November 1966

Born
Calcutta, India
Residence United States
Citizenship Indian
MA (Political Science)
Education
PhD (Humanities)
Alma mater CIIS, San Francisco
Notable work Violent Gods, Buried Evidence
Partner(s) Richard Shapiro
Website anganachatterji.net
Angana P. Chatterji (born November 1966) is an Indian anthropologist,
activist, and feminist historian. Chatterji's research is closely related to
her advocacy work and focuses mainly on India. An anthropologist by
profession, she has studied majoritarianism, gendered violence, and
human rights in Indian Kashmir and communal violence in Orissa. In the
context of the United States, she has researched issues related to
diaspora and identity politics in American society. [citation needed] She co-
founded and was a co-convener of the International People's Tribunal on
Human Rights and Justice in Indian-Administered Kashmir from April
2008-December 2012

In 2012, she co-founded with Shashi Buluswar the Armed Conflict

Resolution and People's Rights Project, housed at the University of
California at Berkeley. The Project co-authored its first research report
in 2015, "Access to Justice for Women: India’s Response to Sexual
Violence in Conflict and Mass Social Unrest" with the Human Rights
Law Clinic at Boalt Law School. In the same year, it also published a
monograph, Conflicted Democracies and Gendered Violence: The Right
to Heal.

Angana Chatterji is the daughter of Bhola Chatterji (1922–1992), a

socialist and Indian freedom fighter and Anubha Sengupta Chatterji. She
is the great-great-granddaughter of Gooroodas Banerjee, a judge and the
first Indian Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta. She grew up
in the communally-tense neighborhood of Narkeldanga and Rajabazar in
Kolkata. Her family included mixed-caste parents and grandparents, and
aunts who were Muslim and Catholic.

Chatterji moved from Kolkata to Delhi in 1984, and then to the United
States in the 1990s. She retains her Indian citizenship and is a permanent
resident of the United States.[6] Her formal education comprises a BA
and an MA in Political Science. She also holds a PhD in the Humanities
from California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), where she later
taught anthropology. Her husband is Richard Shapiro.
From her graduation until 1997, Chatterji worked as director of research
at the Asia Forest Network, an environmental advocacy group. During
this period, she also worked with the Indian Institute of Public
Administration, the Indian Social Institute,[8] and the Planning
Commission of India.

Chatterji joined the teaching staff of the California Institute of Integral

Studies (CIIS) in 1997, and taught Social and Cultural Anthropology
there. Her social and academic advocacy work was related to
anthropology, since she examined issues of class, gender, race, religion,
and sexuality as they are formed by background (history) and place
(geography). At CIIS, she worked with her colleague and partner
Richard Shapiro to create a new academic center focused on
postcolonial anthropology.

Both Chatterji and Shapiro were suspended in July 2011 and dismissed
in December 2011 after 14 and 25 years of service respectively, after the
CIIS received student complaints against them. The CIIS Faculty
Hearing Board found them guilty of failure to perform academic duties
and violation of professional ethics. She was terminated for harassing
students in 2011. According to India Abroad, 39 Anthropology students
from a Department of 50 retained legal counsel to take action against
CIIS. As reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education in January 2012:
"A student worker in the dean of students' office, who had been
supportive of Shapiro and Chatterji and at odds with her own boss, last
fall issued a statement accusing Ms. Strong of being antagonistic toward
the anthropology department and pressuring her to say negative things
about the two professors." The matter entered legal arbitration, and all
allegations were retracted in January 2013.

Chatterji's publications include research monographs, reports and books.

In 1990, she co-published a report on immigrant women's rights in
Delhi's slums and resettlement colonies. In 1996, based on participatory
research on indigenous and Dalit land rights issues and on caste
inequities, she self-published a monograph Community Forest
Management in Arabari: Understanding Socioeconomic and Subsistence
Issues. In 2004, she co-edited with Lubna Nazir Chaudhury a special
issue of Cultural Dynamics, entitled "Gendered Violence in South Asia:
Nation and Community in The Postcolonial Present" In 2005, she co-
edited a book with Shabnam Hashmi entitled Dark Leaves of the Present
which was non-scholarly and intended for the general public In March
2009, after six and a half years of collaborative and theoretical research,
she produced a study on Hindu nationalism entitled Violent Gods: Hindu
Nationalism in India's Present; Narratives from Orissa, published by
Three Essays Collective, which received favourable reviews in popular
periodicals, and has been reviewed by American Ethnologist.

