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The playwright and poet, Michael Madhusudan Datta is easily one of the most important and controversial literary figures of nineteenth-century South Asia-characterized by radical socio cultural transformation. Despite countless discussions by commentators and biographers he remains an enigma among the literary giants who straddled nineteenth-century Bengal. By demystifying Datta's conversion to Christianity and by debunking myths of disinheritance, the alleged 'desertion' of his wife, misogyny, womanizing, alcoholism, and British sycophancy, Maligned Maverick re-examines the life and work of the pioneer of modern Bangla literature. This book delves into unexplored areas of his writings and quotes profusely from poems, plays, letters and articles, including Michael's journalistic writings and his best-known controversial English prose piece The Anglo-Saxon and the Hindu, providing new insights into the mind of the maverick genius.

Hutom Pyanchar Naksha (literally, 'Sketches by Hutom the Owl'), a set of satirical portraits in Bengali about ordinary life in the nineteenth century, is so popular that it has never been out of print since its publication in 1861-2. The author of the sketches, Kaliprasanna Sinha (1840-70), ran several literary journals, founded the Bidyotsahini Sabha (Association for the Cultivation of Knowledge), established a theatre house named Bidyotsahini Theatre to promote Bengali drama, published the Bengali translation of the Mahabharata, and donated generously to social causes and projects of social reform.The Observant Owl, originally published in 2008, is the first ever English translation of Kaliprasanna's work. It presents a joyously irreverent portrait of the city he lived in. The writing is so vivid that one finds within these pages a sense of walking through a nineteenth-century city as fishwives call out their wares, housewives hurry to the river for baths, thieves pick pockets, and carriages creak through slush and rotting banana peels, carting passengers high on ganja.

This work focuses on the major health and sanitation problems of the nineteenth century: the health of the European poor, battling alcoholism and venereal diseases; the views of Indian men and women doctors, about diseases, curatives and birthing practices; and Florence Nightingale's interest in the Presidency, particularly her advocacy of village sanitation. Besides, the contributions of doctors B.K. Bhatwadekar and N.H. Choksy, to public health, through an analysis of their writings, are also explored in this monograph. The themes of the early twentieth century which emerge in this work are the review of sanitary improvements in Urbs Prima in Indis, regulations imposed on pilgrims passing through Bombay and at pilgrim sites, and the state of sanitation and disease control in the villages and towns. The book also revisits an important episode, the experience of Bombay in coping with the Influenza Pandemic of 1918, based on contemporary newspaper reports, and on reports of voluntary agencies, which provided relief.

Indian Medicinal Plants in the Shifting Terrains of Science traces the medical and botanical reconnaissance of indigenous medicinal plants in nineteenth-century Bengal and observes their integration into the framework of modern science. These processes involved critical inroads into mapping the natural world and building foundations for the disciplines of medicine and botany in the colonies. Varied and diachronic processes of scientific review of the colony's natural resources were concurrent with rapid epistemological advances on the global scene and a simultaneous build-up of utilitarian colonial configurations. This led to the eventual budding of critical nationalist and popular indigenous responses and actions, making way for a history of convergence between opposing, contrasting, balancing and adaptive forces of intellection within both the indigenous and non-indigenous spheres. The present volume arose from a deeply felt need to draw attention to the critical issues of engagements and disjuncture between science and environment as well as the increasing endangerment of medicinal plants in the present era. The documentation of this journey also sheds light on these silent species before irretrievable changes render them into oblivion.

Rethinking Human-Animal Relationship engages with animal studies, a growing interdisciplinary field that reveals the deep human unreason and moral schizophrenia regarding their animal 'others'. This book focuses on the links of the unrelenting exploitation of animals throughout history to the domination of humans over other humans: women, lower classes, colonized people and other marginalized categories that are more or less animalized by oppressors. Facilitated by scientific insights into physical and emotional continuity between humans and non-humans as well as by the opening up of a theoretical space by postmodernism, postcolonialism, feminism and other such critical modes of discourse, animal studies emphasizes the human failure to look beyond themselves due to cultural blinders. It emerges in the exploration of shifts in thought in this book that ultimately, this leads to a posthumanistic view, asserting that rather than championing the rights of certain select subjects from a safe ontological distance, one should, fundamentally question the very human schema of knowing them.

