2021 Spring Issue - ReBuilding

2021 Spring Issue - ReBuilding

Urmila Mohan
Editorials

ReBuilding relates processes of damage and restoration, loss and healing, and the never-ending making and doing of things in human lives. In light of the pandemic, and historical and socio-cultural issues that long pre-dated 2020, the question of how we rebuild and remake is in urgent need of consideration. The articles, interviews and essays in this issue encourage us to reflect on the religious and secular beliefs and practices that cohere communities as they cope, create, resist, protest and move forward.

Colorism, Castism, and Gentrification in Bollywood

Colorism, Castism, and Gentrification in Bollywood

Rebecca Peters
Articles, Peer Reviewed

Colorism, prejudicial attitudes towards people with darker skin tones, like all -isms, creates a toxic environment for anyone who does not fall into the ideal category. When major media sources, like Bollywood in India, reinforce the oppressive attitude of discrimination based on skin color, it adds to the normalization of colorism and resulting social hierarchies and stigma. I argue that Bollywood’s desires for respectability among upper class Indian and diasporic audiences emboldens its attitudes about class, caste, and color, contributing significantly to the power and reach of colorism.

Civil Religion in Turkey: The Unifying and Divisive Potential of Material Symbols

Civil Religion in Turkey: The Unifying and Divisive Potential of Material Symbols

Patrycja Hala Saçan
Articles

Civil religion refers to citizens’ devotion and loyalty to the nation and state. Like other religions, it needs symbols that bond citizens to different notions and experiences whether non-tangible forms (political beliefs, the law, or a constitution) or tangible (flags, images, statues, and spaces). Visual representations of these forms can unite people around common values, goals, and history. This paper aims to widen our understanding of the importance of material objects in developing and sustaining national bonds in Turkey where objects and spaces have long helped to form and maintain Turkish identity, and mobilize and unite people.

Cecil John Rhodes: ‘The Complete Gentleman’ of Imperial Dominance

Cecil John Rhodes: ‘The Complete Gentleman’ of Imperial Dominance

Francis B. Nyamnjoh
Articles

Incompleteness engenders an understanding of resilient colonialism epitomised by Cecil Rhodes’ monuments and statues in Southern Africa. It draws on Tutuola’s metaphorical ‘The Complete Gentleman’ and the lessons on being and becoming from Tutuola’s skull to remind us that Rhodes’ legacy still suffers from illusions of completeness and a denial of debt and indebtedness. The call for humility and alertness to the imagined dream of a rainbow nation demands that South Africans stop learning the wrong lessons from Rhodes as exclusionary articulations of belonging informed by superiority and zero-sum games of conquest.