She has co-contributed to an anthology with Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy et

al., and Kashmir: The Case for Freedom (2011) and to South Asian
Feminisms (2012), co-edited by Ania Loomba and Ritty A. Lukose.[24]
She is co-editor of Contesting Nation: Gendered Violence in South Asia;
Notes on the Postcolonial Present (2013) and is working on a
forthcoming title: Land and Justice: The Struggle for Cultural Survival.

In 2002, Chatterji worked with the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate in

the production of a report on the funding of Sangh Parivar service
organizations in India by the Maryland-based India Development and
Relief Fund.

In 2005, she helped form and worked with the Coalition Against
Genocide in the United States to raise public awareness and protest the
visit of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to the U.S. as an honored
guest.

In 2005, she co-convened a People's Tribunal to record testimonials on

the experiences and concerns of different strata of people on the rise of
the Hindu nationalist Sangh Parivar in Orissa. In this, Chatterji worked
with Indian People's Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights, with
Mihir Desai, Retired Chief Justice K.K. Usha of Kerala, Sudhir Pattnaik,
Ram Puniyani, Colin Gonsalves and others. As the People's Tribunal on
Communalism in Orissa was ongoing in June 2005, Sangh members
disrupted the Tribunal's proceedings, threatening to rape and parade the
women members of the Tribunal. The Tribunal released a detailed report
in October 2006, warning of future violence.

After the outbreak of violence between the Hindu and Christian groups
in December 2007, Chatterji testified to the Panigrahi Commission
against the Sangh Parivar groups, and warned of further violence. She
wrote articles criticizing the Hindutva groups, when fresh religious
violence broke out in Orissa after the murder of Swami
Lakshmanananda in August 2008.

On 30 August 2010, Chatterji was announced as a member of Advisory

Board of the Kashmir Initiative at the Carr Center for Human Rights
Policy of Harvard Kennedy School.

In November 2010, Chatterji's husband, Richard Shapiro, was denied

entry to India by immigration authorities at the Delhi airport, and was
forced to return to the United States. Though no official reason was
given to Shapiro for the denial of entry, many suspect that he had been
denied due to Chatterji's work on human rights issues in Kashmir.

Recent Publications

In October 2011, Verso Books published the book Kashmir: The Case
for Freedom, of which Chatterji is a contributing author.

She is co-editor of Contesting Nation: Gendered Violence in South Asia;

Notes on the Postcolonial Present (Zubaan Books), released in April
2013.

In 2012, she co-founded with Shashi Buluswar the Armed Conflict

Resolution and People's Rights Project, housed at the University of
California, Berkeley. The Project co-authored its first research report in
2015, "Access to Justice for Women: India’s Response to Sexual
Violence in Conflict and Mass Social Unrest" with the Human Rights
Law Clinic at Boalt Law School. In the same year, it also published a
monograph, Conflicted Democracies and Gendered Violence: The Right
to Heal. The monograph included a statement by former UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay and a foreword by Veena
Das.
Prof. LEELA DUBE
)
Leela Dube (27 March 1923 – 20 May 2012) was a renowned
anthropologist and feminist scholar, fondly called Leeladee by many.
She was the widow of anthropologist and sociologist Shyama Charan
Dube and a younger sister of the late classical singer Sumati Mutatkar.
She is survived by two sons, Mukul Dube and Saurabh Dube. Known for
her work on kinship and in women's studies, she wrote several books
including Matriliny and Islam: religion and society in the Laccadives [1]
and Women and kinship: comparative perspectives on gender in South
and South-east Asia.

Career

Although she had taught earlier at Osmania, Dube's academic career

really began in 1960 at Sagar University, Madhya Pradesh. She moved
to Delhi in 1975. She played a crucial role in shaping the "Towards
Equality" report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India
(1974), Government of India, discussion of which in the Parliament of
India brought women's studies to centre stage in Indian academia via the
UGC and the ICSSR.