South Asia's river systems are known for their multiple topographies and varied geography. There are several transnational rivers that flow to eastern and north-eastern India through Bhutan, Nepal and China. Geological and environmental changes; the construction of dams, barrages and hydroelectric power projects as well as their side effects; and massive floods, soil erosion and a rise in silt beds have changed the traditional relationship between these rivers and the civilizations settled near their banks. River, Society and Culture presents these dynamics in the context of the rivers of Bengal (both West Bengal and Bangladesh) and Assam. It focuses on four rivers-the Titash, the Tista, the Kalahi and the Raidak-to illustrate the intimate relationship, both historical and contemporary, between these life-giving rivers and their people.

The Gasping City explores the urban environment of colonial Calcutta from the perspective of science as 'knowledge', planning as 'development' and the response of the bhadralok and the bhadramahila to the development of the city. Beginning with the foundation of the Lottery Committee in 1817, the volume traces the urban expansion of Calcutta till the emergence of the Calcutta Improvement Trust in 1823. The research presented here, based on information from contemporary vernacular journals, to demonstrate the extent to which the colonized intelligentsia had internalized Western notions of health, sanitation and environment. The central question in this volume surrounds the contradiction in the trajectories of science and public health on one hand, and the growing environmental crises of colonial Calcutta on the other.

Eurasia, India and the Spaces in Between, is dedicated to his memory with contributions from his colleagues and friends from across the world, engages with a range of issues to give a sense of the diversity of interests that Vasudevan used to nurture. While prima facie they might appear to be on disparate subjects, each of the essays contribute to the understanding of different aspects of life in the Eurasian region in early modern and modern times, with particular emphasis on Russia, Central Asia and South Asia. For Vasudevan, though, these regional engagements were somewhat fluid and amorphous, and quite far from being the hermetically sealed spaces that national imaginaries now make them out to be. Hari Vasudevan was deeply interested in the interactions between and among the peoples of these regions, negotiating as best as they could the historical forces that shaped the landscapes of their time. The essays in this volume essentially address attempts at such negotiation undertaken in the Eurasian region, mostly in the modern times.

Like the heterogeneity of the idyllic landscape of the Ganga-Brahmaputra valleys, the art historical traditions of the region manifest elements of bewildering diversity and multiplicity in form and media. Based on empirical researches over four decades across eastern and north-eastern India, Ganga-Brahmaputra and Beyond: Exploring Art and Iconography of Eastern and North-Eastern India explores these diverse creative traditions, visualized and successfully strategized by premodern śilpins or craftsmen. Spanning a chronological period from the second and first centuries bce to the early twentieth century ce, the chapters in this volume, grouped under three themes-'Eastern India: A Journey across Time'; 'Revisiting North-East India'; and 'Interrogating Artists' Choice'-investigate newly discovered data and interrogate existing material through new questions.

India's History, India's Raj: Essays in Historical Understanding highlights the myriad facets in the story of how Indians themselves participated in the construction not only of the Indian Raj but of Indian history. Due to distortions, omissions, or ideological bias, much of this story remains unbalanced or simply misunderstood. Never before in history has the whole 'continent' of geographic India, surrounded by mountain ranges to the north and oceans to the south, been unified under a single political system. That is-until modern times. However long each monarch reigned, neither lasted their entire length of the political system over which they ruled. Maurya Empire began with Chandragupta and lasted beyond Ashoka; and Mughal rule began with Babur and Humayun and lasted beyond Aurangzeb. Yet, some micro-systems, such as villages, defied this trend and continued to flourish. How and why was this so? Within the pages of this volume are essays that, in one way or another, and from one perspective or another, seek to address this central question. Whatever the size or durability of a given political system, and however much rulers from outside India might have had a hand in its development, each political system was mainly the product of Indian manpower, Indian money, and Indian methods.

With a concise Introduction to historical, cultural, and architectural currents, this book lays out helpful itineraries for visiting these refined specimens of sultanate architecture in Ahmadabad. Primarily envisioned as a guide for studious visitors, this book should be of interest also to academics and historians of Indo-Islamic architecture. Richly illustrated, it brings to light an architectural corpus which deserves a central space as well as a composite scholarly assessment within the discourse surrounding the cultural expressions of Islamic architecture in the Indian subcontinent.

