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The first Jewish kirtan organization was founded in Bombay in 1880, and for the next forty years, kirtan arguably became the most important Marathi Jewish performance medium. Why would Jews adopt a performance form that had been attached to Hindu temple worship for 700 years? And how did they manage to transform it so that it would become not only accepted, but beloved, within the Bene Israel community? The Bene Israel are a deeply religious and observant Jewish community who adapted a Hindu cultural form strategically and performatively. It was no easy task to generate Jewish identity through Hindu song forms, but the socio-political climate of the late nineteenth century made it a project worth pursuing. Bene Israel kirtan tells a story of translation that includes and exceeds the adaptation of Hebrew texts into Marathi texts. By translating not only language, but also religious practices and musical styles, Bene Israel leaders negotiated an Indian Jewish voice vis-à-vis Hindus, Christian missionaries, Indian Christians and Muslims, and global Jewry.

Please join us for a virtual lecture by Namita Wahi (Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi). Topic TBA. Zoom access coming soon.

The contents of the built environment that silhouette an urban terrain may be nowhere more in flux than in Mumbai, India. In her book, A Place to Call Home: Women as Agents of Change in Mumbai, Ramya Ramanath, Associate Professor of International Public Service at DePaul University in Chicago, foregrounds experiences of a diverse group of 120 women recently displaced from the slums of Mumbai and resettled in high-rise public housing to show how a history of tumultuous urban planning decisions can help and hinder an under-heeded population of those who call the city home. Extracts of conversations with the women, documented at various stages in their pre- and post-resettlement experiences, richly illustrate the nuances and aspirations of their everyday lives to shade our understanding of personal, familial and extrafamilial change. Through four core chapters, the women recollect their first homes in the city’s slums followed by their responses to the forced disruption from massive government-led demolitions, their negotiations with state and non-state actors, and their eventual move into secure high-rise housing. The book concludes with descriptions of how they are proactively reconstructing their post-settlement lives and livelihoods and advocating for reconsideration of their new surroundings and ways of life. Their call for the full, continual and differentiated engagement of their ideas and actions has implications for future planning, design, monitoring, and evaluation of place-making processes, particularly now when the exigency to build a more inclusive, viable and homey life is felt in neighborhoods and cities across the globe.