Aijaz Ahmad’s most celebrated book is In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. It is, somewhat surprisingly, the only book he wrote. He published four other books which are all collections of essays (one of which, Lineages of the Present, appeared in two editions with non-identical tables of contents), three books where he is credited as editor or co-editor, and one book of edited conversations.
If the challenge is that of ‘theorizing from the global south’ (p. 50), then the question to ask is, to what extent has the author of this book been successful in meeting this call. Madhok’s interest in offering us an empirical account of ‘subaltern struggles and contestations over rights’ (p. 2) from South Asia is to bring to our notice the conceptual vocabulary used in these struggles, pointing to a different notion of human rights.
In his debut volume, When Ideas Matter: Democracy and Corruption in India, Bilal A Baloch seeks to underscore the salience of ideology in shaping, dictating, and motivating the political elite’s behaviour. Political analysts have conventionally focused on material motivations behind elite political behaviour during the course of an electoral cycle. However, to what extent executive action is determined by ideational frameworks of those in power has largely remained an under-explored theme.
Located in a remote corner of India and, regrettably, the minds of most ‘mainland’ Indians, the North Eastern region has never been an easy site and space to think of, let alone write about. Immensely complex in terms of geography (territory), history, immigration and ethnic composition, economics and politics, the North East, which Sudeep Chakravarti quite correctly rechristens as (India’s) Far East, emerged out of the subcontinental decolonization process
One of the arguments put forward for the abrogation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) under Article 370 in August 2019 by the Central Government was that it hampered development in the erstwhile State. This ‘underdevelopment’ narrative was stressed vehemently by the ruling party at the centre at that time.
A story of many sojourns, Kushan Mystique is a narrative of a cultural anthropologist David Jongeward who got attracted to Kushan history and Gandharan art and developed the symptoms of ‘Kushanitis’. Now what is this ‘Kushanitis’? In a delightful foreword, Joe Cribb, formerly of the British Museum, explains this term by saying that it is a condition of mind which afflicts a person and spreads easily when one comes into direct contact with the puzzle of the Kushan kings.