Political Economy of Colonial and Post-Colonial India analyses critical aspects of the political economy of the colonial and the post-colonial period and focuses on the debates on the transition from one to the other. The volume discusses the Great Divergence, where Britain's shooting forward was predicated upon the devastation of the colonial economy, and instruments used for achieving the subjugation of the Indian economy, such as British monetary policy and particularly the Reserve Bank of India.A major contribution of the book is to study the politics of the two basic contending classes-the capitalist class and the working class as represented by the Left. It is this that determined which class perspective exercised ideological hegemony or influence over the national movement and, consequently, over the post-colonial Indian state.An examination of the Indian national movement's 'idea of India', implemented by the post-colonial Indian state led by Jawaharlal Nehru forms a core theme of the book. It also discusses Indira Gandhi shaping the Indian economy, taking the Nehruvian path to its logical conclusion and then initiating the shift to economic reform. Finally, it discusses at length the growing challenge of perhaps the longest lasting legacy of colonialism-religious communalism-which threatens India's integrity today.

The Eternal Dastur Craft is a study of the Rajlok, Khojas of the state and the political and religious dignitaries and protocol applied to them in the court of the Jaipur State from early eighteenth to late nineteenth century. While appearing in court, the protocol laid out for different social groups depended on the status of the individuals and their castes. Interestingly, in this limited sphere also, the state accommodated nearly all the sections, clans and castes in the court. Being attached to the court, political and religious groups became representative of the court and exercised political pressure.

Globalization, by incessantly promoting uniformity, is not only destroying biological and cultural diversity but also leading to language shifts because linguistic imperialism and linguistic marginalization are two ends of the same spectrum. Linguistic Diversity in South and Southeast Asia brings together the contributions of scholars concerned with this loss from Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, and India. It is a compendium on the depleting linguistic diversity, loss of oral cultures, erosion of indigenous knowledge system, and the widening gap between dominant and dominated languages which has created a situation of linguistic apartheid in this part of the world. Interestingly, these essays also reveal that despite globalization some communities have managed to retain their languages, which must now be sustained and treasured and not allowed to die out. Documenting the first-hand experience of working with the diverse and obscure linguistic communities of South and Southeast Asia, this volume not only delves into the complexities of issues but also suggests measures to arrest the loss of languages and to revive those that are on the brink of extinction.

Glass Crafts in Northern India is not only about beads and bangles and their production cycles, but also about one of the most important glass-craft clusters of the world. The evolution of technology and skills with regard to the making of the furnace and kiln over the centuries and invention of new methods for producing variety of beads are the essence of this volume.

Kūṭiyāṭṭam, the only surviving live Sanskrit theatre in the world, was defined by UNESCO as 'a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity'. Full performances-almost always a single act taken from a multi-act Sanskrit play-range from 12 to 150 hours (in daily or nightly segments of several hours each) and display an aesthetic brilliance and dizzying complexity that are almost beyond description. Each such act constitutes an artistic whole with its own conceptual and thematic unity. The Rite of Seeing reflects the work of the Hebrew University Kūṭiyāṭṭam team and of our colleagues from Tübingen, Paris, Groningen, and elsewhere, over many years of annual pilgrimages to Kerala to watch and study this art in action. It offers interpretations of seven classical performances in the light of the actors' traditional handbooks (Āṭṭaprakāram), the Sanskrit base text, and the artists' oral commentary that emerged naturally in the course of many days of attentive viewing. The essays are accompanied by links to extended performance moments, so that readers can see with their own eyes something of what we have seen in Mūḻikkuḷam and Kiḷḷimaṅgalam. Interpretative essays of this kind, although plentiful in studies of Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Chekhov, have never been attempted for Kūṭiyāṭṭam. The book is thus meant to introduce Kūṭiyāṭṭam to new audiences and to offer pathways for beginning to explore the riches of this unique and still vital tradition.

They are scattered around the globe now, descendants of girmitiyas, indentured labourers, and other subaltern groups of Indians. The journey of their forebears, from India to the tropical sugar colonies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was fraught, but they emerged from the debris of subalternity to lay the foundations of many a colony, from South Africa to Suriname and many places in-between. For the most part, however, they have been ignored by history books as a people without agency or humanity, unworthy of consideration. This picture has been changing in recent decades largely as the result of scholars such as those represented in this volume. In the essays in this volume, scholars from the Indian subaltern diaspora write about their improbable journeys and serendipitous transformations in the face of great odds, of the influences that shaped their thinking and approach to the study of the past of their forebears. This is scholarship up close and personal, not desiccated a nd dry. Fascinating, often moving stories in themselves, the essays collectively provide indispensable insights into the emergence of a field of history which their intervention has rescued from certain obscurity. In the process, both the writers and their forebears are ennobled.

