Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Genetic history of South Asians'

Mixture between populations is an evolutionary process that shapes genetic variation. Intermixing between groups of distinct ancestries creates mosaics of chromosomal segments inherited from multiple ancestral populations. Studying populations of mixed ancestry (admixed populations) is of special interest in population genetics as it not only provides insights into the history of admixed groups but also affords an opportunity to reconstruct the history of the ancestral populations, some of whom may no longer exist in unmixed form. Furthermore, it improves our understanding of the impact of population migrations and helps us discover links between genetic and phenotypic variation in structured populations. The majority of research on admixed populations has focused on African Americans and Latinos where the mixture is recent, having occurred within the past 500 years. In this dissertation, I describe several studies that I have led that expand the scope of admixed studies to West Eurasians and South Asians where the mixture is older, and data from ancestral groups is mostly unavailable. First, I introduce a novel method that studies admixture linkage disequilibrium (LD) to infer the time of mixture. I analyze genomewide data from 40 West Eurasian populations and show that all Southern European, Levantine and Jewish groups have inherited sub-Saharan African ancestry in the past 100 generations, likely reflecting events during the Roman Empire and subsequent Arab migrations. Next, I apply a range of methods to study the history of Siddi groups that harbor African, Indian and Portuguese ancestry, and to infer the history of Roma gypsies from Europe. Finally, I develop a novel approach that combines the insights of frequency and LD-based statistics to infer the underlying model of mixture. I apply this method to 73 South Asian groups and infer that major mixture occurred ~2,000-4,000 years ago. In a subset of populations, all the mixture occurred during this period, a time of major change in India marked by the de- urbanization of the Indus valley civilization and recolonization of the Gangetic plateau. Inferences from our analyses provide novel insights into the history of these populations as well as about the broad impact of human migrations.

The inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) are chronic conditions of the intestinal tract, divided into two main subtypes Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). The exact pathogenesis is unclear but the current paradigm is thought to be an aberrant immune response in a genetically susceptible individual. The incidence and prevalence of IBD has traditionally been higher in North America, Europe, Australia and Israel compared to other regions of the world including China, Japan, India and Korea. More recently there is evidence of an increase in immigrant populations. Studies have also suggested that the clinical characteristics differ across ethnic groups. This has been mirrored by genetic studies that suggest different genetic susceptibilities between groups. A systematic review was performed to define the relevance of gene variants to IBD in a South Asian population. This found that few studies (n=6) have genotyped susceptibility variants in the South Asian population. The majority of these studies examined three common polymorphisms (R702W, G908R, 1007fs) in NOD2/CARD15 in Caucasians and have determined that these are absent in South Asians. The first hypothesis of this study was that clinical characteristics and mucosal distribution differed in South Asians compared with White British in the North of England. A total of 1318 individuals (314 South Asians) with a diagnosis of IBD were recruited. In the South Asian cohort 59% had a diagnosis of UC, 41% CD. In contrast the Caucasian cohort 56% had CD and 44% had UC. South Asians had twice the rate of extensive colitis compared to White British cohort (46% SA vs. 24% White British) and a younger age of diagnosis (30 years vs. 40 years). In the CD cohort South Asians were twice as likely to have colonic disease than White British (54% vs. 20%). Also they had a younger age of onset and were less likely to need surgery for CD.The second hypothesis was that common variants in the same genes described in Caucasian IBD were relevant in South Asians. 13 known SNPs from GWA Studies robustly associated with IBD in Caucasian cohorts were sequenced in South Asians IBD cohort (n=255) and unrelated ethnically matched controls (n=275) to determine if they were relevant to IBD in South Asians. These were genotyped by Sequenom MassArray and no significant associations were discovered. The final hypothesis was that rare highly penetrant variants underlie a group of IBD in consanguineous families in South Asian IBD. A consanguineous family in which the proband had inflammatory colitis diagnosed at 18 months of age was recruited. No disease causing mutations were present in IL10RA, IL10RB and ADAM17. DNA from other family members was used to perform autozygosity mapping of the proband and family. Exome sequence analysis identified 6099 variants in autozygous regions. Further analysis focused on three novel variants. One variant (PPP1R3G) was considered a likely candidate and Sanger sequencing was performed which confirmed it was homozygous in the proband, but it did not segregate in the family and so unlikely to underlie IBD in this individual. In summary this thesis has shown that few genetic studies have been done in South Asian IBD. Also there are significant differences in the clinical characteristics and mucosal distribution between groups and that 13 SNPs associated with IBD in Caucasians were not replicated in the South Asian IBD cohort. Finally autozygosity mapping and exome sequencing has not been successful in identifying a rare novel variant responsible for IBD in the consanguineous family but work is continuing.

The educational achievements of South Asians have been shaped by economic, social and political developments in the post war history of British race relations. Social class background of individual students and the school effect have been shown to be the major determinants of achievement but the precise characteristics of differences at the ethnic minority sub-group level have remained uncharted. In addition, past research has primarily relied on large-scale quantitative methods to develop comparative knowledge of South Asian educational performance. This research is an attempt to understand wider variations of difference in the educational achievement of South Asians. The research is unique as it explores differences between Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani groups, additionally distinguished along lines of social class, ethnicity and gender. Six schools, three of which were selective and three comprehensive, and three further education colleges, were used to obtain samples of South Asian pupils and students. The methods used in this study were principally qualitative. Face-to-face in-depth interviews with school pupils, parents and teachers accounted for the main part of the empirical research, which was also supplemented by a survey of college students and a survey of teachers. The research explored the achievements, aspirations and motivations of pupils, students and parents to analyse educational life histories, interpreting and evaluating differences between South Asian groups by social class, ethnicity and gender, as well as religion and culture. Teachers were interviewed and surveyed in order to determine their perceptions of and actions in relation to South Asians in education. Altogether, 137 respondents (89 school pupils, 25 parents and 23 teachers) were interviewed by the researcher and 176 respondents (109 college students and 67 teachers) participated in the two postal surveys (313 altogether). Questions asked were about secondary school entry, 13-plus subject choices, GCSE and A level achievements, and potential higher education entry. It was found that all South Asians that entered `effective' schools performed competently. Furthermore, the factors which led to the positive educational outcomes for Indian (Hindu and Sikh) groups were oppositional to those which led to the educational underachievement of South Asian Muslim groups and, here, rather more Pakistanis than Bangladeshis. The educational success of Indian groups was attributable to educational norms and values relative to social class. The educational experiences of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis were problematic, largely because of factors in their lives outside of school: such as the limited education and occupational levels of parents, parents' inadequate understanding of the education, and insufficient use of English within the home. Teachers interviewed from the sampled schools and colleges were inclined to advocate positive approaches for managing issues relating to South Asians in education. In conclusion, therefore, it is argued that the educational achievements of South Asians in schools and colleges in Birmingham are closely related to social class background and the school effect. Factors associated with religion and culture are more likely to affect South Asian Muslims. The increasingly competitive nature of the education system has led to a divergence between South Asian groups: with Hindu and Sikh Indians (including some East African Asians) firmly established as educational `successes' and Pakistani and Bangladeshi South Asian Muslims, in contrast, routinely considered as educational `failures'.

