History - Publications

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Browsing History - Publications by Author "Rajagopal, Vakulabharanam"
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    Fashioning Modernity in Telugu: Viresalingam and His Interventionist Strategy
    ( 2005-01-01) Rajagopal, Vakulabharanam
    This article looks at the politics of modernity within Telugu culture by focusing on Kandukuri Viresalingam, the most prominent Westernizing social reformer from the Telugu-speaking region of British India in the nineteenth century. It analyses two of his major literary productions—an autobiography and a novel—and his wider interventions within the public sphere. This study reflects on the ambivalences and contradictions within the reformist project, and the nature of its association with nationalism. It is suggested that in the battle between social reformers and political nationalists, the former managed to assert their social leadership. This allowed Viresalingam's legacy to be successfully appropriated by the nationalist ideology of the region. By showing that political nationalism could indeed accommodate critiques of Indian society from Western or colonial perspectives, the article puts forward an argument different from some of the current understandings of Indian nationalism. © 2005, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved.
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    The rhetorical strategy of an autobiography: Reading Satyavati's Atmacaritamu
    ( 2003-01-01) Rajagopal, Vakulabharanam
    This article describes and analyses the autobiography of an ordinary woman, perhaps the first autobiography by a woman in Telugu. Despite its unique features, the text, strangely enough, fell into oblivion. Published in 1934, Satyavati's Atmacaritamu contains a radical critique of religion and society. Though a widow, Satyavati claimed the status of pativrata and through this ingenious rhetorical strategy legitimated her critique as internal to tradition. The article also situates the text in the corpus of writings by women all over India in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, and traces the evolution the 'women's question' in colonial Andhra in relation to this literature.