She was a key person in the Indian Sociological Society in the 1970s and
was responsible for introducing women's studies concerns into
mainstream sociology. She was one of the pioneering and senior faculty
in the Institute of Rural Management, Anand, when it started functioning
in 1980. One of her studies in the then nascent educational organisation
put it on the international map.[2] In IRMA she pioneered a course for the
first batch in 1980, termed then "Rural Environment"; a foundation
course which attempted to push a "business management techniques
program design" towards asking questions about village society. It was
also designed as a preparatory course to the "village field work
segment". This was an innovation for business schools which she
pioneered from probably her own sociological field work experiences.
This course has been developed further, and split; in 2012, it was offered
as three half credit courses, termed "Rural Society and Polity", "Rural
Livelihood Systems", and "Rural Research Methods". It continues to be
offered as a first semester course, as a preparation for the field work that
follows.[3]

At the World Sociological Congress of 1984, women activists and

women's studies scholars played a dominant role through Research
Committee (RC) 32. Dube summed up the session with her comments
on the tradition of son preference in India. In a debate in the Economic
and Political Weekly in 1982–86 on sex selective abortions, her
contribution was noteworthy and her prediction about the direct
relationship between deficit of women and increased violence against
women proved to be true in later years.

Due to the team effort of women's studies scholars (including Leela

Dube), RC 32 was institutionalized in the World Sociological Congress.
Dube invited many activists for the 12th International Congress of
Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Zagreb, 24–31 July 1988, to
present papers on "Codification of Customary Laws into Family Laws in
Asia". In the Congress, Dube's speech on feminist anthropologist
Eleanor Leacock provided new insights into the departure of feminist
anthropologists from the colonial legacy of "Big Brother watching you".
Power relations between the North and The South in the construction of
knowledge and the hegemonic presence of the ETIC approach in
academics were questioned by Leacock as well as by Dube, a proponent
of the "dialogical approach" in anthropological and ethnographic
research.

At different times, Leela Dube was associated with the Indian Council of
Social Science Research and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.
For short spells she was visiting faculty at several universities in
different parts of the world.

In keeping with her expressed wish, her eyes were donated after her
death.
Books and articles

Visibility and Power: Essays on Women in Society and Development,

co-edited by Leela Dube, Eleanor Leacock and Shirley Ardener and
published by the Oxford University Press in 1986, provides an
international perspective for the anthropology of women in the contexts
of India, Iran, Malaysia, Brazil and Yugoslavia.

Her piece, "On the Construction of Gender: Hindu Girls in Patrilineal

India", Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 23, No. 18 (Apr. 30, 1988),
has been used by women's groups for study circles and training
programmes.

A volume in the series on Women and the Household, Structures and

Strategies: Women, Work, and Family (1990), co-edited by Leela Dube
and Rajni Palriwala, has been useful in teaching women's studies in
Economics, Sociology, Geography, Social Work and Governance
courses.

Women and Kinship: Comparative Perspectives on Gender in South and

South-East Asia, by Leela Dube, United Nations University Press
(1997), argues that kinship systems provide an important context in
which gender relations are located in the personal and public arenas.

Her celebrated book, Anthropological Explorations in Gender:

Intersecting Fields, published in 2001 by Sage, is an important
contribution in feminist anthropology in India. It examines gender,
kinship and culture by sourcing a variety of unconventional materials
such as folk tales, folk songs, proverbs, legends and myths to construct
an ethnographic profile of feminist thought. She provides an
understanding of the socialization of the girl child in the patriarchal
family, with the "seed and soil" theory propagated by Hindu scriptures
and epics symbolizing a domination-subordination power relationship
between men and women.[4][5][6]
Her last publication, a Marathi translation of her last book in English,
was Manavashastratil Lingbhavachi Shodhamohim, which appeared in
2009.

Awards

In 2009 she was given the UGC's Swami Pranavananda Saraswati Award
for 2005.

In 2007 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Indian

Sociological Society.
Veena Das

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Veena Das (born 1945) is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of

Anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University.[1] She is a well-known
scholar in Indian anthropology, and one of the most frequently cited
anthropologists.[2] Her areas of theoretical specialization include the
anthropology of violence,[3] social suffering,[4] and the state.[5] Das has
received multiple international awards including the Ander Retzius Gold
Medal, delivered the prestigious Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture and was
named a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences.[6]

Education

Das completed her Ph.D. in 1970 under the supervision of M. N.