Thesis (MSc)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Deciphering patterns of intraspecies population genetic structuring in commercially important shark species is essential for an integrated fisheries management approach to conservation of regional biodiversity. The common smoothhound shark, Mustelus mustelus, is an overexploited, commercially and recreationally important shark species in South Africa. Considering the vulnerable status of the common smoothhound shark and due to very limited available genetic information, this study aimed to develop molecular markers, assess patterns of genetic diversity and population connectivity along the South African coast using multilocus data generated from 12 microsatellite markers and the mitochondrial gene, NADH dehydrogenase subunit 4 (ND4). The cross-species amplification of microsatellites proved useful for genetic diversity and population genetic analysis of the common smoothhound shark. These microsatellites could aid in the molecular characterisation of other endemic and cosmopolitan species and provide valuable tools for the conservation of potentially threatened or exploited shark species. For the microsatellite data, moderate levels of genetic diversity based on the heterozygosity, allelic richness and haplotype diversity were found in a total of 144 individuals sampled across eight study populations. Estimates for pairwise population differentiation, F-statistics, AMOVA and factorial correspondence analysis (FCA) indicated significant genetic structure within and between west- and east coast populations. Additionally, Bayesian clustering analyses detected two putative ancestral gene pools, supporting the presence of a biogeographic barrier at the Cape Agulhas region and therefore genetic discontinuity between the Indian and Atlantic Ocean samples. On the contrary, mitochondrial data indicated that common smoothhound shark is genetically homogenous with substantial interoceanic gene flow. Such conflicting signals found between nuclear and mitochondrial DNA (mitonuclear discordance) can be attributed to a number of factors and could simply be due to the inherent differences in marker properties or an indication of sex biased dispersal. Despite an indication of an expanding common smoothhound shark population based on both marker types, a contemporary genetic bottleneck may have gone undetected as genetic divergence was very low in some of the study populations. Nonetheless, contemporary restriction to gene flow and historical demographics such as range expansion are proposed as the most likely forces explaining genetic structure in present-day common smoothhound sharks in South Africa. For future sustainable exploitation of common smoothhound shark, the possible existence of two genetically differentiated populations and observed asymmetric gene flow along the South African coast should be taken into consideration. It is also recommended that in the future further evaluations of finescale genetic structure and seasonal migration patterns in this commercially important species are conducted in order to allow integration of this knowledge into existing fisheries management practices.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die ontsyfering van patrone van intraspesie populasie genetiese struktuur in kommersieel belangrike haai spesies is noodsaaklik vir 'n geïntegreerde bestuursbenadering tot visserue en bewaring van plaaslike biodiversiteit. Die hondhaai, Mustelus mustelus, is 'n oorbenutte, kommersiële en sporthengelary belangrike haai spesie in Suid-Afrika. Met inagneming van die kwesbare status van die hondhaai en as gevolg van baie beperkte beskikbare genetiese inligting, het hierdie studie gepoog om molekulêre merkers te ontwikkel, asook om die patrone van genetiese diversiteit en populasie struktuur te ondersoek langs die Suid- Afrikaanse kus deur middel van multilokus data gegenereer uit 12 mikrosatelliet merkers en die mitokondriale geen, NADH dehidrogenase subeenheid 4 (ND4). Die kruis-spesie amplifisering van mikrosatelliete was nuttig vir genetiese diversiteit en populasie genetiese analise van die hondhaai. Hierdie mikrosatelliete kan moontlik help met die molekulêre karakterisering in ander inheemse en kosmopolitaanse spesies en kan as waardevolle hulpmiddels dien in die bewaring van potensieel bedreigde en oorbenutte haai spesies. Vir die mikrosatelliet data is matige vlakke van genetiese diversiteit gevind gebaseer op heterosigositeit, alleliese rykheid en haplotipe diversiteit gevind in 'n totaal van 144 individue getoets oor agt studie populasies. Skattings vir paarsgewyse populasie differensiasie, Fstatistieke, AMOVA en faktoriale ooreenstemming analise het betekenisvolle genetiese struktuur aangedui binne en tussen wes- en ooskus populasies. Daarbenewens, het Bayesian groepering analise twee potensiele voorvaderlike geenpoele waargeneem, ter ondersteuning van die teenwoordigheid van 'n biogeografiese versperring by die Cape Agulhas gebied en dus genetiese diskontinuïteit tussen die Indiese en Atlantiese Oseaan monsters. In teenstelling het die mitokondriale data aangedui dat hierdie haai spesie geneties homogeen is met aansienlike interoseaniese geenvloei. Sulke teenstrydige tekens tussen kern en mitokondriale DNS (mitokern onenigheid) kan toegeskryf word aan 'n aantal faktore en kan eenvoudig wees as gevolg van die inherente verskille in merker eienskappe of 'n aanduiding van geslags sydigeverspreiding. Ten spyte van 'n aanduiding van 'n groeiende hondhaai populasie gebaseer op beide merker tipes, kon 'n hedendaagse genetiese bottelnek onopgemerk gegaan het aangesien genetiese divergensie baie laag was in sommige van die studie populasies. Nietemin, hedendaagse restriksie van geenvloei en historiese demografie soos verbreding van reeks voorkoming word voorgestel as die mees waarskynlike dryfkragte wat genetiese struktuur in die hedendaagse hondhaaie in Suid-Afrika verduidelik. Vir toekomstige volhoubare benutting van die spesie, moet die moontlike bestaan van twee geneties verskillende populasies en waargenome asimmetriese geenvloei langs die Suid-Afrikaanse kus in ag geneem word. Vir die toekoms word dit ook aanbeveel dat verdere evaluerings van fyn-skaal genetiese struktuur en seisoenale migrasie patrone in hierdie kommersiël belangrike spesie uitgevoer word om die integrasie van hierdie kennis in die bestaande bestuur van visserye praktyke toe te laat.
National Research Foundation (NRF)

