List of Recommended Titles for

South-South Translation Grants India

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Topics

Civil Society/Human Rights Postcolonial/Contemporary India Culture and Arts/Cultural Practices Economics Education and Science Gender/Women’s Issues Governance/Public Policy Hinduism History and Politics History and Social/Cutural ChangeIdentity.Minorities India and Islam.Muslims in India Mass Culture Media/Internet Multiculturalism

Civil Society. Human Rights

Civil Society, Public Sphere and Citizenship: Dialogues and Perceptions edited by Rajeev Bhargava and Helmut ReifeldNew Delhi, Sage, 2005, 420 p., ISBN 81-7829-309-9. Contents: Preface/Helmut Reifeld. Introduction/Rajeev Bhargava. I. Civil society, public sphere and citizenship: 1. Civil society and citizenship in western democracies: historical developments and recent challenges/Ute Frevert. 2. Forms of civility and publicness in pre-British India/Farhat Hasan. 3. Subjects' citizenship dream: notes on the nineteenth century/Sudhir Chandra. 4. Notes towards a conception of the colonial public/Neeladri Bhattacharya. II. Citizenship, art and the modern public sphere: 5. An imperfect public: cinema and citizenship in the third world/Ravi S. Vasudevan. 6. Thinking through Hindi/Alok Rai. 7. Genesis or validation: the dilemma of theoretical conception of the modernisation of the public sphere/Clemens Albrecht. III. Citizenship in independent India: 8. Citizenship and the Indian constitution/Valerian Rodrigues. 9. Civil society and its 'underground': explorations in the notion of 'political society'/Aditya Nigam. 10. Citizenship in exile: a Dalit case/Gopal Guru. 11. Outside the bounds of citizenship: the status of aliens, illegal migrants and refugees in India/B.S. Chimni. 12. An emerging civil society: the case of Tibet in exile/Dagmar Bernstorff. 13. Exploring the mythology of the public sphere/Neera Chandhoke. 14. A look at theory: civil society, democracy and public sphere in India/Javeed Alam. 15. Women and the breakdown of the public sphere/Anuradha M. Chenoy. 16. Nation-building and the making of civil society/D.L. Sheth. Index. "In recent times, our understanding of state and society has been considerably enriched by the introduction of a framework that draws upon a set of nuanced distinctions between civil society, political society and public sphere, and which has had a profound impact on the way we understand ideas of nationhood and citizenship. The original, exploratory essays brought together in this volume work within this framework without accepting it uncritically. The contributors examine the relationship between the state and society in India, discuss ideas of citizenship, and study the broad area known as the public sphere. Among the questions addressed are:How do we understand the terms civil society and public sphere and what are their differences in the Indian context? What impact does civil society have on the Indian state today? Who are allowed to participate actively in the public sphere and the workings of the state and who are denied access? What is the role of the Indian citizen today? The eminent scholars who have contributed to this volume provide numerous fresh insights into these and related issues which have been the subject of extensive debate in recent years. This is

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perhaps the first book to deal simultaneously with civil society, the pubic sphere and citizenship in contemporary India, while providing at the same time a comparison with western experience."(https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no40764.htm)

Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life : Hindus and Muslims in India by Ashutosh Varshney.

New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2002, xvi, 382 p., figs., tables, ISBN 0-19-566116-8.

Contents:

Preface. I. Arguments and theories : 1. Introduction. 2. Why civil society? Ethnic conflict and the existing traditions of inquiry. II. The national level : 3. Competing national imaginations. 4. Hindu-Muslim riots, 1950-1995: the national picture. III. Local variations: Aligarh and Calicut: internal and external cleavages : 5. Aligarh and Calicut: civic life and its political foundations. 6. Vicious and virtuous circles. Hyderabad and Lucknow: elite integration versus mass integration: 7. Princely resistance to civil society. 8. Hindu nationalists as bridge builders? Ahmedabad and Surat: how civic institutions decline: 9. Gandhi and civil society. 10. Decline of a civic order and communal violence. 11. Endogeneity? Of causes and consequences. IV. Conclusions : 12. Ethnic conflict, the state, and civil society. Appendices : A. Questionnaire for the project on Hindu-Muslim relations in India. B. Data entry protocol for the riot database. C. Regression results: Hindu-Muslim riots, 1950-1995. Notes. Index.

"In the backdrop of the recent spate of ethnic violence in India, this volume is a timely and significant contribution towards investigating the factors that cause Hindu-Muslim riots.

"Ashutosh Varshney examines three pairs of Indian cities—one city in each pair with a history of communal violence, the other with a history of relative communal harmony—to discern why violence between Hindus and Muslims occurs in some situations but not in others.

"The book focuses on the networks of civic engagement that bring Hindu and Muslim urban communities together. These networks may take the form of associational interaction or they may be everyday forms of engagement. Both forms, if intercommunal, promote peace but the capacity of associational forms to withstand events, like the partition of India in 1947 or the demolition of the Babri mosque in December 1992, is substantially higher.

"Strong associational forms of civic engagement such as integrated business, organizations, trade unions, political parties, and professional associations, are able to control outbreaks of ethnic violence, says Varshney. Vigorous and communally integrated associational life can serve as an agent of peace by restraining those, including politicians, who would polarize Hindus and Muslims along communal lines. Varshney’s findings will be of strong interest to scholars, politicians, and policy-makers of South Asia, but the implications of his study will have practical relevance for a broad range of multiethnic societies in other areas of the world as well." (jacket)

About the Author

Ashutosh Varshney is Professor of Political Science. Previously, he taught, among other places, at Harvard University as an assistant and associate professor of government.

https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no27392.htm

The Conceits of Civil Society by Neera Chandhoke

New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2003, x, 278 p., ISBN 019-566195-8.

Contents:

Introduction. 1. The ambiguities of civil society. 2. The taming of civil society. 3. Collective memory, narratives, and violence. 4. Language, translations, and domination. 5. Civil society: coercion and contestation. Conclusion. References. Index.

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"Civil society is today considered a panacea to the many ills of the modern world by philosophies and ideologies of every hue—from trade unions, social movements, international organizations, and lending agencies to states, both autocratic and democratic. This book problematizes the idea and the practices of civil society and cautions that the ubiquity of the concept may ultimately prove to be its undoing.

"According to the author, civil society today has been reduced to a one-dimensional, watered down concept that has ceased to have any definite meaning. It has been stripped of its essential ambiguities, and oppressive tendencies, and ‘re-presented’ as an area of solidarity, self-help, goodwill, and even possibly an alternative to the state.

"Chandhoke stresses the need to bring the state back into the civil society argument and cautions against the seductions of fashionable perspectives, which seek to conceptually, ‘disembed’ the state from it. She pursues the argument in a critique of theories that prescribe such a course. Such formulations, the book argues, disguise the conflicts within and the many incivilities of civil society.

"The book also examines the inherent politics of civil society—the way for instance identities are constructed through the politics of memory and narrative, and problems of language and meaning with special reference to India.

"This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in political science, philosophy, sociology, and history as also the informed lay reader. Government officials and activists will also find the book useful." (jacket) / https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no29533.htm/

About the Author

Neera Chandhoke is Professor of Political Science, University of Delhi, and Director of the Developing Countries Research Centre, University of Delhi. She received her M.A degree (1968) and her PhD (1984) from the University of Delhi. Her main teaching and research interests are Political Theory, Comparative Politics, and the Politics of Developing Societies with special focus on India.

Postcolonial/ Contemporary India

Who Wants Democracy? by Javeed Alam

New Delhi, Orient Longman, 2004, xix, 143 p., ISBN 81-250-2711-4.

