The Materiality of Politics uses a series of historical illustrations to reveal the physicality and underlying materiality of political processes. The political subject of the study is the collective political actor poised against governmental rules for stabilizing order. Samaddars tour de force propels readers through an account of blood, violence, bodies, controls, laws and conflicts. Politics is examined not as an abstraction, but as a real field of dynamic factors rooted in everyday life. Volume 1, subtitled The Technologies of Rule discusses the techniques of modern rule which form the basis of the post-colonial Indian state. Beginning with the rule of law, the volume analyses the nature and manifestations of constitutional rule, the relation between law and terror and the construction of extraordinary sovereign power. The author also investigates the methods of care, protection, segregation and stabilization by which rule proceeds. In the processes, the material core of the cultural and the aesthetic is exposed.
Commercial cinema has always been one of the biggest indigenous industries in India, and remains so in the post-globalization era, when Indian economy has entered a new phase of global participation, liberalization and expansion. Issues of community, gender, society, social and economic justice, bourgeois-liberal individualism, secular nationhood and ethnic identity are nowhere more explored in the Indian cultural mainstream than in commercial cinema. As Indian economy and policy have gone through a sea-change after the end of the Cold War and the commencement of the Global Capital, the largest cultural industry has followed suit. For example, the global Indian community (known in Indian official terms as the Non-Resident Indian or the NRI) has become an integral part of the cultural representation of India.The politics and ideology of Indian commercial cinema have become extremely complex, offering a fascinating case-study to scholars of Global Culture. Of particular interest is the re-positioning of individual identity vis-à-vis nation, religion, class, and gender. On one hand, the definition of ''nationhood'' and/or community has become much more fluid, keeping in tune with the sweeping universal claims of globalization; the films have consequently revised the scope of their narratives to match India''s emerging global business ambitions. On the other hand, the political realities of India''s long-standig enmity with Pakistan and the international rise of ''Hindutva'' has also contributed to a new strain of jingoism in Indian cinema. ''Bollywood and Globalization'' is a significant scholarly contribution to the current debate on Indian cinema, nationhood and Global Culture. The articles represent a variety of theoretical and pedagogical approaches, and the collection will be appreciated by students and scholars alike.
This book assesses the validity of anti-politics critiques of development, first popularised by James Ferguson, in the peculiar context of India. Fergusons memorable metaphor of development as an Anti-Politics Machine that serves to entrench state power and depoliticize development continues to appeal to those cynical of the widespread tendency of development discourses to treat various issues apolitically. The book examines this problem in India, a country where development planners after independence adopted a scientific stance and claimed to distance themselves from mass politics, but also one where the groundswell of democratic political mobilization has been considerable in recent decades. In a country with an extremely differentiated landscape of authority and diverse politics, what does it mean for the state to undertake a project (or indeed, projects) of depoliticization; for as scholars inspired by Foucault and Gramsci have variously agreed, depoliticization is a tentative project where outcomes are far from certain. The book examines these questions within the new context provided by decentralization, the potential of which to reorganize relationships amongst different levels of the state greatly complicates the very pursuit of depoliticization as a coherent state practice. It looks at these issues through a highly technocratic state watershed development programme in India that has witnessed key transformations towards participation in recent years.
This volume brings together sixteen articles on the religions, literatures and histories of South and Central Asia in tribute to Patrick Olivelle, one of North America's leading Sanskritists and historians of early India.
In the aftermath of considerable seismic unrest caused by the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, this volume focuses on exposing the coastal vulnerability of the region. Despite a plethora of enquiries into natural disasters in different parts of the globe, there is now a more conspicuous concern than ever for the South East Asian region. This global concern has become all the more prevalent since the Hyogo Declaration in January 2005 and the recent Asian Summit in Indonesia. The purpose of this treatise is to bring the characteristics of the disastrous events of the region to the fore, seeking to present not only the continuing fatalities and fragilities of the area, but also the possibilities for coping with natural disasters. The book’s layout is specifically shaped by the nature of the damage and threat caused by these disasters, particularly concerning the communities at risk and their responses. This book will appeal to those involved in both global and local organizations as administrators, facilitators, stakeholders and activists, as well as Governmental / Non Governmental agencies, societies including organizations such as ESCAP, UNDP, WMO, UNESCO, UNCRD.
