With
the landmark Delhi High Court victory in July 2009, sexuality and the law entered
mainstream, legal and public discourse in India inviting both celebration and resistance.
How do we understand this conversation? The July judgement stands on the shoulders of a
much longer history, argue the writers in this contemporary and critical volume on queering
the law. A longer history that shapes, unsettles and challenges both legal and queer histories
and begins new conversations on the intersections between bodies, politics, activism, sexuality,
identity and law. Some playful, some critical and others reflective and irreverent, this unique collection
of pieces brings the life, structures and institutions of law alive and shine with relevance in the contemporary moment.
Arvind Narrain is a human rights activist and lawyer
with the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, of which he is a
founder member. He is the author of Queer: Despised
Sexuality, Law and Social Change (2004) and co-editor of
Because I Have a Voice: Queer Politics in India (2005).
Alok Gupta is a lawyer and queer rights activist.
Page Extent: 650pp. Price: Rs 650
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Paperback
Sexualities Series
Rights: Available
Edited by K. Satchidanandan (in collaboration with the India
International Centre)
In India, every river is a source of myth. Legends surround them, lives get intertwined with their waves,
even as fortunes rise and fall with their ebb and flow. Ganga, Yamuna, Sindhu, Saraswati, Brahmaputra, Sarayu,
Mahanadi, Krishna, Kaveri, Periyar: name them, and you encounter gods, goddesses, princes, princesses, demons
and fairies whose tales they invoke. Indeed, the river has meaning for everyone, whether our lives are directly
dependent on one or not.
This anthology of poems about the river from different parts of India, and in its myriad languages compiled by
Professor K. Satchidanandan brings to life memories, stories and metaphors associated with rivers through the generations.
Featuring the work of stalwarts such as Rabindranath Tagore, Iqbal, Dilip Chitre, Mamang Dai, J. P. Das, Keki N. Daruwalla,
Ashok Vajpeyi and Padma Sachdev, among many others, with many of the poems presented here in the original language and script,
apart from the translations in English, this unique volume is a collector’s treasure.
K. Satchidanandan, poet, critic, editor and
translator, was Professor of English at Christ College,
University of Calicut, Kerala, editor of Indian
Literature, the journal of the Sahitya Akademi and later
its Chief Executive. He is now Director and Professor,
School of Translation Studies and training, IGNOU, Delhi.
Whitewash, Red Stone is the first ever published, comprehensive
history of Catholic-church architecture in Goa, from the
first churches built in that territory in the early 16th
century to the first contemporary churches built in the
1950s. Beginning with the churches in and around Old Goa,
the book goes on to discuss the peculiarities of other
churches scattered through Goa, aiming at demonstrating that
the churches of Goa were Indian Catholicism’s first and
foremost cultural manifestation.
Paulo Varela Gomes is an Architectural historian
based in Coimbra, Portugal. He was, till recently, Director
of Fundacao Oriente India at Panjim, Goa. He was also the
presenter of two television documentary series for the
Portuguese television, one of which was about the Portuguese
in India (O Mundo de Cá, 1995).
Page extent: 248 including over 200 illustrations
Price: Rs 450
Size: Crown Quarto
Binding: Paperback
ISBN:978-93-80403-00-7
Rights available
रण में हम खड़े
सहानुभूति नहीं चाहिए
हमारी भावनाओं को समझो - हम
मांगे जो है
हमारा और कुछ नहीं चाहिए
माँ हमें अपना लें
पिता हमें अपना लें
समाज हमें अपना ले -
और
विश्व हमें अपना
ले
हमें संपत्ति मिलनी चाहिए - श्रीमान
आनंद हमें चाहिए
घर हमें
चाहिए - श्रीमान
और काम हमें चाहिए
व्यक्तिगत कहानियों को न भूलते हुए ए. रेवती
अरावनियों के सामूहिक जीवनों को स्वर देने में सफल रही हैं | दूसरे शव्दों में किसी
एक सच्ची कहानी का दावा नहीं है
बल्कि बहुत से तारों का दावा दृढ स्वर हैं जो विभिन्न बिन्दुओ पर एक हो जाते हैं
लेकिन विशिष्ट और अलग बने रहते हैं
|
‘Claude Levi-Strauss was one of the dominating postwar infludences in French intellectual life and the leading exponent of Structuralism in the social sciences; his work inspired a school of academic followers in the school of academic followers in the 1960s and 1970s in disciplines ranging form music to literary criticism.’
The Telegraph
‘Claude Levi-Strauss’ revolutionary studies of what was once called ‘primitive man’ transformed Western understanding of the nature of culture, custom and civilization. His legacy is imposing. Mythologiques, his four-volume work about the structure of native mythology in the Americas, attempts nothing less than an interpretation of the world of culture and custom, shaped by analysis of several hundred myths of little –known tribes and traditions. The volumes, The Raw and the Cooked, From Honey to Ashes, The origin of Table Manners and The naked Man, Published from 1964 to 1971, challenge the reader with their complex interweaving of theme and detail.’
New York Times
‘…one of the preeminent anthropologists of the 20th century whose erudite, often mind-bendingly labored studies of indigenous Brazilian tribes led to influential theories about human behavior and culture…’
The Washington Post
Dipankar Gupta taught sociology
and social anthropology at Jawaharlal Nehru University for
about 30 years, from January 1980 to July 2009, when he took
early retirement. Author and editor of 15 titles, his latest
publication is The Caged Phoenix: Can India Fly ? He
has taught in several universities in India and abroad.
Page Extent: 172pp.
Price: Rs. 295
Size: 7.75" x 5"
Binding: Paperback
Rights: Available
Set between
1989 and 1994, the film traces the life of Nikhil Kapoor: the state all-round swimming champion.
A committed sportsman, Nikhil’s life changes radically when he finds out that he is HIV-positive.
Even as he faces harassment from authorities and heartbreaking rejection from his parents,
the only two people who stand by him in his fight for justice, life, love and dignity are his
sister Anamika and his boyfriend Nigel. Published for the first time, the screenplay of this
powerful yet poignant film, brings Nikhil’s story back for its fans with the same intensity as
the motion picture. The text of the film is supported by behind-the-scenes visuals and stills
from the film, as well as testimonials from the cast and crew about how this film changed them
in small but critical ways.
Onir is the director of films like My Brother Nikhil
and Sorry Bhai.
Page
Extent: 128pp. + 8 pp. colour section
Price: Rs. 350
Size: Royal
Binding: Paperback
Rights: Available
An
unusual and engrossing effort by a career academic, this
book tells the life story of the Italian Capuchin friar,
Padre Marco della Tomba (1726–1803). Padre Marco worked in Bettiah, near Patna, as a missionary of the Tibet-Hindustan
Mission sponsored by the Congregation of Propaganda Fide in
Rome, and during his time there, he recorded and commented
on a number of critical events of the late eighteenth
century in the subcontinent's history. The fascinating
account is told in the first person since more than half the
book is translated directly from essays and letters written
in Italian by Padre Marco, while the remaining parts have
been written by David Lorenzen mostly on the basis of
Marco's letters and essays and those of some of his
colleagues in the Mission. For long we have read volumes on
the tumultuous eighteenth century by South Asian historians.
This unusual effort places an important source directly in
the hands of interested readers.
David N. Lorenzen is Professor of South Asian History
at the Center for Asian and African Studies, El Colegio de
Mexico.
