Modern historians have repeatedly cast Sri Lanka’s historical female monarchs as ‘queens’, without critically reflecting on the conceptual limits and nuances of that term. Through a close examination of sources from the early second millennium, and their reception by scholars from the colonial period onwards, I demonstrate that Sri Lanka’s female monarchs—particularly Līlāvatī of Poḷonnaruva (r. 1197–1200, 1209, and 1210)—engaged in a more creative and subversive performance of gender than modern ‘queenship’ allows. In particular, I argue, a discourse of kingship’s inherent masculinity, advanced in literary and didactic texts written primarily by male monastics, was too-willingly accepted by colonial-period scholars. Closer attention to the material evidence of Līlāvatī’s reign, however, challenges this discourse and further suggests a politics of gender beyond the binary.

The popular genre of sung and spoken performance—naniwabushi—was the biggest ‘craze’ during the first decade of the twentieth century in Japan. This article uncovers how Miyazaki Tōten (1870–1922), a revolutionary and thinker who became a naniwabushi balladeer, was instrumental in the rise of naniwabushi as a popular art form during the Russo-Japanese transwar period (1902–1909) and used it to engage in a practice of nihilist democracy. In using a transwar frame to examine the content, audiences, and contemporary reports of his performances, this article concludes that Miyazaki Tōten created ‘new’ naniwabushi to deliberately link the techniques and rhetoric of the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement from the 1880s to the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). He used naniwabushi to articulate his concepts of autonomous freedom, nihilism, and anarchist communitarianism in a time usually characterized by the heavy suppression of dissent. It counters the impression of the wholesale embrace of nationalism and support for Japanese imperialism and shows how Japan’s urban poor engaged in political discourse through popular entertainment that was critical of Japanese imperialism.

Histories of conservation suggest that from the nineteenth century onwards, the custodianship and conservation of colonial antiquities enabled European powers to legitimize imperial claims. This article complicates this view by focusing on a series of visits made by British royals to the Caves of Elephanta, near Bombay, as part of their tours of India. Of particular interest are the visits in 1870 and 1875, which were essentially picnics, including fireworks and feasting, with little showcasing of ongoing conservation efforts. The article argues that these early visits also sought to advance a narrative of imperial legitimization through the British heirs’ presence at an Indian monument. Rather than acts of rational governance, such as conservation measures, these picnics were transactions within the ceremonial economy that privileged consumption as a means of legitimizing empire. They present a register of imperial engagement with an Indian monument that is neither ‘plunder’ nor ‘preservation’. Instead, they are posited as predecessors of the durbars (courts/assemblies) produced by the British administration from 1877 onwards. As acts of imperial political communication, the Elephanta visits drew upon the popularity of the picnic as a form of leisure, and consumption, and the long-standing aesthetic resonances of the site, such as the island’s picturesque framing and the Caves’ Romanticist associations. These enduring aesthetic frameworks made the acts of consumption legible as imperial political communication. The picnics at Elephanta demonstrate that colonial antiquities featured in imperial narratives of legitimization based on political pageantry, exceeding conservation and rational governance.

This article investigates the cultural politics of the Beijing subway. Drawing on diverse sources, we trace the evolution of the subway over the last half-century to reveal that it transcends its fluctuating, time-specific practicalities to serve as a potent conduit through which the Chinese state consistently shapes subjecthood. The article begins with the subway’s Cold War inception as a military enterprise, spotlighting its deliberate concealment to safeguard the echelons of power and obscure both international and domestic tensions. The second section delves into the subway’s rebirth in the wake of China’s opening-up reform and rapid economic rise, as it transforms into a mobile gallery of political aesthetics that extols China’s cultural heritage and triumphs, cultivating national pride under siege from unleashed market and social forces. The final section dissects the subway’s orchestration of undesirable passengers, sculpting a socioeconomic hierarchy in the city’s commuting system. As a multifaceted prism, the Beijing subway encapsulates a range of covert and overt, pragmatic and aesthetic, and inclusive and exclusive elements in the cultural politics of Chinese infrastructure at large; and it illustrates the sustained centrality of state power in shaping individual subjectivities and defining the cultural and representational significance of Chinese infrastructure, albeit amid growing contestation.

This article explores the spatial dynamics of imperial administration in colonial Burma through the lens of gender, bureaucracy, and frontier. Focusing on the story of Hugh Ernest McColl, a British administrative officer in Burma who struggled for promotion as a result of his marriage to a Burmese woman, the article sheds light on the spatial dynamics regarding loyalty, competence, and political priorities in the imperial administration of frontiers. Such spatial dynamics were most clearly manifested in the diverging attitudes between central authorities and local governments towards McColl’s case. Drawing on archival sources and secondary literature that contextualize McColl’s case within the broader textures of colonial governance, this article argues that McColl’s case reveals the internal contradiction of the imperial administration, which saw a constant tension between the ideological imperatives of control and the practical demands of how to control. McColl’s story is therefore a story of broader significance—of the inherent structural contradiction of colonial rule and its inability to overcome it.