Contents:

Preface. 1. Democracy and the people. 2. The vulnerable populations and democracy. 3. Identity formation among oppressed castes. 4. Muslims: the 'joker' in the democratic pack. 5. Democracy and its impact on citizenship. 6. Democracy and the making of the Indian nation. 7. Elite counter-reaction and the turn to the right. 8. Civil society and democracy. 9. Conclusion. Epilogue.

"From the moment of its birth democracy in India was plagued by a deep anxiety. In 1947, Nehru saw the future as a time to redeem pledges, a time to fulfil the hopes that had been aroused during the national struggle. But he was well aware that this was a difficult task. Reforms followed, democratic institutions were set up, and universal adult Franchise was established. But poverty, illiteracy and poor health remained part of the post-colonial landscape. Why then do the poor and the malnutrited return in every election to choose their representatives, to form the government of their choice?

Through an effort to answer this seeming Paradox, Alam explores the working of democracy in India. Beneath the play of caste and communal politics, and the threats of institutional collapse, Alam sees democracy acquiring a firm basis within Indian society. He shows what the voting patterns tells us about the links between regional voices and national unity, between the politics of community and the idea of citizenship, between the commitments of the poor and the apathy of the

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rich. This is a tract that questions our common assumptions and forces us to re-think our ideas about the life of Indian democracy."

About the Author

Javeed Alam is Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi

https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no37875.htm

Interrogating Social Capital : The Indian Experience edited by Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Bishnu N. Mohapatra and Sudha Pai.

New Delhi, Sage, 2004, 335 p., figs., tables, ISBN 81-7829-412-5.

Contents:

Introduction/Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Bishnu N. Mohapatra and Sudha Pai. 1. Social capital, Panchayats and grassroots democracy: the politics of Dalit assertion in two districts of Uttar Pradesh/Sudha Pai. 2. Democracy and social capital in the Central Himalaya: a tale of two villages/Niraja Gopal Jayal. 3. Social connectedness and the fragility of social capital: a view from a village in Orissa/Bishnu N. Mohapatra. 4. Is civil society the answer?/Susanne Hoeber Rudolph. 5. Civic Community and its margins: schoolteachers in rural West Bengal/Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya. 6. Classes for the masses? social capital, social distance and the quality of the government school system/Manabi Majumdar. 7. Devolution, joint forest management and the transformation of 'social capital'/Nandini Sundar. 8. Making democracy perform: human development and civil community in India/Peter Mayer. 9. 'Putnam in India': is social capital a meaningful and measurable concept at the Indian state level?/Renata Serra. 10. Social network and protest movements: the case of Kerala/Ashok Swain. Index.

    "Recent years have seen the concept of social capital gain increasing currency, besides courting controversy, both in academic social science writing and in the development discourse of multilateral donor agencies. It has been viewed as an explanation for both the flourishing of democracy and economic development, and therefore as the potential key to successful development practices in the developing world.

    Presenting varied experiences of the interaction between social capital and the democratic functioning of a variety of institutions in India, the essays in this volume subject the notion of social capital to close and thorough scrutiny. The critique of social capital that this volume provides is strongly anchored in empirical case studies of three kinds:

Field-based micro-studies in rural areas

Sectoral studies in the areas of joint forest management, environment and education

Macro-studies which relate indicators of human development to dimensions of social capital

    The contributors explore central issues concerning the inter-relationship between social capital and democracy. Additionally, they address important questions such as: Does social capital inhere is some communities and associations and not in others? Can it be 'constructed' and, if so, which are the agencies best suited to do so?

    Perhaps the first book to provide a field-based critique of the theory of social capital in a non-western setting, this insightful volume will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of development studies, politics and governance. It will be of equal interest to the policy community, international agencies, development professionals and NGOs."

https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no38879.htm

Regional Modernities : The Cultural Politics of Development in India edited by K. Sivaramakrishnan and Arun Agrawal

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New Delhi, OUP, 2003, xvi, 452 p., ISBN 019-565701-2.

Contents:

1. Regional modernities in stories and practices of development/K. Sivaramakrishnan and Arun Agrawal. I. Traveling discourses: 2. The transmission of development: problems of scale and socialization/Akhil Gupta. 3. Developing women: the traffic in ideas about women and their needs in Kangra, India/Kim Berry. 4. ‘Difficult work’: becoming developed/Rebecca Klenk. 5. Building India’s ‘Modern Temples’: Indians and Americans in the Damodar Valley Corporation, 1945-60/Daniel Klingensmith. 6. ‘Shelter’ in Modern Delhi/Vijay Prashad. II. Development situations: 7. Beyond blackmail: multivalent modernities and the cultural politics of development in India/Donald S. Moore. 8. Development, nationalism, and the time of the primitive: the Dangs Darbar/Ajay Skaria. 9. Educating entrepreneurs, organizing for social justice: NGO development strategies in New Delhi Bastis/Sangeeta Luthra. 10. Mukkuvar modernity: development as a cultural identity/Ajantha Subramanian. 11. Development counter-narratives: taking social movements seriously/Subir Sinha. III. Transgressing boundaries: 12. Rethinking boundaries/Angelique Haugerud. 13. On binaries and boundaries/David Mosse. 14. Beyond the local/global divide: knowledge for tree management in Madhya Pradesh/Sonja Brodt. 15. Modernity in a suitcase: an essay on immigrant Indian writing/Amitava S. Kumar. 16. Policing and erasing the global/local border: Rajasthani foresters and the narrative ecology of modernization/Paul Robbins. 17. State, place, identity: two stories in the making of region/Itty Abraham. Index.

"This book brings together essays that critique entrenched discourses on development. Using culturalist frameworks, the essays advance public and scholarly debates on development that move beyond globally dominant and homogenized views of modernity.

"Drawing on extensive ethnographic treatments, the contributors to the volume point out the diversity of both the development experience, and the nature of modernities that development puts in place. The essays challenge post-structural analyses of development, and rethink the concept of globalization by strategically focusing on the cultural politics of social transformations.

"Further, the volume suggests that local histories and agencies are at work in any modern context. To this end, it advances the need for greater attention to the region as a conceptual device—to understand how the local is constructed, and how regional political and economic formations selectively empower or undermine particular local processes and phenomena. In analysing these different enactments of development, the volume puts forward the idea of ‘regional modernities’, and weaves cases around diverse regions to present a rich and complex but strongly analytical set of studies.

"The theoretically sophisticated and empirically grounded research reported in this volume would be useful to scholars and researchers in development studies, cultural studies, South Asian studies, sociology, social anthropology as also NGOs and activists."

About the Author

K. Sivaramakrishnan, Associate Professor, Anthropology & Jackson School of International Studies; Arun Agrawal, Ph.D., Duke University, 1992, is Associate Professor of Political Science, and is Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Ethics, Politics and Economics Program.

Culture and Arts / Cultural Practices

Indian Poetry: Modernism and After by Ed. By. K. SatchidanandanSahitya Akademi; 2001, ISBN 81-260-1092-4; 388p.

SynopsisThis anthology of papers presented at a Seminar organissed by the Sahitya Akademi in March 1998, takes stock of the Indian poetry of the five decades after independence, raise basic conceptual questions, examines paradigm shifts and interrogates the established canons by foregrounding marginalized voice. The papers examine the growth of modern sensibility in Indian

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poetry in specific linguistic contexts, relates it to general cultural issues and esamines post-colonial avant-grade trends including the feminist and the Dalit movements. The papers are collected under three heads: 'Modernism in Retrospect' examines the historical, political and aesthetic aspects of modernism; 'After Modernism: Articulating Resistance' takes a close look at the alternative trends that challenge the status-quoist mainstream poetry; 'Poetry as Discourse: Some General Issues' takes up some general issues concerning the present and future of poetry, including the problems of the translation of poetry. Contributors to the volume include Dilip Chitre, E. V. Ramakrishnan, Ramesh chandra shah, Makarand Paranjape, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Chandrakant Patil, M. Asaduddin, Lakshmi Kannan, Rajlukshmee Debee, K. D. Kurtkodi, P.P.Raveendran, S. Carlos, Sudheesh Pachauri and Udayan Vajpeyi among others.