Thesis (PhD (Genetics))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: South African abalone, Haliotis midae, has been the subject of major concern regarding its survival and conservation over the last decade or more. Being the only one of five endemic species with commercial value, there is considerable interest and urgency in genetic management and improvement of this species. Limited genetic information and the increasing conservation concern of this species are considered the key motivations for generating information on the micro- and macro-evolutionary processes of H. midae, the overall objective of this study. This study reported the first microsatellite and Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) markers developed specifically for Haliotis midae. Both these marker types were applied to elucidate the degree of gene flow in nine natural abalone populations whilst testing for two contrasting hypotheses; panmixia versus restricted gene flow. Data was analysed using a series of methodological approaches ranging from traditional summary statistics to more advanced MCMC based Bayesian clustering methods with and without including spatial information. Using only microsatellite data, the historical demography of the species was also examined in terms of effective population size and population size fluctuations. Finally, the evolutionary positioning and origin of Haliotis midae with regards to other Haliotis species was investigated based on mitochondrial and nuclear sequence data. Both microsatellite and SNP data gave evidence for subtle differentiation between West and East coast populations that correlates with a hydrogeographic barrier in the vicinity of Cape Agulhas. Population substructure was supported by AMOVA, FCA and Bayesian clustering analysis. Clustering utilizing spatial information further indicated clinal variation on both sides of the proposed barrier with a region in the middle coinciding with a secondary contact zone, indicating possible historical isolation during glacial periods. Overall, the similar degree of substructure observed with both microsatellites and SNPs supported the existence of contemporary and/or historical factors with genome-wide effect on gene flow. The population expansion measured with the microsatellites was inconsistent with the known recent decline but taking the species’ life cycle and large effective population size into account, a shrinkage in population size will probably only be apparent in a few generations time. On a macro-evolutionary scale, this study presents the first classification of South African abalone as a monophyletic group within the Haliotidae family. The topology based on the combined mitochondrial and nuclear dataset is highly suggestive of a relatively recent radiation of the SA species from the Indo-Pacific basin. The study concludes by describing the most likely factors that could have affected overall population structure and makes suggestions on how the given genetic information should be incorporated into strategies aimed towards the effective management and conservation of Haliotis midae.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die Suid-Afrikaanse perlemoen, Haliotis midae, is oor die laaste dekade of meer die onderwerp van groot bekommernis betreffende die spesie se oorlewing en bewaring. Aangesien dit die enigste van vyf endemiese SA spesies is met kommersiёle waarde, is daar besonderse belang en erns in die genetiese beheer en verbetering van die spesie. Beperkte genetiese inligting en ‘n toenemende behoefte om die spesie te bewaar is die hoof motivering agter die generering van informasie rakende mikro- en makro-evolusionêre prosesse in Haliotis midae en is die oorhoofse doel van hierdie studie. Hierdie studie beskryf die eerste mikrosatelliete en enkel basispaar polimorfismes wat ontwikkel is spesifiek vir Haliotis midae. Beide tipe merkers is aangewend om die mate van gene vloei in nege wilde perlemoen populasies te ondersoek terwyl twee hipoteses ondersoek is; panmiksie versus beperkte gene vloei. Data is geanaliseer deur gebruik te maak van ‘n reeks metodieke benaderings wat wissel van tradisionele opsommings statistieke tot meer gevorderde MCMC gebasseerde groeperings metodes met of sonder die gebruik van geografiese data. Mikrosatelliet data is ook aangewend om die historiese demografie van die spesie te bepaal in terme van effektiewe populasie grootte asook veranderinge in populasie groottes. Laastens is die evolusionêre posisionering en oorsprong van Haliotis midae teenoor ander Haliotis spesies ondersoek deur gebruik te maak van mitokondriale en nukleêre DNA volgorde data. Beide mikrosatelliet en enkel basispaar polimorfisme data lewer bewys van ‘n subtiele genetiese verskil tussen wes en ooskus populasies wat verband hou met ‘n hidrografiese skeiding in die omgewing van Kaap Agulhas. Populasie struktuur is ondersteun deur die analise van molekulêre variansie (AMOVA), faktoriale komponente analise asook Bayesiese groeperings analise. Groeperings analise wat geografiese informasie insluit dui klinale genetiese variasie aan beide kante van die skeiding aan met ‘n area in die middel wat ooreenstem met ‘n sekondêre kontak gebied. In totaal, ondersteun die soortgelyke mate van struktuur verkry met beide die mikrosatelliete en enkel basispaar polimorfismes die bestaan van hedendaagse en/of historiese faktore met genoom wye invloed op gene vloei. Die toename in populasie grootte vasgestel deur die mikrosatelliet data stem nie ooreen met die onlangse afname waargeneem in die spesie nie, maar met inagneming van Haliotis midae se lewenssiklus en groot effektiewe populasie grootte, sal die afname in populasie grootte moontlik eers oor ‘n paar generasies na vore kom. Op ‘n makro-evolusionêre skaal lewer hierdie studie die eerste klassifikasie van Suid-Afrikaanse perlemoen as ‘n monofiletiese groep binne die Haliotidae familie. Die topologie gebaseer op ‘n gesamentlike mitkondriale en nukleêre datastel is hoogs aanduidend van ‘n relatiewe onlangse verspreiding van die Suid-Afrikaanse spesies uit die Stille-Indiese Oseaan. Die studie sluit af deur die mees algemene faktore te bespreek wat populasie struktuur kon beïnvloed het en maak voorstelle op watter wyse hierdie genetiese inligting aangewend kan word vir die effekiewe beheer en bewaring van Haliotis midae.

Two Amerindian populations from the Peruvian Amazon (Yanesha) and from rural lowlands of the Argentinean Gran Chaco (Wichi) were analyzed. They represent two case study of the South American genetic variability. The Yanesha represent a model of population isolated for long-time in the Amazon rainforest, characterized by environmental and altitudinal stratifications. The Wichi represent a model of population living in an area recently colonized by European populations (the Criollos are the population of the admixed descendents), whose aim is to depict the native ancestral gene pool and the degree of admixture, in relation to the very high prevalence of Chagas disease. The methods used for the genotyping are common, concerning the Y chromosome markers (male lineage) and the mitochondrial markers (maternal lineage). The determination of the phylogeographic diagnostic polymorphisms was carried out by the classical techniques of PCR, restriction enzymes, sequencing and specific mini-sequencing. New method for the detection of the protozoa Trypanosoma cruzi was developed by means of the nested PCR. The main results show patterns of genetic stratification in Yanesha forest communities, referable to different migrations at different times, estimated by Bayesian analyses. In particular Yanesha were considered as a population of transition between the Amazon basin and the Andean Cordillera, evaluating the potential migration routes and the separation of clusters of community in relation to different genetic bio-ancestry. As the Wichi, the gene pool analyzed appears clearly differentiated by the admixed sympatric Criollos, due to strict social practices (deeply analyzed with the support of cultural anthropological tools) that have preserved the native identity at a diachronic level. A pattern of distribution of the seropositivity in relation to the different phylogenetic lineages (the adaptation in evolutionary terms) does not appear, neither Amerindian nor European, but in relation to environmental and living conditions of the two distinct subpopulations.

Much has been learnt about the genetics of Homo sapiens over the last 130 years including gene structure and number, genome size, and levels of genetic diversity. Many things remain less well understood, however, not least the genetic basis of common, complex traits and disorders. Consideration of functionally important but non-coding regions may improve understanding. I assessed naturally occurring, genetic variation in the promoters of four serotinergic genes and revealed (75%) to be polymorphic, two-thirds of which (50% overall) had functional variant haplotypes. These promoter-based polymorphisms are good functional candidate loci for psychiatric trait mapping studies. The variation within our genomes is organised by historic evolutionary and demographic events. Populations with unique demographic histories may be important in complex trait gene mapping, and the Antioquia isolate (North-West Colombia) is an example of such a population. Using population genetic analyses I have shown high autosomal diversity in Antioquia structure analysis showed relatedness to be strong with Spain and modest with African and Native American populations, likely reflective of its historic admixture. LD was not pronounced in Antioquia, potentially an artefact of marker selection. However, Antioquia may have an important role in admixture mapping. Mapping multifactorial psychiatric traits and disorders is particularly challenging for geneticists. To investigate the genetics of BPI, I performed a family-based association analysis of the SLC6A4 gene in the Antioquia and CVCR populations using 10 SNPs, 3 STRs and 1 VNTR spanning approximately 300kb, including an assessment of LD structure. Moderate over-transmission in BPI cases was observed for a haplotype consisting of the functional VNTR (the LPR) long allele and an adjacent STR (Antioquia TDT %2= 6.00, p=0.014 CVCR HHRR x2=5.012, p=0.025 both TDT %2= 8.00, p=0.005). Characterising genetic variation at the population level is important to improve population-based genetic association studies of complex traits, and the inclusion of regulatory variation is supported.

