This chapter traces the travels of Flavius’ sculpture from Rome, via Paris and New York, to Indianapolis. The artwork’s movements reflect changing historical tides, and also took on different meanings as it passed through each context and historical moment.

Shah Abdul Latif of Bhit (1688–1751) is Sindh's most celebrated poet. The Risalo, his collection of Sindhi verse, is sung by his devotees daily at his tomb. It is also recited, studied, and set to pop music. It has inspired political commentaries, poetry, and religious works. Latif is a venerated saint, whose tomb at Bhit attracts many visitors, especially on his death anniversary. His visitors include people of diverse genders, religious affiliations, and sectarian identities. Recent studies have shown that Latif's poetry was elevated by colonial scholars and officials, forging a Sindhi literary canon, as they oversaw a change in the language of administration from Persian to Sindhi. However, Latif's life and poetry were also significant in his own time, marking a radical shift in individual subjectivity while also contributing to the emergence of a written Sindhi literary culture.

During Latif's time, a new social order was emerging in Sindh. This was a slow process unfolding at various loci without predetermined outcomes. The set of religious scholars in Thatta, including Makhdum Muhammad Hashim, who were the subject of the previous chapter, constituted one such locus. Latif, who was the head of a contemporaneous Sufi order, and the subject of this chapter, was another important innovator of self and community in the eighteenth century. Hashim and Latif both responded to the same context, where neither elite subjectivity nor society could be ordered anymore around the axis of the emperor.

Even as Hashim and Latif were frequently at loggerheads, their oeuvres had three features in common. They shared an interest in refashioning elite male subjectivity in relation to new communities that incorporated layfolk and women. They used a new medium, written and literary Sindhi, to formulate their idioms for individual and community. Lastly, both imagined the relationship between elite individual and popular community in less hierarchical ways than at the height of Mughal rule, when layfolk and women had been pointedly excluded.

The differences between Latif and Hashim are substantial, too. Hashim and his descendants created and upheld boundaries between Muslim and Hindu, men and women, Sunni and Shia. They also insisted on the primacy of a new Sunni Muslim order, produced out of everyday religious practice, which aspired to incorporate layfolk, women, non-Muslims, and non-Sunnis.

Introduction

Neelima, a transgender woman in her mid-sixties, smiled thoughtfully as she gazed back at me, carefully considering my question. We were sitting across from each other at a small table in the NGO office where Neelima worked. Though she lives alone now, as a young GNC person, Neelima lived in a hammam with her hijra family. I asked about the kinds of changes Neelima had witnessed in guru–chela relationships as I was interested in understanding how gurus’ expectations of their chelas have changed. I mentioned Vandana's relationship with her chela in the hammam that we heard about in the last chapter, asking if Neelima could think of any relationships she knew of that worked like that. She paused and focused her serious eyes on a point above me on the wall, thinking as she fiddled with the long gold chain that was tucked under her bright, patterned sari. Then, looking back at me, she grinned and replied, “You are talking about those olden days. But now, this is the new times.”

In her lifetime, Neelima has witnessed a dramatic shift in the expectations of gurus and chelas in the “new times,” as compared to the “olden days.” In the past, she explained, “the chela was more obedient and the guru was more respected … the chela couldn't go against the word of the guru; she was obliged to follow what the guru told her.” For Neelima, a key feature of guru–chela relationships in the “olden days” was the level of authority gurus held within the relationship. As she recounts, “earlier, the guru had authority and she would order the chela to do what she was asked.” Because gurus had a claim on authority in this relationship, chelas owed gurus this respect and were required to obey them. As Neelima observed, “the way a chela would behave with her guru has changed” because “those days the respect [expected to be demonstrated] was more.”

Today, the authority gurus once held is shrinking, and chelas are no longer expected to demonstrate this degree of respect for their gurus. Contrary to when Neelima was a young chela, “now the guru–chela relationship is friendly and close.”

As part of an “object biography” of Flavius’ sculpture, this chapter traces reactions to its discovery and subsequent exhibition in the Palazzo Barberini, which raises issues related to the collecting of ancient art in Early Modern Rome and the sculpture’s role in presenting the Barberini family and its history to visitors to the palace.

