Fifteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

This paper explores two significant happenings in India and Africa in two different periods, split by nearly one hundred years. Malabar region in the Southwest coast of the Indian subcontinent witnessed the emergence of circus kalaris (training centres) in the early twentieth century, from where women, men and youngsters from different communities got trained and went on to become renowned artistes in various companies around the world. This ‘new’ and ‘modern’ physical culture and the radical recasting of the body in a place where caste system imposed cruel restrictions of access to other bodies in terms not just in touch but even visibility and hearing was definitely one of the most significant historical moments in the subcontinent. In the second part, I look at the formation of several circus schools across East African countries such as Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia by the end of the twentieth century. I examine the various trajectories of inequality, labour, livelihood and dignity that have set in motion these transnational voyages of itinerant physical cultures and bodies to think through the global web of non-governmental capital, colonial, and postcolonial states and policy production in the Global South.