SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Overview

Department of the Languages and Cultures of South Asia

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Name:

Ms Rashi Rohatgi

Email address:

rashi@soas.ac.uk

Thesis title:

Fighting Cane and Canon: Reading Abhimanyu Unnuth's Hindi Poetry in and outside of Literary Mauritius

Year of Study:

Started 2009

Internal Supervisors

• Kai Easton
• Francesca Orsini

Biography

I hail from Pennsylvania and have pursued language studies, area studies, and religious studies of various regions and is currently focused on Hindi poetry.

I am currently organising a series of seminars on research student life for the SOAS Research Students’ Society. The seminars deal with academic issues, such as the move to electronic theses, as well as complementary issues, such as post-fieldwork anxiety. For the past three years, I have collaborated with other volunteers on the annual SOAS Graduate Student Conference. Further information on our latest conference, 'Comparing Centres, Comparing Peripheries,' can be found at http://centresandperipheries.blogspot.com/.

In 2010, I was the research student representative for the department of South Asian Languages and Cultures. In 2011, I represent the research students of the department of African Languages and Cultures.

Teaching:

• Assisted with undergraduate linguistics and media theory courses at the University of Chicago.
• Spoke on 'Imagining Mauritius' for the SOAS MA seminar 'Travelling Africa: Writing the Cape to Cairo'
• Currently assisting with the undergraduate course South Asian Culture and History in African and Caribbean Literature at SOAS.
• Currently assisting with the MA course Postcolonial Theory and Practice at SOAS.

PhD Research

Currently, I am researching the development and persistence of Hindi poetry in Mauritius with a focus on the early poetry of Abhimanyu Unnuth. His second work, The Teeth of the Cactus, brings together questions of history, labour relation, and Hindu philosophy in a trenchant questioning of a postcolonial people choosing to pursue prosperity in globalization. . It captures a distinct point of view- Unnuth’s connection to the Hindi language is an unusual reaction to the creolization of the island- but also a common experience: both of Indian immigrants and of the reevaluation of their experience by Mauritians reaching adulthood, as Unnuth did, with the Independence of the Mauritian nation in 1968.

The fading legacy of The Teeth of the Cactus signals the decline of a vibrant era of Hindi poetry as central to the nation-building project of Mauritius; poets writing after Unnuth markedly position themselves as diasporic poets. A proponent of a combination of close and distant reading in critical readings of literature, I am finding that an analysis of the rise and fall in favour of Unnuth’s poetry sheds light on the rich tradition out of which Unnuth came, as well as on the modern Mauritian Hindi poetic scene hiding behind and being hidden behind global geopoetic forces.

My work on Unnuth lies at the intersection of several broader research interests. Childhood exposure to multiple languages has led to an interest in translation as a practice and also the theory of translation, and my undergraduate work on the cross-cultural communication between India and the Soviet Union further led to an interest into the relationship between history and culture. I was fortunate enough to come across the work of Abhimanyu Unnuth during my time studying the historical development of Hindu culture, and am now preoccupied by quite recent history!

PhD Publications

Selected PhD Publications:

• 'Postcolonial Hindi Translation in Mauritius: The Case of Kalpana Lalji’s Amargeet', Matatu, Vol. 42, Spring 2012.
• 'Remembering the Cultivation of the Mauritian Hindi Sphere', Journal of the African Literature Association, Vol. 6.1, 2011.
• 'Poetics of Dislocation: a Review', Wasafiri, Issue 67, 2011.
• ‘Writing in Hindi in Mauritius’, Religions of South Asia, Vol. 3.2, 2009.
• ‘Strides of Vishnu: a Review’, Oxford Journal of Hindu Studies, Vol. 1-2, 2008.

PhD Conferences

Selected Paper Presentations:

• The 'Other' in the Indian Ocean. Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies, SOAS, 2012
• Looking Back on the Cultivation of the Mauritian Hindi Sphere. British Association for South Asian Studies, Southampton University, 2011.
• A New Mauritian Hinduism in the Poetry of Abhimanyu Unnuth. European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, Universitӓt Bonn, 2010.
  Translating Unnuth. Conference of the Center for Literary Translation, Columbia University, 2007.