About The Editor: K. Satchidanandan who has edited this volume is a pioneer of modern poetry and criticism in Malayalam with 18 collections of poetry, two plays, 15 collections of critical articles and interviews and 15 collections of translated poetry. He ha four highly acclaimed collection of poetry in English translation: Summer Rain, How to go to the Tao Temple, Imperfect and Other New Poems and So Many Births: Three Decades of Poetry. Some of his critical articles have been collected under the title Indian Literature: Positions and Propositions. Winner of ten state-level and national awards for literature, his works have been translated into several major Indian and foreign language and included in national and international anthologies. He has done reading and lectures in all major countries of Europe and Asia besides USA. Having been a Professor of English and the editor of Indian Literature, he now heads the Sahitya Akademi, the Indian National Academy of Letters.(http :// www . exoticindiaart . com / book / details / IDE 279/ )

Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance: Theater and Politics in Colonial and Postcolonial India by Nandi Bhatia.New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2004, vii, ISBN 019 5672127, 206 p.

Contents: 1. Introduction: the theoretical-historical context. 2. Censorship and the politics of nationalist drama. 3. Multiple mediations of "Shakespeare" 4. Performance and protest in the Indian people's theatre association. 5. Colonial history and postcolonial interventions: staging the 1857 mutiny as "The Great Rebellion" in Utpal Dutt's Mahavidroha. Epilogue: bringing women's struggles to the streets in postcolonial India. Appendix: a bill to empower the government to prohibit certain dramatic performances. Notes. Bibliography. Index."Despite its importance to literary and cultural texts of resistance, theater has been largely overlooked as a field of analysis in colonial and postcolonial studies. Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance seeks to address that absence, as it uniquely views drama and performance as central to the practices of nationalism and anticolonial resistance.Nandi Bhatia argues that Indian theater was a significant force in the struggle against oppressive colonial and postcolonial structures, as it sought to undo various schemes of political and cultural power through its engagement with subjects derived from mythology, history, and available colonial models such as Shakespeare. Bhati's attention to local histories within a postcolonial framework places performance in a global and transcultural context. Drawing connections between art and politics, between performance and everyday experience, Bhatia shows how performance often intervened in political debates and even changed the course of politics.One of the few studies of Indian theater to link the aesthetics and the politics of that theater, Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance combines in-depth archival research with close readings of dramatic texts performed at critical moments history. Each chapter amplifies its themes against the backdrop of specific social conditions as it examines particular dramatic productions, from the Indigo mirror to adaptations of Shakespeare plays by Indian theater companies, illustrating the role of theater in bringing nationalist, anticolonial, and gendered struggles into the public sphere."(https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no37046.htm)

About the AuthorNandi Bhatia, Ph.D. (U of Texas at Austin, 1996; Panjab University, 1993). Postcolonial literatures and theory; theatre and imperialism, British Empire, South Asia and diasporic discourses, cultural studies. Work in Progress: Book: Sahibs, Saints, and Subalterns: Writing Race, Class and

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Gender in the British Empire; Edited Books: Partition and Migration; Theatre in India: A Reader, Guest Editor, Feminist Review on the theme "Women and Theatre." Honors and Distinctions: The John Charles Polanyi Prize for Literature 1999; SSHRC Standard Research Grant, 200-2004; Chair, Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute India Studies Committee; Editorial Board: South Asia Graduate Research Journal, Journal of South Asian Popular Culture. Now she is Associate Professor, University College 57, London.

In the Name of the Secular: Contemporary Cultural Activism in India by Rustom Bharucha. OUP India, 1998, xi,ISBN: 195648897, 197 p.

Contents: 1. Mapping the 'secular'. 2. In the name of the secular: i. Variables of secularism. ii. The Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA). iii. The Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT). iv. The third sector movement in Brazil. v. The making of secular culture. 3. On the border of fascism: the manufacture of consent in Roja. 4. Dismantling men: the crisis of male identity in Father, son, and holy war. 5. No more Utopias? Re-mapping the present. Bibliography. Index."What does it mean to be 'secular'? How are the ideals of secularism actually lived, communicated and experienced in a country where religion and politics are so inextricably linked?"From the cultural movements of the 1940s to the present day, writers, artists, and directors have countered fascist and imperialist pressures through a variety of popular cultural forms. In this bold and challenging new book, Rustom Bharucha charts the shifting dynamics of religion, community and civil society in an era which has seen the concurrent rise of mass media, globalization and religious fundamentalism. Apart from engaging with the conflicting seculiarist ideologies of films as diverse as Mani Ratnam's Roja and Anand Patwardhan's Father, son and holy war, the book also focuses on different forums for cultural activism, from SAHMAT in New Delhi to the mohalla peace committees in the slums of Mumbai."In an area which is increasingly polarized, Bharucha encourages real dialogue about issues such as citizenship, nationalism, secularism and cultural activism, whose repercussions are felt at every level of society in India and across the world. The result is a vital book for all those interested in cultural, gender, film and performance studies."(https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no13094.htm)

About the AuthorRustom Bharucha is an independent writer, director and cultural critic based in Kolkata, India. He is the author of several books including Theatre and the World, The Question of Faith, In the Name of the Secular, The Politics of Cultural Practice, and Rajasthan: An Oral History.  His current project is an inter-Asian study of Rabindranath Tagore and Okakura Tenshin, within the larger contexts of nationalism, pan-Asianism, and cosmopolitanism.

Culture and the Making of Identity in Contemporary India edited by Kamala Ganesh and Usha Thakkar

New Delhi, Sage Pub., 2005, 274 p., ISBN 81-7829-524-5.

    Contents:

Foreword. Introduction: fields of culture: conversations and contestations/Kamala Ganesh. I. 1. From interior landscapes into cyberspace: fluidity and dynamics of tradition/Kapila Vatsyayan. 2. From Sankara to fusion: an Indian musical spectrum/Ashok Ranade. 3. Lineages of the modern in Indian art: the making of a national history/Tapati Guha-Thakurta. 4. Divided by a common language: the novel in India, in English and in English translation/Meenakshi Mukherjee. II. 5. Translating sensibility/Dilip Chitre. 6. What does translation mean in India?/U.R. Ananthamurthy. 7. Inter-culturalism and the question of body/Anuradha Kapur. 8. Inter-culturalism and intra-culturalism in theatre: a personal response/Vijaya Mehta. III. 9. Stri Shakti: dimensions of woman power in India/Vimla Bahuguna. 10. Vimla Bahuguna and the legacy of Gandhian politics/Usha Thakkar. 11. Heritage of Bhakti: Sant women's writings in Marathi/Vidyut Bhagwat. 12. Feminism and feminist expression: a dialogue/Devaki Jain. 13. 'Re' inscribing the past: inserting women into Indian history/Uma Chakravarti. 14. The humanist perspective and the civilizing role of history/Mariam Dossal. IV. 15. Indigenous knowledges and the hegemony of science/Claude

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Alvares. 16. Towards an informed science criticism: the debate on science in post independence India/Gita Chadha. About the editors and contributors. Index.

"The long-standing and continuing debate on Indian culture and on what constitutes 'Indianness' manifests itself in many ways, some more subtle than others. In India, the historical passage to modernity, mediated by colonial authority and by nationalist resistance to it, has impacted all cultural disciplines. This collection of 17 original essays provides insights into the various ways in which the interrelated issues of culture, identity and Indianness are expressed in contemporary times.