Page Extent: 292pp. + 8pp. colour section
Price: Rs. 350
Size: 7.75" x 5"
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 978-81-906668-8-6
Available in South Asia only
This new edition of Devotional Islam and Politics in British India brings to readers once again Usha Sanyal’s nuanced study of the Sunni scholar Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi, his writing and the Ahl-e Sunnat movement. During the formative period of this movement, between the 1880s and 1920, the debates in which the Ahl-e Sunnat ‘ulama' engaged with other north Indian ‘ulama’ pertained mainly to religion. The ‘ulama' tried to inculcate in individual Muslims a stricter adherence to the sharia or law to bring about reform or to engage in tajdid (renewal of faith). This effort at renewal was inspired in many instances by the example of the Prophet Muhammad. Their efforts at reform resulted in the opening of schools, the publication of tracts and journals, and the writing of fatwas (legal rulings) on concrete problems raised by members of the community with the ‘ulama' emerging in the process as an important source of authority in the absence of Muslim state power.
‘… the book is an exceedingly interesting and informative study of how the Muslim mind had been working in pre-partition India under the impact of the religious resurgence of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.’
The Journal of Religious Studies
Usha Sanyal has taught at Rutgers University and now teaches at Queens University of Charlotte. She is the author of
Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi: In the Path of the Prophet (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005). Currently, she is working on a book about Barelwi women’s texts, and is coediting, with David Gilmartin and Sandria Freitag, a volume of essays entitled
Muslim Voices: Community and the Self in South Asia.
Page Extent: 392 pp.
Price: Rs 395
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 978-81-906668-6-2
Rights: Available
‘McLeod has done more for Sikh history than anyone now alive. In fact, if there is a Father of Sikh History, it is Hew Mcleod.’
Rukun Advani, The Hindu
‘It is because of a few writers, and Hew McLeod above all, that the world has any inkling of Sikhism as an independent religion, with a unique, universal and timeless world view. He brought Sikhism to Western academia.’
Jaideep Sarin, Thaindian News
‘Hew was renowned for his openness and his readiness to answer any question and to read any manuscript. This generosity, together with his precocious embrace of email, placed him at the centre of an international scholarly community.’
Tony Ballantyne, The Guardian
Hew McLeod’s seminal studies include The Evolution of the
Sikh community (1975), Who is a Sikh? The Problem of Sikh
Identity (1989), The Janam Sakhi (1980), The Chaupa Singh
Rahit-Nama (1987), Early Sikh tradition (1980) and Sikhs of
the Khalsa Rahit (2003).
Page Extent: 380 pp.
Price: Rs 350
Size: 7.75”x5”
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 978-81-906668-7-9
Rights: Available
Saurabh Dube’s has been an extraordinarily articulate
voice providing distinctive perspectives on a wide range of
subjects in modern Indian history for over two decades.
After Conversion offers diversely focused but conceptually
integrated and characteristically ambitious essays.…’
ANN GOLD
‘Dube’s writings have always been characterized by a stylish
verve and the ability to approach old issues in interesting
and intriguing ways, and that is again the case here. … By
decentering the conventional privileging of the moment of
conversion, Dube provides a very differently nuanced
understanding of conversion….This is going to be a book that
will be valuable to scholars across disciplines because of
the patience, theoretical rigour, and empirical wealth
with which it pursues its questions.’
AJAY SKARIA
After Conversion imaginatively addresses issues of
modernity and its margins, based upon an interplay between a
variety of Western and non-Western perspectives. Saurabh
Dube critically considers questions of conversion by
examining colonial writings of a vernacular Christianity and
by tracking the transformations of caste and sect in South
Asia. He provides personal portraits of his anthropologist
father as well as of an important visual artist in order to
convey the dense sensuousness and moving contradictions of
everyday worlds. Together, Dube incisively explores the
mutual intersections between culture and power and the past
and the present, while prudently unravelling the ways in
which academic categories and social worlds come together
yet fall apart.
Saurabh Dube is Professor of History, Center for Asian and
African Studies, El Colegio de México, Mexico.
Page Extent: 224pp. + 8pp. colour section Price: Rs 325 Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Paperback ISBN: 978-81-906186-6-3 Rights: Available
Series: New Perspectives on Indian Pasts
Kyla Pasha's poems sparkle with the rediscovery of song’s electricity while losing
none of the sophisticated edge of argument. Pasha’s poems move in several directions,
unconstrained by doctrinaire notions of what a poem should do and be. She speaks to present,
distant or departed interlocutors; meditates on how we lose and find ourselves again
through travel; brings news of war to the front lawn, talks crisp commonsense to the
robed spectres of Death and Memory. The self opens to the world, and the world to the
self, in Pasha’s poems, through the realisation that we are formed by the irreducible
compound of love, betrayal, forgiveness and anger that swirls constantly in the fragile
crucible of the body.
In the South Asian context, ‘woman poet’ is all too often a title claimed by simple appeal to
physiognomy and asserted through conformity with the dictionary of feminist cliché. Kyla Pasha is
among the exceptions to this norm, who work to earn their title. She crafts her way through the
labyrinth of language, attending sensitively to image and cadence, the murmur of several tongues;
if her ear is tuned to the intimate tremors of the heart, it also records the epic turbulences both
of South Asia and a world in ecological and political meltdown.
Ranjit Hoskote
Kyla Pasha is a poet, journalist and occasional playwright based in Lahore.
Powerful and poetic, this feminist telling of the disturbing stories of women who have survived
domestic abuse, chooses to highlight resilience rather than victimhood. Nighat Gandhi’s tender,
involved narration of their voices plunges the reader helplessly into their worlds, into their
introspection, their strength and their vulnerability. In the best traditions of feminist scholarship,
Nighat puts her own self and politics at risk in the process, immersed as she is in ‘the beauty and
sadness of feminism’ that denies us the comfort of settled answers to ethical dilemmas.
Nivedita Menon
In conversation with eight women who survived lives of abuse, Nighat M. Gandhi draws attention to
the unexpected fact that despite years of suffering, many abuse survivors can and do live enhanced
lives and experience personal growth. Once these eight women find the sources of help which enable
them to leave the abusive situations they are in, there are significant changes in the women’s thoughts,
beliefs, and behaviour with respect to gender-based violence. Refreshingly, these eight women are
unanimous in their refusal to return to their previously abusive families. They value their newfound
independence much more than their previously socially-approved, limiting roles and duties as wives,
daughters-in-law and daughters. Most of them report a greater degree of satisfaction and well-being with
the new lives they have built. Nighat reflects upon her own ‘privileged’ status as an educated
middle-class woman living in a small town in North India as she records these poignant and empowering
encounters with valiant women who confirm that women are thriving and discovering the joys of building
new lives when old ones have let them down.
Nighat M. Gandhi is the author of Ghalib at Dusk (2009). She
is a Mental Health counselor based in allahabad.
