białka river, and radiocarbon dating shows it was made about 42,290 to 39,380 years ago. No ivory fragments were found at the site, suggesting the boomerang must have been crafted elsewhere and carried to Obłazowa Cave, underscoring its special status, the researchers said. Experimental work has demonstrated its capability to fly. Prehistoric boomerangs have been found in Europe including a wooden example from Jutland dating from about 7,000 years ago, while in North Africa, hunters are depicted in rock art wielding boomerangs from about 8,500 years ago. Ivory boomerangs were also found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, which dates from 1,323BC. Boomerangs are thought to have developed from throwing sticks, the earliest examples of which date from about 300,000 years ago and were found in Germany. Over time, it is likely that craftsmen realised making the stick curved creates greater lift as it moves through the air, allowing it to fly for longer. Not all boomerangs are designed to return to the thrower. Although the boomerangs were developed for hunting, over time they became multi-purpose tools, used for butchering animals, digging and scraping hot ashes, and even producing music when struck together. The authors conclude: 'The dispersed nature of the evidence suggests that while the boomerang was not a ubiquitous tool, its presence across various cultures likely reflects independent innovations rather than direct transmission, demonstrating its adaptability to different environmental and cultural contexts. 'These findings offer valuable insights into early human technological innovation, revealing the creative solutions societies developed to address their needs across time and space.' The research was published in the journal Plos One. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Dua Lipa & Fiance Callum Turner Have ‘Two-And-A-Half Week' Dating Rule
Dua Lipa is finally letting the world in on her romance with now-fiancé, Callum Turner, as she opened up about their relationship in a recent interview. The singer initially sparked dating rumors with the British actor in January 2024. While Lipa has continued to give glimpses of her loved-up moments with Turner, she still kept her relationship dynamics low-key. Now, the singer has finally given some insight into their love story and even revealed that she broke her dating rule. Dua Lipa recently got candid about breaking her dating rule with her fiancé, Callum Turner, during her Antipodean tour. In an interview with British Vogue, the 29-year-old revealed that despite their busy schedules, she and her beau have a 'two-and-a-half week rule.' This means that the lovebirds won't be apart for longer than this duration. However, the rule was broken when she embarked on the Australia and New Zealand leg of her Radical Optimism Tour. Lipa and Turner had to break that dating rule during her Antipodean tour. The couple were apart for three weeks instead and found it 'very hard.' During the interview, Lipa also confirmed her engagement to Turner. The revelation came after months of speculation about the 'Levitating' hitmaker's relationship status. In December last year, Lipa sparked engagement rumors after flaunting a stunning rock on her ring finger as she marked the 'last days of 2024.' While the ring caught everyone's eyes, Lipa never publicly confirmed her engagement to Turner until now. The musician told British Vogue that she is indeed engaged to the 35-year-old British star. Lipa gushed and said that it is 'very exciting.' Meanwhile, the lovebirds have yet to set the date for their wedding. Lipa shared that there are no plans at the moment as she wants to finish her tour, while Turner has also been shooting. Nonetheless, the 'Training Season' crooner added, 'We're just enjoying this period.' Originally reported by Shriya Swami on Reality Tea. The post Dua Lipa & Fiance Callum Turner Have 'Two-And-A-Half Week' Dating Rule appeared first on Mandatory.
New Paper
10-06-2025
- Sport
- New Paper
Eruption ready to explode
Racegoers at Sungai Besi should be in for a treat when the Four-Year-Old Sprint Championship comes up on June 15. Invariably, there will be a bully in the pack, as it has often been the case when such aged series are contested. This year, the big boy in this feature over the 1,200m event appears to be Antipodean. With a rating of 103 and 10 wins from 15 outings - that last one coming on April 5 - Antipodean should start as the logical favourite in the showcase event. But the son of Derryn, who has recorded nine of his wins for Simon Dunderdale and only one for his current trainer, Tiang Kim Choi, might have his work cut out. Emerging from the training track on the morning of June 10, a couple of runners threw down the gauntlet. They could be the ones out to spoil the party for Antipodean. In particular, take note of Eruption and Big Union. Sure, they are both considered "lesser lights" on the big stage but, if allowed to throw in some punches, they both could do damage. Eruption would have gone into the notebooks of many at trackside when he ran the 600m in 37.6sec, while Big Union did not put a hoof wrong when disposing of that same trip in an easy 40.6sec. And, drawing a line through their recent showing in races, both have legitimate chances in that big race for four-year-olds. Eruption boasts a stellar record for the first half of the 2025 season. He won a 1,400m race on Jan 26 and he was again successful over that same trip on April 27. Last time on May 18, when sent away as the raging favourite, the son of Xtravagant found one to beat in Pacific Warrior, who took the honours when winning by half a length. Eruption has since trained on and, while the 1,200m might seem a tad short, his style of racing of staying close to the lead should see him involved in the finish. Yes, Antipodean does seem like he is the one to beat. But, should the Lawson Moy-trained Eruption explode over the final furlong, we might just see fireworks. As for Big Union, he is a huge chance in the contest coming up. Indeed and right now, he must seem like gold dust to his trainer Jerome Tan and the Cat Racing Stable. Big Union has been off the board just four times in his 16 outings at Kranji and now at the Selangor