Seminar: Life in Mithila, 5-6 March 2022

Life in Mithila: History, Society and Politics in a Region

An online seminar in honour of Late Prof. Hetukar Jha (1944-2017)

Organised by Mithila Study Group

March 05 - 06, 2022

This online seminar aims to pay intellectual tribute to Late Prof. Hetukar Jha (1944-2017), an illustrious and acclaimed sociologist, by engaging with his scholarship, questions, and provocations. Envisioned to be trilingual, the seminar is conceived of deliberations, conversations, and presentation of research papers in English, Hindi, and Maithili, with a broad thematic focus on the society in Mithila in historical perspectives.

Registration Link: https://forms.gle/kqUEw3wdYDcLkxGo9

Programme Schedule

Day 01: 05 March, 2022

Session 01: 10.00 AM to 10.45 AM Inaugural Session (Mithila Study Group: Manish, Shrutikar, Mithilesh, Dev and Sadan; moderated by Dev)

10.45 AM to 11.00 AM: Tea Break

Session 02: 11.00 AM to 12.30 PM Mithila and Maithili beyond the borders

(20 minutes X 3 for presentation+30 minutes for discussion)

दीपामणि हालै महंत, गौहाटी विश्वविद्यालय, गौहाटी, विधापतिक पदावली आ शंकरदेवक ‘बरगीत’, भाव-भाषाक तुलनात्मक अध्ययन

Nabanipa Bhattacharjee, University of Delhi, Delhi and Manish Thakur, IIM Calcutta, Kolkata, Context and Consequence of Early Migration to Eastern South Asia: The Mithila Connection

Ruma Bose, Psychiatrist and Anthropologist, London, The Imprint of Mithila on the Kanwar Pilgrimage

Chair/discussant: Vidyanand Jha, IIM Calcutta, Kolkata

12.30 to 1.30 PM Lunch Break

Session 03: 1.30 PM to 3.20 PM Mithila in Pre Colonial Pasts

Sneh Kumar Jha, Delhi University, Delhi, Literature and History: Multilingual World Of Varna Ratnakara.

सुशांत कुमार,इतिहास और पुरात्तव के स्वतंत्र शोधार्थी, बेगूसराय, पूर्वमध्यकालीन तिरहुत की पाषाण प्रतिमाओं का सामाजिक पहलू

Amitabh Kumar, LNMU, Darbhanga, The images of Kingship in Mithila under the Karnatas and the Oinwaras

भवनाथ झा,सम्पादक, 'धर्मायण', महावीर मन्दिर, पटना, तिरहुत के राजा राघव सिंह का राघोपुर दानपत्र- 1719ई."

Chair/Discussant: Pankaj Jha, LSR College, Delhi University, Delhi.

3.20 PM to 3.30 PM Tea Break

3.30 PM to 5.30 PM Session 04 Religiosity, Politics and the Spatial Transformation

Suprya Sharma, CEPT, Ahmedabad, Flooded villages, foldable houses and floating castes – Built environment of the flood hit region of Mithila

Sadan Jha, Centre for Social Studies, Surat, Gosāun and the Gosāunik Ghar

कमल कुमार मिश्र, स्वतंत्र शोधकर्ता-इतिहासकार, तारा उपासना का मैथिल स्वरुप: रोजमर्रा की धार्मिकता पर एक शोधार्थी की टीप

Praveen Priyadarshi, IIIT, Delhi, A Road to Empowerment: Retracing the Footprint of Politics in a Village Space

Chair/discussant: Manoj Kumar, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru

5.30 PM to 5.45PM Tea Break

5.45 PM to 7.00 PM Session 10 Living with Flood

Ruchi Shree,Tilka Majhi Bhagalpur University, Bhagalpur, and SOAS, London, Revisiting Renu’s Rinjal, Dhanjal: The Fear of Floods in Bihar Then and Now