'The Anthropologist and the Native' is a multidisciplinary volume of twenty essays by internationally known scholars of different persuasions, honouring the distinguished anthropologist Gananath Obeyesekere.
The ascetic, devotional sect known as the Mahanubhavs Those of the Great Experience arose in 13th century Maharashtra. The Mahanubhavs initially experienced a fairly rapid expansion, particularly across the northern and eastern regions of Maharashtra. However, by the end of the 14th century their movement went underground as they sought a defensive isolation from the larger Hindu context, and they withdrew to remote areas and villages. Although the prominent leaders of the early Mahanubhavs were Brahmans (often converts from the prevailing advaita vaisnavism), their followers were and are mostly non-Brahmans, i.e. low caste people and even untouchables. Thus the Mahanubhavs were met with prejudice and distrust outside their own closed circles, and this isolation continued until the beginning of the 20th century. This volume offers an overview of the origins and main religious and doctrinal characteristics of the Mahanubhavs, with a particular focus on the aspects that reveal their difference and nonconformity.
An Introduction to Changing India: Culture, Politics and Development provides a comprehensive view of todays rapidly changing India in a way that is both reader-friendly and scholarly, without requiring prior knowledge on the subject from its readers. It investigates Indian culture, politics, economics and technology, as well as population and environmental issues. Gender issues are also discussed throughout the book. The authors provide a balanced picture of the emerging Indias many triumphs, as well as its lingering problems and the ongoing battle for more inclusive growth. By drawing on anthropological fieldwork in rural and urban India, the authors give ordinary Indians a voice by exploring their aspirations for change, while also describing macro-level changes.The study draws from extensive reading of research reports and fieldwork by the authors, who have carried out anthropological research on kinship, gender issues, politics, class and caste, population issues and the appropriation of information technology in India since the 1990s.
This volume offers a collection of lucid, theoretically stimulating articles that explore and analyse the institutions and values which are salient in understanding political practices in South Asia. Combining a wide range of theoretical and empirical approaches, and blending the work of experts long established in their respective fields with refreshing and innovative approaches by younger scholars, this collaborative and cross-disciplinary endeavour facilitates a deeper understanding of the subcontinent's diverse and complex political and democratic practices in the 21st century.
With its close analysis of the phenomenon of the migration of Indian students to Australia, this book critically approaches the entanglement of the education industry with migration opportunities, and looks into the goals and aspirations of the Indian middle class. It discusses the overlaps of studies on migration and transnationalism, and raises questions on skilled migration.
This volume critically examines the notion of a ''new'' India by acknowledging that India is changing remarkably and by indicating that in the overzealous enthusiasm about the new India, there is collective amnesia about the other, older India. The book argues that the increasing consolidation of capitalist markets of commodity production and consumption has unleashed not only economic growth and social change, but has also introduced new contradictions associated with market dynamics in the material and social as well as intellectual spheres.
'Dialogics of Self, the Mahabharata and Culture: The History of Understanding and Understanding of History' explores the interrelationships between individual and cultural historical dynamics in interpreting texts, using key concepts from Bakhtin's theory of dialogics. This ambitious volume discusses the limits of fixed monologic discourses and the benefits of fluid dialogic discourses, and provides a cultural and psychological analysis of the epic Indian text the 'Mahabharata'. The problem addressed by 'Dialogics of Self, the Mahabharata and Culture' is not just how we understand and narrate history, but also how the very mechanism by which we understand and narrate history itself has a history. This volume is about the interplay of several histories that of the individual, individual's past relationship to the text, which in turn is dependent on the nature of encounters they have had in the past, and the history of the text, and the very history of understanding.
'The Retreat of Democracy' presents an expanded and reworked selection of Basu's best journalistic and academic writings on political and economic themes since the late 1990s. In addition to Basus critical essays on globalization and democracy, the book also moves onto wider terrain to ideas in economics, anthropological observations on social norms, the role of culture, and travel in India and abroad. While the essays range from studies on major economists such as Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz, to humorous encounters with Indian bureaucracy, two recurring themes run thoughout: first, that the ultimate objective of policy-making must be the progress of the disadvantaged, and ignoring market laws and individual incentives courts failure; second, that for the successful crafting of economic policy it is important to recognize markets as embedded in specific cultures and social norms. This volume is a clear, intelligible and highly engaging showcase of Basus global and humanistic views on politics, economics and democracy.