Thesis (MSc)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study investigated the evolution of the genus Palinurus at the higher and lower taxonomic levels. The population genetics of the spiny lobster, Palinurus delagoae, was investigated by making use of a portion of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region (547 base pairs) that was sequenced for 285 lobsters from the southeastern coast of Africa (six sites) and 49 lobsters from Walters Shoals (one site), a submerged seamount on the Madagascar Ridge. Lobsters from these two areas shared no haplotypes and differed by at least 27 mutational steps. An analysis of molecular variance showed significant genetic partitioning, and pairwise comparisons suggested that lobsters from Walters Shoals are distinct from those of other sampling areas. Along the south east African coastline there was shallow genetic partitioning between four southern sites (South Africa) and two northern (Mozambique) sites, suggesting two Management Units along the African coast. Female gene flow along the African coast may be propagated by larval dispersal in the Mozambique and Agulhas Currents and counter-current migrations by benthic juveniles along the shelf, but the mtDNA data strongly suggest that larvae at Walters Shoals have been, or are currently still retained by other oceanographic processes. The magnitude of mtDNA divergence among lobsters from the southeastern coast of Africa and those at Walters Shoals, together with the absence of any shared haplotypes between these regions, strongly suggested that these two taxa represent distinct species. The molecular data of the large subunit ribosomal RNA, 16S rRNA (481 bp), and cytochrome oxidase subunit I, COI (520 bp) were then used for a higher level phylogenetic analysis of the genus. A total of 33 individuals (five representatives from each of the six species), and two outgroups (Projasus parkeri and Palinustus unicornutus), were subjected to maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference analyses. All analyses were conducted on both the separate data sets as well as a combination of the two genes. Bootstrap analyses of the 16S rRNA data resulted in >70% support for the monophyly of all six Palinurus species but no support could be obtained for any of the interspecific associations. Likewise, individual analyses of the COI gene resulted in strong support for the monophyly of the species. The combined data (parsimony analyses) increased the resolution considerably and apart from the monophyly of all six species, good bootstrap support was also obtained for associations among species. The topology for the maximum likelihood analyses displayed a more resolved and well supported tree when the basal ingroup taxon P. elephas was used to root the tree. The combined Bayesian analyses did not result in a well resolved topology and no significant posterior probabilities could be obtained reflecting the associations among species.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie het die evolusie van die genus Palinurus by hoë en laer taksonomiese vlakke ondersoek. Die bevolkingsgenetika studie op die kreef, Palinurus delagoae, is ondersoek deur gebruik te maak van 'n gedeelte van die mitokondriale (mtDNA) kontrole-area (547 basispare) waarvan die volgorde bepaal is vir 285 krewe van die suidoos-kus van Afrika (afkomstig van ses verskillende gebiede) en 49 krewe afkomstig van Walters Shoals (een gebied), 'n ondersese berg op die Madagaskar Rand. Krewe van hierdie twee areas deel geen haplotipes nie en verskil met ten minste 27 mutasiestappe. 'n Analise van die molekulêre variansie toon dat daar 'n beduidende genetiese verdeling tussen die twee groepe is en 'n gepaarde vergelyking toon dat krewe afkomstig van Walters Shoals verskil beduidend van krewe uit ander gebiede. Volgens die vlak genetiese verdeling tussen die vier suidelike (Suid-Afrika) en twee noordelike (Mosambiek) gebiede van die suidoos-kus van Afrika wil dit voorkom of daar twee bestuurseenhede langs die kuslyn van Afrika is. Vroulike geenvloei langs hierdie kuslyn kan dalk bevarder word deur larwale verspreiding in die Mosambiek- en Agulhas- Seestrome en teenstroom migrasie van jong bodemwonende krefies op die kontinentale plaat. Die mtDNA data stel egter voor dat kreeflarwes by Walters Shoals deur ander oseanografiese prosesse steeds (of tot onlangs toe) behou word. Die grootte van mtDNA divergering tussen krewe van die suidoos-kus van Afrika en die by Walters Shoals, sowel as die afwesigheid van enige gemeenskaplike haplotipes tussen die twee gebiede, toon met beduidende sekerheid aan dat hierdie twee taksa twee unieke spesies verteenwoordig. Die molekulêre data van die 16S-rRNA (481bp) van die groot ribosomale-subeenheid en die sitochroom oksidase subeenheid, COI (520bp) is gebruik om 'n hoër resolusie filogenetiese analise van die genus te bepaal. Data van 33 individue (vyf individue uit elk van die ses spesies) en twee buitegroepe (Projasnus parkeri en Palinustus uniconutus) is geanaliseer deur gebruik te maak van die maksimum-parsimonie, die maksimum-waarskynlikheid en die Bayes-inferensie metodes. Alle analises is uitgevoer op beide die afsonderlike datastelle sowel as op die gekombineerde data van die twee gene. Analise van die 16S-rRNA data deur die skoenlusmetode (steekproefhersteekproef- metode) toon meer as 70% steun vir die monofilie van al ses Palinurus spesies maar dit toon geen steun vir enige van die interspesifieke assosiasies nie. Net so toon individuele analise van die COI geen beduidende steun vir die monofilie van die spesies. Die gekombineerde data (parsimonie) het 'n aansienlike verhoging in die resolusie teweeg gebring en behalwe vir die monofilie van al ses die spesies was daar ook goeie steun deur die skoenlusmetode vir die assosiasie tussen spesies verkry. Die topologie vir die maksimum-parsimonie het 'n goed gesteunde en hoër resolusie boom vir die gekombineerde datastel (sonder die buitegroepe) getoon. Die gekombineerde Bayesanalise het nie 'n soortgelyke boom opgelewer nie en die assosiasie tussen die spesies is nie ondersteun nie aangesien geen beduidende a posteriori-waarskynlikheid verkry kon word nie.

The lyssavirus genus of the Rhabdovirus family is divided into seven genotypes. Genotype 3, Mokola virus, has only been found on the African continent, and has been reported to infect rodents, cats, dogs and humans. The first Mokola virus identification in South Africa was made in 1970, on the east coast of the KwaZulu-Natal province. After 25 years, Mokola virus was again identified in three cats, 650 km south-west of the previous isolation. In 1997 two more Mokola infections were identified in Pinetown, only about 23 km south-west of the 1970 isolation. Phylogenetic analysis of the nucleic acid sequences of the nucleoprotein gene region of the Mokola genome, indicated that the Mokola viruses from the same geographical region were more closely related, irrespective of the time of isolation. The identification of these two distinct clusters of Mokola in South Africa leads i us to believe that this virus is more widespread than previously thought, but that the reservoir host species remains to be identified. Genotype 1 in the Rhabdovirus family, rabies virus, is found on all continents, except Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Japan, Hawaii, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Ireland, etc. An ongoing rabies enzootic in southern Africa is associated with two genetically distinct groups of viruses, called the canid biotype (infecting carnivores of the family Canidae) and the viverrid biotype (infecting carnivores of the subfamily Viverrinae). We identified the first cases of spillover of canid biotype virus into viverrid hosts, using monoclonal antibody and nucleic acid sequence analysis. Genetic analysis of the G-L intergenic region of the rabies virus genome, showed that these spillover events do not bring about any significant change on this part of the virus genome. All of these spillover isolates maintained a typical canid virus phylogeny. Rabies viruses associated with the family Viverridae form a highly diverse group of viruses, which can be divided into four distinct phylogenetic groups, each associated with a specific geographical area in South Africa. The canid biotype of rabies virus is divided into three specific groups, based on geographic location and the associated reservoir species, namely KwaZulu-Natal province (with domestic dogs as its main vector), the western parts of South Africa (bat-eared foxes) and the northern parts of South Africa (black-backed jackals). In order to determine the degree of genetic change in the virus over a period of time, we identified two endemic canid rabies regions (KwaZulu-Natal and the northern parts of South Africa) and analysed the nucleic acid sequence variation 0f the viruses over 15 years. Phylogenetic analysis of the variable G-L intergenic region of t e virus genome indicated that the canid rabies biotype changed less than 1% over the period studied. This implies that the highly diverse viverrid biotype has been circulating in the southern African wildlife for a very long time. In order to obtain a faster, more economical, and reliable method for rabies virus biotype identification, a competitive, hemi-nested PCR assay was developed. In a single tube, two biotype specific oligonucleotides (developed by Jaftha, 1997), and a common downstream primer were -used in the biotype specific, second round amplification. The specific virus biotypes were identified on the basis of specific amplicon sizes for each biotype. A third biotype specific primer was designed to target a region of the Nucleoprotein gene, this primer was used in a second round hemi-nested reaction. Despite having been designed to specifically amplify canid biotype viruses, this primer amplified all rabies biotypes non¬specifically. We conclude that the nucleoprotein genes are too conserved to make this part of the genome a good target for a biotype-specific PCR diagnostic assay.
Dissertation (MSc (Agric) Microbiology)--University of Pretoria, 1997.
Microbiology and Plant Pathology
unrestricted

