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15200 results in ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute

Page 160 of 760

  • 10 - Seeking a Sufi Heritage in the Deccan

  • Edited by Anjana Sharma
  • Book:
    Records, Recoveries, Remnants and Inter-Asian Interconnections
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    04 July 2018
    Print publication:
    28 February 2018, pp 222-238

  • Summary

    In the multi-volume work The Heritage of Sufism covering an entire millennium of Persianate Sufism, Leonard Lewisohn recognizes the difficulty of undertaking a “comprehensive coverage of all the mystical contexts” that characterize Sufi heritage within the span of a single study. Covering the expansive idea of a “spiritual and cultural renaissance” in Persian society between 1200 and 1500 the work identifies Sufism as a major catalyst for these developments. The religious climate of Persia in the aforementioned period was intensely influenced by Sufi traditions led by masters like Jalaluddin Rumi (d. 1273), Nimatullah Wali (d. 1431), Hafez Shirazi (d. 1389), Saadi (d. 1292), and Saiyid Ali Hamadani (d. 1384) among many others. Their works and activities shaped pre-Safavid Persia in a manner which scholars have characterized as a “renaissance” — in literature, arts, Islamic sciences, philosophy, music and mystical scholarship. One can grasp Lewisohn's emphasis on the impossibility of covering comprehensively all dimensions of this Sufi tradition between the covers of a single volume. Certain important aspects remain unexplored, even though they are critical towards understanding the heritage of Persian Sufism.

    In an interesting parallel, South Asia presents before us similar difficulties of undertaking a comprehensive study of a Sufi heritage in this region. Within the same time frame, before the rise of the Mughal Empire — the South Asian equivalent of the mighty Safavids — Sufi activities spread across north India, and also the South, particularly the Deccan region. This paper will look into certain aspects connected to the rise of Sufi networks in the Deccan in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, at a time when Deccan's Sanskritized cultural world experienced the coming of a north Indian Persian tradition. In spite of some obvious similarities with the Iranian situation, the focus will be less on such sweeping categories as “renaissance”. Rather the article will seek to engage with a different set of questions more relevant to the idea of a Sufi heritage.

    What roles did Sufi saints and, later, their shrines play in creating a heritage? Was this idea sustained only through tangible traces of their shrines? Or can it be located in the intangible idea of mystical rituals and practices, like sama? How did the chain of spiritual succession ensure the continuity of this heritage?

  • 1 - Introduction: Records, Recoveries, Remnants and Inter-Asian Interconnections — Decoding Cultural Heritage

  • Edited by Anjana Sharma
  • Book:
    Records, Recoveries, Remnants and Inter-Asian Interconnections
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    04 July 2018
    Print publication:
    28 February 2018, pp 1-31

  • Summary

    I met a traveller from an antique land

    Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

    Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

    Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown

    And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

    Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things…

    Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias, 1818

    So why begin an introduction on the contours, memories and cascading narratives of an inter Asian cultural history and heritage making with the sonorous words of the quintessential British Romantic poet, Percy Shelley, writing of a lost and unknown king, one who is possibly an Egyptian tyrant in an ancient time? A poem which takes at its point of entry the view of “a traveller from an antique land”, one, it is clear, who has no direct links with this land but is encountering an unknown, unreadable culture and is seeking to decipher and decode the lost civilizational history from a Eurocentric, colonially shaped imaginary.

    So is it a sense of historical myopia and twisted irony, to choose as an epigraph this iconic poem, one that is symbolic in literary history of the opaqueness of cultural encounters? More so given that many essays within the pages of this volume directly disagree and debate on how history is manifested, absorbed and then concretized into a narrative that feeds a culture's — any culture's — sense of hegemony: accounts that have the common seam of being dialogic and interrogative, and, fundamentally, anti-colonial.

    However, the views that emerged in the works of a Shelley, or others I will cite/site later on in this introduction, sit well with the arc of the narrative that many of the cultural theorists, Sinologists, historians, art historians, interlocutors of heritage and culture, its practitioners, religious study experts and social anthropologist engage with in this collection. At the heart of these contestations lie the vexed questions of cultural heritage, its complex and multivalent legacies, its deep fissures, its ruptures indicative of ideological schismatics and political shifts, its historical reconfigurations and altered meanings and symbolic “value” across time. In fact, as we read through this collection, we find that the drum beat of a lost time echoes in different ideational registers till today.