How are infrastructures socially appropriated? This article uses my fortuitous presence in a rural locality in eastern India as its residents discussed proposals for its complete electrification, allowing me to reflect on social negotiations around infrastructure prior to its installation. Drawing on a detailed ethnography of electrification in a West Bengal village, I illustrate the nuanced ways in which people inflect infrastructural projects with their collective ideas of what is right and good. As far as they can see, such projects are neither the unalloyed benefit that proponents celebrate nor the unmitigated evil that opponents lament. Rather, they are evaluated in relation to people’s imagination of the collective good, to which such infrastructures may or may not be central. Drawing on the insights offered by my interlocutors as well as recent advances in the literature on the politics of infrastructures, this article interrogates the perspective that infrastructures advance governmental rationalities. Building on well-established insights that technological infrastructures are not socially neutral and that infrastructures are socially appropriated, disputed, and negotiated, this article demonstrates that people’s engagement with infrastructures politicizes, rather than governmentalizes, them.

In the early twentieth century, economic and religious antagonism between Sinhalese and Moors in Ceylon escalated into widespread, deadly violence. In the immediate aftermath of the 1915 pogrom, which involved the targeting of Moors and their property, the Sinhalese nationalist Anagarika Dharmapala observed that ‘Muhammadans’ had accumulated wealth through ‘Shylockian methods’. Even prior to Dharmapala’s claim, Moors were repeatedly depicted as the ‘Jews of Ceylon’ by both influential Sinhalese actors and colonial state actors. As Ceylon did not have a local Jewish population, this article investigates the use of a rhetorical device that was familiar within the broader networks of empire to ‘other’ a non-Jewish mercantile minority. The article accordingly enquires into how and why antisemitic epithets came to be used in prejudicial speech against Moors. It also explores propaganda portraying Moors in terms of ‘hostile’ Jewish stereotypes and the way in which such stereotypes were deployed in Sinhalese interactions with Moors. By tracing the connections between antisemitism and anti-capitalism, this article aims to contribute to a broader discourse on the positions of Semitic groups in British imperial ideology.

This article asks why the victims of the 1944–45 famine in Indonesia’s main island of Java are largely missing from Indonesia’s public memory and historiography. It surveys relevant studies, to conclude that there is no consensus on the human toll of the famine. The article then traces the origins of an initial estimate of four million mentioned by Indonesia’s authorities to data on mortality and births uncovered in late 1945. It discusses the outcomes of a recent study that analysed these data to re-estimate excess deaths of, respectively, 0.7 and 1.2 million during 1944 and 1945. The difference with the initial estimate is that it also included unborn children and an unsubstantiated approximation of victims in 1946. The article analyses the likely reasons why the millions of victims of the famine went missing from Indonesia’s public memory and historiography during the 1950s and 1960s.

While many commentators have noted the Bharatiya Janata Party’s more recent attempts at appropriating Gandhian imagery and symbolism, few have diverted their attention towards earlier attempts by Hindu Nationalists to do so. M. S. Golwalkar is the most prominent example of Hindu Nationalists who attempted to incorporate Gandhi into the pantheon of Hindutva (Hindu-ness). This article argues that Golwalkar reproduced Gandhian ideas as part of Hindu Nationalist thought, alongside carefully and consciously portraying himself as an ascetic politician, much like Gandhi, in the post-colonial leg of his career. He crafted a mode of Hindutva politics whereby his image as an extraordinarily able-bodied yogi became an archetype that was touted as a model for every swayamsevak to follow. Furthermore, the ideological shifts that are visible in Golwalkar’s later publications created greater room in Hindutva thought to incorporate Gandhi’s ideas and legacy into the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) ideological fold. Doing so allowed Golwalkar to tackle the challenges the RSS faced after Gandhi’s assassination. This article locates Golwalkar and the RSS in the shadow of the Mahatma to not only broaden the understanding of Gandhi’s legacy in post-colonial India but also to prompt a reappraisal of the nature of Hindutva itself. By exploring the Sangh’s deep appropriation of Gandhi’s ideas and legacy, one can begin to understand the malleable and flexible nature of the otherwise narrow majoritarian Hindu Nationalist project.