Srinivas.[7] She was professor of anthropology at the New School for
Social Research from 1997-2000,[8] before moving to Johns Hopkins
University, where she served as chair of the Department of
Anthropology between 2001 and 2008.[9]

Books

Her first book Structure and Cognition: Aspects of Hindu Caste and
Ritual (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1977) brought the textual
practices of 13th to 17th century in relation to self representation of
caste groups in focus. Her identification of the structure of Hindu
thought in terms of the tripartite division between priesthood, kinship
and renunciation proved to be an extremely important structuralist
interpretation of the important poles within which innovations and
claims to new status by caste groups took place.

Veena Das's most recent book is Life and Words: Violence and the
Descent into the Ordinary, California University Press, 2006. As the title
implies, Das sees violence not as an interruption of ordinary life but as
something that is implicated in the ordinary. The philosopher Stanley
Cavell has written a memorable foreword to the book in which he says
that one way of reading it is as a companion to Wittgenstein's
Philosophical Investigations. One of the chapters in the book deals with
the state of abducted women in the post-independence time period and
has been the interest of various legal historians. Life and Words is
heavily influenced by Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, but it also deals
with particular moments in history such as the Partition of India and the
assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984.
The book ‘narrates the lives of particular persons and communities who
were deeply embedded in these events, and it describes the way that the
event attaches itself with its tentacles into everyday life and folds itself
into the recesses of the ordinary.’

Research

Since the eighties she became engrossed in the study of violence and
social suffering. Her edited book, Mirrors of Violence: Communities,
Riots and Survivors in South Asia published by Oxford University Press
in 1990 was one of the first to bring issues of violence within
anthropology of South Asia. A trilogy on these subjects that she edited
with Arthur Kleinman and others in the late nineties and early twenties
gave a new direction to these fields. The volumes are titled Social
Suffering; Violence and Subjectivity; and Remaking a World.

Awards

She received the Anders Retzius Gold Medal from the Swedish Society
for Anthropology and Geography in 1995,[10] and an honorary doctorate
from the University of Chicago in 2000.[11] She is a foreign honorary
member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences [12] and a fellow
of the Third World Academy of Sciences. In 2007, Das delivered the
Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture at the University of Rochester, considered
by many to be the most important annual lecture series in the field of
Anthropology.
S. A. K. Durga

S.A.K. Durga, who passed away recently, was known for her
insightful lec-dems on music.

Nine years ago, as I walked into Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, I found the
hall almost full, although the programme was half an hour away. Not
surprising, for the lec-dem that day was by Dr. S.A.K. Durga, whose
lectures always drew big crowds. Her lec-dem that day, organised by
Rukmini Arts, was on Thodi raga. My memory takes a leap back across
the years, when I hear that Durga is no more, and that Todi lec dem
comes to my mind vividly. What follows is a gist of that lecture, and my
experience listening to it.

Durga began by pointing out that Venkatamakhi calls Todi an ‘outhara’

raga. Venkatamakhi does not include Thodi in the 19 melas that he calls
by the name ‘praakprasiddha melas.” But even 2000 years ago, Thodi
existed in Tamil music. A latter day Sangam treatise refers to Thodi as
‘viLarippAlai.’ One does not find Thodi in Thevaram, but it is seen in
Divya Prabandham as Mudirnda Kurinji. However a full fledged
handling of Thodi is seen only in the Trinity period.

There are not many geethams in Thodi. Two are given in Sangeetha
Sampradaya Pradarshini, but these are not in vogue among singers, said
Durga. She added that the notations for these geethams were not easily
decipherable, and singing them without understanding the notations
would detract from the aesthetic aspect of music.

Sambamurthy called Thodi a ‘naya’ ragam. Naya ragas are those that
offer ample scope for alapana, niraval and swaraprasthara. Sambamurthy
said Thodi was a sarvaswara gamaka varika rakti raga. He did not agree
that Thodi was an outhara raga - that is one that came from the North.
Talking of samvaaditva (consonance), Durga said that Thodi was one of
the most consonant ragas, or arguably the most consonant raga. She
illustrated the samvaaditva of Thodi by singing the charanam of
Tyagaraja’s ‘Ninnu vinaa sukhamu gaana’.