The second volume of Kolkata in Space, Time and Imagination continues with the theme of the ordinary and the everyday, with special attention paid to the underclasses of the city, focusing on certain labouring sectors (including feminized ones) that have always been marginalized in the city's history and yet do assert their 'right to the city' even in this age of neoliberal economics that seems to be rapidly turning the city into a utopia for the middle-class.This volume, moreover, deals with the efflorescence of creative imagination in the city's culturescape, focusing on certain literary and artistic genres. It also shows how, in a sense, the city itself is an imagined existence, albeit a pluralistic one, and how perceptions of the city's past and the conservation of its heritage are also largely determined by imagination. Just as the first volume highlights the politics of space and time, the present one makes a nuanced study of the politics of culture in the city.

The Archaeological Geography of Early Historical Gujarat argues that the Gujarat region was the meeting point of cultures from mainland India as well as the gateway for goods from overseas and offers important information regarding Indian Ocean trade in ancient India taking place from the west coast of the peninsula. Gujarat was also the hub where the overland trade routes met, where goods from north India, the Deccan, and what is today Afghanistan, as well as areas surrounding the east of the river Indus landed. Besides providing an account of the hinterland of the north-western coast of India, which has a historical character of its own, this volume also provides information on the nature of the ancient settlements of the modern state of Gujarat, and their connections with each other.

Fall of the Maratha Empire, Vol. I (1796-1806) documents that significant transitional epoch in modern Indian history when the Marathas lost their hegemony in India and Peshwa Bajirao II became a subservient tool of British imperialism by concluding the Treaty of Bassain in 1802. The two resourceful Maratha chiefs Shinde and Bhonsle, fought against the British in the Second Anglo-Maratha War while Holkar remained quiescent. Shinde and Bhonsle were, however, defeated by the brilliant and meticulous planning of Governor-General Lord Wellesley and the British Generals. The vast amount of material available at the National Archives of India, New Delhi; the Secretariat Record Office, Bombay; and the British Library, London, along with the published documents contained in the several volumes of the Poona Residency Correspondence and the Wellesley papers in Montgomery Martin's volumes, have been fully utilized to reconstruct the fascinating story of the fall of the Marathas in this volume.

Collections on Indian democracy are plentiful. Yet rarely do they question the impact of the ongoing democratic mobilizations on the mundane, everyday lives of ordinary citizens and the world they see around them. Borrowing insights from new research in cultural studies, contemporary literary theory, visual politics, biopolitics, meteorology, to cite a few, State of Democracy in India covers the ground cast aside by existing narratives and analyses of Indian democracy. Pivoted on the experiences of the people and not necessarily the institutions of governance, this collection examines a vast array of markers of democracy under the rubrics of populism, disaster migration, caste contestations, new developments in feminism, and the act of culture. Towards the end of the volume, a meditation on the meaning of writing in COVID-19 induced precarity reflects on the individual and social experiences of living through the pandemic. The guiding principle of the contributions in this volume is that democracy is not merely a psephological number game of vote sharing and swings but encompasses worldviews, touching every department of life, collective and individual. This innovative collection reconfigures our vision of democracy as a force-field of interests and new imaginations, full of possibilities and yet fraught with deep fissures and contestations of views and practices.

Kashmir: Before the Accession and After examines the hitherto neglected areas of life in Kashmir, its continually fraught relationship with the central government of India, and the role of international politics, which resulted in the inception and perpetuation of the crisis in the region. Spanning the decades from the end of the rule of the Dogras and Sheikh Abdullah's contentious relations with the national leadership in Delhi to the current abrogation of Article 370, this book investigates the historical trajectory and modern identity politics at the core of the Kashmir problem.

Religion, Community and Nation: Hindu Consciousness and Nationalism in Colonial Punjab examines the emergence and growth of a Hindu communitarian identity in Punjab and its interface with the nationalist discourse and the anti-colonial struggle from the late nineteenth century to the closing years of the 1920s. An attempt has been made to understand and explain how different sections of the new Hindu elite, having developed a distinct communitarian identity, negotiated with the ideology of inclusive nationalism and the anti-imperialist struggle represented by the Congress. However, the Hindu consciousness that emerged and evolved in colonial Punjab was far from monolithic and represented divergent perceptions. One of the trends that dominated the Hindu discourse and polity, described in this study as the 'nationalist-communitarian' perspective, was led by Lala Lajpat Rai. This volume also takes a fresh look at the position of Lala Lajpat Rai in the context of the shifts taking place in Hindu identity politics as well as in the nationalist movement.