Divided into four sections, the contributions range from detailed and scholarly essays to critical reviews of literature and reflections on experience. The first two sections deal with music, art, literature and translation, theatre and philosophy. These are fields of knowledge and practice in which there are well-developed indigenous traditions. Sections three and four cover fields in which the very existence of indigenous traditions is a matter of controversy and debate--feminism, the writing of history, and science. Overall, the fields of inquiry chosen are those where traditional practices have entered into a dialogue with 'modern' perspectives, leading to significant outcomes.

The contributors--distinguished specialists writing for a general readership--outline and evaluate significant developments since independence in their respective fields. This interdisciplinary volume testifies that the theme of identity continues to be a potent reference point, even in the more abstract, formal, academic, creative and symbolic realms of culture. It will attract a wide readership in disciplines such as cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, the visual and performing arts, and gender studies." (jacket)

https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no40760.htm

Indian Society through Personal Writings by M.N. Srinivas.

OUP India , 1998, xi, 245 p., ISBN 019564560-X.

Contents:

1. Itineraries of an Indian social anthropologist. 2. My Baroda days. 3. Bangalore as I see it. 4. The study of disputes in an Indian village. 5. A Caste dispute among the washermen of Mysore. 6. A joint family dispute in a Mysore village. 7. The potter and the priest. 8. The changing village. 9. The quality of social relations. 10. Religion. Farewell. Index.

"M.N. Srinivas' personal writings combine a novelist's imagination with the insight of a social scientist. The first three essays are autobiographical accounts of how he became a social anthropologist, of his job as the first Professor of sociology at Maharaja Sayajirao University at Baroda in 1951, and of moving from Delhi to Bangalore where he made his home. 'Bangalore as I see it is interesting both for its content and for the fact that it is Srinivas's only ethnographic account of a city.

"The next seven essays are based on his work in Rampura in Mysore. These cover subjects such as village disputes, social change, the quality of social relations, and religion. In the last essay, 'Farewell', the author describes how he had to wrench himself from his village and fieldwork to return to the formal atmosphere of the University of Oxford."

About the Author

M.N. Srinivas is currently the J.R.D. Tata Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. His books include Village, Caste, Gender and Method and The Remembered Village.https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no13618.htm

Economics

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On Ethics and Economics by Amartya Sen.

Blackwell Publishers, 1999, xv, 131 p., ISBN 019562761-X.

Contents:

Preface. I. Economic behaviour and moral sentiments: 1. Two origins. 2. Achievements and weakness. 3. Economic behaviour and rationality. 4. Rationality as consistency. 5. Self-interest and rational behaviour. 6. Adam Smith and self-interest. II. Economic judgements and moral philosophy: 1. Interpersonal comparisons of utility. 2. Pareto optimality and economic efficiency. 3. Utility, pareto optimality and welfarism. 4. Well-being and agency. 5. Valuing and value. 6. Agency and well-being: distinction and interdependence. 7. Utility and well-being. 8. Achievements, freedom and rights. 9. Self-interest and welfare economics. 10. Rights and freedom. III. Freedom and consequences: 1. Well-being, agency and freedom. 2. Plurality and evaluation. 3. Incompleteness and overcompleteness. 4. Conflicts and impasse. 5. Rights and consequence. 6. Consequential assessment and deontology. 7. Ethics and economics. 8. Welfare, goals and choices. 9. Conduct, ethics and economics. References. Author index. Subject index.

"In this elegant critique, Amartya Sen argues that welfare economics can be substantively enriched by paying more explicit attention to ethics, and that modern ethical studies can also benefit from a closer contact with economics. He further elaborates that even predictive and descriptive economics can be helped by making room for welfare-economic considerations in the explanation of behaviour, especially in production relations, which inevitably involve problems of cooperation as well as conflict. In this context, he explores the concept of rationality of behaviour thoroughly and pays particular attention to social interdependence and internal tensions within consequentialist reasoning.

"Professor Sen's contributions to economics and ethics have greatly strengthened the theoretical bases of both disciplines; this appraisal of the connections between the two subjects and their possible development will be welcomed not least for the clarity and depth which it contributes to the debate."

About the Autor:

Amartya Sen is Master, Trinity College, Cambridge. He won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998.

/ https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no14387.htm/

Education and Science

Another Reason by Gyan Prakash

Princeton University Press, Paperback: 248 p.,1999, ISBN: 0691004536

SynopsisIn this tour de force of historical scholarship and archival invention, Gyan Prakash focuses on the political culture of scientific thought as the crucible of emergent Indian nationalism. He produces a brilliant genealogy of 'colonial modernity,' agile and attentive to contemporary postcolonial questions: the contradictory desires for both science and tradition, 'newness' and orthodoxy, the secular and the sacred. Immersed in such complexities, Prakash retrieves the aspirational, progressive voices of the freedom movement to address contemporary Indian life. This is a superb work of historical revision by a writer of great insight and imagination.

This is a pathbreaking work. It adds a new dimension to the study of colonialism by holding up the mirror of science to the Raj and reciprocally that of governmentality to science in a colonial condition. Caught up in this double reflection, the problem of modernity appears in a fresh but disturbing light. A truly brilliant achievement.

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Gyan Prakash mounts a powerful and sustained argument in this book for treating the dissemination of science in colonial India not, as conventional historiography would have it, as the gradual supersession of backwardness and superstition and the spread of universal enlightenment, but as a case of hybrid growth. As is to be expected from Prakash, the research is meticulous and solid and his presentation is clear and forceful.

About the Author

Gyan Prakash is Professor of History and Director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University, U.S.A. His research and teaching is concerned with the colonial genealogies of modernity, and problems of postcolonial thought and politics.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691004536/qid=1134236104/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-2233871-8844821?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

Education and Democracy in India/edited by Anne Vaugier-Chatterjee.

New Delhi, Manohar, 2004, 269 p., ISBN 81-7304-604-2.

    Contents:

Introduction/Anne Vaugier-Chatterjee. 1. Education and democracy in India: contribution of the Christian Missions/Ambrose Pinto. 2. Lessons from Kurukshetra: the RSS Education Project/Akshay Bakaya. 3. Women's education in India: a historical perspective/Aparna Basu. 4. Education of women: the political implications/Gouri Srivastava. 5. Education and democracy in India: a case study of Sikkim/S.K. Jain. 6. Pedagogy and politics: the case of English textbooks/Shalini Advani. 7. Educational quality and the new economic regime/Krishna Kumar. 8. Primary education in India today: is decentralization the way out?/Sumit Bose and Anne Vaugier-Chatterjee. 9. Madhya Pradesh's education guarantee scheme: reflections based on a brief trip to Betul district/Francois Leclercq. 10. Financing elementary education in India/Stephane Moulin. 11. The meaning of the old school-tie: private schools, admission procedures and class segmentation in New Delhi/Anne Waldrop. 12. Decentralization of education: the role of international financial institutions in the district primary education programme and implications for society/Samia Kazi Aoul. 13. The construction of Saraswati: formation and transformation of Saffron identity in contemporary Uttar Pradesh/Jayati Chaturvedi and Gyaneshwar Chaturvedi. 14. The education of the deprived groups: the problem of access/R.P. Singh.

    "Since independence, India's educational performance has been regularly put under scrutiny. Meeting the original mandate of providing free and compulsory education to all children up to the age of 14 has proved to be an uphill task. Various reforms and programmes have been initiated over the past decades to achieve the somewhat elusive aim of Universal Elementary Education (UEE). The National Policy on Education (1986) formulated after a nation-wide debate still stands out as a landmark in the country's educational policy along with the 1992 programme of action which outlined its implementation strategy. A framework of partnerships aiming to launch centrally sponsored schemes at the state level followed later. A spectacular innovation, post-1991, was the multiplicity of donor-assisted programmes.

