South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies

📣 Join us for the next instalment of the Monash Asia Initiative's seminar series!

🔷 Cross-Cultural Communication: The Joys and Frustrations of Translation in Asian Research

"Translating Taranatha (1575–1634), a Controversial Tibetan Thinker" examines the remarkable challenges of bringing one of Tibet's most complex historical voices into modern languages — from his serious religious texts to his sharp wit and earthy autobiography.

📅 Date: Wednesday, 25 March 2026
⏰ Time: 1:00–2:30 PM (Melbourne/Sydney/Canberra time)

👤 Speakers:
• Dr David Templeman — Research Scholar, Monash University & La Trobe University
• Prof Peter Verhagen (Special Guest) — Tibetan Culture and Language, Leiden University, Amsterdam

👉 Register here: https://monash.zoom.us/meeting/register/R-vybtNqSzK7kYO3VNQhbg

Professor S. D. Muni challenges long-held assumptions about India’s foreign policy — arguing that India, despite deep engagement with the United States, has never entered a true ‘alliance’ with Washington, nor can its strategic orientation be simply ‘replaced’ with China.

He suggests that the resurgence of Trumpism has significantly influenced how India positions itself globally, prompting major redefinitions in its relationships with China, Russia, Europe, and countries across Asia. In this seminar, Professor Muni will unpack the nature and implications of these evolving dynamics.

📅 19 November 2025
🕐 1:00–2:30 PM AEDT
🔗 Register here: https://monash.zoom.us/meeting/register/m9QibVDRSO-ft4RwPtyfGA

Beyond Borders: Reimagining Asian Societies in and Across a Shifting World

The 26th ASAA Biennial Conference is coming to Deakin Geelong Waterfront (29 June – 2 July 2026)!

Join the largest gathering of Asia experts in the southern hemisphere as we explore identity, migration, geopolitics, technology, and sustainability across Asia.

📅 Registration opens 15 December 2025
🔗 Learn more: www.asaa.asn.au

🎓 Exciting News!

Dr. Ali Usman Qasmi (LUMS), Editorial Board member of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, will be at the Annual South Asia Conference in Madison, WI (22–24 Oct).

Don’t miss his insights on navigating peer review & publishing in South Asian studies! 🌏📚

Informality has been conventionally understood as a barrier to financial inclusion. This article offers an alternative perspective that conceives informality as labour, housing and financial informality, and financial inclusion as universal access to and use of a full range of formal financial services to challenge this prevailing view. Field evidence collected in Kolkata suggests that while labour and housing informality hinder broad-based financial inclusion, financial informality, comprising heterogenous informal financial practices that act as substitutes for or supplements to formal practices, play a developmental role, or involve illegal elements in the process, has more complex implications for financial inclusion. This permits the advancement of a typology of financial informality—substitutive, supplementary, developmental and illegal—to categorise informal financial practices. Among them, developmental informality that promotes a stepping stone transition to formality undisputedly challenges the idea that informality is always a barrier to financial inclusion.

Rethinking the Role of Informality as a Barrier to Financial Inclusion: Insights from an Indian Urban Setting Informality has been conventionally understood as a barrier to financial inclusion. This article offers an alternative perspective that conceives informality as labour, housing and financial inform...

This article examines the evolution of elephant preservation in Mysore and contends that following the Rendition of Mysore (1881), leveraged the colonial elephant preservation legislation to assert their kingship and sovereignty. Despite the end of the war elephant and the ensuing decrease in their importance to Indian kingship, it shows how elephants continued to remain integral to expressions of kingship in Mysore. Examining the close links between the state’s much-celebrated khedda operations and elephant preservation policy, the article demonstrates how they facilitated the reinterpretation of traditional kingship practices within the region while showcasing collaborative British rule. Reviewing state policies on elephant hunting, it illustrates how the Elephant Preservation Act of 1874 allowed the maharaja to assert his sovereign authority. The article highlights the Wodeyars’ dynamic adaptation of traditional practices to colonial challenges, illustrating complex interactions between colonialism, hunting, conservation and sovereignty in the context of elephant preservation.

The elephant crown: Wodeyar kingship, hunting and the politics of preservation under British colonialism This article examines the evolution of elephant preservation in Mysore and contends that following the Rendition of Mysore (1881), leveraged the colonial elephant preservation legislation to assert...

