Deba Prosad Chowdhury’s The Idea of History in a Changing World disaggregates the different historical moments that produced the conceptual frame of modern scientific history. Tracing its philosophical foundations in Herodotus and Thucydides, Chowdhury locates its founding concepts in post-enlightenment philosophical discourses of humanism, rationalism, progress, objectivity and scientific thought.
I f you look at the number of books that are publishing the narratives of women, that’s a story in itself. Suddenly, the voiceless gender is speaking out—boldly, aggressively, honestly. What’s more, the second sex is getting heard—if the plethora of women centric books hitting the stores is any yardstick.Aparna Jain’s Own It tells the stories of women at the workplace and the persisting glass ceiling, while Walking Towards Ourselves is a collection of intensely personal accounts of women who have constantly faced challenges on account of their gender, colour or community. One is a business book, focusing on the issues confronting career women in organizations, while the other has a more sweeping canvas capturing a rich tapestry of real life experiences of women living in India.
This edited volume by N. Sarojini and Vrinda Marwah brings out a comprehensive understanding of the political economy of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). The debate on ART shows a very complex picture; on the one side, marketed as pro-women technology— often projecting it as helping women to fulfill their desire to be mothers—it also invokes questions of violence and control on women’s bodies, on the other. Any discussions on ART would navigate through this complex and paradoxical set of realities where women’s bodies are the sites for various negotiations with market, medical technologies, and ideologies.
Acompilation of ten essays originally presented on the occasion of the S.C. Mishra memorial at the Indian History Congress, History, Ideas and Society covers a wide variety of themes, ranging from historical ideas and ideologies to colonialism, communalism, sex-education, science and coins, the book portrays the dynamics of Indian history at its best. By bringing together writings on various periods of time and place, it not only adds to the richness but also contributes to unravelling the pathbreaking moments of Indian historical research.
In the ‘Introduction’ to The Invention of Tradition [1983], co-edited by Eric Hobsbwam and Terence Ranger. Hobsbawm remarked, ‘“Traditions” which appear or claim to be old are often recent in origin and sometimes invented…. “Invented tradition” is taken to mean a set of practices….which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.’ Approaching the Divine by Bharati Jagannathan illustrates the case of such an invented tradition of the Srivaisnava community of South India (located in modern Tamil Nadu, southern Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka).
It is well known that the first Indian initiative at writing a history of Indian Archaeology was taken by Sourindranath Roy when he wrote ‘Indian Archaeology from Jones to Marshall (1784–1947)’ way back in 1953 which was largely a narrative of events relating to official archaeologists. On its publication and thereafter Roy’s narrative acquired a seminal status. However, beyond the official scheme of things there were initiatives of many individuals and institutions that played a significant role in understanding the past.
Amaravati began to be developed as the capital of Andhra Pradesh last year, and the State’s creation of its new identity has involved an emphasis on its Buddhist past, at least partly to attract foreign investment. The Government of Andhra Pradesh also plans to set up a museum in Amaravati in memory of B.R. Ambedkar, who converted to Buddhism, but also interpreted its Pali canon afresh.
In ‘Where these essays are coming from’, the introduction to this volume, Vasudha Dalmia retraces her intellectual formation and weaves the trajectory of her personal research interests with the political and cultural history of the last three decades. Intellectual autobiographies are all too rare, yet always riveting to read.Chance encounters that lead to unforeseen life paths (for her, landing in Germany as a 22-year-old), mixed family histories that surface later in life as questions demanding to be answered and reconciled
The Mahåbhårata is a unique text which not only claims for itself an encyclopaedic status declaring itself to be a compendium of everything that is there on social morality (dharma), political economy (artha), pleasure (kåma) and spiritual liberation (moksa) (Mbh I.56.33)—but also points out its rightful position as an itihåsa placed at a conversational crossroads among the authors located in its past, present and future (Mbh I.1.24; I.56.22). Therefore, there is no wonder that it captured the imagination of scholars, interpreters, translators and creative writers across time and space, leading to the production of a mammoth bibliography around itself.
Guest editing a special history issue for The Book Review was a good opportunity to reflect on what history means and what it represents, standing in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The discipline has moved beyond the Positivist idea of ‘scientific history’; yet, in popular perception (substantiated by the recent comments of a well-read novelist), History remains primarily a chronology of events. The academia—particularly in humanities—has become largely interdisciplinary, and that definitely reshaped our way of reconstructing the past.
Like other existential crises or questions, feminist dilemmas too are fraught with the need to forge an adequate praxis for the individual feminist and for the collective consciousness that we have learnt to describe as feminist. These dilemmas encompass a wide canvas of issues ranging from epistemology and morality to the concerns of change and transformation. An important axis on which one of these dilemmas is played out—across cultures—is women’s traditional roles as care givers in the private domain and their quest to free themselves of the burden of the same.