    Against this backdrop, the enduring class, caste and gender imbalances in education called for a political will to make access to schools a priority. Moreover, as schools form a natural arena for the construction of nationalism, it is not a surprise that the gradual withdrawal of the state from the educational sphere has created a vacuum for its use by ideological groups and organizations.

    Some of these significant changes and present trends are reflected and commented upon in the present volume, which is the outcome of two international conferences organized by the Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi. Cutting across research fields, the two seminars gathered on a common platform, historians, political scientists and educationists from India and Europe to reflect on the most central issues in the education sector: its history and development, its decentralization, its finances, its sociology and some of its ideological trends."

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https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no40585.htm

Gender/Women’s Issues

The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India, 1800-1900 by Kumar Radna Verso, 1993, Paperback: 203 pages, ISBN: 0860916650

SynopsisThis history of the women's movement in India covers the period from the 19th century to the present day. Kumar raises key questions about the nature of the movement, the kind of issues it has taken up, its directions and perspectives and its differences from western movements.About the AuthorRadha Kumar is Senior Fellow and Director of the project on Ethnic Conflict, Partition and Post-Conflict Reconstruction at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. She is author of Divide and Fall? Bosnia in the Annals of Partition (Verso: 1997,1999), and A History of Doing: Women’s Movements in India from 1800-1990 (Kali for Women and Verso: 1993). Kumar was formerly Executive Director, Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly, and has written frequently for Foreign Affairs, Economic and Political Weekly, The Times of India and The Nation.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0860916650/103-7230232-3285410?v=glance&n=283155&s=books&v=glancehttp://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/bobuk/scripts/home.jsp?action=search&source=3266474136&type=isbn&term=0860916650

Governance/Public Policy

The Crisis in Government Acountability: Essays on Governance Reforms and India's Economic Performance by Dilip MookherjeeOUP India, 2004, 166 p., ISBN: 0195667875,

DescriptionThese essays by Dilip Mookherjee share a common theme - the importance and challenge of second and third generation reforms in the Indian economy in the era of increasing role of market forces. The author reviews in detail the following four areas: delivery systems for goods and services supplied by the government; tax collection; legal institutions; and regulation of the financial sector. A comprehensive introduction pulls together both theoretical and empirical context to the issues discussed in the text. SynopsisThese essays by Mookherjee share a common theme: the importance and challenge of second and third generation reforms in the Indian economy in the era of increasing role of market forces. The author reviews: delivery systems for goods and services supplied by the government; tax collection; legal institutions; and regulation of the financial sector. About the authorDilip Mookherjee, Professor. Ph.D., London School of Economics, Professor of Economics, Boston University

(http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0195667875/reviews/026-6181109-9434849)

Hinduism12

Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation : Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism by Tanika Sarkar

Indiana University Press, Permanent Black, 2001, 290 p., ISBN 81-7824-007-6.

Contents:

Introduction. 1. Hindu wife, Hindu nation: domesticity and nationalism in nineteenth-century Bengal. 2. Talking about scandals: religion, law and love in late nineteenth-century Bengal. 3. A book of her own, a life of her own: the autobiography of a nineteenth-century woman. 4. Bankimchandra and the impossibility of a political agenda. 5. Imagining Hindu Rashtra : the Hindu and the Muslim in Bankimchandra’s writings. 6. Conjugality and Hindu nationalism: resisting colonial reason and the death of a child-wife. 7. A pre-history of rights? The age of consent debates in colonial Bengal. 8. Nationalist iconography: the image of women in nineteenth-century Bengali literature. 9. Aspects of contemporary Hindutva theology: the voice of Sadhvi Rithambhara.

"What are some of the major Hindu ideas and traditions that have shaped the dominant conceptions of ‘womanhood’, ‘domesticity’, ‘wifeliness’, ‘mothering’ and India as a ‘Hindu’ nation? Tanika Sarkar’s book examines literary and social traditions, elite voices and popular culture the rhetoric and the ground realities which have together, through complex historical processes, created the lived reality of north India today.

"Her book includes a searching critique of Bankimchandra Chatterjee, whose novel, Anandamath, is among the best known instances of a proto-nationalist definition of Hindu nationhood. Tanika Sarkar also examines scandal literature, rumours, and the popular press in colonial times for ‘Subaltern’ ideas that have shaped contemporary India. She concludes with a detailed examination of how earlier Indian religious traditions of saintliness, sacrifice, heroism, and warfare are being subverted or transformed by militant and fundamentalist forms of Hinduism.

"This book is a brilliant historicization and scathing critique of many of the dominant concepts by which Indians generally, and north Indian Hindus more specifically, think and live today. Historians, sociologists, political scientists and serious readers who wish to understand how the immediate past has shaped India’s life will value this incisive work of a major historian." (jacket)

About the AuthorDr. Tanika Sarkar is Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Her first book is Bengal 1928-1934: The Politics of Protest (Delhi: Oxford University, 1987). Recent publications include Words to Win: The Making of ‘Amar Jiban’, A Modern Autobiography (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1999), and Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001). Those reflect her interest to analyze religion, gender and politics in Indian context.

https :// www . vedamsbooks . com / no 22560. htm

Beyond Nationalist Frames : Relocating Postmodernism, Hindutva, History by Sumit Sarkar.

New Delhi, Permanent Black, 2002, vi, 265 p., ISBN 81-7824-026-2.

Contents :

Introduction. 1. Colonial times: clocks and Kali-yuga. 2. Identities and histories: some lower-caste narratives from early twentieth-century Bengal. 3. Intimations of Hindutva : ideologies, caste, and class in post-Swadeshi Bengal. 4. Two Muslim tracts for peasants: Bengal 1909-1910. 5. Nationalism and ‘Stri-Swadhinata’: the contexts and meanings of Rabindranath’s Ghare-Baire. 6. Postmodernism and the writing of history. 7. The BJP bomb and nationalism. 8. Christianity, Hindutva, and the question of Conversions. 9. Hindutva and history. Index.

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"The political context in which the historian of India finds himself today, says Sumit Sarkar, is dominated by the advance of the Hindu Right and globalised forms of capitalism. Simultaneously, the historian’s intellectual context is now dominated by the marginalisation of all varieties of Marxism and an academic shift to cultural studies and postmodern critiques. In this scenario, how may a thinking historian who retains an unfashionable commitment to socialist-feminist values, alongside a democratic political vision formulated within Indian conditions of skewed social development, practice the craft of history?

"This excellent set of essays collectively constitutes Sumit Sarkar’s answer to this central question. A nostalgic return to the orthodoxies of an earlier age, he argues, would be ostrich-like. An uncritical acceptance of postcolonial positions and postmodern theories, he demonstrates, is intellectually unpalatable. And as for the contemporary fundamentalist directions of Hindu politics, he unearths a rich hoard of suppressions, evasions and distortions of history by which a nation is sidetracked from rationality and hoodwinked into the most modern form of false consciousness.

"The theme which runs through and unites these essays is Sarkar’s consistent critique of the limits of ‘nationalist frames’. He shows that despite their divergent forms—chauvinistic or benign, political-statist or culturalist—nationalist frameworks have limited modern South Asian history. Sarkar argues forcefully for moving beyond such frames towards a flexibly Marxian social history and politics imbued with democratic, socialist-feminist, and internationalist values.