Unlike many core human rights treaties, the Statelessness Conventions are among the most poorly ratified in the world. Orthodox scholarship on human rights treaties primarily focuses on post-ratification implementation and their impact on state conduct. While it is important to examine post-ratification compliance, understanding why states agree to ratify human rights treaties is as crucial. Ratification nudges states towards better human rights practices and serves as a gateway for the implementation of international norms. This chapter addresses this gap in scholarship by examining the ratification status of the Statelessness Conventions and the ratification process of the 1954 Statelessness Convention, together with key actors and their influence, by the Philippines, Southeast Asia’s first State Party to the treaty, and its subsequent accession to the 1961 Reduction of Statelessness Convention. Both rationalist and non-rationalist explanations account for ratifications. While rational explanations push states to ratify treaties, socializing liberal and constructivist-oriented explanations, for example, also drive states to commit to treaties. Multi-dimensional and multi-perspectival orientations should therefore inform how and why ratification or accession campaigns should be undertaken, and perhaps, even how treaties themselves should be designed. This analysis serves as a basis for broader theoretical reflections on persuading states to ratify human rights treaties.

At the end of the sixteenth century, when Akbar's chief historian and theoretician of Mughal power, Abul Fazl, compiled a list of nobles in The Institutes of Akbar (Ain-i Akbari), he maintained a studious silence on the details of their lives. He gave only their names and numerical rank, arranged in descending order from 10,000 to 200. Conscious of breaking with earlier imperial histories, which contained ample details of the lives of the nobility, he explained, “It does not suit the encomiast of the king to praise others.” Besides, he continued, he would be constrained by court politics, to “mention that which is worthy of praise, and to keep silent on that which cannot be approved.” His point was that only the emperor, who alone stood above the fray, could judge his subjects. Akbar's mansabdari system, and its imperial ranking, should be the sole way to assess Mughal nobles.

The mansabdari system heralded the centralization of power in the hands of the Mughal emperor. The independence of nobles was curtailed by restricting intergenerational transfer of power and discouraging a sustained association between the nobility and land. Under the mansabdari system, the numerical rank assigned to each noble was tied to status, military responsibilities, and emoluments. This rank, its conferment and withdrawal, augmentation and reduction, was at the sole discretion of the emperor. A noble could not pass on his rank, position, or wealth to his descendants. After his death, these perquisites were resumed by the court. A noble's son could progress within the mansabdari system only at the pleasure of the emperor. This was not considered arbitrary power. Rather, Akbar presented himself as possessing unmatched discernment, which enabled him to select the right officials to maintain order in his empire. For nobles, and their sons, this meant that birthright alone could not guarantee individual or intergenerational success. One had to distinguish oneself as an individual.

In the mansabdari system, the nobility was not paid directly from imperial coffers. It received rights to collect taxes from specific lands. These revenue assignments were determined by the imperial bureaucracy. They were often non-contiguous and frequently rotated. Many a time, they did not correspond to a noble's traditional base of power, discouraging territorially consolidated opposition against the court.

Introduction

Sunitha, a hijra in her forties, had invited me to her home, where she lives with three other hijras, for Makara Sankranti, the harvest festival. We sat together on a large blanket she had spread on the light yellow and orange tile floor in her sparkling-clean living room while her housemates—none of whom was her guru—prepared food in the adjacent kitchen. But despite having a nonresidential guru, Sunitha spoke in glowing terms about the guru–chela relationship. “The guru will give to the next generation,” she said, “and the guru is next only to our parents in status.” For Sunitha, the guru–chela relationship incorporates social reciprocity, generational continuity, and the respect for elders traditionally emphasized in both hijra and cishet family relationships. As a guru, she explained,

Sunitha was not alone in describing the guru–chela relationship in a highly idealized manner, similar to how people in cishet families speak about their family relationships. When speaking of her hijra family, she and other older gurus I talked to drew on idealized discourses most commonly used to describe non-hijra families. Such discourses emphasize positive emotions associated with ideal families while covering up the more practical aspects of being part of a family, such as financial and social interdependence—aspects that chelas and younger GNC people are keen to emphasize.

For Sunitha, the financial obligations between gurus and chelas that younger GNC people see as restrictive serve a crucial role in guru–chela relationships. It is essential for chelas to give part of their daily earnings to their gurus because, she explained, “a chela has to take care of her guru. That is the culture. If not, how can the relationship between guru and chela exist? It will get broken up.”