भारतीय
शहरों में अनौपचारिक बस्तियों को जबरन उजाड़ दिया जाना इस बात
का सबसे बर्बर लक्षण है की हमारी समूची लोक नीति को संपन्न
वर्गों के हितसाधन का उपकरण बना दिया गया है | प्रस्तुत पुस्तक
में इस मुद्दे का न केवल एक अप्रतिम गहराई, गुणवत्ता और मानवीय
दृष्टि से अध्ययन किया गया है बल्कि नारीवादी नज़रिए के समावेश
से इस विषय को एक नया आयाम प्राप्त हो गया है |
- ज्याँ द्रेज़
जनवरी २००४ में केंद्रीय पर्यटन मंत्रालय ने ऐलान किया कि यमुना
के किनारे १०० एकड़ की पट्टी को तट विहार के रूप में विकसित किया
जायेगा | सरकार का कहना था की राष्ट्रमंडल खेलों के दौरान
सैलानियों को ये जगह बहुत भायेगी | फरवरी और अप्रैल २००४ में
इस इलाके के घरों और सामुदायिक इमारतों को दहा दिया गया जिससे
हज़ारों लोग पलक झपकते बेघर हो गए | दो साल के शोध अध्ययन पर
आधारित यह पुस्तक उजाड़े गए परिवारों में से लगभग ३,००० परिवारों
की ज़िन्दगी का जायज़ा लेती है जिन्हें शहर के हाशिए पर बवाना
में पुनर्वास दिया गया था | इस पुस्तक में उनकी पहचान, घरों,
अधिकारों और जीवन पर हो रहे हमलों को देखते हुए सम्मानजनक जीवन
जीने की उनकी चाह और संघर्ष का वर्णन किया गया है | इस पुस्तक
में बहुत सारे सामाजिक और आर्थिक संकेतकों के प्रसंग में इकट्ठा
किये गए आंकड़ों और साक्ष्यों के ज़रिए यह दर्शाया गया है की
बेदख़ली और पुनर्वास ने पुनर्वासित परिवारों के अधिकारों व
आजीविका को कितना कमज़ोर कर दिया है और उन्हें एक ऐसी स्थायी
ग़रीबी की अवस्था में धकेल दिया है जहाँ से निकल पाना असंभव भले
न हो मगर बहुत दूर की बात जरुर लगती है |
दिल्ली को एक 'विश्व स्तरीय महानगर' बनाने के लिए की जा रही
उठापटक के मानवीय निहितार्थों का आलोचनात्मक भंडाफोड़ करते
हुए नक़्शे से बाहर ने शहरी विकास के मौजूदा रुझानों पर कुछ
बेचैन करने वाले सवाल खड़े किये हैं और इस बात के लिए बहुत
विश्वसनीय ढंग से दबाव पैदा किया है की शहर के भविष्य को तय
करने वाली बहसों में सिर्फ संपन्न (या सम्पन्नता के ख्वाहिशमंद)
नागारिकों की ही नहीं बल्कि शहर के सभी नागरिकों की आवाज़ और
नज़र को पूरी मान्यता दी जानी चाहिए |
कल्याणी मेनन-सेन नारीवादी कार्यकर्ता, शोधकर्ता और लेखिका हैं
| वह नई दिल्ली स्थित महिलाओं के संसाधन केंद्र जागोरी से
संबद्ध हैं |
गौतम भान शहरी प्रणालियों के शोधकर्ता और लेखक हैं | दिल्ली
नवासी श्री भान फ़िलहाल कैलिफ़ोर्निया विश्वविद्यालय, बर्कले से
अर्बन में स्टडीज़ में पीएचडी कर रहे हैं |
Page Extent: 210pp. Price: Rs 250
Size: Demy Octavo Binding: Paperback
Kaiwan
Mehta takes the reader for a walk through the streets and
past the buildings of the ‘native town’ of colonial Bombay,
reading their histories and excavating their memories, while
continuing to negotiate their present context. This historic
neighbourhood of Mumbai, fondly referred to as Bhuleshwar,
has remained a residential and religious hub as before,
while thriving as the city’s essential commercial
marketplace today. It retains a complex history of migration
and community, which is evident in the architectural form,
motifs and designs of the area. The buildings are literally
registers of history; they are maps of a time gone by, and
yet they continue to find themselves relevant and alive in
the contemporary context. Alice in Bhuleshwar is also a
story of the people who have lived in these buildings:
unsung icons like Premiji and Saroj Pathak, famed artistes
like Jayashankar ‘Sundari’, and others who have inhabited
these buildings which breathe in the salty air of Mumbai and
speak to those who care to listen.
Kaiwan Mehta has studied Architecture, Literature,
Indian Aesthetics and Cultural Studies. He is currently
pursuing a doctorate at the Centre for the Study of Culture
and Society, Bangalore. While being involved in teaching,
writing and research on architecture and the city, he has
been associated with many institutions like KRV Institute
for Architecture, Mumbai, Jnanapravaha, Mumbai and Akademie
Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart.
Page Extent:208 pp.
Price: Rs 295
Size: 7.75" x 5" (with over 100 b/w illustrations)
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 978-81-906186-3-2
The
Clash of Chronologies shows the crucial value of the ancient
period of Indian history for understanding India’s deep
history. In this valuable volume, Thomas Trautmann makes
this connection with great acuity through a series of
studies, on topics ranging from the contrasting theories of
time and history in India and Europe, persistent codes of
kinship and marriage between north and south India, the
conjuncture of ancient Indian and European traditions of
language analysis in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, legacies of European scholars of India’s deep
history such as Sir William Jones and A.L.Basham, and
structures of the ancient Indian state. At a time when
ancient history is being dismissed by some as a projection
of colonial rule or hyper-magnified by others as the charter
of the modern state, this book finds a middle way that
restores the true weight and value of ancient history,
namely as an essential component of the long view, a way of
finding our place and a tool for making a future. This is a
critical volume for students and scholars of ancient as well
as modern Indian History, Anthropology and Linguistics.
Thomas R. Trautmann is Professor of History and
Anthropology at the University of Michigan, USA.
Page Extent: 352pp.
Price: Rs 395
Size: Royal
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 978-81-906186-5-6
Series: New Perspectives on Indian Pasts
Rights: Available
This
unusual yet engrossing volume is an exploration of how three
English writers - Edward Carpenter, E. M. Forster and
Christopher Isherwood - who shared a similar sexuality,
sought in Hindu spirituality one way of achieving personal
autonomy and fulfillment. Tackling the themes of the
guru-disciple relationship, their quarrel with Christianity,
relationships with their mothers and the problematic
feminine, the tensions between sexuality and the attraction
of Hindu mysticism, this fascinating work follows the three
writers on their intriguing personal quest.
Antony Copley is Honorary Reader at the University of
Kent
Page Extent: c.336pp.
Price: c.Rs350
Size: Royal
Binding: Paperback ISBN: 978-81-906668-2-4
For sale only in South Asia
Sunil Gupta stands at the forefront of that creative
‘migrant’ generation which first exploded on the visual art
scene in the 1980s. Wish You Were Here is a memoir
in photos by this important photographer of Indian origin
for whom home is where he finds himself at a given moment.
In this thought-provoking work, the personal becomes
political without guile or inhibition as the photographer
explores contentious terrain such as sexuality, gender and
racism. His courageous engagement with the issues which have
shaped his experience and practice has given decisive shape
to the contemporary debate about difference.
‘Sunil Gupta is a very special photographer; he seems to
know how to use a visual as text in the most natural way.
First City
‘The book is beautifully
designed; compact enough so you can carry it around in your
handbag, yet large enough so the photographs have space to
breathe’
Time Out, Delhi
Page Extent: 120pp.; all four colour
Price: Rs 995
Size: 8.75”x 6.75”
Binding: Hardback
ISBN: 978-81-90666-0-0
These
vivid and compelling portraits reveal the lives of eleven
ordinary Indians utterly different in class, occupation,
language, and regional identity yet sharing the same hopes,
fears, and life-challenges common to us all. The volume
challenges the crude, monolithic stereotypes of Islam so
often heard today. It is a timely and much-needed
contribution.
Richard M. Eaton, Professor of History at University of
Arizona, Tucsona.
In this captivating new volume, 13 anthropologists present a
set of vivid portraits of Muslims in India today. Each of
the contributors has had a long-term research interest in
Muslim societies in India, but in these essays they profile
one single individual whom they have met in the course of
their research and whose story they found compelling. The
subjects of this volume live in different parts of India,
like Bhuj, the mountains of Kashmir, Hyderabad, Androth
Island, and Lucknow, they speak different languages, eat
different foods, are engaged in various kinds of work, but
are all Muslim. Zooming in on individuals who have normally
stood cheek-by-jowl with hundreds of others in a large
canvas, these portraits focus attention on them in a
separate frame, revealing their stories, predicaments, and
realities, the aspirations they nurture and the impediments
they overcome to attempt to achieve these. In doing so, they
highlight the sheer diversity which lies hidden under the
seemingly homogeneous category of the Indian Muslim, and
shatter stereotypes. Intimately told and stripped of jargon,
yet nuanced and incisive, this is a valuable addition to the
corpus of books on the Muslim community in contemporary
India.