"This is a major collection by the best-known historian of modern India." (jacket)

https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no27208.htm

History and Politics

Modern Myths, Locked Minds: Secularism and Fundamentalism in Indiaby T.N. Madan. Oxford University Press, 1998 , xv, 323 p., ISBN: 0195640721

Contents :

Preface. I. Introduction: 1. Scope, Concepts, Method. 2. Ideology: religious tradition . 3. Secularization, secularism, the christian tradition and the enlightenment. 4 Secularization and secularism: social science perspectives. 5. Fundamentalism and pluralism. 7. Structure and method. II. The Sikh religious tradition: meanings of secularism: 1. Sikhism as this-worldly ethic. 2. The doctrine of two swords. 3. The secular state of Ranjit Singh. III. The Sikh religious tradition: fundamentalisms, old and new: 1. Fundamentalists or defenders of faith. 2. Exclusive Sikh identity. 3. Gurdwara agitation. 4. Sikh separatism. 5. After operation blue star, 1984-94. 6. Characteristics of Sikh. 7. Fundamentalism. IV: Islam in South Asia: from orthodoxy to fundamentalism: 1. Introduction. 2. Arrival of Islam in India: opportunities and dilemmas. 3. Religious authority versus secular power in medieval India. 4. Religious syncretism and revivalism. 5. Loss of power: Dar ul-Islam to Dar ul-Harb. 6. The revivalist hope: redemption by education: tradition versus. 7. Modernity. 8. Islamic fundamentalism in South Asia in the twentieth century. 9. Concluding remarks: lessons of comparison. V. Islam in South Asia: quest for pluralism: 1. Introduction. 2. Azad: pluralism as the politics of national liberation. 3. Azad: pluralism as a religious philosophy. 4. Azad: pluralism as cultural history concluding remarks. VI. The Hindu religious tradition: secularism as pluralism: 1. Introduction. 2. The unity of the sacred and the secular. 3. Religious pluralism. Appendix. VII. The Hindu religious tradition: revivalism and fundamentalism: 1. Reform and revivalism in the Nineteenth century. 2. The Arya Samaj. 3. Hindutva and the RSS. 4. Gandhi's Hinduism. VIII. The crisis of Indian secularism: 1. Introduction. 2. A Gandhian perspective. 3. Nehru on religion, politics and secularism. 4. Secularism and the constitution. 5. The majority-minority conundrum. 6. Concluding remarks. Epilogue. Glossary. References. Index.

From the Preface: "This book owes its existence to the anxieties flowing from religious assertiveness in recent decades. Secularism and fundamentalism are presented here as modern ideologies that purvey images of the world as the only two options available to an individual. Though opposed by

14

definition, as it were, T.N. Madan argues that they are also similar in significant ways. such as in their concern with power and intolerance of alternatives. The stridency with which they are both voiced has given rise to anxieties about the future. Professor Madan brings the voice of scholarly reason, first to bear upon the western tradition that has generated these ideologies and then to scrutinize the Sikh, Islamic and Hindu traditions which have been used to construct the two rival ideologies. What is offered is a comparison of overall traditions seen over a long period of time unfolding the markedly distinctive historical experiences of each. The author queries crucial formulations or key episodes in relation to the issues of secularism and fundamentalism" (jacket)

About the Author

T.N. Madan is Honorary Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi. His books include Family and Kinship, Pathways: Approaches to the Study of Society in India and Religion in India

https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no12010.htm

Explorations in Connected History : From the Tagus to the Ganges by Sanjay Subrahmanyam

DescriptionThis volume looks at a range of sources in various archived to reconstruct a history of South Asia in a wider Eurasian context, thus the use of the term connected history

History at the Limit of World-History by Ranajit Guha.

New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2003, x, 116 p., ISBN 0-19-566485-X.

Contents:

Preface. 1. Introduction. 2. Historicality and the prose of the world. 3. The prose of history, or the invention of world-history. 4. Experience, wonder, and the pathos of historicality. 5. Epilogue: the poverty of historiography – a poet’s reproach. Appendix: historicality in literature/Rabindranath Tagore. Notes. Glossary. Index.

"The past is not just, as has been famously said, another country with foreign customs: it is a contested and colonized terrain. Indigenous histories have been expropriated, eclipsed, sometimes even wholly eradicated, in the service of imperialist aims buttressed by a distinctly western philosophy of history. Ranajit Guha, perhaps the most influential figure in postcolonial and subaltern studies at work today, offers a critique by such historiography of taking issue with the Hegelian concept of world-history. That concept, he contends, reduces the course of human history to the amoral record of states and empires, great men and clashing civilizations. It renders invisible the quotidian experience of ordinary people and casts off all that came before it into the nether-existence known as ‘prehistory’.

"On the Indian subcontinent, Guha believes, this western way of looking at the past was so successfully insinuated by British colonization that few today can see clearly its ongoing and pernicious influence. He argues that to break out of this habit of mind and go beyond the Eurocentric and statist limit of world-history, historians should learn from literature to make their narratives doubly inclusive: to extend them in scope not only to make room for the pasts of the so-called peoples without history but to address the historicality of everyday life as well. Only then, as Guha demonstrates through an examination of Rabindranath Tagore’s critique of historiography, can we recapture a more fully human past of ‘experience and wonder’.

"This fascinating and passionately argued study will be welcomed by students and scholars of Indian history and sociology, as well as informed general readers interested in the nature and direction of contemporary historical inquiry, both in the subcontinent and elsewhere."

About the Author

Ranajit Guha, University of Sussex and Australian National University15

https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no31453.htm

The Idea of India by Sunil Khilnani

Khilnani (politics, Univ. of London) offers a penetrating analysis of the spread of democracy to ever more diverse segments of the Indian body politic. Juxtaposed to this trend is the breakup of the Congress Party's hegemony and the subsequent growth of regional political parties. With the ebbing of congressional power and the elimination of its Socialist economic constraints, the Indian economy has embraced greater growth as the number of Indians living below the poverty line diminishes. Khilnani attributes much of this growth to India's cities, which emerge as paradoxical points of exclusion and economic dynamism when compared with rural India. In the process, national identity has in Khilnani's vision been subsumed by regional political focuses, urban and rural divisions, and greater religious identification. Hence, India's future will necessitate the continuance of a viable democracy sustaining the economic, cultural, and social diversity of the subcontinent. The author skillfully draws out the ironies and paradoxes of Indian history with a subtle, illuminating prose. For informed readers.?John F. Riddick, Central Michigan Univ. Lib., Mt. PleasantCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Remembering Partition : Violence, Nationalism and History in India (Contemporary South Asia by Gyanendra Pandey,

Cambridge University Press, 2001, 232 p., ISBN: 0521002508Synopsis

Gyan Pandey's latest book is a compelling examination of the violence that marked the partition of India in 1947, and how the preceding events have been documented. In the process, the author provides a critique of history-writing and nationalist myth-making. He also investigates how local forms of community are established by the way in which violent events are remembered and written about. The book will be of interest to historians of South Asia, to sociologists and to anyone concerned with the Indian subaltern story.

About the AuthorGyanendra Pandey is Professor of Anthropology and History at Johns Hopkins University. He was a founder member of the Subaltern Studies group, and is the author of many publications including Hindus and Others: The Question of identity in India Today (1993) and The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (1990).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521002508/qid=1134567579/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/103-1258462-5916606?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen Allen Lane; 2005, 256 p., ISBN: 0713996870

SynopsisIndia is a large and very diverse country with many distinct pursuits, vastly different convictions, widely divergent customs, and a veritable feast of viewpoints. The Argumentative Indian brings together an illuminating selection of writings from Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen that outline the need to understand contemporary India in the light of its long argumentative tradition. The understanding and use of this rich argumentative tradition are critically important, Sen argues, for the success of India's democracy, the defence of its secular politics, the removal of inequalities related to class, caste, gender and community, and the pursuit of sub-continental peace.

