LECTURE SERIES ON GOVERNANCE AND POLITICS IN SOUTH ASIA WINTER SEMESTER 2024/2025 The Fascinating Convergence of Tribalization and Hinduization in Odisha’s History

About the Talk:

The former, dominantly tribal, “feudatory states” of Odisha offer excellent conditions for analysis of the emergence of “kingship ideology” under the reciprocal influence of Hinduization and tribalization. Odisha’s mountainous tribal hinterland and the fertile deltaic coastal regions comprise two socio-economic zones with distinct cultural-political identities. In the tribal hinterland nearly two dozen feudatory states had emerged from tribal and post-tribal state formation since late medieval period until the British conquest in 1803. On the other hand, powerful regional kingdoms flourished since the Middle Ages in the fertile coastal regions under dominant Brahmanical influence and the unique temple cities like Puri and Konarka. The cross-cultural encounter and convergence of these two areas are an essential feature of Odisha’s identity and a major subject of this talk. Prof. Kulke  will speak on five selected former feudatory states in Orissa and the unique socio-cultural development of their existing and still worshipped tribal mother goddesses.

About the Speaker:

Prof. Hermann Kulke, is a world-renowned historian of early and early medieval South and Southeast Asia. He taught Indian history at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg (1967-1988), and retired as a Professor of Asian History at Kiel University, Germany (1988-2003). His pioneering work on the Jagannatha cult and other aspects of Orissa's culture (1970-75; 1995-2004) is widely recognized. He has authored/ edited a large number of publications, including A History of India (with Dietmar Rothermund); The Cult of Jagannatha and the Regional Culture of Orissa (with Eschmann and Tripathi); and The Routledge Handbook of State in Premodern India (with B.P. Sahu). He received the Jayadeva Foundation Award (2004) for his contributions to Orissa studies; the Asiatic Society (Kolkata) Raychaudhuri Gold Medal (2006); the Padma Shri, conferred by Republic of India (2010); and the Order of Merit, awarded by the Federal Republic of Germany (2011).