Mukulika Banerjee is Reader in Social Anthropology,
University College London. She is the author of The Pathan
Unarmed (2000) and The Sari (2003; co-authored with Daniel
Miller).
Page Extent: 164pp.
Price: Rs 250
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 978-81-906186-2-5
World Rights (except South Asia) sold
For
all those who grew up in seventies and eighties middle-class
India, Amar Chitra Katha, or ACK as it was popularly
referred to among friends, was an important influence if not
an iconic cultural artefact. Published at a time when ACK
appears to be on the verge of a second lease of life, this
compelling new book draws our attention to the stimulating
and troubling potentials of Amar Chitra Katha as a force in
modern Indian history. Based on a reading of visual
practices and the complicated art history informing the
comics, the book delves into core issues of communalism,
history writing and the ways in which middle-class India
negotiates the consumption of products of popular culture to
suit its ideological moorings.
During her research the author found that the creators of
ACK amalgamated both local art traditions as well as a
realist aesthetic borrowed from the calendar art-derivative
style of Ravi Varma to produce an evocative yet sober style,
appropriate for a largely middle-class, child audience. This
was supposedly distant from the “vulgar” Hindi film posters,
yet in practice it was completely immersed in the techniques
of larger-than-life hyper-representation characteristic of
the commercial Hindi film aesthetic. This technique
succeeded in furnishing the reader with a visual imaginary
of a mythological Hindu past that could at once blend into a
real historical continuum, stretching from the ancient past
to modern India, rendering myth historical and history
mythological.
A provocative and cleverly argued monograph, this book is a
must-read not only for scholars and students of modern
Indian history, contemporary culture and politics, but also
for everyone who grew up with, loved or hated Amar Chitra
Katha.
Nandini Chandra teaches English at Hansraj College,
New Delhi.
In
January 2004, the Tourism Ministry of the Government of
India announced its plan of developing a 100-acre strip of
land on the banks of the river Yamuna into a riverside
promenade with parks and fountains which would be marketed
as major tourist attractions. At the time this plan was
unveiled, the riverbank and bed along this stretch was
occupied by the Yamuna Pushta ‘jhuggi-jhonpdi’ colony, a
string of settlements home to around 35,000 working class
families - more than 150,000 people – some of whom had lived
here for over three decades. In February and April 2004,
homes and community buildings along the banks of the Yamuna
were razed to the ground in several 24-hour long operations.
Having followed the events leading up to the so-called
‘voluntary’ demolitions which exploded into intense protests
and forceful and violent suppression by the authorities, the
authors of this present volume decided to expand the scope
of their research and undertake a comprehensive household
survey to map the situation on the ground in one of the
relocation sites, Bawana, with respect to the commitments
made in key policy documents. In carrying out the household
survey, they chose women as their primary interlocutors
since they are ideally situated to unravel and expose the
interconnections and synergy between patriarchy and other
systems of domination and inequality.
A critical exposé of a travesty in the name of urban
development, Swept off the Map raises uncomfortable
questions about the collective responsibility of authorities
and all citizens in ensuring that uprooted communities such
as the one from Pushta live with dignity in the face of the
repeated assaults on their identities, homes, rights and
lives.
Page Extent: c. 200pp.
Price: c. Rs 250
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 978-81-906186-1-8
In
this important new book, Sudha Rajagopalan explores the
consumption of Indian popular cinema in post-Stalinist
Soviet society. In doing so, she highlights the enthusiastic
response Indian popular films and their stars received from
the Soviet audience, as well as the discursive and
institutional context in which this consumption occurred
from the mid-fifties till the end of the Soviet era in
1991.The death of Stalin in 1953 was followed by the
introduction of important changes in government policy in
the Soviet Union, including a relative liberalisation of
leisure and culture which revealed the state’s resurgent
interest in addressing popular tastes. The renewed import
and screening of foreign entertainment films in the Soviet
Union was one of the most visible outcomes of this change.
Drawing on oral history methodology and archival research in
Russia, the author analyses the ways in which Soviet
movie-goers, policy makers, critics and sociologists
responded to, interpreted and debated Indian cinema in the
Soviet Union between 1954 and the end of the eighties.
Complemented by contemporary press and archival photos which
capture the rapturous reception given to actors like Raj
Kapoor, Nargis, Shashi Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan and Mithun
Chakraborty as well as Soviet film posters announcing films
like Awara, Betaab and Chandni, this engaging book, which is
also the first monograph on Indian cinema abroad among non-diasporic
audiences, is a must-read not only for students and scholars
of film history and cultural studies, but every such lay
reader who has grown up on a regular diet of popular Indian
cinema.
Sudha Rajagopalan is an independent scholar
and writer, currently based in the Netherlands.
Page Extent: 260pp. + 32pp. of b/w and colour illustrations
Price: Rs 350
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 978-81-906186-0-1
U.S Rights sold
Angelo Costa Silveira
Translated from the Portuguese by Maria Flavia Ribeiro
'They
would describe in detail the houses they had lived in: the
rooms with carved rosewood furniture and the pictures of
their ancestors on the walls, the balcao where the mando
would be sung, the verandah where one would have his siesta
on an Indo-Portuguese chair, the oratory or the throne of
light where the rosary would be said before dinner, the
kitchen blackened by the smoke of the sorpatels, baked
bebincas and steamed sannas; the well, the paddy fields, or
even the mango, chikoo or jackfruit trees known for the
quality of fruit they produced. The house was an
inextricable part of their life, heritage and history.'
The courtyard house of Goa harks back to a long tradition of
dwellings with a central space open to the skies
circumscribed by rooms on all sides, a model as much
functional in keeping the house cool in the hot climate, as
of sacred inspiration. Along the famed Konkan coast, we find
references to courtyard houses from the later medieval
period onwards. Indeed, in order to find a suitable
precedent to the patio house of Goa we need look no further
than the domestic and monumental architecture of Vijayanagar.
While the churches and sacred buildings of Goa have been the
focus of a majority of studies on the built heritage of Goa,
in more recent times, there has been increasing awareness
that the resplendent houses of Goa are as deserving of
careful attention. For visitors returning from Goa, images
of the houses with colourful facades and romantic porches
are as evocative of their Goan sojourn as those of the
magnificent, whitewashed churches.
However, today this distinct domestic architecture of
historical Goa faces a deep threat. Once, the symbols of
prosperity, many have today fallen into disrepair. In this
lovingly detailed and thoroughly documented new book, Angelo
Silveira takes us on a journey through the form of the Goan
courtyard house, and the traditional techniques and
materials which contributed to the construction of this
unique dwelling.
He also makes us aware of the need for a more concerted
programme to conserve the courtyard house of Goa, and leaves
us with a few tips on the same. This is a book as much for
the student of architecture, or practising architect as it
is for anyone who has ever visited or plans to visit Goa.
Illustrated with more than 100 colour and black&white
photographs, it is a treat for the eyes, as well as an
important comment on the need to save a unique
heritage of India.
Angelo Costa Silveira is a conservation architect of
Goan origin based in Lisbon, Portugal.
Page Extent: 152pp.
Price: Rs 495
Size: Royal
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 978-81-903634-7-1
With more than 100 colour and black & white photographs
Harlan O. Pearson
New Perspectives on Indian Pasts
The
political transition from rule by the Muslim Mughal dynasty
to British colonial rule led to a basic religious
reorientation among Indian Muslims. At this time of
transformation in the early nineteenth century, a key Muslim
movement called the Tariqah-i Muhammadiyah or
Mummahadi movement, also referred to as the Mujahidin or
Indian Wahhabi movement, gathered force in northwest India.
Although the Muhammadi reformers gained recognition by
waging a jihad (holy war), a much familiar and feared
word today, the jihad was only one manifestation of a
fundamental change in religious thought and organization.
Using Muhammadi sources as well as the contemporary account of the
movement by Muslims and British observers, this incisive
study makes an important comment on the historical
interaction of social and religious forces in the nineteenth
century in the Indian subcontinent.
