Dr Parashar Kulkarni 

Week 2, Thursday 8 May, 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

This book-length project examines the role of cow protection in resisting labour struggles in Bombay’s cotton mills from the birth of industrialization in the 1850s to its eventual decline in the 1990s. Relying on public discourse in newspapers, government reports, and union documents, it shows that cows, sacred to Hindus, became a symbol of identity and a basis for elective affinity between mill owners, political/religious leaders, and a pro-capital city government. Mill owners funded cow protection societies, political/religious leaders supported cow protection and mediated directly with mill owners, and the state offered legitimacy, further resisting the negotiating power and innovations of labour unions to demand better living and working conditions. By implicating cow protection (identitarianism/ communalism more broadly) in the political economy of industrial capitalism, this essay shifts attention from its primarily nationalist, majoritarian, and often agrarian discourse.

Parashar Kulkarni specializes in the political economy of religion in colonial and contemporary South Asia and the British Empire. He is currently visiting the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies at UCL. Previously, he has taught at Yale-NUS College and has a PhD from New York University. (https://sites.google.com/view/parasharkulkarni/)