Śrāddha, or ancestral rites in India and Hinduism, and pitaraḥ, who are worshipped in śrāddha, are translated into Japanese as “Soreisai” and “Sorei,” respectively. However, these concepts and their meanings have not been examined enough. In this paper, I present lists enumerating concrete objects worshipped in śrāddha by studying selected 28 Sūtras, their supplements, and some Smṛtis, which compiled from about third century BCE to third century CE. This process clearly showed that not only pitaraḥ (i.e., father, paternal grandfather, and paternal great-grandfather) were worshipped in śrāddha, but also were their wives and maternal ancestors, especially in the later texts. In the second half of the paper, I focus on how female and maternal ancestors are worshipped. I demonstrate that female ancestors are always worshipped with their husbands, though some regulations refer to female ancestors as wives while others refer to them as mothers. Furthermore, I have supposed that the regulations of rites for maternal ancestors were originally exceptional rules and related to the duty of putrikāputra, or the son of an appointed daughter (putrikā). A putrikā is a brother-less daughter who is given in marriage on condition that her son will become her father’s son.

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The aim of this paper is to explore how female Hindu ascetics can obtain their places in society, and achieve happiness and well-being, focusing on their intimate networks which they call ‘family’. Female Hindu ascetics are suppressed in male-dominated Indian society. The author conducted a field study in Kumbh Melā. She has found out that they depend on various forms of ‘family’, not unlike female householders. This ‘family’ consists of various actors, including patriarchal guru-disciple relations, kinship relations and male-partners whom they live with. The ascetics also try to make good use of the ‘family’ and re-construct it in order to make their living easier and to achieve their prestige in the society. The ‘family’ of female ascetics is a form of social bond. The author attempts to describe the ascetics’ struggle for better living, using the framework of the dependence and re-construction of ‘family’.

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Focusing on the India’s experience which introduced political safeguards for minorities prior to the development of international debates on the minority rights issue, this paper elaborates the reason why the founding fathers of India included political safeguards such as the reservation of seats in the new Constitution. While preceding studies have mostly focused on the Muslim community, that have remained as the largest religious minority group even in post-partition India, studies on why the Scheduled Castes reserved seats was introduced in the Constitution has not been discussed systematically. Especially, there has been scarcity on the analysis of agency of Scheduled Castes leaders during Constitution-making process. Therefore, this paper, placing the role and effort of B. R. Ambedkar, who was one of the most influential Scheduled Casts leaders, at the center of study, examines how he got involved in the politics of Constitution-making. The paper takes notice of the development of cooperative relationship between Ambedkar and the Congress leaders after independence and Ambedkar’s adaptation to the changed political circumstances surrounding the Constituent Assembly. Taking these things into consideration, an attempt is made to show the political process led to the introduction of the Scheduled Castes reserved seats by the Constituent Assembly of India.

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This paper examines the role of civil society in constructing a childcare network in the postdevelopment era with a focus on the function of NGOs in Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme in contemporary India. My data are based on fieldwork conducted in urban slum areas in Delhi. The study found that there are two types of NGOs that participated in the public-private partnership model of ICDS, namely, a substitution-type NGO and an advocacy-type NGO. The substitution-type NGO substituted the role of the government and promoted smooth and efficient implementation of the project’s objectives, while positioning the poor as the object of the scheme rather than its subject. Meanwhile the advocacy-type NGO promoted the participation of the poor attempting to reflect the voice of the poor by listening and responding to their complaints and demands. The former contributed to improving the capability of the poor, while the latter their capacity. In other words, the former increased their chances of getting child development services as per the fixed objective of the scheme while the voices or the needs of the poor were not taken note of. The latter, however, provided opportunities for the poor to raise their voice about their needs and to take part in the negotiation process. These NGOs played vital roles in providing effective organizational foundation for ICDS though in very different ways. Therefore, this paper concludes that it is important to focus on the ways of participation of the poor and the form of NGOs that mediate the participation of the poor in order to understand the role of civil society in constructing childcare network, unlike previous studies which focused solely on the degrees of participation of the poor.

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Economic growth with industrialization accelerated by the globalization and national economic policies since 1990s brought dramatic change in Bangladeshi society both in rural and urban. Local government as a provider of public services, on the other hand, have failed to meet growing needs of citizen especially in urban area. Meanwhile, governance issue had been mainstreamed in international development since 1980s, and the major donors in Bangladesh have conducted studies on governance situations in Bangladesh in 1990s. Based on the studies, one of the major donors, Asian Development Bank, initiated a project for improvement of governance and urban infrastructure for local government in 2002. The model of governance improvement invented by ADB has now been applied in other project supported by other donors such as World Bank and JICA. This article is to demonstrate present situation of governance especially in urban local government by reviewing the project for urban local governance and infrastructure development focusing on people’s participation in public services which is one of main activities in the project. People’s involvement in governance is also globally promoted institutional change not only in developing countries, but also developed countries. By reviewing the people’s participation in local governance, we analyze the project activity in the context of participatory democracy which is also recently globalized phenomenon, and finally articulate scope of further research.

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The South Asians who arrived on the Pacific Coast of North America in the early twentieth century are famous for their political activism in the Komagata Maru Incident and the Ghadr movement, among others. In conventional discussions, these movements have been argued chiefly through the perspective of some active political leaders, and the historical, economic, and social backgrounds of the South Asian immigrants on the Pacific Coast have often been overlooked. Moreover, the immigrants’participation in these political incidents has been argued to have connections with their political interests and religious organizations centering around Sikh Gurdwaras; however, the economic relationships among these immigrants has been under-explored. This paper examines the target population’s motives and methods of immigration, their living conditions in Vancouver around 1910, and their socio-economic relationships. Their most important reason for migrating to Canada was to earn a higher income. Through an analysis of The Census of Canada 1911, this paper shows that their wages in Canada were six to eleven times higher than in India. Most of them had not intended to settle there permanently, but it was a suitable place for them to earn more money in a shorter period. Irrespective of their mobility, through pursuing economic success, South Asian immigrants exerted themselves and strengthened their social ties by establishing mutual aid institutions and a company whose shareholders were immigrants to the Pacific Coast.

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