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among transgender people in Kerala, this paper unravels the processual understanding of kinship enabled through q***r mobility and kin‐making practices. With a focus on intra‐regional movements of transgender people in a Parivar, a kinship unit headed by a trans woman, it argues that q***r mobility and kin‐making constitute each other to an understanding of ‘kinship on the move’ in opposition to the perception of kinship as static and fixed. The literal and figurative movements of transgender people to various kin positions and various households render an understanding of kinship as an ongoing process that includes connections, disconnections and a conglomeration of natal kin, Parivar kin and kin that matter. The study blurs the boundary between kinship and kin‐making and points to the need to ­consider these aspects together.

Kinship on the move: Eviction and new socialities emerging among transgender people in Kerala Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among transgender people in Kerala, I unravel the processual understanding of kinship enabled through q***r mobility and kin‐making practices. With a focus on intr...

This article examines the relationship between democracy and ideas of corruption in Nepal. It argues that the transformations in media that followed the country’s transition to multiparty democracy in 1990 have prompted new dynamics of visibility that have fostered perceptions of eroded moralities in democratic political life. The first part of the paper traces this transformation and illustrates how politicians have become more visible and known to the Nepali public than ever before. The second part of the paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork to illustrate the contemporary workings of local journalism in Nepal. The moral frameworks that have accompanied democracy make accusations and ‘revelations’ of corruption powerful political weapons, and battles over reputation consistently play out across the local media. Attention to these transformations in media and visibility provides insight into the growing ambivalence around federalism and democracy in the region.

Digging up the dirt: Democracy, visibility and the ‘crisis of corruption’ in Nepal This article examines the relationship between democracy and ideas of corruption in Nepal. It argues that the transformations in media that followed the country’s transition to multiparty democracy...

This paper draws from textual, folklorist, ethnographical and archaeological sources to show that a range of exotic goods exported from India in the period of Indo-Roman sea trade was extracted and supplied by ethnic and tribal communities inhabiting remote forested and mountainous regions. These communities adopted (and still do) a ‘foraging’ approach to derive both necessities and ‘trade’ commodities from their immersive ecological landscape.

Exotic Commodities of the Periplus and Indian Forest-Dwellers in Indo-Roman Exchange Networks (First Century BCE to Third Century CE) It is submitted that the process of extraction of certain forest produce and minerals in ancient times was part of a broader foraging way of life rooted in prehistory that was never fully abandoned...

Southern India played a key role in supplying boatbuilding materials in the western Indian Ocean for millennia. South Asian forest-dwellers provided a continuous flow of timber and fibre cordage to the communities along its coasts, enabling them to build ships that sustained the trade networks connecting the ports of the Indian Ocean. Yet, the commerce of boatbuilding materials has been long overlooked in scholarly discourse, which is generally more focused on the trade of luxury commodities. This paper discusses the use and trade of boatbuilding materials in the western Indian Ocean by using a multidisciplinary approach that combines historical sources, archaeological evidence, experimental archaeological data and ethnographic records. This offers insights into the significant role played by South Asian materials such as teak (Tectona grandis), coconut palm (Cocos nucifera), dammar resin and cotton in the context of western Indian Ocean shipbuilding.

Timber, Fibre, Resin and Cotton: South Asian Materials in Western Indian Ocean Watercraft Southern India played a key role in supplying boatbuilding materials in the western Indian Ocean for millennia. South Asian forest-dwellers provided a continuous flow of timber and fibre cordage to...

In their petition to Edwin Montagu in 1917, the Utkal Sammilani, a pan-Oriya forum, used the Linguistic Survey’s map of Oriya to represent a political and territorial claim to a majoritarian linguistic province. However, for survey administrator George Grierson, language maps only showed an approximate geography and could not be used to draw boundaries. This article argues that Grierson’s map set off a series of contested cartographic exercises which led to the eventual creation of Orissa in 1936. Initially, debates over a separate Orissa played out through existing maps and geographical data from the LSI and other sources. When the Orissa question was taken up by the Simon Commission, a series of new maps were created that undid Grierson’s cartographic logic and remade the indefiniteness of language into a mappable, bounded province. This article concludes that Grierson was eventually proved right as different linguistic communities continued to resist being left on the wrong side of the line.

George Grierson’s map and the remaking of Orissa, 1917–36 In their petition to Edwin Montagu in 1917, the Utkal Sammilani, a pan-Oriya forum, used the Linguistic Survey’s map of Oriya to represent a political and territorial claim to a majoritarian lingui...