  • 2 - Negotiating Place and Heritage: Creating Nalanda University

  • Edited by Anjana Sharma
  • Book:
    Records, Recoveries, Remnants and Inter-Asian Interconnections
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    04 July 2018
    Print publication:
    28 February 2018, pp 32-50

  • Summary

    Does place matter? Does it matter in all instances? When locating new institutions does place matter beyond conventional issues of logistics, or will institutions achieve the same outcome irrespective of locale? These are some of the questions that emerged when two places with seemingly long histories and identities seemed to come together in the (re)creation of a new Nalanda university for the twenty-first century. These two places were of course the original Nalanda university or Mahavihara, the archaeological remains of which still exist as testimony to the greatness of what it symbolized, and the settlement of Rajgir, inhabited since prehistory, where the new international Nalanda university was to be located.

    The identification with and choice of Nalanda was of course deliberate: Old Nalanda was the inspiration for the establishment of the new university. Old Nalanda, as we well know was one of the flourishing citadels of intellectual pursuit in the world way before organized transmission of knowledge became codified in formal university structures, and it symbolized academic rigour of the highest distinction. Added to this was the evocative symbolism of an interconnected Asia and the journey to Nalanda undertaken by Asian scholars seeking knowledge and learning they could carry back to their regions. It was this voyage that inspired George Yeo, the then Foreign Minister of Singapore, to forward the Nalanda proposal to the Government of India sometime in early 2006. He envisaged a new Nalanda university could once again be

    an icon of the Asian renaissance in the 21st century and should draw students and scholars from everywhere, as it once did. It should be a centre of civilizational dialogue and inter-faith understanding, as it once was. It should again make available for the common betterment of all human beings knowledge already existing in the world (Yeo 2011).

    Later that year, in March 2006, while visiting Bihar, the then President of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam said how impressed he was to learn during a state visit of Singapore's commitment to the project. And it was only because it involved re-establishing a Nalanda for our times, that Amartya Sen agreed to chair the Mentor Group that would guide the project. Enthused by the idea, the State Government of Bihar, decided proactively to explore the setting up of a new Nalanda university.

  • 7 - “Central India Is What Is Called the Middle Kingdom”

  • Edited by Anjana Sharma
  • Book:
    Records, Recoveries, Remnants and Inter-Asian Interconnections
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    04 July 2018
    Print publication:
    28 February 2018, pp 141-159

  • Summary

    I come into the discussion on the intersection of history, culture and heritage and its ecological and environmental connections from a position that may seem to be a non-specialist one: I am not an art historian, nor an archaeologist, nor a specialist of environmental or social studies. However, what I most certainly am is someone who has been working for some forty years now in the field of Chinese intellectual history (this is the title of my Chair at Collège de France in Paris), and who has been since long developing a growing interest in intercultural studies, more specifically between India and China. I therefore feel tremendously privileged to have been given the opportunity to come to Nâlandâ as a pilgrim, right in the heart of a land which has witnessed not only crosscultural exchanges between India and China but also a space that is redolent with the memory of the historic endeavour of members of the Chinese elites to leave behind their heritage in their quest for something other than what had so far constituted the civilizational centrality and self-proclaimed superiority.

    This historic movement outwards is even more critical to recall in the present day: a time when China's official discourse is entirely geared towards the Chinese rise to power and recovery of its imperial centrality in the East Asian region. To my mind, more than ever, it is timely and salutary to remind ourselves of the periods in the past when the Chinese themselves did not necessarily perceive themselves as the centre of the world (the “Middle Kingdom”, zhongguo), or even more simply as the world (“all under Heaven”, tianxia).

    My starting point will be a sentence which sounds rather intriguing to me, as it has done so far for a good number of scholars, from Faxian 's Foguo ji (Notes on the Country of the Buddha), which was first translated about two centuries ago into a European language, namely French, by Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat (1788–1832). This self-taught Sinologist was elected to the very first Chair dedicated to Chinese Studies ever created in Europe in 1814 at the Collège de France (then called the Collège Royal) in Paris.

  • 5 - Heritage Preservation in the Gaya Region

  • Edited by Anjana Sharma
  • Book:
    Records, Recoveries, Remnants and Inter-Asian Interconnections
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    04 July 2018
    Print publication:
    28 February 2018, pp 86-104

  • Summary

    Being the home of two prominent UNESCO World Heritage sites of Bodhgaya and Nalanda, South Bihar region has a rich historical past. The region also witnessed the emergence of important urban and political centres of Rajgir and Pataliputra in ancient India. In early medieval India, the region was known as the centre of Buddhism because of the prominent Buddhist monasteries and their religious and political influence over the region. In this period, there also emerged a distinct tradition of stone and metal sculptural production, enriching the material assemblage of the region. The expansive material assemblage of this period can be encountered in almost every district of the South Bihar region including the Gaya district. Though the historical and religious prominence of this district is evident at the sites of Bodhgaya and Gaya, the district also has several smaller sites and villages with impressive material remains that have been documented in the last two hundred years and will be examined in this chapter.