The objectives of this thesis are: a) To examine racial/ethnic differences in coronary artery calcification (CAC) and CAD, between symptomatic South Asians and Caucasians, matched for age, gender and conventional cardiovascular risk factors, b) To assess, using a meta-analysis model, the natural history of and stability of measurements of coronary artery calcium scoring (CACs) based on data collected from two large published trials: St Francis and EBEAT, c) To investigate the prevalence of coronary artery calcification in individuals with CT evidence for AVC, mitral valve calcification (MAC) or of both of them (AVC+MAC), d) To assess any potential association between premature CAD (<55 years in first-degree male relatives and <65 years in first-degree female relatives) and CAC in a large cohort of asymptomatic individuals. We found that coronary artery calcification is more extensive and diffuse in symptomatic patients of South Asian ethnic origin as compared to Caucasians, despite similar conventional risk factors for CAD. This is more evident in those >50 years of age, suggesting potential genetic or other risk factors yet to be determined. The natural history of coronary artery calcification was overtime progression in the majority of subjects, irrespective of gender. The higher variability in RCA measurements could be related to the low baseline CACs or exaggerated movement of the right side atrioventricular ring, whereas those for LCA brances are influenced by the branch allocation of the CACs. Valve calcification is not isolated but involve also and the coronary arteries. The presence of calcification in the aortic valve or combined aortic and mitral valves predicted coronary artery calcification. Additionally patients in whom both valves have become calcified tend to have severe coronary artery calcification. And finally, there is no relationship between the prevalence and extent of coronary artery calcification and the presence of family history of coronary heart disease in asymptomatic individuals with none of the conventional risk factors for atherosclerosis.

This dissertation challenges the existing narrative in the history of Daoism that asserts that it was precisely during the Yuan period when all the different lineages "converged" to form the "two great Daoist schools" of Quanzhen and Zhengyi and furthermore suggests that there was a progression to this convergence, that the Quanzhen school in the north was "replaced" in imperial favor by the Celestial Masters of the Zhengyi school in the south after the Mongols conquered the Song dynasty in 1276. By critically examining contemporaneous sources, especially inscriptions, this study reveals that the patriarchs of the Zhang family of Mount Longhu ("the Celestial Masters of the Zhengyi school") were not the most influential or authoritative Daoists during the Yuan. In fact, it was the patriarchs of the lineage of the Mysterious Teachings that were the most eminent and influential Daoists from the south. In comparing the roles played by the Mysterious Teachings in contradistinction to the Celestial Masters, this study dismantles the prevailing narrative that the patriarchs of the Zhang family of Mount Longhu were the sole spiritual and political authorities over Daoism throughout Chinese history and shows that they did not in fact fully established themselves as the perennial sacred leaders of Daoism until the Ming dynasty.

This dissertation examines the formation of urban poverty and slums which have long stigmatized South Asian cities. It focuses on the emergence of markets in housing through the 19th and early 20th centuries in Bombay primarily, and Karachi and Aden secondarily. It is the first historical study of slums, or poor and stigmatized housing, in colonial Western India. It critically engages with the terms of global urban modernity and the historiography of colonialism in South Asia, challenging the broader nationalist frames in which scholars have understood South Asia's poverty. While this is not a comparative project, the dissertation interrogates many of the implicit and explicit comparative claims that have been made about colonial cities and their legibility in the discourse on global slums. Housing was a visible marker of inequality on the urban landscape and therefore a useful site through which to examine the changing relations between migrants and settlers, laborers and capitalists, and society and the state. The changing political economy of Western India resulted in a laboring and urban poor whose housing issues became productive of regional, colonial, and national difference. By following circular migrants across city and country, this study builds on the subcontinent's Early Modern history of a pervasive rural-urban continuum of human networks. Everyday workers used their mobility and habitation practices to negotiate a changing world, bringing cities like Bombay, Karachi, and Aden into their routes of mobility to earn a livelihood. Increased opportunities combined with the intensification of production, market crises, growing demographic pressures on the land, and the spread of indebtedness to produce and reproduce inequality. This dissertation also compares the subsequent management of the urban poverty problem in cities across Western India, which heightened concerns over public health and sanitation. Newly financed poor housing initiatives sought to correct these at the turn of the century, but their limitations made modern slums. By addressing the eventual obfuscation of the once-transitioned status of the modern slum-dweller, this study delineates the bases for the conceptualization of a distinctive third world poverty and urban form.

This dissertation takes the routine marginalization and erasure of Muslim presence in the contemporary social and political life of the western Indian state of Gujarat as an entry point into a genealogy of Gujarati regionalism. Through a historical anthropology of the reconfiguration of the modern idea of Gujarat, I argue that violence against religious minorities is an effect of both secular nation-building and of religious nationalist mobilization. Given this entanglement, I suggest that we rethink the oppositional relationship between religion and the secular in analyzing violence against Muslims in contemporary Gujarat. The modern idea of Gujarat, I further argue, cannot be grasped without taking into consideration how local conceptions of region and of religion were fundamentally altered by colonial power. In particular, I suggest that the construction of Islam as inessential and external to the idea of Gujarat is a legacy bequeathed by colonialism and its forms of knowledge. The transmutation of Gujarati Muslims into strangers, in other words, occurred simultaneously with the articulation of the modern idea of Gujarat in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I focus in particular on the role of nineteenth-century regional history-writing, in which the foundational role of Islam was de-emphasized, in what I call the making of a regional tradition. By highlighting the colonial genealogy of contemporary discourses of Gujaratni asmita (pride in Gujarat), in which Hindu and Gujarati are posited as identical with each other, I argue that colonialism was one of its conditions of possibility. One result of this simultaneous reconfiguration of religion and region, I argue, is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to inhabit a Hindu religious identity that is not at the same time articulated in opposition to a Muslim Other in Gujarat. Another consequence is that it is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for Muslims to represent themselves or advocate for their rights as Muslim and as Gujarati. How the reconfiguration of a Gujarati regional identity is imbricated with transformations in conceptions of religion is part of what this dissertation seeks to think about. Furthermore, I argue that the marginalization of Muslims in Gujarat cannot be understood through an exclusive focus on organized violence or on the Hindu nationalist movement. While recent studies on Gujarat have focused mainly on the pogrom of 2002 to think about the role of the Hindu nationalist movement in orchestrating mass violence against Muslims in contemporary Gujarat, I argue that the pogrom of 2002 is but one part of a broader spectrum of violence and exclusion that permeates the body of the state and society. In addition, I suggest that one of the conditions of possibility for such violence is the sedimentation of a conception of Gujaratiness as identical with Hinduness that cuts across the religious/secular divide. Instead of focusing exclusively on the violence of the Hindu nationalist movement, I explore this process of sedimentation as it manifests itself in the intersecting logics of urban planning, heritage preservation, and neoliberal development in contemporary Gujarat. Through an analysis of the contemporary reorganization and partitioning of the city of Ahmedabad along religious lines, I show how it is continuous with colonial and nationalist urban planning practices of the early twentieth century. Using ethnographic examples, I also argue that the contemporary secular nationalist discourse of heritage preservation is both complicit in the marginalization of Muslims and continuous with practices of urban planning and preservation that were articulated in the late colonial period. Finally, my dissertation demonstrates the enabling nature of neoliberal logics in the organization of violence against Muslims in Gujarat and argues that anti-Muslim violence and prejudice are enabled by and intertwined with narratives about the promises of capital and progress. Combining historical and ethnographic methods, this dissertation seeks to contribute to an anthropology of colonialism, nationalism, religion, secularism and violence in South Asia that is attentive to the continuities and discontinuities that are constitutive of the postcolonial present we inhabit. By historicizing contemporary debates and assumptions about Muslims in Gujarat and describing some of the genealogies that have contributed to their sedimentation, I hope to have argued that colonial legacies have enduring effects in the present and that the question posed by colonial forms of knowledge and representation is not merely epistemological or historiographical but also a political one. Written as a history of the present, this dissertation is motivated by a desire to imagine a future in which Hindu/Gujarati and Muslim are no longer conceptualized as oppositional categories; in which Gujarati Muslims are able to represent themselves as Muslims and in their own (varied) terms; and where Hindus are no longer invited and incited to inhabit a subjectivity that depends on making Muslims strangers to Gujarat.