While basing itself on a Sufi world-view, organization and
concepts inspired by the intellectual system of the
eighteenth-century theologian, Shah Wali Allah, the
Tariqah-I Muhammadiyah put forth a reformist program
attacking the prevalent practices at the tomb of saints and
mystics, and belief in any mediation between man and God.
Widespread Muhammadi preaching and religious literature in
the popular Urdu language presented the Divine Law to all
classes of Indian Muslims for the first time. The Muhammadi
were also among the first Muslims anywhere to use the
printing press to spread their fundamentalist message. In
proclaiming religious purification and revival as well as
holy war to the Indian masses during a time of rapid
historical change, the Muhammadi reformers helped to shape a
new individual and communal identity and also initiated a
process of Islamic reform in India. Pearson’s major
contribution in this important volume is to show how the
intellectual history associated with Shah Wali Allah was
transformed in the nineteenth century to an activist,
organized ‘mass movement’ that drew upon techniques
technologies, notably printing and popular preaching,
introduced to India by British officials and Christian
missionaries.
Harlan O. Pearson graduated from the University of
Minnesota and completed his Ph. D. at the Department of
History at Duke University. After teaching at the University
of Minnesota as a visiting Assistant Professor, he studied
computer science and has worked as a software engineer
developing communications and network systems.
What
is wonderful about this book is the originality of Reddy’s
ethnography. She significantly advances—really,
transforms—discussions that until now were largely dependent
on less comprehensive work. With Respect to Sex will reframe
entirely the dominant conversation on hijra identity, which
has seen it as being reducible to gender. This is an
important book that will be read and reread by a broad range
of scholars.
Lawrence Cohen
With Respect to Sex extends the theoretical context of work
on gender in precisely the right direction, moving away from
the idea of alternative genders as rigid categories and
viewing them instead as multiple identities. Reddy’s deep
and intimate ethnography makes this book an important
contribution to the discipline of anthropology and to gender
studies more generally.
Serena Nanda
In an important, intimate, rich and eminently readable
ethnography, Gayatri Reddy creates a portrait of a community
of hijras in Hyderabad that suggests that one cannot see
hijras simply through the lens of gender and sexual
difference because that is not how hijras understand
themselves. Tracing their presence from an era of Hyderabadi
royal patronage to the shifting social and cultural
landscapes of modernity and nationalism and finally to
contemporary neo-liberalism, Reddy shows the ever-changing,
complicated and multi-faceted matrix of class, caste,
religion, and regional identities and practices that
underlie hijra understandings of both their identity and
their difference. At stake, she says, are questions of
nationalism, citizenship, identity, religion, class, sex,
and economics.
Gayatri Reddy is assistant professor of anthropology
and gender and women's studies at the University of Illinois
at Chicago.
This
book tells two interwoven stories. At a macro level, it
tells a story of the pleasures and compromises of cultural
sharing in the making of imperial architecture. At a micro
level it sets out to recover conversations between
people—the Indo-Britons—who met at the building interface in
south India, where two very different aesthetic and material
practices collided. The narrative is set between 1800 and
1880—the historical gap in which a colonial state appeared
in India and Indian architects disappeared from British
view.
Shanti Jayewardene-Pillai is trained as an architect
in Sri Lanka and the UK. She obtained her Masters in
architectural history from University College London and her
DPhil from the University of Oxford. She has practised as an
architect in Sri Lanka and the UK and taught history at the
Bartlett School of Architecture, London University. She now
lives in Oxfordshire.
Over
the last few years there has been an increasing interest in
studying masculinities in the south Asian region.
Masculinities, the gender system that makes men, remains the
least researched pool of darkness of the south Asian
reality. We certainly know the obvious—the visible,
hegemonic masculinity that bristles and valorously displays
its wares but what about various other masculinities, those
that remain silent, pushed under and un-recognised. What is
the story of these masculinities? How do these masculinities
relate with each other? Are they locked in some form of
permanent conflict? Why are some forms of masculinity more
assertive and more public? How do these masculinities impact
on gender relations? Are various forms of masculinities
definite, unbreakable, permanent or do they form
historically, decay, change and transform? This graphic
book, a mixed-media production comprising drawings,
photographs, text and video frames attempts to frame these
questions in a creative and reader-friendly mode.
Drawing on popular culture, socialisation charts used in
schools, poetry, personal stories and documentary footage,
the book brings together main theories, key concepts and
empirical research on masculiniites. Designed to be an
introduction to the study of masculinities, it utilises a
south Asian tapestry to discuss the state of knowledge in
the field.
Rahul Roy is an independent documentary film maker.
Besides directing a number of internationally acclaimed
films on the theme of masculinities, he has also written
widely on men and gender issues.
Page Extent: 72pp.
Price: c. Rs 295
Size: Royal
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 81-903634-8-4
To see some of the pages from the book please click
on the following thumbnails.
Beautifully
written. The best and most comprehensive study on Islamic
mysticism in the English language.
Religious Studies Review
Students of Islam and of comparative religion--as well as
those who respond to mysticism--are deeply in the author's
debt for giving us what will surely be the standard
treatment of Sufism for a long time to come.
America
Mystical Dimensions of Islam presents, for the first time, a
balanced historical treatment of the transnational
phenomenon of Sufism—Islamic mysticism—from its beginnings
through the nineteenth century. Through her sensitivity and
deep understanding of the subject, Annemarie Schimmel, an
eminent scholar of Eastern religions, draws the reader into
the mood, the vision, and the way of the Sufi in a manner
that adds an essential ingredient to her analysis of the
history of Sufism.
Besides exploring the origins of the mystical movement and
its development through different stages, the author also
examines the various aspects of mystical poetry in Arabic,
Persian, Turkish, Sindhi, Panjabi, and Pashto. The author
skillfully demonstrates how Sufi ideals permeated the whole
fabric of Muslim life, providing the average Muslim—villager
or intellectual—with the virtues of perfect trust in God and
the loving surrender to God's will.
Professor Schimmel's long acquaintance with Turkey, Iran,
and the Indian subcontinent provides a unique emphasis to
the study, and the author's personal knowledge of Sufi
practice in these regions lends a contemporary relevance to
her work.
This is the first time the work of this renowned Islamic
studies scholar is being brought to India.
Annemarie Schimmel (1922-2003) was a renowned German
scholar of Islam and author of eighty books, including
Gabriel’s Wing: A Study into the Religious Ideas of Sir
Muhammad Iqbal (1963), Triumphal Sun: A Study of the
Works of Jalaloddin Rumi (1978), Islam in the Indian
Subcontinent (1980), Muhammad is His Messenger
(1985), Islamic Names (1989), A Two-Coloured
Brocade: The Imagery of Persian Poetry (1992), and
Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to
Islam (1994),
Forming
a pair with the classic, Aryans and British India, this
pioneering work examines the phenomenon discussed in the
former book from a different perspective and in a different
local expression, that of colonial Madras in the Ellis
years, especially the years from the founding of the College
of Fort St George in 1812 to the untimely death of Ellis in
1819. This was a period when the most interesting
interactions about languages and nations were taking place
between Indian and English scholars in Madras, resulting
eventually in a distinctive Madras School of Orientalism. In
this book Trautmann in his trademark expertly incisive
manner highlights the most spectacular and durable results
of the intellectual production of the Madras School of
Orientalism, which he calls the Dravidian proof. Mandatory
reading for all students and scholars of ancient and modern
Indian history, this book is a most compelling sequel to the
classic Aryans and British India.
Thomas R. Trautmann is Professor of History and Anthropology at the University of Michigan, USA. He is the author of
Dravidian Kinship (1981) and Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship
(1987). He is the editor of Time, Histories and Ethnologies (co-edited 1995),
Transformations of Kinship (1998), and The Aryan Debate (2004).
