Translated fronts: songs of socialist cosmopolitanism in Cold War India

Throughout the Cold War, India maintained a policy of non-alignment, first in relation to China and later in relation to the US and USSR. This policy allowed India to receive support from both superpowers during the Cold War, and bolstered Jawaharlal Nehru’s efforts to craft a secular nation that would modernize rapidly along socialist lines. As is inevitably the case, reality proved more complicated than policy. The political context became messy, and myriad translations of socialism in regional contexts pulled at the seams of Nehru’s dream, particularly in the rural areas he sought to modernize through dams, irrigation projects, and infrastructural development. In this paper, I interrogate Cold War socialism at its highly translated margins through the work of Sant Tukdoji Maharaj, a singer-saint from rural Eastern Maharashtra whose influence was local, national, and international. Tukdoji was many things to many people: a devotional singer, a Gandhian, a champion of progressive land reform, an international spokesperson for World Peace, and a supporter of nuclear defence at the Chinese and Pakistani fronts. Tukdoji’s music absorbed influences from beyond rural Maharashtra, but many of his songs obscure the depth of his international political engagements and the complexity of his intersecting ideologies. Through close readings of his songs and writings, this article explores how Tukdoji Maharaj adapted cosmopolitan political ideas to particular contexts, crafting each cultural translation to be optimally intelligible and impactful for a given audience.     

The Holy War in Syria: Cemal Pasha and the Ottoman Plan to conquer Egypt in the First World War

This article aims to analyse the importance of the Egyptian campaign to Ottoman policy in the First World War. It seeks to add to our knowledge of the Ottoman war experience by putting the focus on the empire’s preparations for conquering Egypt and by giving priority to understand the aims of the expedition. The expedition itself is placed within the context of the jihad policy adopted at the beginning of the war and which sought to put an end to the Entente’s colonial domination of Muslim countries. The Ottomans’ propaganda initiatives in support of the measures were meant to motivate support among the Syrian population through the idea of holy war.     

Yusuf M. Juwayeyi: Archaeology and Oral Traditions in Malawi

African Archaeological Review -