Solid: Liquid offers significant new insights about the emerging configurations of family and gender relations in Indian society which are increasingly being shaped by a neoliberal state and market. Focused on the practices of sex selection and commercial surrogacy, Sangari makes a strong case for the relevance, if not indispensability, of a triadic framework made up of family, state and market to analyse the emerging and persisting patriarchal configurations in contemporary India. As revealed through an incisive analysis of the uses to which assisted reproductive technologies have been put in India, this work shows that patriarchal practices exist both within and outside a transnational capitalist regime and must not be mistaken as ‘women’s issues’ (p. 156).
As is reflected in the title, this is a fascinating anthology that looks critically at knowledges, identities and institutions related to women’s mental health. Each of these are very lofty concepts and constructions in themselves that find elaborate deconstruction and articulation in the nine essays that comprise this book. The field of Mental Health in contemporary times has become truly multidisciplinary in nature and draws extensively from the frameworks of Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology, Psychiatry, Literature, Law, Human Rights and Gender Studies. This enables new conceptualizations and perspectives to emerge. Likewise, recognizing the importance of pluralism, multiplicity and diverse realities flowing from varied cultures and contexts, in understanding the subjective worlds and experiences of individuals, who are emotionally disturbed, victims of trauma, suffering or afflicted with disease, often labelled as being of ‘unsound mind’, is also essential. All the nine essayists recognize these dimensions and raise questions about the existing systems, beliefs and practices which perpetuate the use of labels, stigma and mechanical rendering of therapeutic services and justice to women.
What this book does from the start is interpellate the reader, literally asking them the question—where are you from? Are[n’t] you an outlaw too? Is there any way to speak of these things other than from the position of the implicated, interested outlaw? And as it takes the reader on the methodologically risky and provisional journey of finding and giving voice for outlaws, and in the process revisiting models of speech, it offers innumerable possibilities— of language, milestones, and networks.
The title of this book suggests two very significant things. The first is that a unified field of feminism is a misnomer and the second that there is a considerable amount of restlessness with feminist theory and politics. Both these elements actually make the domain of feminist scholarship and practice very charged and challenging, and open and dynamic.The most exciting aspect of trying to map the terrain of feminist scholarship is twofold. First, that it is intrinsically linked with the lived experiences of men and women, second, that it draws its energies by critiquing and engaging in a dialogue with its own understanding. Feminist politics and scholarship has to be amongst the most selfcritical intellectual terrains.
What does it mean to say that the history of postcolonial India has been a history of violence? Given the daily barrage of reports on the escalating violence in India, such a claim may seem alarmingly familiar, even eerily ordinary. Can there be a more opportune time for an extensive discussion of sexuality, gender and violence in postcolonial India? Each and every day, it seems, we are confronted yet again by the systemic violation of subaltern subjects, marked by one or more intersecting vectors of difference: caste, class, gender, sexual orientation, to name a select few. On the one hand, recent events have ignited a much-needed robust and public conversation on gender, sexuality and cultural practices within India. The relationship between organized feminism,
Arecurring question while I was choosing the books for this special issue on gender was: does one pick up books that analyse social formations and institutions, cultural meanings and practices, economy and polity, using gender as an analytical category or those which use ‘woman’ as a synonym for gender, attempting to alter, add, re-define existing knowledge and make a critical statement about the prevailing structural inequality? The collection before you (and part of the August issue since all the reviews could not be accommodated in this volume) reflects the eclectic and fraught terrain of variegated perspectives, methodologies and sources. Another consideration was to include books that are in close conversation with feminist ideas and share the commitment of feminist praxis, which may (not) analyse gender relations in a conventional sense but expand the scope to think about critical events, governance, performance, arts, literature, high politics, etc.
2016
Till about the dawn of the twentieth century, Chanakya’s Arthashastra and his other works had remained in oblivion for modern scholars. The singular credit for the discovery of this 2500 year old manuscript on statecraft and political economy goes to Dr Rudrapatnam Shamashastry of Mysore, who not only unearthed the text but heralded a new era in Indian administration and statecraft. At the same time he also helped refresh the western minds that Indian thought was not entirely geared to discovering the ‘other-worldly’ merits.
The book cannot be categorized as belonging to a particular genre as far as its story line is concerned. Undoubtedly a fiction, the reader is left wondering if the protagonist was actually a ‘real person’ who did not wish to reveal her identity, and yet wanted the world to know about her life and the people linked with her—their experiences, their mindsets, and their thinking that most of the time directed their actions. What comes across is a level of honesty that existed in the primary players and an acceptance of human failings—if one may call it that—of their loved ones.
2015
Qayenaat, the heroine of The Cosmopolitans, has been married once, doesn’t like to cook, has a friend called Sathi who’s actually her ex-boyfriend, but hasn’t quite gotten over her, and is fiftythree years old.The novel opens with the arrival of Baban Reddy on the Bangalore art scene. On display at ‘Navya’, the new art gallery is Baban’s gigantic piece of art Nostalgia. So big is Nostalgia that you have to climb up a ladder to inspect it closely! The art lovers of Bangalore are agog with the news and vying with each other to catch the attention of the artist Baban, who has a lady-friend accompanying him called Tanya.