In this dissertation, I analyze interactions between Sanskrit and Persian literary cultures at the Mughal court during the years 1570-1650 C.E. During this period, the Mughals rose to prominence as one of the most powerful dynasties of the early modern world and patronized Persian as a language of both literature and empire. Simultaneously, the imperial court supported Sanskrit textual production, participated in Sanskrit cultural life, and produced Persian translations of Sanskrit literature. For their part, Sanskrit intellectuals became influential members of the Mughal court, developed a linguistic interest in Persian, and wrote extensively about their imperial experiences. Yet the role of Sanskrit at the Mughal court remains a largely untold story in modern scholarship, as do the resulting engagements across cultural lines. To the extent that scholars have thought about Sanskrit and Persian in tandem, they have generally been blinded by their own language barriers and mistakenly asserted that there was no serious interaction between the two. I challenge this uncritical view through a systematic reading of texts in both languages and provide the first detailed account of exchanges between these traditions at the Mughal court. I further argue that these cross-cultural events are central to understanding the construction of power in the Mughal Empire and the cultural and literary dynamics of early modern India.

This dissertation investigates the close connection between poetry and prayer in South Asia by studying the history of Sanskrit hymns of praise (stotras) in Kashmir. It offers a broad introduction to the history and general features of the stotra genre, and it charts the course of these literary hymns in Kashmir from the ninth century to the present. Historically, Kashmir was one of the most dynamic and influential centers of Sanskrit learning and literary production in South Asia. This dissertation focuses on a number of innovative texts from this region, such as Ksemaraja's eleventh-century commentaries and Sahib Kaul's seventeenth-century hymns, which have received little scholarly attention. In particular, it offers the first study in any European language of the Stutikusumanjali, a major work of religious literature dedicated to the god Siva and one of the only extant witnesses to the trajectory of Sanskrit literary culture in fourteenth-century Kashmir. This dissertation also contributes to the study of Saivism by examining the ways that Saiva poets have integrated the traditions of Sanskrit literature (kavya) and poetics (alankarasastra), theology (especially non-dualism), and Saiva worship and devotion. It argues for the diverse configurations of Saiva bhakti expressed and explored in these literary hymns and the challenges they present for standard interpretations of Hindu bhakti. More broadly, this study of stotras from Kashmir offers new perspectives on the history and vitality of prayer in South Asia and its complex relationships to poetry and poetics.

This dissertation follows the historians of left politics in Bangladesh, a country that went through a century of independence and reversal under three signs–British India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. While the country kept reimagining itself under new identities, the idea of communism was underground and persecuted in all three periods, although the forms of struggle and the shape of ideas kept changing. This research is an ethnography of forms of writing history, the purchase of the celebration or censure of the work, and new socialities and rearranged hierarchies that emerge from this process. For a small but significant group of journalists, publishers, activists, and survivors, the project of arguing, understanding, documenting, writing down, and reenacting particular moments of Bangladesh history is a vital and presentist task.

My dissertation project, ‘Reimagining the Modern Hindu Self: Caste, Untouchability and Hindu Theology in Colonial South Asia, 1899-1948’ examines the interrelationship between modern forms of Hinduness and the narratives of Progressivism in the context of Maharashtra, a region in Western India. I present a thick description of the complex social world of Marathi intellectuals and cultural actors of the early twentieth century through various discursive/philosophical writings, journals, newspapers, pamphlets, personal correspondence, biographies, as well as a wide range of literary corpus of novels, plays and literary criticism in Marathi. My project hopes to demonstrate that a deeper engagement with the vernacular discourses would be enriching and productive for South Asian intellectual history. My methodology involved an exploration of the dialogic and transformational relationships between the centre and the peripheries of ‘Hinduness’ across disparate sites of discursive productions like non-Brahmin print publics, theological debates and literary culture. Through an examination of the ways in which the various peripheries of Hinduness – like Untouchables, the non-Brahmin, the non-Hindu and the women – had transformed the ideas of what constituted the core of modern Hinduness, I argue that the various narratives of Maharashtra’s progressivism and a complex phenomenon of modern Hinduness were deeply implicated in the production of each other in the first half of the twentieth century. My project identifies untouchables, women, anti-caste intellectuals, toilet cleaners, translators of Sanskrit texts and people who fasted unto death as crucial actors in this reimagination of modern Hindu self. Also, by providing a regionally specific history of Hindu ethic, my project challenges the Pan-Indian narrative of universal Hinduism that is privileged in the historiography of South Asia and enables me to argue that the ethical value of Hinduness was inherently political and the universal idea of Hinduness did not emerge through a singular genealogy. It is in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, that the contradiction between the ethical and political aspects of Hinduness became significant. My project is to write a long and complex history of this imperative moment that coincided with the dawn of independent India.

The Nath sampradāy, a community whose early Hindavi literature propagates a selfhood which is deeply enmeshed in both Hindu and Islamic traditions, has been at the forefront of Hindu right-wing agitations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Examining an extensive vernacular corpus of texts–– from seventeenth-century manuscripts to twentieth-century printed books–– this dissertation investigates the changes that took place in the Nath community over the longue dureé. Analyzing this oeuvre, along with historical records, I explore both how the yogis portrayed themselves in their literature and how they were viewed by others. Specifically, this dissertation addresses how modern technologies and ideologies–– such as print, nationalism, and democracy–– merged to help create a more rigidly Hindu identity for the sampradāy in the twentieth century: a novel selfhood unlike the one previously propagated. In particular, it examines how the influential twentieth-century leader of the Goraknath temple in Gorakhpur, Mahant Digvijaynath, reimagined his Nath identity to make his community a center of Hindutvā politics in modern India.

This dissertation draws inspiration from one of most iconic exchanges across the Indian Ocean in antiquity: that of Indian spices for Roman gold coins on the Periyar River in Malabar. While previous scholarship has outlined how these goods arrived at various entrepots like that on the Periyar, the larger impacts of Indian Ocean imports within new socio-cultural environments have yet to be explored. "Beyond the Periyar" articulates these impacts from a new perspective, the commodities themselves and the rippling patterns of consumption and industries that contribute to or arise from their importation. Roman coins changed functions as they changed hands, and surviving specimens often show the multiple stages of their long lives as objects through physical adaptations by Indian consumers. Their superficial design further held aesthetic value, provided useful idioms for Indian die-cutters, and inspired an industry of high-quality imitations. Indian spices like black pepper, cinnamon leaf, and ginger contributed to Roman culinary and cosmetic practices, as attested by Roman authors and associated utensils. These products have been discussed in the context of notions of “luxury” in reactionary texts—however, such critiques must be balanced against larger considerations of literary genre and known economic factors like prices vis-à-vis real wages. A hive of human activity throughout the Indian Ocean world underpinned these acts of consumption, which often stands behind the veil of consumer apathy. Human agents range from the investors financing transoceanic ventures and the traders manning oceangoing vessels, to state interests and regional security personnel, to the processors, craftsmen, and vendors who marketed these products to consumers. When we look beyond the Periyar, the consumption of long-distance imports appears not as a marginal force, but as a transformative component of ancient economies and societies with a far wider reach than previously assumed.