(http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0713996870/qid=1122448615/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_3_1/026-8685766-1107615)

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History and Social/Cultural Change

Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies by Dipesh Chakrabarty Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Paperback: 180 pages, 2002; ISBN: 0226100391Book DescriptionIn Habitations of Modernity, Dipesh Chakrabarty explores the complexities of modernism in India and seeks principles of humaneness grounded in everyday life that may elude grand political theories. The questions that motivate Chakrabarty are shared by all postcolonial historians and anthropologists: How do we think about the legacy of the European Enlightenment in lands far from Europe in geography or history? How can we envision ways of being modern that speak to what is shared around the world, as well as to cultural diversity? How do we resist the tendency to justify the violence accompanying triumphalist moments of modernity?

Chakrabarty pursues these issues in a series of closely linked essays, ranging from a history of the influential Indian series Subaltern Studies to examinations of specific cultural practices in modern India, such as the use of khadi--Gandhian style of dress--by male politicians and the politics of civic consciousness in public spaces. He concludes with considerations of the ethical dilemmas that arise when one writes on behalf of social justice projects.

About the Author

Dipesh Chakrabarty is a social historian whose work focuses on theoretical issues in historiography and nationalism, particularly postcolonialism. Before joining Chicago's faculty, he taught at the University of Melbourne, where he was the Ashworth Reader in Social Theory and director of the Ashworth Centre for Social Theory. While in Australia, he was extensively involved as a public speaker for the Amnesty International campaign on human-rights abuses in India. He has been a visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley, the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, and Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

Identity and Minorities

Culture and the Making of Identity in Contemporary India/edited by Kamala Ganesh and Usha Thakkar. New Delhi, Sage Pub., 2005, ISBN 81-7829-524-5, 274 p.

Contents: Foreword. Introduction: fields of culture: conversations and contestations/Kamala Ganesh. I. 1. From interior landscapes into cyberspace: fluidity and dynamics of tradition/Kapila Vatsyayan. 2. From Sankara to fusion: an Indian musical spectrum/Ashok Ranade. 3. Lineages of the modern in Indian art: the making of a national history/Tapati Guha-Thakurta. 4. Divided by a common language: the novel in India, in English and in English translation/Meenakshi Mukherjee. II. 5. Translating sensibility/Dilip Chitre. 6. What does translation mean in India?/U.R. Ananthamurthy. 7. Inter-culturalism and the question of body/Anuradha Kapur. 8. Inter-culturalism and intra-culturalism in theatre: a personal response/Vijaya Mehta. III. 9. Stri Shakti: dimensions of woman power in India/Vimla Bahuguna. 10. Vimla Bahuguna and the legacy of Gandhian politics/Usha Thakkar. 11. Heritage of Bhakti: Sant women's writings in Marathi/Vidyut Bhagwat. 12. Feminism and feminist expression: a dialogue/Devaki Jain. 13. 'Re' inscribing the past: inserting women into Indian history/Uma Chakravarti. 14. The humanist perspective and the civilizing role of history/Mariam Dossal. IV. 15. Indigenous knowledges and the hegemony of science/Claude Alvares. 16. Towards an informed science criticism: the debate on science in post independence India/Gita Chadha. About the editors and contributors. Index."The long-standing and continuing debate on Indian culture and on what constitutes 'Indianness' manifests itself in many ways, some more subtle than others. In India, the historical passage to modernity, mediated by colonial authority and by nationalist resistance to it, has impacted all cultural disciplines. This collection of 17 original essays provides insights into the various ways in

17

which the interrelated issues of culture, identity and Indianness are expressed in contemporary times.Divided into four sections, the contributions range from detailed and scholarly essays to critical reviews of literature and reflections on experience. The first two sections deal with music, art, literature and translation, theatre and philosophy. These are fields of knowledge and practice in which there are well-developed indigenous traditions. Sections three and four cover fields in which the very existence of indigenous traditions is a matter of controversy and debate--feminism, the writing of history, and science. Overall, the fields of inquiry chosen are those where traditional practices have entered into a dialogue with 'modern' perspectives, leading to significant outcomes.The contributors--distinguished specialists writing for a general readership--outline and evaluate significant developments since independence in their respective fields. This interdisciplinary volume testifies that the theme of identity continues to be a potent reference point, even in the more abstract, formal, academic, creative and symbolic realms of culture. It will attract a wide readership in disciplines such as cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, the visual and performing arts, and gender studies."

(https :// www . vedamsbooks . com / no 40760. htm )

Caste in Question: Identity or Hierarchy? edited by Dipankar Gupta New Delhi, Sage, 2004, xxi,., ISBN 81-7829-441-9, 255 p.

Contents: Preface and acknowledgements. Introduction: the certitudes of caste: when identity trumps hierarchy/Dipankar Gupta. 1. Caste Panchayats and the policing of marriage in Haryana: enforcing kinship and territorial exogamy/Prem Chowdhry. 2. 'We (Yadavs) are a caste of politicians': caste and modern politics in a North Indian town/Lucia Michelutti. 3. Jains, caste and hierarchy in North Gujarat/John E. Cort. 4. Hierarchy, difference and the caste system: a study of rural Bihar/Gaurang R. Sahay. 5. Replication or dissent? Culture and institutions among ''Untouchable' scheduled castes in Karnataka/G.K. Karanth. 6. Sikhism and the caste question: dalits and their politics in contemporary Punjab/Surinder S. Jodhka. 7. Inventing caste history: dalit mobilisation and nationalist past/Badri Narayan. 8. 'The Bedias are Rajputs': caste consciousness of a marginal community/Anuja Agrawal. Index.

(https://www.vedamsbooks.com/no38315.htm)

India and Islam.Muslims in India

The Diversity of Muslim Women's Lives in India

by Zoya Hasan (Editor), Ritu Menon (Editor)Rutgers University Press, 2005, Hardcover: 353 pages, ISBN: 0813537037Synopsis To what extent does Muslim personal law, such as polygamy and triple talaq (the allowance for men to instantly divorce their wives), affect the lives of Muslim women? Are these factors more or less important than other lifestyle issues such as socioeconomic status?

Over the past several decades, the most influential approaches to the study of Muslim women and nearly all the significant campaigns for their rights have focused on religious practices and the urgency to reform Islamic laws. Such focused views, however, give the false sense that religion is the main, if not the only, aspect of Muslim women’s lives.

In order to broaden the lens through which this demographic is typically seen, a group of researchers in India carried out a large and unprecedented study of one of the most disadvantaged sections of Indian society. The editors of The Diversity of Muslim Women’s Lives in India bring together this research in a comprehensive collection of informative and revealing case studies. The essays examine Muslim identity, not only in terms of religious doctrine, but as a heterogeneous set of characteristics produced at the intersections of class, religion, and gender.

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Addressing issues of law, politics, education, race, and other neglected secular subjects, this volume is essential reading for policy-makers, social activists, and scholars.

"This volume succeeds in questioning the stereotype of the defenseless, victimized, burqa-clad Muslim woman, by providing data about the lives of real Muslim women as they maneuver and survive, defend their rights, manage property, and become active in politics."—Gail Minault, professor of history, University of Texas at Austin

About the AuthorZoya Hasan is a professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has published widely in academic journals and periodicals and is the author of Dominance and Mobilisation: Rural Politics in Western Uttar Pradesh and Quest for Power: Oppositional Movements and Post-Congress Politics in Uttar Pradesh. With Ritu Menon, she is coauthor of Unequal Citizens: A Study of Muslim Women in India.

Ritu Menon is a publisher and writer. She is the coauthor of Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition and Unequal Citizens: A Study of Muslim Women in India, and editor of No Woman’s Land: Women from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh Write on the Partition of India. She has also edited several anthologies of stories by Indian women.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813537037/qid=1134417685/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-9326570-6732165?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

Mass Culture

The Secret Politics of Our Desires: Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinemaedited by Ashis NandyZed Books ; 1999, ISBN: 1856495167, 240 p.

