Sexuality, Obscenity, Community Women, Muslims And The...

Word Count: 1473 Gupta, Charu. 2001. Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and the Hindu Public in Colonial India. Delhi: Permanent Black Charu Gupta’s work, ‘Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and the Hindu Public in Colonial India’, published in 2001, provides an enlightening view on themes including gender, sexuality and religion, all in the context of the British Colonialism and the rise of the Hindu nationalist ideology. In the second chapter, ‘Redefining obscenity in Aesthetics and Print’, Gupta focuses on the â€Å"moral panic† in Colonial India regarding representations of sexuality and ideas of obscenity in print. (p.30) She examines the attempts made by British Colonial and Hindu moralists to utilize printed literature in order to promote a civilised, celibate society, and scrutinizes the ways in which this was used to police and discredit particularly female, but also male sexual and social identities. Gupta then sets this against the apparent obscenity and semi-pornographic nature of popular literature, and argues that this provided a â€Å"serious chall enge† to the moralist mind-set by resisting and inverting the elite’s attempts to control the Hindu public. (p.30) This view provides an insightful understanding of the diversities and consistencies of print culture, and throughout the chapter, Gupta corroborates her points utilizing a broad range of literary and textual evidence, including books, poems, pamphlets, songs and advertisements, whichShow MoreRelatedModern Bollywood, A Decade Old: Bollywood and the Colonial Censorship3158 Words   |  13 Pagesgovernment. There have been endless debates by the contrasting individual ideas on how the media should be controlled from displaying unethical contents, and normative theory helps in guiding the individuals (theorists, writers, society and general public) to produce suggestions and ideas that media should follow, for the benefit of society and media (McQuail, 2010). The Indian Film Industry was established in 1913 but began to be known in 1920 (Indian Ministry of Inf ormation and Broadcasting, 2010)Read MoreThe Jade Pendant5982 Words   |  24 Pagesdiscourse. Being the native language of none of the ethnic groups, its choice favored none. The presence of the different ethnic communities with their strong cultural identities and heritage suggests that the influence they exert over the development of Singapore literature cannot be insignificant. Chinese literature dates more than 3,000 years while the classic Hindu tales of  Mahabharata  and  Ramayana  are well-known, passed from generation to generation and transplanted to the alien soil of Singapore