Black South African women who have breast cancer have been found in general to be diagnosed at a younger age, have a more aggressive disease and a poorer prognosis in comparison to their Caucasian counterparts. However, there is a paucity of research related to the manner in which breast cancer is inherited in black South African families. It is also not known whether these individuals harbour deleterious mutations in breast cancer predisposition genes. As 5-10% of breast cancers have been shown to be inherited, in white populations, this study aimed to investigate family history and inheritance of breast cancer in black South African women. It also aimed to evaluate the use and consistency of existing risk assessment models in this population. A retrospective, file-based analysis of 45 black South African women who were diagnosed with breast cancer before the age of 50 years was performed. The probands were ascertained from the Genetic Counselling Clinic held weekly at the Breast and Plastic Clinic, Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. Information was obtained from the subjects’ genetic counselling files as well as the Oncology database that is housed at the Clinic. Information pertaining to the personal breast disease history of the probands as well as their family histories (three generation pedigrees) was entered into a spreadsheet and analysed. The results of this study indicated that there were very few young black South African women with breast cancer who had a significant family history of cancer (4/45; 9%). Family history is an important factor in assessing an individual’s breast cancer risks. Results also suggested that age at diagnosis may not be an appropriate predictor of inherited breast cancer risk in this population. A significant proportion of black South African women diagnosed with breast cancer younger than 50 years might be proven to have sporadic rather than inherited breast cancers. Three risk assessment tools (The Claus Model, the Tyrer-Cuzick Model and the Manchester Scoring system) were evaluated in this study. They were shown to have some degree of consistency and each had unique advantages and disadvantages of use within this population. The main limitation of these risk assessment tools is that they were designed based on data from Caucasian populations and as such their applicability to a non-Caucasian population has not been validated. Their true validity within this population can only be established once molecular genetic analysis has been performed. This study highlights the necessity of molecular genetic screening in this population in order to further delineate which individuals in this population are truly at an increased risk of developing inherited breast cancer. This information is important because it can inform which individuals would benefit from cancer risk assessments and various cancer prevention and reduction strategies. Information obtained from this study will be useful to direct future research in this population with respect to genetic counselling for inherited breast cancer.

This dissertation examines Deccan India’s earliest surviving stone constructions, which were founded during the 6th through the 8th centuries CE and are known for their unparalleled formal eclecticism. Whereas past scholarship explains their heterogeneous formal character as an organic outcome of the Deccan’s “borderland” location between north India and south India, my study challenges the very conceptualization of the Deccan temple within a binary taxonomy that recognizes only northern and southern temple types. Rejecting the passivity implied by the borderland metaphor, I emphasize the role of human agents—particularly architects and makers—in establishing a dialectic between the north Indian and the south Indian architectural systems in the Deccan’s built worlds and built spaces. Secondly, by adopting the Deccan temple cluster as an analytical category in its own right, the present work contributes to the still developing field of landscape studies of the premodern Deccan. I read traditional art-historical evidence—the built environment, sculpture, and stone and copperplate inscriptions—alongside discursive treatments of landscape cultures and phenomenological and experiential perspectives. As a result, I am able to present hitherto unexamined aspects of the cluster’s spatial arrangement: the interrelationships between structures and the ways those relationships influence ritual and processional movements, as well as the symbolic, locative, and organizing role played by water bodies. The project therefore reimagines the Deccan’s sacred centers not as conglomerations of disjointed monuments but as integrated environments in which built structures interact with, and engage, natural elements, and vice versa.

The study of Indian indentured servitude in the British Empire has largely been confined to the histories of slavery or free labor. Few scholars have connected indenture to larger processes in the British Empire. This dissertation examines the global nature of Indian indenture to find how trends in colonial power were inflected in the relationship between the state and the indentured worker. This dissertation uses the colonial experience in South Asia as a basis for its global history. It contends that the history of the colonial rule of law in the subcontinent was of deep importance to the mechanisms of indenture. By looking at archival records from the United Kingdom, Trinidad, Fiji, and elsewhere, this dissertation finds that officials in the indenture colonies were attempting to transform indebted Indian peasants into indentured workers. This process was inflected by the experience of colonial rule elsewhere. At first, this meant the implementation of ideas tied to imperial liberalism. Following the challenges to British colonialism in the mid-nineteenth century, the indenture colonies mirrored a wider movement towards conservative governance. The ways in which the colonial state attempted to control and manipulate workers underwent a dramatic shift. In the indenture colony, colonial power exerted both authoritarian and paternalist tendencies. This dissertation uses the governorships of Arthur Hamilton-Gordon in Trinidad and Fiji to explore this shift. This dissertation makes its argument by focusing on the indenture colonies of Trinidad and Fiji. In doing so, it moves beyond the model of studying indenture that has looked at the British Empire as a whole, or otherwise in specific colonies or sub-regions. Using Trinidad and Fiji allows for a deep understanding of continuity and change. For example, Trinidad can be used to examine indenture’s beginnings, as the colony began to import Indian indentured labor in 1842, while Fiji can be used to understand late indenture. Furthermore, colonial officials, ideas of authority, capital, labor, and goods were always circulating throughout this global empire. The study of Trinidad and Fiji allows for a critical understanding of such exchanges and this dissertation uses both to explore bureaucratic offices, law, financial systems, governance, protest, medicine and health, and global agitation in Indian indenture. “The Currents of Restless Toil” is an in-depth study into the nature of colonial governance in the indenture colonies of Trinidad and Fiji. It explores the nuances of colonial power, providing a window into the theory and practice that shaped the restless toil of Indians across the world.

On the southwestern coast of India, Kerala, with its fortuitous position in the Indian ocean trade network, has served as a beacon for merchant ships since antiquity. As early as the ninth-century, Kerala’s rulers – the Cēras (ca. 800 – 1124) and merchant polities developed a symbiotic relationship that allowed a wealth of diplomatic privileges for traders. Religious leaders who travelled with merchants are named as the benefactors of agreements between the Cēras and the guilds. This dissertation will show that a corollary of this unique trade policy was the canonization of a shared architectural and artistic vocabulary in the region’s religious monuments. Individual chapters dedicated to the architectural style of temples, churches, synagogues, and mosques will examine this syncretism and the idiomatic mode of sacred art and architecture that came to define the Kerala style.

This dissertation investigates the vocation of politics in the Maratha Empire from the release and restoration of Chhatrapati Shahu Bhonsle in 1708 to the British East India Company’s final victory against the Marathas in 1818. Founded in the mid-seventeenth century by the ambitious general and first Chhatrapati Shivaji Bhonsle, the Maratha Empire encompassed a decentralized web of allied governments stretching from the western Deccan into far-flung parts of the Indian subcontinent. While the Company’s pejorative moniker of “confederacy” has cast a long shadow over historical understanding of the politics of the Maratha state, this dissertation argues that the ascendancy of scribal-bureaucratic networks and their practices of communication enabled Maratha governments to foster a modern diplomatic framework of deliberation, adjudication, and collaboration. The creation of a flexible language and practice of communication transcending linguistic, cultural, religious, and political divisions was the signal achievement of the scribal-bureaucratic networks that increasingly came to dominate politics and government in the eighteenth-century Maratha Empire. Through a case study of individuals and households of the Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu sub-caste, this dissertation demonstrates that both non-Brahman and Brahman officials skilled in the arts of verbal and written communication rose from the lower ranks of the Maratha bureaucracy to the highest circles of political decision-making. They not only advanced their socioeconomic claims to wealth, title, and property, but also shaped government agendas, resolved disputes, and forged alliances through the dialogic exchange of oaths, treaties, objects, and sentimental words. Moreover, scribal-bureaucrats drew on this mode of communication to build strategic multilateral coalitions and to pen novel reflections on the meaning and purpose of politics once the dominance of the British East India Company was impossible to ignore. Communicative politics comes into vivid focus through a critical examination of the records and manuscripts that described, evaluated, and enacted relationships between Maratha governments. While the focus is on the critically important governments of Satara, Nagpur, and Pune, close attention is paid to conduits of power, persuasion, and affiliation between them and their rivals and allies in the eighteenth-century Deccan. Over the course of six chapters, this dissertation traces a chronological arc from the re-constitution to the dissolution of Maratha sovereignty as well as a thematic one from the structures and practices, to the personnel, and finally to the shifting meanings of politics. Chapters 1 and 2 explore how the delicate frameworks and practices preserving relationships between governments were made and unmade in the context of Maratha expansion in the Deccan. Turning to the personnel of politics, Chapters 3 and 4 follow the careers of Kayastha Prabhu scribal officials who attained influence at the courts of Satara, Kolhapur, Nagpur, and Baroda. Finally, Chapters 5 and 6 highlight the ways in which the meaning of politics shifted in response to the emergence of Company power. The story of Maratha politics is thus the story of a concatenation of deliberative, pragmatic compromises suited to the realities of a dynamic inter-imperial world.