To explore the importance of death and the dead to the study of religious conversion, this article adopts an ethnographic and comparative approach to the lives and deaths of two male Muslim converts in the southwest Indian state of Kerala. Paying attention to the treatment of their dead bodies, which were donated and cremated, contrary to their wishes for an Islamic funeral, and the problematization of their proper names, it is argued that death is the point at which selves are made/remade. Death provides the opportunity for the dead, their kin, friends, and state institutions to make claims about religious identities and familial relations. I conclude that these multiple and often contradictory stances converted the dead into religiously indeterminate figures, though their belonging to their kin was successfully established.

On 3 August 1970, a student activist belonging to the Kakumaru-ha (Revolutionary Marxist Faction) was beaten to death by members of the rival Chūkaku-ha (Central Core Faction) at Hosei University, Tokyo. This incident sparked an intense war between Japanese New Left factions that stretched into the 1980s and resulted in dozens of deaths, making Japan a unique case among industrialized nations for its extremely high level of left-wing interfactional violence. Of particular importance in understanding the ideological factors surrounding such an escalation of violence was the debate triggered between Umemoto Katsumi, one of the intellectual founders of the Japanese New Left, and members of the Kakumaru-ha led by Kuroda Kan’ichi around the limits of political violence. This article explores the theoretical confrontation between these two opposing sides that was of such critical importance to the logic of war between Japanese New Left factions in the 1970s and 1980s.

This article seeks to assess the legal legacy of one of British India’s most significant emergency acts: Act XI of 1857, also known as the State Offences Act. Although introduced during the Indian Uprising of 1857, it will be argued that the extra-judicial provisions contained in this act exerted a strong influence on the legal character of post-1857 ‘special’ or exceptional colonial criminal legislation, an influence that continued to be reflected in the punitive emergency laws set in place in post-colonial India. The long-term historical significance of Act XI will be illustrated by examining some of the more notable pieces of punitive or repressive legislation enacted in colonial and post-colonial India, namely the Murderous Outrages Act of 1867, the 1915 Defence of India (Criminal Law Amendment) Act, the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919, the Defence of India Act, 1962, and, more recently, the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act of 1985.

This article presents a comparison of two Vietnamese Buddhist monks who travelled to and spent time in South Asia in the 1950s. The first, Thích Tố Liên (1903–1977), travelled to Calcutta and then on to Sri Lanka in May 1950 to participate in the First General Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists. Though his encounter was relatively brief, it left a lasting impression. Tố Liên returned as an ardent advocate for the World Fellowship and for an internationalist view of Buddhism more generally. The second, Thích Minh Chàu (1918–2012), had a very different encounter with Sri Lanka and India. He spent most of the 1950s studying Pali manuscripts and earning his doctoral degree from the Nalanda Institute (then a part of the University of Bihar, now Nalanda University). During this time, he became an important popularizer of contemporary Indian ideas. While in South Asia, he contributed many articles to Buddhist journals back in Vietnam. He recounted his pilgrimage to major Buddhist sites, considered the contemporary influence of Buddhism in India, and analysed the works of everyone from Tagore to the Dalai Lama. This article will compare the South Asian experiences of these two Vietnamese Buddhist monks and analyse their impact on Buddhist unification and the Vietnamese Buddhist movement in the 1960s.

Between 1907 and 1914, Filipino lawyer, journalist, and nationalist Vicente Sotto found in Hong Kong a sanctuary from the clutches of the Americans. The city also provided him with a space in which to explore alternative ideas for both his own development and the future of the Philippine Islands beyond the confines of pan-Asianism and anti-imperialism. Using Sotto’s experience in Hong Kong as a point of access, this article demonstrates modern Asia’s anti-imperial era as a product of transimperial ‘connectivities’ and ‘ruptures’ wherein new political affinities were forged between like-minded Asians, while interstitial imperial spaces between colony and metropole carved space for radical, yet nuanced and inconsistent, visions of national independence to materialize—at the expense of abutting empires. It serves to decentralize the role of empire, conflating instead the activities of local, colonial, and imperial actors as a singular experience that shaped modern Asia’s revolutionary decades.

Since at least the nineteenth century, the Maratha warrior-king Shivaji (r. 1674–80) has served as a central symbol in Indian politics. This article interrogates his legacy through the lens of his famous sword, the Bhavani Talvar. At least three swords have been identified as this weapon since the nineteenth century; by analysing each of these claims in turn, I consider how the discourse around Shivaji’s sword(s) traces the evolving legacy of Shivaji himself. Interested less in the historical merits of these claims than in the socio-political work they perform, I seek to uncover why the last of these three, now in London, has become essentially synonymous with the Bhavani Talvar in the popular sphere. Ultimately, I attribute this preference to the object’s political resonance: supposedly given to the Prince of Wales by a descendant of Shivaji in 1875, the object has been a rallying cry for Indian politicians of diverse ideological persuasions, who, in demanding its return, have sought to position themselves as the heirs to Shivaji and the healers of a nation still ailing from colonial wounds.