The first ever book on Mumbai written in the Marathi language, this is a historically fascinating and revealing urban biography of nineteenth-century India.
Inherent in colonialism was the idea of self-legitimation, the most powerful tool of which was the colonizer''s claim to bring the fruits of progress and modernity to the subject people. In colonial logic, people who were different because they were inferior had to be made similar - and hence equal - by civilizing them. However, once this equality had been attained, the very basis for colonial rule would vanish. Colonialism as Civilizing Mission explores British colonial ideology at work in South Asia. Ranging from studies on sport and national education, to pulp fiction to infanticide, to psychiatric therapy and religion, these essays on the various forms, expressions and consequences of the British ‘civilizing mission’ in South Asia shed light on a topic that even today continues to be an important factor in South Asian politics.
This fascinating book, based on extensive archival research in Britain and India, examines why mutineer-rebels chose to attack prisons and release prisoners, discusses the impact of the destruction of the jails on British penal policy in mainland India, considers the relationship between India and its penal settlements in Southeast Asia, re-examines Britains decision to settle the Andaman Islands as a penal colony in 1858, and re-evaluates the experiences of mutineer-rebel convicts there. As such this book makes an important contribution to histories of the mutiny-rebellion, British colonial South Asia, British expansion in the Indian Ocean and incarceration and transportation. Coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the mutiny-rebellion, this book will be of interest to academics and students researching the history of colonial India, the history of empire and expansion and the history of imprisonment and incarceration.
The first ever book on Mumbai written in the Marathi language, this is a historically fascinating and revealing urban biography of nineteenth-century India.
'Colonial Childhoods' is about the politics of childhood in India between the 1860s and the 1930s. It examines not only the redefinition of the 'child' in the cultural and intellectual climate of colonialism, but also the uses of the child, the parent and the family in colonizing and nationalizing projects. It investigates also the complications of transporting metropolitan discourses of childhood, adulthood and expertise across the lines of race. Focused on reformatories and laws for juvenile delinquents, and boarding schools for aristocratic children, it illuminates a vital area of conflict and accommodation in a colonial society.
Through oral histories, interviews and fictional retellings, 'Bengal Partition Stories' unearths and articulates the collective memories of a people traumatised by the brutal division of their homeland.
A revised edition of the classic monograph, 'The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh' investigates the social contradictions, class forces, and efforts at political organization and mobilization that lay behind the emergence of a powerful nationalist movement in Uttar Pradesh in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It also considers the concurrent emergence of HinduMuslim differences as a major factor affecting nationalist politics and the anti-colonial struggle in India.
A Marxist scholar and historian, Irfan Habib has been a towering presence in the Indian intellectual scene for over four decades. His formidable intellectual reputation, established in the sixties with the publication of The Agrarian System of Mughal India, broadened as he became an authority in the entire area of Indian history from ancient to modern. Professor Habib’s undiminished commitment to the cause of socialism is reflected in these highly original and bold analyses of Marxist historiography and theories of socialist construction. This volume comprises essays from scholars around the world representing the wide variety of Habib’s interests and contributions. Ranging from history to politics and economics, the essays cover both the medieval period and modern India, as well as theories for the future of this emerging superpower. This special edition also features an essay by Irfan Habib, originally published as The Economic History of Medieval India: A Survey, covering the Delhi Sultanate, the Vijayanagara economy and the economy of Mughal India.
A Marxist scholar and historian, Irfan Habib has been a towering presence in the Indian intellectual scene for over four decades. His formidable intellectual reputation, established in the sixties with the publication of The Agrarian System of Mughal India, broadened as he became an authority in the entire area of Indian history from ancient to modern. Professor Habib’s undiminished commitment to the cause of socialism is reflected in these highly original and bold analyses of Marxist historiography and theories of socialist construction. This volume comprises essays from scholars around the world representing the wide variety of Habib’s interests and contributions. Ranging from history to politics and economics, the essays cover both the medieval period and modern India, as well as theories for the future of this emerging superpower. This special edition also features an essay by Irfan Habib, originally published as The Economic History of Medieval India: A Survey, covering the Delhi Sultanate, the Vijayanagara economy and the economy of Mughal India.
A profound analysis of a broad range of issues, providing a masterly overview of rural development in India.
A far-reaching and extensive rethinking of India's political and economic structures at every level, engagingly presented by a team of eminent academics and practitioners.
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