The precarity of democratic order In contemporary times needs no underlining. Crisis of Liberal Deliberation addresses this Issue from a novel perspective. Through what magic, queries this volume, the Indian democratic state is even surviving as a political formation.For how long will democratic order remain durable despite Its myriad loopholes, glaring fault-lines, and thousand histories of disappointment? Curiously, as more democratic states come under the sway of violence, the demand for democracy has become more Intense among people. Unveiling this apparent paradox from their respective fields of specialization, the contributors of this volume analyse a vast range of facets of contemporary Indian democracy. The result is a glasnost of Ideas, views and debates relating to the urgency of this deliberation.

Islam first arrived in India through Arab merchants in the very first century of Islam's rise in Arabia. Focusing on th arrival and growth of Islam in South Asia and the important socio-political changes it brought, Islam and Its Culture in South Asia examines the identity and lives of the converts to Islam, their reasons for conversion and the role performed by modern reformers who initiated modernist trends in order to enlighten Indian Muslims. It also analyses the approaches employed by modern Islamicists in their writings on the Muslims and their history in India. Based on contemporary and near contemporary sources that have been hitherto unknown or overlooked, this volume will help scholars reconstruct the social and intellectual history of the different communities of South Asia.

Shipbuilding, Navigation and the South-West Silk Road: North Odisha, Bengal and Arakan looks at circulation and ships in a space that brings together the Indian subcontinent, the Himalayan regions, south-west China and South-East Asia, connecting those regions to the larger Indian Oceanic trade. This space is organized around the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta, a constantly moving topography criss-crossed by hundreds of changing rivers, where boats and ships play a pivotal role in circulation, trade and wealth. So far, boats and ships of the Northern Bay of Bengal have been the subject of very few studies. Shallow draft vessels, able to navigate the coast, estuaries and deep rivers provided the technological response to a particular typography. They are also the reflections of a form of transportation that evades the control of a central and land-based polity. Their understanding is crucial to reassess our idea of roads as well as the history of technology and trade in a space central to circulation, yet highly politically fragmented and evading sustainable control. The study of shipbuilding highlights the relevance of technological features shared beyond area studies and periodization. Thanks to a cross-discipline, cross-area and cross-era approach, the book offers a water-centric perspective on the region.

Weaving Hierarchies: Handloom Weavers in Early Twentieth Century United Provinces combines primarily historical data with extensive field research to give us new insights into the structures of artisan trades and the lives of weaving communities specifically located in the weaving hubs of Azamgarh, Gorakhpur and Faizabad divisions of eastern Uttar Pradesh during the first half of the twentieth century. Thus, it fills an important gap in the existing labour historiography, which has tended to focus more on 'modern' sites of labour such as factories, mines and plantations.

The essays in this volume focus on the surviving remains in India of premodern public buildings like serais, bridges and water-works of different types as well as masonry structures meant to extract indigo or sugar from plants. Much of this evidence is significant for the study of economic history as well as war technology of the post-Turkish conquest phase. The attempt here is to present this evidence in the perspective of the evolving production technology which appears to have received an impetus with the establishment of Turkish rule.

The Marginalized Self questions the century-old perception of the Musahar community as rat-eating, pig-rearing, habitually drunk, lazy and unmotivated; a perception fostered by the dominant discourse of development, and the historically prevalent hierarchical social system. This collection of essays argues that these victims of the dominant model of development acquire a different kind of power and critical consciousness due to their marginality, which helps them to examine the processes, practices, and institutions that give rise to and justify poverty, displacement, corruption, greed, competition, and violence in the name of development.Ethnographic studies focussing on the Musahars have demonstrated that the people of this community are capable of offering resistance to the might of the development regime in terms of a comparative critique of modern civilization. They can assert the value of their own worldview and epistemology, and in doing so, they subvert the superiority that is generally assigned to the logical and formal schema in understanding the world, and which often speaks in contradictory, evasive, ambiguous, and metaphorical terms.The book offers insights into marginality, culture, and development in India, and will be of interest to students, scholars, practitioners and policy-makers associated with the disciplines of development studies, social work, social anthropology, critical social psychology, history, and public policy.