This article examines how individual police officers in China interpret and justify the use of excessive force on social media through their WeChat Subscription Accounts (WSAs). Existing research examines how the police department uses social media to justify deadly force, but overlooks individual officers’ online justifications. Adopting a critical discourse analysis approach, this study analyses 211 articles commenting on a prominent case of police violence in China. The findings shed light on the online voice of Chinese frontline officers, revealing an ideology that defends the use of excessive force. The articles published in WSAs displayed strong empathy towards the involved officer; contested the characterization of the incident as police brutality by police officials, the public, and the media; and employed various strategies to justify the officer’s actions. The discussion section expands on these findings by drawing comparisons to justifications in the United States, emphasizing the distinctive dynamic between individual officers’ online expression and official police discourse in China, and offering insights for scholars examining online expression and digital nationalism in the Chinese context.

This article provides an innovative anthropological analysis of youth activism in contemporary Thailand by examining its past and current manifestations through an unusual theoretical nexus—that between (cosmological) politics and kinship tropes. Against the backdrop of the Buddhist kingdom’s long-standing cult of the ‘Father-King’, the article focuses on the 2020 Thai democracy movement in relation to student demonstrations in the 1970s. It aims to explore the ambiguous permutations in the meanings of kinship that have marked Thai young people’s democratic engagement in a range of social fields—including friendship, siblinghood, and comradeship. Drawing upon archival material, oral histories of student revolts, and extended ethnography with today’s youth activists in a number of political sites—anti-government rallies, universities, and private homes—the article reveals how kin relationships, hierarchies, and affects are entangled in diverse political formations of youth dissent. Through a detailed reading of these complex entanglements, it shows how relationships of ‘equal friendship’ and ‘hierarchical siblinghood’ substantiate the symbolic grounds of Thai youth activism, as conflicting instantiations of ‘filial insubordination’ to monarchical parenthood. While youth activists advocate for an egalitarian, ‘friendship-based’ polity, explicitly questioning the democratic viability of Thailand’s Buddhist kin(g)ship, they are simultaneously caught up in (seemingly inescapable) hierarchical sibling relationships that validate the latter’s ontological legitimacy in practice, generating subtle tensions. It is argued that attention given to the varied cultural shapes of these tensions can make it possible to unearth the deep, kinship-based core of Thai social conflict that is concealed beneath public forms and straightforward political stances.

In Bangladesh, many secularists pursue their political goals through cultural activism. While committed to achieving a secular, progressive, and non-communal society, they often refrain from explicitly articulating their politics due to the sensitivity of their goals. Instead, cultural performances allow them to instantiate and embody a secular ethos with transformative potential, expressed through distinct cultural genres that become recognized as secular aesthetics. While activists consider culture to be a morally superior and ‘purer’ way to promote their political aims than party politics, which they perceive as ‘dirty’ and corrupt, cultural traditions are hardly neutral ground from which to enact secular aspirations. This article explores the ethical struggles that emerge from this position to illuminate what it means to act politically while trying to avoid politics, and why people might choose comparatively elusive forms of political engagement despite their strong commitment to a cause. Attending to less tangible forms of politics encourages us to rethink the role of political messages and visibility in social movements by highlighting the significant role, as well as contradictory implications, of aesthetics, embodiment, and gestures in political action. Conversely, the elusive politics of cultural activism underlines the need to go beyond analysing national discourses to understand the contested nature of secularism in Bangladesh.

This article evaluates China’s influence on the making and unmaking of economic détente in the 1970s. Utilizing recently declassified documents in Japan, the United States, and China, this article demonstrates that Chinese officials used both diplomatic and commercial means to influence their Japanese and American counterparts to prevent them from developing economic relations with the Soviet Union. During this process, Japanese and American industrialists had to carefully weigh up their participation in governments’ geopolitical schemes when pursuing business opportunities in the two socialist countries. This cautious attitude led to shifting dynamics in economic détente and varying outcomes for development projects. Chinese activism also prompted changes in Japan and the United States when decision-makers sought to benefit from the Sino-Soviet confrontation and maximize their economic and geopolitical gains. This article, therefore, features economic détente as a dynamic, multilateral process and emphasizes that the volatile geopolitics in Northeast Asia played a crucial role in ending détente and redrew the global Cold War to carry stronger economic overtones.