Pankaj Kumar Jha, Motilal Nehru College, Delhi University, Delhi, Contestations between the State and Civil Society: Politics of Flood control in the Bagmati region of Mithila

Chair/Discussant Kailash Chandra Jha

Day Two

Session 06 : 10.00 AM to 11.45 AM Session 05 Maithili Language, Literature and culture

Lalit Kumar, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College, University of Delhi, Reading Hari Mohan Jha’s Kanyadan(1930)

Shivangi Priya, Manipal University Jaipur, and Narayan Choudhary, Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysuru, Role of Socio-cultural factors in the maintenance of linguistic identity: A study of Maithili speakers of North Bihar

Abhishek Dev Narayan,Tagore National Scholar,IGNCA, Delhi, Folklores of Mithila: A Collective Consciousness of Expression, Identity and Change

Nupur Choudhary, Independent Researcher and Masters, Nālandā University, Nalanda, Through the Images of Gods and Remembrance: A Case Study of Maithili Gītagovinda

Chair/Discussant: Mithilesh Kumar Jha

Tea Break: 11.45 AM to 12 AM

Session 07: 12.AM to 2 PM Identities and Institutions: Contestations and Negotiations

Mithilesh Kumar Jha, Dept. of HSS, IIT Guwahati, Imaginaries of ‘Nation’ and ‘Region’ in Mithila: Thinking through and beyond the works of Hetukar Jha

विद्यानंद झा, आई आई एम कलकत्ता, कोलकाता, विद्यापतिपर्वक संक्षिप्त इतिहास आ पर्वक लोक सँ विमुख होईत स्वरुप

कैलाश चंद्र झा, एकेडमिक-एक्टिविस्ट, धरोहर, उनका संरक्षण और सामाजिक चेतना: मिथिला के पंजी का माइक्रोफिल्मिंग 1990-2000.

Manoj Kumar, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, Chronotopes of Collective Desire Dynamics of Educational Aspirations among the farmer proprietor class of the Mithila-Tirhut Region.

Chair/discussant: Manish Thakur

2.00PM to 2.30 Lunch Break

2.30 PM to 4.00 PM Session 08 Gender, Subalternity and the Folk culture

Coralynn V. Davis, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, Maithil women's festivals and festival tales: cultural reproduction and social change

Mona Das, Satyawati College (Day), Delhi University, ‘Feminine’ in subaltern: Maliniyas of Salhesh Gatha

Palashka Jha, Programme consultant in Restless Development, Jaipur, Analysing the Musahar Community through sociological theories

Chair/Discussant: Dev Nath Pathak, South Asian University, Delhi

4.00 PM to 4.15 PM Tea Break

Session 09 4.15 PM to 5.45 PM Body: Poetics and Performativity

प्रिया रानी, स्वतंत्र शोधार्थी, स्त्रीत्व और पसाहिन

Christopher Diamond, College of Asia & the Pacific, The Australian National University, Canberra, Masculine Ethics, Geography & Maithil Identity in the Works of Vidyāpati

Dev Nath Pathak, South Asian University, Delhi, Yatri Nagarjun: Positing an Ambivalent Purushartha in Modern Mithila

Chair/Discussant: Coralynn V. Davis, Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

5.45 PM to 6.00 PM Tea Break

6.00PM to 7.00 PM Round table: Late Prof. Hetukar Jha and His Scholarship

Rajeshwar Mishra (Independent researcher), V K Lal (Rtd. Professor of Sociology, Patna University), William Pinch (Professor of History at Wesleyan University and Consulting Editor of the journal History and Theory), Pushpendra (Professor and Chairperson, Centre for Development Practice and Research,Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Patna), Gopal Kamal (Rtd. Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, Government of India),

Moderated by Sadan Jha.

7.00 PM: Concluding Session

Manindra Thakur, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, Observer's notes: Theorizing Life in Mithila/Thinking in Mithila.

Open Roundtable Discussion among all the participants reflecting on two days seminar and the way ahead

Organisers

Mithila Study Group:

Mithilesh Kumar Jha, IIT, Guwahati.