Page Extent: c. 300pp.
Price: c. Rs 595
Size: Royal
Binding: Hardback
ISBN: 81-903634-0-9
Maya Sharma…argues that the issue of same sex
relationships between women in India is not necessarily an
urban phenomenon…she feels that the women’s movement ought
to do more than just empathise with such women.
The Hindu
An unusual new book by Maya Sharma documents the lives of
lesbian women in rural and unprivileged India. Thrice
oppressed? Not quite. What emerges are startling stories of
freedom. Gautam Bhan
Tehelka
The narratives in this volume constitute immense challenges and small but profoundly significant triumphs. Located within a personal journey of emergence from a space fraught with silences and half-truths, the book documents the life-stories of ten working-class queer women living in north India. In doing so, it dispels the myth that lesbians in India are all urban, westernized and come from upper and middle classes. These real-life narratives create a space for voices with little or no privilege, providing these women with an opportunity to share their lived realities with one another and with others. The stories effectively challenge the notion of women as sexual beings without agency, and it is hoped, will influence the women’s movement towards an inclusion of lesbian women in the movement.
Maya Sharma, a feminist, is an activist in the Indian
Women’s Movement. She is, at present, working with a
grassroots women’s organization, called Vikalp in Baroda,
Gujarat.
A
scooter ride of a book, whizzing past the intriguing
metaphors of Tamil culture….scholarly, relaxed and
informal…' Shiv Visvanathan Outlook
'Few are the scholars who now travel between these now separate [bilingual] worlds [of English and the mother tongue]. One of these exceptions is the brilliant social historian A.R. Venkatachalapathy, who writes fluently in English and more fluently in Tamil….' Ramachandra Guha
'A.R. Venkatachapathy deftly combines social and cultural history, and draws on a spectrum of literary sources…. [His essay on coffee] could also form part of an as yet unwritten history of consumption in colonial India.' Sanjay Subrahmanyam
This delightful new volume represents that rare thing in Indian history-writing—a thoroughly engaging read! Venkatachalapathy’s writings on the cultural history of nineteenth-century Tamil Nadu would be enjoyed equally by both the academic-minded scholar looking for a nuanced and lucid narrative based on thorough research, as well as the lay informed reader in search of a classic good read.
The essays fall into two distinct sections. Those in the first section contribute to an as yet unwritten history of consumption in colonial India. Taking up both material (coffee, tea and tobacco) and cultural (the cartoon, the city and modern literature) artefacts, the first five chapters explore how these were consumed in colonial Tamil society. The chapters in the second part are broadly concerned with the politics of language, literature and identity in colonial Tamil
Nadu. A historical exploration of how the Tamil literary canon was constructed leads to chapters on the ways in which this canon was used to construct identity. The author draws from sources as varied as fiction, essays, reviews, comment, advertisement, and notices to bring to life a rich and vibrant cultural history.
A.R. Venkatachalapathy took his Ph.D. in history from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi for his dissertation on the print culture in colonial Tamil
Nadu. Presently he is Associate Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. He has earlier taught at Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli, the University of Madras and the University of Chicago. An accomplished Tamil writer, he has written/edited over fifteen books in Tamil combining rigorous scholarly discipline with literary flair. He is also the translator of Sundara Ramaswamy’s J.J.: Some Jottings (Katha, 2004).
Page Extent: 228pp.
Price: Rs 495
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Hardback
ISBN: 81-902272-9-7
Since
the late 1950s when he first began to paint, landscape
elements have remained a constant point of reference in
Paramjit Singh’s canvasses. With titles as innocuous as
Monsoon Light, Red in the Woods, Evening Light, and Lakes
these canvasses throw open to the viewer and collector an
exquisite mélange of colour, light, and the fragrance of the
vibrant countryside. In this present volume, noted art
critic, Ella Datta, familiarises the reader and art lover
with details of the veteran artist’s life, the influences
which shaped his art, and the streams of thought which gave
substance to the mystical landscapes that he is renowned
for. Based on extensive interviews with the artist, the
volume includes some of his best-known work, which includes
landscapes, as well as the more rarely seen black & white
drawings and pastels. Ella Datta’s eminently readable
account of the artist’s life and work is supplemented by
valuable photographs from the Singh family archives.
Ella Datta is a well-known art critic, regularly
contributing articles on contemporary Indian art to national
dailies such as the Hindustan Times and the Telegraph. She
is also the author of a number of titles on contemporary
Indian artists including Ganesh Pyne: His Life and Times
(1998).
Page Extent: 132pp. (including 60 four-colour
reproductions of the artist’s landscapes)
Price: Rs 1395
Size: Crown Quarto
Binding: Hardback
ISBN: 81-902272-8-9
'Here is a scholar whose writing is scholarly but also lucid and engaging. What’s more, Lorenzen is not into political posturing, so he has no problem in taking controversial stands, if evidence demands….Lorenzen’s position on religious conflict in ancient and medieval India steers clear of both those who magnify it and those who deny it. But Lorenzen also recognizes the internal divisions and diversity within Hinduism.' Upinder Singh Tehelka
A significant collection of essays by a renowned scholar of religious studies, the present volume contains ten essays that discuss the history of religious movements and religious ideologies in India. The volume begins with an essay which asks and seeks to answer the rather provocative question: who invented
Hinduism? Most of the essays included here attempt to uncover and criticize scholarly arguments that the author feels are based as much on ideology or conventional inherited opinions as on the evidence available in historical documents. For instance, in the lead essay about the supposed invention of Hinduism by the British, he argues that the concept of a Hindu religion was clearly recognized by Hindus themselves at least as far back as the beginning of the fifteenth century. Thought-provoking in style and lucid in composition, this volume will be of much interest to students and scholars of religious history, medieval Indian history, sociology, anthropology, and South Asian studies.
David N. Lorenzen, a senior scholar of religious studies, is Professor of South Asian History at the Center for Asian and African Studies, El Colegio de Mexico. He has authored and edited numerous significant publications, which include
Kabir Legends and Ananta-das's Kabir Parachai (1991), The Kapalikas and Kalamukhas: Two Lost Saivite Sects
(1991), Bhakti Religion in North India: Community Identity and Political Action
(1995), Praises to a Formless God: Nirguni Texts from
North India (1996)and Religious Movements in
South Asia 600-1800 A.D. (2004).
‘Highly
accessible and a major step forward in understanding Islam,
this book should be read from the schoolroom to the State
Department.’ Francis Robinson
‘A thoughtful and finely balanced primer on contemporary
Islam.’ New York Review of Books
Making a radical departure from the recently proliferating
publications on Islam—journalist exposés on terrorist
intrigues and solemn expositions on the clash of
civilizations - renowned Islamicist Carl Ernst offers in
this book a sympathetic yet reasoned and analytical view of
the Islamic religious tradition and the contemporary issues
that Muslims face. He introduces
the reader
to the
profound spiritual and
intellectual resources of Islam while clarifying debate and
highlighting diversity within the tradition. Writing from
within the framework of religious studies and the historical
context he describes how Protestant definitions of religion
and anti-Muslim prejudice have affected views of Islam in
Europe and America. He also discusses the contemporary
importance of Islam in both its traditional settings and its
new locations and provides a context for understanding
extremist movements like fundamentalism. Ernst concludes
with an overview of critical debates on important
contemporary issues such as gender and veiling, state
politics, and science and religion. Revealing the human face
of Islam, this timely and important volume aims at
stimulating conversation between Muslims and non-Muslims in
a world that they have commonly inherited.
Carl W. Ernst is W.R. Kenan Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of several books on Islam, including
Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center, Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order in South Asia and Beyond
(co-authored with Bruce B. Lawrence), and The Shambhala Guide to Sufism.