Turf Club. Sure, he has yet to knock home a win in all of his six starts in Malaysia - but he has not been left stranded in any of those races. Last time - on June 1 - and in a "high class" event, he went down fighting to Pacific Victory. A run earlier, on May 18, he ran fourth to the very exciting Pacific Vampire in a Supreme race over the 1,100m. The son of Zoustar will enjoy the short and sharp 1,200m he has to cover on June 15, as three of his five career wins at Kranji were over this same trip. He will give his rivals in the big sprint something to think about. So, keep him in your calculations. Outside of that feature event, two runners entered for the Class 4 sprint over the 1,100m were also put through their paces on the training track. They were War Dragon and Cheerful Baby. War Dragon clocked a flashy 37.6sec for the 600m while Cheerful Baby went over that same trip in 38.2sec. Forget the fact that War Dragon is a 10-year-old going on 11. The son of Battle Paint still believes he is one of the young crowd and, when in the mood, he can still raise a pretty neat gallop. We saw it three starts back on Feb 23 when he ran a half-length second to Legend Ninety Two. It has been a long while since War Dragon, who is also prepared by Moy, last won a race but, on the strength of his work, he might be a good one to toss into those novelty bets. As for Cheerful Baby, another Tan ward, he has been sparingly raced and the assignment coming up will be his second in 2025. However, he has been to three trials and his last one on June 4 saw him finish third behind the winner Kim Legend. His claim to fame must be the time he put together four wins in a row when racing at Kranji. The son of Brazen Beau is not going to do that any time soon but, given his work on the training track, he could, in his next few runs, be capable of bringing home his first Malaysian pay cheque. brian@
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Review: Nicolas Cage Goes Full 'Groundhog Day' Thriller in 'The Surfer'
A surprisingly low-key Nicolas Cage performance anchors The Surfer, a throwback revenge thriller with a jet-black comedic edge from Vivarium director Lorcan Finnegan. For about 40 minutes, this film is an intriguing and even propulsive B-movie programmer. The first act is an efficient revenge setup, infused with some lush photography (the picture was shot on location in Melbourne) and an authentic grittiness which recalls '70s Antipodean grindhouse classics. But unfortunately, like all exploitation riffs which make the mistake of taking themselves too seriously, The Surfer goes on far too long and eventually exhausts its audience. Cage plays the titlular character, an unnamed office drone who whisks his son (Finn Little) to an idyllic coastal spot in the community where he was raised. The Surfer wants to buy a home overlooking the beach, the very same one in which he lived until age 15, when his father died and his mother moved the family to California. Hoping to take his son out to catch a few waves and an enviable glimpse of their new abode, he's instead met with some hostile 'localism' from the beach's resident muscle heads who are engaged in a bizarre salt-water cult overseen by Scally (Julian McMahon). At this point, The Surfer takes a detour into the sort of nightmare comedy about which you can ask no questions. Why, after being violently rebuffed and humiliated in front of his son, does Cage begin living on the beach in his car? Why does he keep returning to receive fresh injuries from the cult members? Why not just grab an Airbnb near his new home? What's up with the old man, also living out of his car, who's passing around flyers advertising his missing son? And why, after stealing his surfboard, do the cult members claim they've had it for seven years? There's a lot going on in The Surfer — the broken relationships of fathers and sons; the seeping wounds of male ego; mid-life malaise; the unexplained possibility of time loops — but none of it develops into anything. It's long been the safe haven of marginally talented filmmakers to produce a hallucinatory, vaguely existential film of dubious quality and pass it off as the vision of an auteur; but when the quality isn't there, it's all terribly transparent. Instead of interrogating or developing any of the ideas to which the film gestures, Finnegan visits a succession of increasingly outlandish humiliations onto his title character, all of which seem tailor-made for Cage's particular acting style. Watch him drink dirty water from a puddle (and later a public toilet)! Wince as he jumps onto broken glass! Shudder when he pawns his late father's watch for a flat white!The screenplay, by Thomas Martin, doubtless sent its cast and crew into fits of giggles. None of that mirth translates to the screen. By the time Cage swings a live rat by the tail (which he later beats to death and pockets for a snack) and attempts to shoot a dog in the head, you'll likely wish the whole thing would end so you can go home. Sequences which seem designed to provoke a strong emotional reaction pass without impression, boring instead of outraging. The climax is so foregone and uninspiring that your mind may wander to your shopping list in the film's final moments. It's worth mentioning that there's an admirable nastiness to this movie, and one gets the sense that Finnegan would do nicely with a straight, no-frills suspense piece. There's a queasy quality to the beach bullies that wouldn't be out of place in a home invasion movie, and before it goes off the rails, the film chugs along with a nicely suspenseful rhythm. There are even fleeting moments where you see in Finnegan's approach something of the efficient, genre-literate subversion Steven Soderbergh accomplishes so effortlessly. But what's the point of it all? Considering most of its business will presumably be done on streaming, it's odd that The Surfer so frequently tempts its audience to tune out. Unfortunately, the temptation stems not from the visceral impact of the travesties visited upon Cage (none of which truly land) but rather from the intense feeling of déjà vu. For all of its excesses, we've seen this done many times before and frequently better. The Surfer is currently in cinemas.