SynopsisThis work deals with an important and too-often ignored area of cultural studies. To examine the enormous industry of Indian popular cinema is to study Indian modernity at its rawest. The questions and perspctives this book presents aim to provoke a thinking of cinema that is political in the widest sense - from its importance in ideas of nation and national cultural formation to psycho-social perspectives on identity, class and gender.(http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1856495167/qid=1122450219/sr=8-7/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i7_xgl/026-8685766-1107615)About the AuthorAshis Nandy is a political psychologist and sociologist of science who has worked on cultures of knowledge, visions, and dialogue of civilizations. At present he is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies and Chairperson of the Committee for Cultural Choices and Global Futures, both located in Delhi.

Media/Internet

India's Communication Revolution: From Bullock Carts to Cyber Marts by Arvind Singhal, Everett M. Rogers Sage Publications Ltd, 2001,ISBN:8170369479, 297p.

Synopsis

This book explores the recent social changes in Indian society, resulting from the applications of new communication technologies such as satellites, cable television and the Internet. Though far from becoming an information society, it shows how India is making remarkable progress in that direction through an informatization strategy: the process through which communication technologies are used for furthering socio-economic development.

About the Author

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Arvind Singhal is Professor of Communication Studies and Presidential Research Scholar at Ohio University. Winner of the CHOICE 2002 Outstanding Academic Title

(http://www.arvindsinghal.com/books.htm)http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0761994726/qid=1122803197/sr=1-3/

ref=sr_1_0_3/026-6181109-9434849

Nirvana under the rain tree: Stories of fortune and flameouts from India's Internet revolution by Samar HalarnkarBooks Today , 2002, ISBN: 8187478381, 232 p

SynopsisWhy would you write a book that might get outdated even as you finished keying it in? Either because the story was powerful and needed to be told or because you were supremely confident of your writing abilities. Samar Halarnkar’s book brings to life the spirit of the Internet nerds who dared to dream. Of course, many dreams turned out to be just that, but we do have the right to dream on, don’t we?

Halarnkar’s life is forever intertwined with the Internet. He found the girl who was to become his wife through the medium and the relationship developed through e-mails. "Over the next few months, the anonymity of the Internet allowed us to share our joys, our sorrows, our ambitions, our passions — and all this without ever knowing what the other looked like, not even what the other sounded like. No photos, no phones. That was the unspoken, unwritten rule of our relationship." This has a beautiful real-life ending, and they will, hopefully live happily ever after.

Thousand of young men and women all over the country were swept off their feet during the great Internet euphoria of 1999-2000. In Mumbai they work with the Internet that you see but in Bangalore they work with the Internet you don’t see, as the book says. Everyone who could handle a mouse and a keyboard had dreams of making millions and this book has vignettes of those whose enterprises garnered at least a million dollars in investment from venture capitalists. You have Alok Kejriwal of contests win.com whose father, a traditional businessman, scoffed at his idea in 1998. But with the crucial help from Cyrus Oshidar, MTV’s creative head, he ploughed on to carve out his own Internet success story.

Impulsesoft, in Bangalore, is far removed from the flash lifestyles, neon-lit billboards and conspicuous consumption seen in the companies that had to struggle for the second round of funding, and did not see the third. It is still around, providing Bluetooth technology solutions worldwide.

About the Author

SAMAR HALARNKAR was born in Kolar Gold Fields and grew up in small towns across north Karnataka. He started work as a crime reporter with 'The Times of India', Bangalore, in 1990 after which he switched to science writing. He has an M.A. degree from the 'University of Missouri-Columbia, US. He has worked for the Week Business World and India Today and is presently Editor, Special Projects, for Business Today magazine.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2002/20021104/login/books.htm

Politics After Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India  by Arvind Rajagopal West Nyack: Cambridge Univ Pr, 2001, ISBN 0521648394, 325p.

SynopsisIn January 1987, the Indian state-run television began broadcasting a Hindu epic in serial form, The Ramayana, to nationwide audiences, violating a decades-old taboo on religious partisanship. What resulted was the largest political campaign in post-independence times, around the symbol of Lord Ram, led by Hindu nationalists. The complexion of Indian politics was irrevocably changed thereafter. In this book, Arvind Rajagopal analyses this extraordinary series of events. While audiences may have thought they were harking back to an epic golden age, Hindu nationalist

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leaders were embracing the prospects of neoliberalism and globalisation. Television was the device that hinged these movements together, symbolising the new possibilities of politics, at once more inclusive and authoritarian. Simultaneously, this study examines how the larger historical context was woven into and changed the character of Hindu nationalism. About the Author

Arvind Rajagopal - Associate Professor, Culture and Communication Interests include political economy of culture, contemporary South Asia, social theory, audiences and reception theory, and globalization. Author of Politics After Television: Religious Nationalism and the Retailing of Hinduness (Cambridge, 2001). Guest Editor of Social Text No. 68, on Technologies of Perception and the Cultures of Globalization. Coauthor of Mapping Hegemony: Television News and Industrial Conflict (1992) and several articles in scholarly journals. Recipient of Rockefeller Fellowship at the University of Chicago (1993) and awards from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (1996, 1997) and the American Institute of Indian Studies (1994, 1997, 2000). Member of the School of Socil Science, at the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton (1998-1999). (http://education.nyu.edu/education/steinhardt/db/faculty/1221/Dept_design/0)

Journalism: Changing Society, Emerging Trends by Jagadish ChakravarthyNew Delhi, Authors Press, 2003, 247p., ISBN: 8172731485

Synopsis

The new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are changing journalism, as we know it, in profound ways. They are changing how news is produced by including the audience in the story telling process. ICTs have revolutionized the day-to-day work of journalism, and they provide new opportunities for journalists to work better, more efficiently and more professionally. If the information society is truly about providing the knowledge, skills and services that will enrich peoples, lives and bolster democratic participation at large, then journalists must have access to new technologies that will strengthen their professional capacity to ensure reliable, quality, and accurate information for public consumption- whatever the mode of its dissemination. The present publication describes the unprecedented opportunities provided by the information society to expand the media landscape. It explains the role of new media technologies in strengthening democratic pluralism through citizens’ rapid access to new areas of quality journalism with the capacity to influence policy making at local, national and regional level. The content of the book will definitely contribute to enhance readers understanding of the media transitions and its effects on the society. It will be a highly valuable reference tool for all the beneficiaries of the cyber world.

About the AuthorJagadish Chakravarthy is a well-known freelance journalist. He did his postgraduate degree in journalism and mass communications. He has a wide-range experience in reporting for both domestic and foreign newspapers and newswires. His contributions in the area of broadcast as well as printmedia communication are highly acclaimed. He has a keen interest in the emerging fields of cybermedia and online journalism, and has countributed a number of articles on the subjects in various journals and leading newspapers. He is associated with many national as well as international organizations of repute involved in education, training and development, journalism and communication.

http://www.bagchee.com/BookDisplay.aspx?Bkid=B21347

Multiculturalism

Culture and Economy in the India edited by Bhikhu Parekh, Gurharpal Singh, Steven Vertovec Routledge, 2003, ISBN: 0415270057, 224 p.

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The Indian diaspora, with between nine and twelve million people living outside South Asia, is one of the largest and most significant in the world today. This book examines the Indian diaspora in the US, Canada, the UK, East Africa, South Africa, the West Indies, Southeast Asia and Australasia focusing on demography, economy, culture and future development.(http://www.routledge-ny.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?sku=&isbn=0415270057&parent_id=&pc=)

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