21 International Conference on Maharashtra: Culture & Society Deha. Invoking the Body.

Day 1 - 19.06.2025

08:30-09:15                     Registration

09:15-10:00                     Welcome by the organizers and the Director of the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg

 

10:15-12:00                     Panel 1: Orienting Deha

Kartik Maini                     Corpora and Comportment: Orientations of the Body in the Dāsbodh

Rahul Sarwate                 Two Histories of the Body: Literature and Life in Early-Twentieth-Century Maharashtra

Surajkumar Thube         From Entertainment to Assertion: Reimagining Deha in Satyashodak Jalsas

 

13:30-15:15                     Panel 2: Representations of Deha

Irina P. Glushkova           Corporeal Discomfort, Divine Touch, and Janabai's Pictorial Physique in the 19th Century Prints

Muphid Mujawar           Body and Embodied Features: A Study of ‘Muslim’ Characters in Marathi Cinema

Vaishnavi Bagade           Challenging Traditional Brahminical Notions of Beauty: Exploring the Representation of the Body in the Poetry of Namdev Dhasal and Shantanu Kamble

 

15:45-17:30                     Panel 3: Deha as Metaphor

Chinmay Dharurkar       Metaphoric Extensions of Body Parts in Marathi

Shrikant Botre                 Metaphor, Caste, and the Body: Science-ing Sex in Late Colonial Western India

Pramod Mandade          From Ulcers to Wounds: The Metaphoric and Material Body of the 'Police Action' in Marathwada

 

Day 2 - 20.06.2025

08:50-10:00                     Panel 4: Women’s Deha

Prashant                          The Maratha State, Brahmanical Patriarchy, and the Regulation of Women’s Bodies in 18th-Century Western India

Jaswandi Wamburkar    Changing Consciousness about Women’s Body and Health

 

10:15-12:00                     Panel 5: Disciplining Deha

Nabhojeet Sen                 The Body in Punishment and a Body for Labour: Gender, Enslavement and Disciplining in Early Modern Western Deccan, 1670s-1818

Rashmi Banerjee            Murderous Mothers: Illegitimacy and Child-murder in Colonial Bombay

Kalpana Dixit                    Closed-Circuit Television Surveillance and Regulation of Bodies

 

13:30-15:15                     Panel 6: Deha Politics

Rosalind O’Hanlon         Embodied Families: The Kulavrttanta and Brahman Cultural Politics in the Twentieth Century

Sunila S. Kalé and           Sovereign Bodies: Surya Namaskar and Self-Rule in Christian L. Novetzke the Princely State of Aundh

Alok Oak                           Inhabiting Secular Bodies: Dharmashastras and Hindu Reform in Maharashtra (1930-1956)

 

15:45-16:55                      Panel 7: Public Deha

Aishwarya Walvekar      A Look Within, a Look Away; a Look Back, a Look Forward: Politics of Bodies, Technologies and Times in Ganeshotsav’s halte dekhawe

Firdaus Soni                     Bodies in and of the Jatra: Engaging the Jatra of Malegaon in Marathwada

 

Day 3 - 21.06.2025

08:50-10:00                     Panel 8: Relating Deha to the world

Sonali Kale                       Reclaiming Spirituality by Deconstructing Body: Phule’s Approach to Bodily Impurity in Religion 

Digvijay Nikam                The Deha of the World and the Deha of the Poet in Arun Kolatkar’s Poetry

 

10:15-12:00                     Panel 9: Deity and Deha, Deity’s Deha (Chair: Dušan Deák)

Anne Feldhaus                The Divine Self in the Līḷācaritra

Borayin Larios                 Embodying the Divine in the Streets of Pune

Anuja Patwardhan         Maligned Maladies and Benign Divinities: A Case  Study of Disease Deities in Coastal Maharashtra

 

13:30-15:15                     Panel 10: Decaying Deha

Madhuri Deshmukh      Death and the Body in the Grind-Mill Song Tradition

Michihiro Ogawa            The Damage to Human Health in the Indian Great Famine of 1876-1878 with Special Focus on the Epidemic of Cholera in the Bombay Deccan

Lisa Klopfer                     Turnings

15:15-15:45                     Closing