Mick Douglas
Co-published with RMIT Press, Melbourne, Australia
Kolkata’s trams are one of the city’s most enduring legacies, as a government anxious to scrap them has come to discover. Melbourne, another city that cherishes its trams, has lent its support to Kolkata’s campaign for some years. This book is the outcome of that sustained joint effort. It presents the tramways of both cities, but most importantly, it affirms their place in defining each city’s identity.' Sukanta Chaudhuri
It is this cultural buzz surrounding the story of
Calcutta’s trams that forms one half of Tramjatra, a project
that attempts to link two “tram cities”, Calcutta and
Melbourne….The project has taken the shape of a small book
which, not unlike the way tramlines criss-cross Calcutta,
weaves the various notions and sub-notions that make trams a
cultural experience in both cities.
Indrajit Hazra Hindustan Times
An unprecedented inter-cultural arts project called
Tramjatra has since 1996 brought together artists and the tramways communities of Melbourne (Australia) & Kolkata (Calcutta, India) to explore their cities through the medium of tramways. In the context of increasing debates about sustainability and the impact and processes of globalisation,
Tramjatra has demonstrated how new linkages made through a public arts practice of inter-cultural collaboration can enliven approaches to identifying and building upon attributes of value in a city. Through a time when Kolkata's struggling tramways have faced a persistent threat of closure and the operation of Melbourne's tramways has been privatised and automated, the
Tramjatra project has provoked a broader, globally oriented engagement in what it is to move and be moved in contemporary urban life. The book explores this relationship between the movement afforded by tramways as a mode of public transport, and the contemporary social, political, economic and creative forces of movement that are manifested in the relation between these two contemporary cultures of tramways.
Written in English, with a small proportion in Bengali, the book includes essays by emerging as well as internationally renowned writers and scholars (Dipesh Chakrabarty, Gayatri Spivak and so on) which discuss historical links between Melbourne & Kolkata; that examine the relation between memory and tram travel, ticketing and travelling; that revisit past events of the
Tramjatra project; that locate
Tramjatra in the context of western notions of public art, and in the context of debates on transculturalism and international education; and which unravel issues of translation in inter-cultural arts practice. The volume also includes short writings by a diverse range of participants and 'passengers' responding to and building upon the
Tramjatra project. Supplemented with stunning visuals, this unique volume published simultaneously in India and Australia offers a journey through two cities and a contemporary relation between them via the medium of tramways.
Mick Douglas is an artist and senior lecturer in the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT in Melbourne.
Page Extent: 304pp.
Price: Rs 295
Size: 120mmX160mm
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 81-902272-4-6
'Ruth Vanita's Gandhi's Tiger and Sita's Smile is a major contribution to public debates on issues of gender and sexuality that frames these issues in highly original and provocative ways. Vanita has an astonishing ability to make texts speak to each other. Her intimacy with medieval devotional literature, Urdu poetry as well as modern forms of popular culture result in essays that are sparkling with wit and humor and will make us reexamine what it is to become man, to become woman, or to become animal.' Veena Das
'Ruth Vanita’s scholarship is staggering. She scours
the intellectual landscape, from the Upanishads to writers of our times, from the tale of Oedipus to that of Ashtavakra, from Sappho to the story of lesbian love in the Bengal version of the Padma Purana. And, through it all, she builds up a case for a more humane society and for the tolerance of diversity, deftly demonstrating how the celebration of diversity has roots in ancient India.' Kaushik Basu
The essays in this collection, written over the last five years, interrogate a variety of Indian texts and contexts along intersecting axes of gender, nation, and desire, addressing both the material and the representational. A couple of these essays grew out of seeds planted during the author’s years at
Manushi (she is co-founder of this ground-breaking Indian feminist magazine). Most others emerged from further research in areas that first opened up to Vanita while working on
Same-Sex Love in India and her subsequent books, Queering India and
Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West. Intertextuality is a primary theme in these essays. Vanita is interested in the ways in which medieval texts speak to each other and draw on earlier canonical works, rewriting and transforming narrative in a spirit of respectful conversation. In very different registers, modern texts, such as nineteenth-century poetry and twentieth-century fiction and cinema, also converse with each other and with older texts. Another equally interesting but distinctly different area of enquiry addressed in these essays is the way texts are received in later periods or by other cultures in the same period. Boldly written, and addressing a number of issues which South Asian society would ‘rather not talk about’, this is a timely volume which effectively narrows the seemingly looming gap between sexuality and gender.
Ruth Vanita is Professor of Liberal Studies and Women’s Studies at the University of Montana.
Arvind and Gautam’s book weaves the threads of the LGBT movement together into a hard-nailed fist that punches hetero-normative India in its very belly….The knuckles in the book are two incredible essays by two women who tear into the construct called heterosexuality…a remarkable book that is a must for students of gender and sexual politics in India.' Ashok Row Kavi Sunday Hindustan Times
'Passionate, considered, this anthology pushes at the hypocrisies of a society that turns love into something queer…it is a book to be read, re-read and passed on—not by people sympathetic to queer issues but by those who are not.' Mitali Saran Tehelka
'It is a collective voice of reason that comes shining through, with its definitive and inclusive spirit of the human struggle for dignity and equality.' Mahesh Dattani The Week
'….This anthology expands the reach and scope, and illuminates the presence of queer politics in different spaces in India. What is most impressive, however, is that it confronts the unquestioned, “compulsory” nature of heterosexuality in India, in a language that is not restricted to the academic.' First City
To speak of sexuality, and of same-sex love
in particular, in India today is
simultaneously an act of political
assertion, celebration, defiance and fear.
Indeed, in times when the issue of queer
sexuality is beginning to find more space in
popular representation, as seen in recent
Bollywood films and the mainstream media,
this groundbreaking collection of writings
states boldly and clearly that queer lives
and politics are inextricably linked with
each other. The words of this anthology are
those of the queer community itself, spoken
in their own voice, as one and yet as
individuals, each of whom has a story to
tell, and a view to share.
In giving voice to a concept, an identity
and a politics that is only now, and slowly
at that, beginning to enter the
consciousness of the nation, the two editors
of the anthology and its twenty-seven
contributors discuss the queer mo(ve)ment in
terms of its definition and composition; the
legal challenges which face the community,
particularly the activism against Section
377 of the Indian Penal Code; queer protests
and demonstrations which have played a
strong role in building wider public
consciousness about the issue; a burgeoning
queer culture; and the everyday lives of
queer people which become in themselves
creative sites of resistance. The volume is
divided into three parts. The first attempts
to place the diverse sexuality-related
struggles within a conceptual framework; the
second narrates untold stories of activism,
and critically reflects on the directions of
the Indian queer movement; and the last, and
perhaps the most critical, records the
personal journeys of queer lives which
articulate what it means to live a life on
the margins of institutions such as
marriage, monogamy and family. This volume
is in many ways an unprecedented effort, as
the voice of a community that refuses to be
silenced, and the words on these pages are,
perhaps, the beginning of its own moment of
assertion.
Arvind Narrain graduated from the National Law School of India University, and did his LLM from Warwick University. He is the author of
Queer: Despised Sexuality, Law and Social Change. He is currently working as a part of a collective of lawyers at the Alternative Law Forum based in Bangalore, a young group working on a critical practice of law.
Gautam Bhan is a queer rights activist and writer based in New Delhi who
writes extensively on queer issues and
social movements. He is a member of PRISM,
Voices against Section 377, and the Nigah
Media Collective.
Here
is an eye-opener, which painstakingly details the effect
colonial powers, had on the domestic life of Bengali babus
and their wives. Its sheer magnitude surprises, as do the
topics chosen.' Suchitra Behal The Hindu
Husband: Hold on—let’s first see what training a wife needs
to be a ‘partner’…. First, spending money according to a
good policy, second, behaving well with people, third,
keeping the house orderly and learning how to do the
housework, fourth making one’s husband happy.
Fifth—medicine. Can you say how many that was?
Wife: Five.