Drawing on archival materials, family stories, and student artwork, “Schooling the Master: Caste Supremacy and American Education in British Ceylon, 1795–1855” examines how nineteenth-century American missionary education in South Asia facilitated dominant-caste supremacy while distributing negotiated sensibilities of colonial modernity. The work’s first section explores the arrangement of an educational nexus of mutual benefit between the Jaffna Peninsula’s dominant Veḷḷāḷar caste, the British Ceylonese government, and American Protestant missionaries. I track this nexus from its origins in the veranda school of Tamil Śaiva poet Kūḻaṅkai Tampirāṉ (1699–1795) to its apogee in the American Ceylon Mission boarding schools of the late 1840s. The dissertation’s second part examines two pedagogies of colonial modernity: the embroidery of needlework samplers that taught an American form of gendered domesticity, and map drawing that imparted a geographically specific and American-style national identity. By describing three moments in its development and two pedagogical facets of its career, the dissertation argues that an educational nexus crafted for some Veḷḷāḷars a distinct Jaffna Tamil identity that is geographically bound, gendered, and pervaded by a sense of superiority. This dissertation makes two significant contributions to South Asian studies, first by demonstrating an unexamined arrangement of power in the context of colonialism—the educational nexus—and second, by exploring the way colonial teaching methods in the first half of the nineteenth century transformed South Asian ways of being.

This dissertation sheds new light on the nature and development of Hindu devotional religiosity (bhakti) by drawing attention to bhakti's understudied historical relationships with Tantra, Yoga, and Sufism. Specifically, this thesis explains the phenomenal rise of bhakti in early modern north India as a process of identity and community formation fundamentally connected to Sufi-inflected critiques of tantric and yogic religiosity. With the advent of the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century, new alliances--most notably Akbar's with the Kacchvaha royal clan of Amer--led to the development of a joint Mughal-Rajput court culture and religio-political idiom in which Vaishnava bhakti institutional forms became key symbols of power and deportment, and thus bhakti communities became beneficiaries of extensive patronage. Through a study of the life and works of the important but little-known bhakti poet-saint Agradas, this thesis offers insight into how these bhakti communities competed for patronage and followers. If the rise of bhakti was inseparable from Mughal socio-political developments, it was also contingent upon the successful formation of a new bhakti identity. This thesis centers on the Ramanandi community at Galta, comparing them with the Nath yogis to show the development of this bhakti identity, one defined especially in opposition to the "other" of the tantric yogi and shakta. It also contributes a broad study of early modern bhakti poetry and hagiography demonstrating the rise of new, Sufi-inflected, exclusivist bhakti attitudes that stigmatized key aspects of tantric and yogic religiosity, and that therein prefigured orientalist-colonialist depictions of bhakti as "religion" and Tantra as "magic."

“Ordering Subjects” argues that the merchants of Marwar led efforts to demarcate a new, exclusive community of elites, one that they conceptualized of as self-consciously ‘Hindu’ and forged through the application of state power. This early modern Hindu community defined itself in opposition not to the figure of the Muslim but to that of the ‘Untouchable,’ a category that included but was not limited to the Muslim. The early modern Hindu identity was thus deeply imagined in caste terms. This elite community organized around Krishna devotion, especially the Vallabh Sampraday, and demarcated itself through cultural markers such as the practice of vegetarianism, teetotalism, and austerity. Merchants, often joined by brāhmaṇs, waged their battles for the demarcation of this new community by petitioning the crown and by successfully deploying the control that they had gained in prior centuries over the state apparatus as bureaucrats. State power, consisting of its judicial, fiscal, recordkeeping, and surveillance mechanisms, played a central role in the implementation of laws and regulations, including spatial, economic, social, and ritual segregation, enforced vegetarianism, and the moral policing of elite subjects’ lives. Most of these petitions and state responses were legitimized with reference to ethics, marking a departure from the until-then prevalent emphasis on custom as the basis for legislating society. “Ordering Subjects” suggests that this marked a shift towards a more universal law and that the turn to ethical principles made possible the disregard for the force of custom that these departures marked. Further, the dissertation demonstrates that these processes enabled the ascendance of a mercantile ethos as the preeminent cultural code of the region, displacing that of the warrior and modifying that of the brāhmaṇ. Lastly, it shows the extent to which the state in eighteenth century Marwar had penetrated society and was capable of intervening in it using surveillance and judicial methods. The dissertation challenges the current scholarly framing of the debate over the existence of religious identities in pre-colonial South Asia, suggesting that it casts modern, binary (‘Hindu-Muslim’) conceptions of religion, as distinct from politics, upon pre-modern history. Instead, “Ordering Subjects” points to the role of caste, as a field of politics, in determining the contours and imagination of early modern Hindu identity. It offers a political and social history of Krishna devotion, extending scholarship on this field beyond the focus on its literary, theological, and cultural aspects that currently dominate the field. In tracing the local effects of the global processes of economic circulation and integration that characterized early modernity upon social and political life of a landlocked kingdom, the dissertation offers a perspective upon the history of early modern South Asia as it unfolded away from, but in connection with, the ports and court cities of the region.

This dissertation sheds new light on the Purātan Janamsākhī, the earliest available account on the founder and most important figure of the Sikh tradition – Gurū Nānak (d. 1539 CE). Scholarship on Gurū Nānak has largely dismissed the significance of this text and has overlooked the fact that, after its composition in 1588 CE, the Purātan Janamsākhī remained the most widely circulated account of Gurū Nānak’s life for two centuries. This thesis engages with the manuscripts and studies of the text to provide a life-history of the Purātan Janamsākhī, and, in arguing for a reclamation of this account, takes on a close reading of the Purātan Janamsākhī to identify how, within decades of his death, followers of Gurū Nānak remembered his life and message. This thesis situates the Purātan Janamsākhī within its historical context and compares it with some of its closest North Indian contemporaries, including other janamsākhīs composed on the life of Gurū Nānak and hagiographical writings written about religious figures from different North Indian communities. Our comparative approach allows us to identify some basic commonalities in hagiographical writing and glean aspects that distinguish the Purātan Janamsākhī from its counterparts, including Gurū Nānak’s unique interest in political critique and building a new community. This thesis, therefore, contributes significantly to our understandings of identity and community formation, to studies on hagiographical writing, and to our foundational understandings of Sikh history.

This study explores the various processes that constructed and transformed the undergraduate curriculum in a Faculty of Education at a South African university. It attempts to delve beneath the representation of post-apartheid curriculum change as a linear process. The thesis argues that scholars should attempt to unravel how the curriculum performs the task of social transformation at the site of the university by empirically investigating how the relationship between structure and action links with the ideals of post-apartheid higher education policy. Theoretically, this study posits that the deficit in the local literature on the use of the structure/agency relationship as a heuristic device for examining institutional change should be addressed with the relational sociology of Pierre Bourdieu.
Sociology
D. Phil. (Sociology)