Melancholia of Freedom: Social Life in an Indian Township in South Africa

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
	Under the Gaze: Freedom and Race after Apartheid
	Freedom and Sovereignty after Apartheid
	Melancholia of Freedom
	Between Irrelevance and Irreverence: “Our Culture” after Apartheid
	Structure of the Book
	Methods and Material
Chapter 1: Ethnicity by Fiat: The Remaking of Indian Life in South Africa
	The Asiatic Question
	The New Hygienic Indian
	Census et Censura
	The New Indian Social Body
	Policing the Internal Frontier
	Containing the Bush: Crime and Vigilantes in the Age of Democratic Policing
Chapter 2: Domesticity and Cultural Intimacy
	From Kinship to Family
	The New Indian Woman and the Family House
	Tongues without Speech: Caste as Language Community
	“Our Culture” as Embarrassment
	Cultural Intimacy and Embarrassment: Charous and Lahnees
	Class and Charou Names
	Performing in the Gaze: The Indian Public Sphere
	Joke-Work on a Saturday Morning
	Comic Belief? Laughter and Cultural Intimacy
	Charou 4 Eva: Domesticity Lost and Refound
Chapter 3: Charous and Ravans: A Story of Mutual Nonrecognition
	AmaKula and amaZulu on the Colonial Estates
	Durban, January 1949: “The Largest Race Riot in the World”
	Cato Manor and the Urban Zulu
	The Indian “1949 Syndrome” as a Social Text
	The Syndrome Affirmed: Inanda 1985
	Racism’s Two Bodies
	Racial Practice, Indian-Style
	Africans at Our Doorsteps
	Somatic Anxieties
	Nonrecognition and the Elusive Master
Chapter 4: Autonomy, Freedom, and Political Speech
	Local Affairs and the Problem of Indian Speech
	The House of Delhigoats
	“Scandals Are the Foundations of the State”
	Who Speaks for the Community? The Particular as Universalist Gesture
	The Only Good Indian Is a Poor Indian: The ANC and the Indian Townships
	“All the Way”: On the Ways of the Tiger
	From Tragedy to Comedy: Politics as a Form of Enjoyment
Chapter 5: Movement, Sound, and Body in the Postapartheid City
	The Steel Cages of Modernity
	Driving while Brown
	(Auto)mobility in the Postapartheid City
	Vehicular Vernacular: Visual and Sonic
	Taxis, Charou-Style
	Conclusion: “Indianness,” African-Style
Chapter 6: The Unwieldy Fetish: Desi Fantasies, Roots Tourism, and Diasporic Desires
	India as an Unwieldy Fetish
	The Spiritual Homeland
	Seeking Ancestral Roots
	Finding Spiritual Truth
	Catalysts of Modernity
	Global Desi Dreamscapes: The Revival of Bollywood in South Africa
	“What Does This Film Make of Me?”
	Plot Summary
	Who Are We Indians, After All?
	Diaspora and the Unwieldy Fetish
Chapter 7: Global Hindus and Pure Muslims: Universalist Aspirations and Territorialized Lives
	Hinduism in Translation
	Religious Practices, Hindu Missionaries, and Cultural Purification
	A Nervous Relationship: Contemporary Hindu Practices in the Townships
	The Call of Global Hinduism
	Globalized Islam and the Impurities of the Past
	Muslim Durban
	Deculturation and the Invention of the Pure Muslim
	“Oh Lord, Won’t You Buy Me a Mercedes-Benz?”
	Da’wah in the Township
	Reaching for the Universal
Chapter 8 The Saved and the Backsliders: The Charou Soul and the Instability of Belief
	The Fragility of the Charou Soul
	Signs of the Spirit
	Reconfiguring Patriarchy and Gendered Surveillance
	On Suits and Sermons
	Looking like Kentucky . . .
	Race, Gender, Body
	Between Vessel and Substance: On the Exteriority of the Soul
Postscript: Melancholia in the Time of the “African Personality”
Notes
References
Index