Husband: Don’t forget them. Another day I’ll tell you how
these five should be learned. Today I’ll simply
explain the
relationship itself. Are you sure you’re not getting sleepy?
In the late nineteenth century, as dominance of British power in India led to the imposition of an alien culture on indigenous life-ways, the entire world of local domestic life and its most intimate relationships became contested ground. This anthology offers translated selections from nine Bengali domestic manuals written by both men and women in the course of these debates and contestations. In simple and often colloquial language these ‘how to do it’ books act as guides to conducting relations within a family context, child rearing, and household management. Often presented in the form of an intimate dialogue between husband and wife in the dead of the night, the translations provide an unusual insight into the home of the Bengali bhadralok in colonial times. As one hurtles from one representation of middle-class reformism to another, it becomes clear that this anthology is an invaluable addition to the rather thin collection of translated primary sources of this period. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of gender studies, history, sociology, lay readers interested in the culture of the colonial period, as well as all informed women readers.
Judith E. Walsh is a professor in the Humanities and Languages Department at the State University of New York/ the College at Old Westbury and a Research Associate at Columbia University's Southern Asian Institute. She is the author of
Growing Up in British India (Holmes & Meier 1983), and
Domesticity in Colonial India: What Women Learned When Men Gave Them Advice.
'Aryans
and British India, as are all Thomas Trautmann's studies, is
meticulously researched and carefully argued..Trautmann's
study provides a lucid and forceful narrative of the
inception and growth of the (Aryan) theory as a construct of
the 19th century.' Romila Thapar
'This is an engaging as well as a scholarly book about an idea that has had a
troubled history in our time...Professor Trautmann has
examined the development of ideas about language, race and
society in the context of nineteenth-century India with
exemplary patience.' André Béteille
'It (the book) serves, severally, as a commentary on interpretations of the origins of Indian civilization, an informed critique of Said's Orientalism (by a Sanskritist with an evident zest for his texts and a wry appreciation of the wilder shores of Orientalist endeavour), and, not least, as a major contribution to the history of ideas of language and race as they evolved in tandem in India and Britain. The Aryans, one hopes, will never be the same again.' David Arnold
'In an age when voices of scholarship have become strident if not shrill, Aryans and British India is remarkably different, characterized as it is by gentle understatement, concern, and erudition.' Kumkum Roy
(First time in paperback) In this landmark study, Thomas Trautmann delves into the intellectual accomplishments of the 'languages and nations' concept in British India, as well as the darker politics of race hatred which emerged out of it. He challenges the racial hypothesis through a powerful analysis of the feeble evidence upon which it is based. Issued for the first time in paperback format, this edition includes a new Preface in which the author discusses further ideas on the understanding of the Aryan theory and the languages and nations project, as well as the new scholarship supporting such ideas. The new preface also discusses the Aryan debate in contemporary India, which looks for a link between Aryans, Sanskrit, the Veda and the Indus Valley Civilization, and which has in recent times broadened into a tremendously politicized controversy. A compelling and carefully researched work, Aryans and British India has become mandatory reading, since its first publication in 1997, for historians, political scientists and commentators, anthropologists, and linguists, as well as scholars and students of cultural studies.
Thomas R. Trautmann is Professor of History and Anthropology at the University of Michigan, USA. He is the author of
Dravidian Kinship (1981) and Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship
(1987). He is the editor of Time, Histories and Ethnologies (co-edited 1995),
Transformations of Kinship (1998), and The Aryan Debate (2004).
'Once
Upon a Furore is a brave attempt to give Indian cricket the flesh and blood that it has often lacked...I would recommend this book to Mandira Bedi, Shekhar Suman and their ilk.' Rajdeep Sardesai Biblio
‘The book, replete with little known facts, makes for a delightful debut from the author and a brand new publishing house. Once Upon a Furore reveals above all, why the term “its not cricket” has got such permanency.’ Dilip Bobb India Today
‘Boria Majumdar attempts to bring back a bit of history and tradition through his book….This book is serious reading, for those who would like to go back and see where it all began.’ Jaideep Ghosh Hindustan Times
….The historian in Boria Majumdar subsumes the cricketing expert in him many times over. His mellifluous narrative tells mostly of the spin balls that affluent sports inflicted on the political fabric of India and surely still do in most societies.’ Madhumita Chakraborty The Financial Express
‘In this tightly constructed and lucidly written work, the young cricket historian Boria Majumdar provides a series of accounts of clashes and controversies in Indian cricket history. The book's production values are also
striking. This volume, the first publication from the newly set up Yoda Press, is beautifully produced and finished.’ Wisden Asia Cricket
Did you know that Lala Amarnath was once
charged with accepting a purse of Rs. 5,000
from cricket enthusiasts in Calcutta for
including a Bengali player in the Indian
side? Or that an Indian side was forced to
come back from the UK because they had no
money to eat and live on? Or that match
fixing was alive and well in India as early
as 1948? These are some of the controversial
moments in Indian cricket history which
Boria Majumdar retrieves from the dusty
shelves of archives for this delightful new
volume.
Extensively based on nearly forgotten and
long out-of-print classic titles, old
newspaper reports and official archives,
this volume is an important addition to the
steadily growing corpus of contemporary
writing on the history of Indian cricket.
Each chapter of the book presents a
captivating story of intrigue and
power-play. Through a look at controversies
that have plagued Indian cricket over the
years, this book draws attention to the fact
that the country’s intense engagement with
the game stretches back more than a century.
In doing so the author brings to light the
writings of those he calls the ‘day-to-day
historians’ of cricket, like J.C. Maitra,
Berry Sarbadhikary and J.M.Ganguly, who had
written on the game for years in newspapers
and journals, yet remain little known to
even the most avid sports enthusiast in
contemporary India.
This volume, the first in a new series
called Sport in South Asia, brings to
life a cricketing past that is fast
disappearing, whilst restoring lost pages of
our cricket history, and resuscitating
forgotten protagonists, both players and
administrators. An engaging slice from the
fascinating saga of Indian cricket, this
book is as much a collector’s item for the
sports enthusiast, as it is serious reading
for the cultural historian.
Boria Majumdar is a Rhodes Scholar, and currently Deputy Director of the
International Research Centre for Sport,
Socialisation and Society, De Montfort
University, Bedford. A visiting lecturer at
the University of Chicago and a fellow of
the International Olympic Museum, Lausanne
(2004), he has completed his doctorate on
the Social History of Indian Cricket at St.
Johns College, Oxford. He is also Deputy
Executive Academic Editor of the
International Journal of the History of
Sport (Routledge), and General Editor of
the first-ever sports series in Indian
publishing, Sport in South Asia,
started by YODA PRESS. His publications
include, Cricketing Cultures in Conflict:
World Cup 2003 (co-edited with J.A.
Mangan), (2004); Sport in South Asian
Society—Past and Present (co-edited
with J.A. Mangan) (2004); and Twenty-two
Yards to Freedom: A Social History of Indian
Cricket (forthcoming; commissioned by
the Board of Control for Cricket in India).
This is his first authored publication.
Page Extent: 300pp. (288pp.+12pp. of illustrations)
Price: Rs 395
Size: Demy Octavo
Octavo Binding: Hardback
ISBN: 81-902272-0-3
This
anthology of Indian Writing in French, brings together texts
from Pondicherry, Karaikal and Mahe, the erstwhile French
territories in India. It also includes writings from Goa, a
former Portuguese colony, where French was widely used in
literary circles. Some of the writers whose texts appear in
the anthology are Toru Dutt, Sri Aurobindo, M. Mukundan,
Paulino Dias, Léon Saint Jean and so on.
Vijaya Rao is Associate Professor at the Centre for
French & Francophone Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
New Delhi, where she teaches French and Francophone
literature.
Page Extent: c.200pp.
Price: c.Rs225
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Paperback
For sale only in South Asia