In 1898, when the sun never set on the British Empire, Kirparam, young and penniless, left his village on the Jhelum to end up, almost accidentally, in Kenya. (Tana is a river in Kenya.) There were thousands of men like him in India
The portrayal of same—sex relationships in 20th century Indian literature has been characterized, most frequently, by ambiguity or by an incipient homophobia. Critical responses to Ismat Chugtai’s Lihaaf and Ugra’s collection of short stories Chocolate…
The book is a rich multi-site ethnography that spans continents, tracing histories and movements of people of Hyderabadi origin. The fieldwork was done over a period of ten years from 1990 to 2000 in Hyderabad, the United Kingdom,
The birds flying home in pairs Through the soft mountain air of dusk- In these things there is deep meaning, But when we are about to express it, We suddenly forget the words.
The text vs the field, the classical vs the folk, the occasional vs the quotidian. These have been some of the key oppositional categories through which sociology of India, particularly understandings of Hindu life and culture have been articulated and debated.
I would like to begin this review in Jackson’s own words: ‘It is true that the border crosser who writes about another culture is part beggar, part stenographer, part Sherlock Holmes, part patchwork quilt maker’ (p. 309).