There were interesting digressions too in Durga’s lec-dem. Ariyakudi

used to sing a madhyama kala phrase in Sindhubhairavi, which gave it a
Hindustani flavour, and Durga demonstrated this. She gave a demo of
how griha bhedam works in the set of five audava ragas - Mohanam,
Madhyamavati, Hindolam, Suddha Saveri and Suddha Dhanyasi.

Thodi is sung often with shadja varja and panchama varja, which adds to
its beauty. In ‘Era Napai’ varnam, we find panchama varja in the charana
chittaswaram.

The Dikshitar family seems to have had a special affinity for Thodi,
Durga observed. Muthuswami Dikshitar’s dhyana kriti in his Navarana
set is in Thodi. A popular pallavi in the past was ‘Gaanalola Karunaala
vaala.’ This is actually a part of a kirtana by Chinnaswamy Dikshitar.
Baluswami Dikshitar’s chittaswarams for ‘Gajavadana,’ give the essence
of Thodi. Ramaswamy Dikshitar composed a padam in Thodi.

Tygaraja has composed the maximum number of kritis in Thodi. An

interesting speculation by Durga was about the use of the word
‘tambura’ in more than one Tyagaraja kriti in Thodi, ‘Koluvamaragatha,’
to cite just one instance. Durga said Thodi is full of microtones. While
sruti suddham is of absolute and undeniable importance for all ragas, the
lack of it when singing Thodi, mars a Kutcheri more than the lack of
sruti suddham in any other raga. Perhaps it was to point this out, that
Tyagaraja referred more than once to the tambura, in his Thodi kritis, she
said. Todi is as inscrutable as God Himself, said Durga, which is why
beginners are not taught difficult ragas like Thodi and Saveri.

There are no Todi compositions in Nauka Charitram, but ‘Vaareedhi

Neeku’ is from Prahlada Bhakti Vijayam. There is a javali in Thodi by
Dharmapuri Subbarayar. We were pleasantly surprised when Durga
came up with the Tamil padam, ‘Yaar poi solluvaar,’ which this writer’s
mother had heard Ariyakudi sing in many concerts in the fifties. In fact,
it was popularised by Ariyakudi. Durga then sang snatches of Poochi
Srinivasa Iyengar’s tillana ‘Dheem Dheem.’

Thodi in GNB’s style and Balamuralikrishna’s style is slightly different.

They don’t shake the gandharam, but sing it as a plain note, said Durga.
She concluded that no other raga brought out the wonder and beauty of
Carnatic music the way Todi did.

This lec-dem is still fresh in my memory after nine years, which only
goes to show what an outstanding communicator Durga was. On the
many occasions I met her, she taught me a lot of things - from folk
music to classical music. She never talked down to anyone who went to
her to learn something.

When she came to our house some years ago, she was beside herself
with excitement, as she went through our collection of gramophone
records. She asked me to crank up our gramophone and she heard many
of the Odeon label records of Ariyakudi in our collection. When she
gave a lec-dem on Arunachala Kavi’s Rama Nataka kritis, she borrowed
our recordings of Ariyakudi’s rendering of the kritis. She would often
say apologetically, “I am afraid I don’t know much beside music!”
forgetting that it was that kind of focus that gave her the depth of
knowledge she had. Who, but Durga, would speak about her strength
this way?! When I spoke to her a few days before her death, she told me
she was planning a workshop on Harikambodi sometime in the end of
November. Hers was truly a life dedicated to music.

A book and an award

Durga was the first Asian to have published a book on Ethnomusicology,

and was the first recipient of the musicologist award from the Music
Academy.
S. A. K. Durga
S. A. Kumari Durga
Born
1 June 1940
Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu
November 20, 2016
Died
(aged 76)
Residence Chennai, Tamil Nadu
Nationality Indian
Doctorate in
Education
ethnomusicology
Loyola College, Chennai,
Alma mater Wesleyan University, Yale
University
Occupation musicologist
Known for Ethnomusicologist
Home town Kumbakonam
S. A. Venkatarama Iyer,
Parent(s)
Lalithabai

Dr. S. A. Kumari Durga (1 June 1940 – 20 November 2016) was a

musicologist and ethnomusicologist from the Indian state of Tamil
Nadu. She was the founder of the Centre for Ethnomusicology based in
Chennai.