    Because of the historical and sacred importance of Gaya and Bodhgaya, the district began to attract scholarly attention from the nineteenth century onwards. This is illustrated by the surveys of numerous colonial surveyors and archaeologists. Colonial surveys began with Francis Buchanan- Hamilton, who surveyed this district in 1811–12. Along with the sites of Bodhgaya and Gaya, he also surveyed several villages that contained historical remains or older temples and shrines. Following on from this initial foray, in the second half of the nineteenth century, Alexander Cunningham, the first director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI, hereafter), and J.D. Beglar also explored the district and documented several villages of historic importance and their significant remains. In the last ten years, new surveys have been conducted, which resulted in the documentation of more than 350 sites with historical remains including mounds, sculptures, inscriptions, architectural elements, and shrines/temples from the ancient and early medieval periods. All of these documentations have revealed resituated contexts of several early medieval images and temples, which indicate a complex and disparate history of the district.

    Colonial surveys, conducted in the second half of the nineteenth century, led to the movement of objects, images, and architectural materials into newly built colonial museums.

  • 9 - Tracing Transregional Networks and Connections Across the Indic Manuscript Cultures of Nusantara (AD 1400–1600)

  • Edited by Anjana Sharma
  • Book:
    Records, Recoveries, Remnants and Inter-Asian Interconnections
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    04 July 2018
    Print publication:
    28 February 2018, pp 184-221

  • Summary

    It is truly not easy to write a ‘well integrated’ history of Southeast Asia…. The main difficulty is in fact to transcend the heaviness of regional, colonial and then nationalistic histories which have strongly partitioned off the historical space.

    (Lombard 1995, p. 10)

    INTRODUCTION

    Disparate areas of Nusantara experienced a religious and socio-political “paradigm shift” during the period of AD 1400–1600, which here I call “early modern” for the sake of convenience. The Indic-influenced polities of Java and Sumatra, where Hinduism and Buddhism had been prevalent for nearly a thousand years, began to succumb to the advance of Islam and the Islamicate social paradigm. Yet, in spite of — or perhaps thanks to — political instabilities, the disruption (or reconfiguration) of patterns of international trade and diplomacy, and the emergence of new literary genres, religio-ritual paradigms, and social orders, those regions appear to have maintained a vigorous activity of preservation, transformation, and circulation of knowledge based on Indic paradigms.

    Victor Lieberman (2009, p. 10) describes a process of cultural integration in Southeast Asia from the fifteenth century onwards, an example of which is what he calls the “demoticisation” of “textually based Indic religions [that] once had been the more or less exclusive preserve of capital-based elites”. (Lieberman here refers to western and central mainland Southeast Asia, and does not look further into the insular region.) Following this lead, in this paper I explore the “parallelisms” that seem to have existed across the mosaic of literary and manuscript cultures of Western Nusantara — i.e., Sumatra, Java, and Bali — in the early modern period. Those locales witnessed the flourishing of vernacular text-manuscript cultures that shared religious ideas, literary conventions, and text-building practices stemming from the heyday of the Sanskrit Cosmopolis and the ensuing Vernacular Millennium (Pollock 1996, 2006). Rather than being separate and delinked peripheries, I suggest that these locales partook, through religious and cultural networks, of a translocal textual tradition of ultimately Indic origin. Although their textual documents were produced in different local contexts characterized by different histories of reception, socio-cultural specificities, and religious contingencies, they appear to have developed in parallel, as it were, from what must once have been a shared Sanskritic tradition.

    Here I will approach the literary cultures of early modern Malay and Javano-Balinese spheres by focusing on what Pollock (2007, p. 83) calls the “materiality of manuscript culture”, and elaborate on historical evidence that linked their social and religious contexts. I will first describe the networks of manuscripts and literati in the Javano-Balinese sphere from the late fourteenth to the sixteenth century.

  • EduCity, Johor: A Promising Project with Multiple Challenges to Overcome

  • Chang-Da Wan, Benedict Weerasena
  • Book:
    EduCity, Johor
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    14 February 2018, pp vii-viii

  • Summary

    EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

  • • EduCity, built as an integrated learning hub, is a constituent part of Malaysia's general programme to enhance its reputation as a regional centre for higher education.