Dev Nath Pathak, South Asian University, Delhi

Shrutikar Jha, kalyani Foundation, Darbhanga.

Manish Thakur, IIM, kolkata.

Sadan Jha, CSS, Surat.

Media Partner: Galp Lok

Media and technical support: Antara Roy Chaudhury and Divyendu Jha

Life in Mithila: History, Society and Politics in a Region: March 05 -06, 2022

Concept Note

The two-day event, Life in Mithila: History, Society and Politics in a region, aims to capture the vast and complex canvas, dynamism, changes, and mobility in Mithila at the interface of society, culture, polity, and economy. To emphasize this interface, we deem the idea of social in Mithila as a kaleidoscope of experiences, reason, and narratives.

Mithila has a distinct place in the rich and diverse cultural tapestry of Bihar. In the realm of ideas and knowledge, it is the land of Gargi, Bharati, Dak, and Ayachi. In the field of art, different schools and traditions of Mithila paintings have made their strong presence at the national and global landscapes.

While we acknowledge that there exists a robust scholarship on the region, its history, and society, we strongly feel that a lot of avenues are yet to be explored, old questions can be revisited, and fresh forays can be made with potentials towards advancing the terrain of knowledge on Mithila.

With an inclusive and holistic approach, the seminar locates the complex issues of the social at the interface of various other domains of life. In implication, this shall broaden the understanding of concepts rooted in Mithila and routed through time and space. Scholars often deploy canonical terms without reflecting on the relation of roots and routes, time and space. Thus, for heritage, we often mean only the built heritage and the tangible remnants from the past and ignore intangible and non-material aspects like knowledge traditions, cultural memory, literary traditions, and so on. A focus on some of these aspects of Mithila with this proposed inclusive approach, we are sure, will not only lead to new scholarly explorations and theorizations but also deepen and expand our understanding of Maithili society both in historical and contemporary senses.

This seminar uses Mithila as a key ground in the socio-historical framework generating the potential to deliver contemporary concerns along with the engagement with the past. Social science and humanities-based engagement with the aspects of Bihar deliver a complex and comprehensive imagination. It is not a monolithic society, culture, and polity. In the middle of the superimposed society and culture, the complexity of grassroots, travails of ideas, and regimes of values also assume central importance. This seminar tends to be informed by and seeks to move forward from the preceding corpus of knowledge.

Instead of following any narrow understanding of the region, we conceive Mithila in broad terms and as a geo-cultural region with historically shifting boundaries. Thus, as a site for research and knowledge production, Mithila is not conceptualized here through national boundaries or administrative units but also includes Nepal and diasporic society created in and through processes of migrations.

With presentations of rigorously researched papers on Mithila from social science perspectives, the seminar is conceived as an occasion to pay tribute to the scholarship of the Late Prof. Hetukar Jha, an internationally renowned sociologist and an author of several paths breaking books and essays on wide-ranging subjects from Historical Sociology (Routledge) to The Social Structure of Indian Village (Sage) and authoritatively intervened at several scholarly debates of lasting importance, fearlessly challenging the settled and showing us alternative perspectives based on solid empirical research. It is unfortunate that so far, there is not a single conference or edited volume dedicated to the memory of a man who devoted his entire life to generating and preserving the knowledge of Mithila and Bihar.

Focused on Mithila, some proposed broad subthemes for inviting papers include:

1. Socio-historical reasonings on and in Mithila

2. Imagining the region: society, culture, and polity

3. Contesting identities: religion, caste, class, and gender

4. Change and continuity in Mithila

5. Language and literature in Mithila

6. Traditions of knowledge and practices

7. Mithila’s folk traditions, art, and architectures

Languages of the Seminar: Maithili, Hindi, and English

Contact Info:

Mithila Study Grop <mithilastudygroup@gmail.com>

16Saurav Rai, Kaushal Nath Jha and 14 others