  • • Located in Iskandar Malaysia, Johor, on a 305-acre catalyst development housing seven higher education institutions, EduCity aims to become a best-in-class higher education destination and at the same time provide talent to support economic activities in Iskandar Malaysia.

  • • With over 3,500 students currently enrolled, EduCity is moving towards its goal of having 16,000 students by 2025. Its proximity to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur provides it with a large population of potential students, although attracting academic staff to work there remains a challenge.

  • • Other challenges that EduCity faces revolve around the provision of facilities and support services, coordination of courses on offer, and coordination between the entity that runs the site — EduCity Iskandar Sdn Bhd (EISB) — and the universities.

  • EduCity, Johor: A Promising Project with Multiple Challenges to Overcome

  • Chang-Da Wan, Benedict Weerasena
  • Book:
    EduCity, Johor
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    14 February 2018, pp 1-21

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    Private higher education in Malaysia has seen robust growth since the introduction of the Private Higher Education Institutions Act (1996) (Act 555), which legalized these institutions. To transform Malaysia into a global higher education hub, as first outlined by the National Higher Education Strategic Plan (2007–20), the government has sought to offer a wide range of courses and programmes through private universities and colleges as well as international branch campuses with competitive tuition fees.

    This paper examines the development of EduCity, an integrated learning hub situated in Iskandar Malaysia in the state of Johor. The idea for an integrated learning hub built around multiple universities was first hatched in 2007, and in 2011 the first institution moved in. In exploring the challenges and underlying issues involved, this paper aims to shed light on the private higher education sector in the country in general.

    Several site visits were made to the EduCity campus and to the temporary city campus. On 17–23 August 2017, we conducted interviews with academics and administrators in the various universities and with policymakers. In addition, policy documents from the Malaysian government, Johor State government, Iskandar Regional Development Authority, and the respective universities were consulted.

    The paper first outlines how EduCity was conceptualized and discusses the role of EduCity Iskandar Sdn Bhd (EISB) as the “driver” and “owner” of EduCity. It then studies the huge challenges that the creation of an integrated learning hub involves.

    JOHOR AND ISKANDAR MALAYSIA

    Over the past five decades, the economic structure of Johor has evolved substantially. Johor started off as an agriculture-based economy: its flat and fertile land was well suited for the production of primary products for export such as palm oil, rubber, pineapple and coffee. But faced with volatile commodity prices, since the 1970s Johor state chose to invest in the manufacturing sector (Hutchinson 2012).

    The Economic Plan for Johor (1990–2005) advocated greater commercialization of agriculture and encouraged more knowledge- and capital-intensive industries (UPEN Johor 1989). In the subsequent Johor Operational Master Plan (1996–2010), the service sector was added as a target growth area. This highlighted strategic investment in infrastructure and skill provision to foster high-value services (RMA Perunding Bersatu 1996).

  • Foreword

  • Chang-Da Wan, Benedict Weerasena
  • Book:
    EduCity, Johor
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    14 February 2018, pp v-vi

  • Summary

    The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

    The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

    TheTrends in Southeast Asiaseries acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

  • GE-14 in Johor: The Fall of the Fortress

  • Francis E. Hutchinson
  • Book:
    GE-14 in Johor
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    02 February 2018, pp vii-viii

  • Summary

    EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

  • • Johor is a key battleground in Malaysia's 14th General Elections. The state is economically vital to the country: it is the birthplace of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO); and it has a large number of parliamentary seats.

  • • Johor-specific dynamics that have worked to the advantage of the ruling coalition include: UMNO's unique links with the state; the tight control over religion; and the phenomenal scale and success of the Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) scheme.

  • • Despite these advantages, support for the ruling coalition has been slipping across the state. Furthermore, the emergence of new parties such as Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PPBM) will challenge Barisan Nasional's control over Johor's rural and Malay heartland.

  • • The redelineation of parliamentary and state constituencies now underway is however likely to benefit BN, and recent survey data indicate that Johoreans are yet to be attracted to the reconfigured opposition coalition, Pakatan Harapan.

  • • Thus, while BN may suffer a drop in support, it is likely to retain power in Johor.

  • Foreword

  • Francis E. Hutchinson
  • Book:
    GE-14 in Johor
    Published by:
    ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
    Published online:
    12 February 2019
    Print publication:
    02 February 2018, pp v-vi

  • Summary

    The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

    The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success and, perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

    The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

Page 160 of 760