Veena Dhanammal


Book Description

This book looks at the life and music of Veena Dhanammal (1866–1938), considered the embodiment of ‘classicism’ in Karnatik music. It locates her art within the cultural, social and intellectual milieu she inhabited, allowing readers to track the changing musical landscape of southern India, as a process of urbanisation — beginning in the late nineteenth century — resulted in Karnatik music’s movement from a ritual and courtly location to a modern, secular form of entertainment in the city space.




New Mansions For Music


Book Description

The essays in New Mansions for Music: Performance, Pedagogy and Criticism look at one of the most ancient and rigorous classical musical traditions of India, the Karnatik music system, and the kind of changes it underwent once it was relocated from traditional spaces of temples and salons to the public domain. Nineteenth-century Madras led the way in the transformation that Karnatik music underwent as it encountered the forces of modernization and standardization. This study also contributes to our understanding of the experience of modernity in India through the prism of music. The role of Madras city as patron and custodian of the performing arts, especially classical music offers an invaluable perspective on the larger processes of modernization in India. As the title suggests, the areas of classical music, which were most influenced by these developments were pedagogy or modes of musical transmission, performance conventions and criticism or music appreciation. Once the urban elite demanded the widening of the teaching of classical music, traditional modes of music instruction underwent a major change involving a breakdown of the gurushishya parampara or the tradition wherein the teacher imparted knowledge to a chosen few. Caste and kinship were important determining factors for the selection of these shishyas or students, but in modern institutions like the universities these boundaries had to be demolished. Simultaneously, the public staging of music brought the performer into a new relationship with his audience, especially as the art form became subject to validation and criticism by the newly emerging music critic. In an immensely readable book peppered with anecdotes and conversations with leading musicians and critics of the day, as well as humorous visual representations, part caricature, part satirical, the author describes a rapidly changing society and its new look in early twentieth century Madras.




The Pearson CSAT Manual 2011


Book Description




Raja Serfoji II


Book Description

In the early nineteenth century, the south Indian kingdom of Tanjore, which had come under the control of the East India Company, flourished as a ‘centre’ of enlightenment. This book traces the contours of the Tanjore enlightenment, which produced a knowledge that was at once modern and deeply rooted in the indigenous tradition. The chief protagonist of this first ever full-length study on Tanjore at the turn of the nineteenth century is Raja Serfoji II (r. 1798–1832), in whose world science and God coexisted comfortably. Tanjore at this time was a thriving contact-zone, linked to several centres through extensive local and global networks. Its court attracted a great number of visitors, including Christian missionaries, high-ranking Company officials, princely contemporaries, naturalists, and medical practitioners. Dwelling on the locatedness of science and enlightenment modernity in the context of the colonial periphery, the book describes how the Raja deployed certain ‘vectors of assemblage’ — an array of practices, instruments, theories and people, including his vast collection of manuscripts, books and scientific instruments, a Devanagari printing press, a menagerie, health establishments and a large retinue of trained experts and artists — to invent Tanjore as a contemporary ‘centre’. Shunning reductionist and diffusionist explanations of the transmission of Western science in colonial settings, the study uses hitherto unexplored archival sources to reconstruct the Tanjore enlightenment as the outcome of globally situated cross-cultural exchanges. It celebrates the openness and confidence with which European science was engaged with, assimilated, translated and reinvented in a ‘contact-zone’ located in the colonial backwaters of south India. The book will be of interest to historians, sociologists and those interested in history of science and medicine, anthropologists, cultural studies scholars, as well as the general reader.




A Girl’s Quest for Self-Realization


Book Description

Parents should avoid trying to fulfil their ambitions through their children by deciding their children’s life-missions for them, ignoring children’s own ambitions. The intellect of a person who undergoes ‘Anguish’ gets so sharpened that the person would shine in whatever activity the person might later undertake. Vasanthi was brought up even without allowing her to know the difference between a male and a female. He wanted her to become a great singer but she was more interested to become an actress. When youth began to blossom she struggled to learn about the body’s sexuality and their purpose in life. Saradhy was a great actor and was her friend. A chance physical contact in a drama excited traces of physical love between them; he understood immediately and struggled to escape from it for the rest of his life. She could not understand the strange feeling she was experiencing. She spent years experimenting with ‘Touch’ and analyzing the results. He guided her wade through life successfully. Saradhy desired sanyasa. He performed “Kamadahanam” drama to destroy all his love towards women but failed to achieve it. By yoga, he transferred to Kireeti what attracted Vasanthi, got her married to Kireeti and moved away from them He was addicted to drama and continued to give performances even as he changed religions and moved from place to place. Saradhy was performing in their town, a drama in which Vasanthi played the heroine earlier. She requested him to permit her play that role again; he stoutly refused. She convinced the day’s heroine and replaced her after the drama commenced. In a situation in the drama, they embraced each other. They experienced a transcendental pleasure and satisfaction and their lives left their bodies. Pause for a moment. It has become very common to keep a pet, usually a dog, in almost every house. The pets are medically treated to suppress their sex urges. Have pets no right to sex? What right has a family to enjoy sex but prevent their poor pet the same pleasure? Would they not lament and struggle like Vasanthi, to understand what they are missing? Vainly do we boast to be animal lovers!




Benoy Kumar Sarkar


Book Description

This book explores the life and times of the pioneering Indian sociologist Benoy Kumar Sarkar. It locates him simultaneously in the intellectual history of India and the political history of the world in the twentieth century. It focuses on the development and implications of Sarkar’s thinking on race, gender, governance and nationhood in a changing context. A penetrating portrait of Sarkar and his age, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern Indian history, sociology, and politics.




Contributions of Thanjavur Maratha Kings


Book Description

The History Of TamilNadu Kings (Cholas,Nayakas) and accomplishments during their rule,with the Brief history of The Great Maratha warrior Chatrapathi Shivaji,his son Dharmaveer Sambhaji, their spiritual guru Samartha Ramdas and their visit to Tamilnadu has been included . Thanjavur was ruled by Maratha kings for 180 years and they had a vast accomplishments in many fields and were scholars themselves.History of Thanjavur Marathas has been included. King Serfoji II who was a Bibliophile developed arts,culture and literature and one of the present world largest library, SARASWATI MAHAL is named after him. Brief historical detail on Indian Classical art form-Bharatanatyam has also been written. The founder of Maratha rule in Thanjavur (TamilNadu) was King Venkoji alias Ekoji, founded in 1676 A.D. Details of all kings who ruled after him and their works and accomplishments in the field of arts,literature,culture,dance,drama, science,medicines,Engineering,ship building etc which they did in those days (300 years back) with a brief detail on Maratha Royal family of Thanjavur, Sadar Mahal Palace has been included. Thanjavur Maratha Kings were the patron of arts, learning and many scholars and artists were flourished during their reign. Trip to Thanjavur,TamilNadu (India) is incomplete without visiting Remarkable places of Raja Raja Chola’s Brihadeshwara temple and Thanjavur Maharaja’s Serfoji Saraswati Mahal Library (TMSSML).Brihadeshwara Temple and Saraswati Mahal Library are the imperishable and living monuments of Raja Raja Cholan and King Serfoji II. “The Tanjore Country is celebrated all over the world for its charities.It is called Dharma Raj-and I consider this reputation,which reverts upon me through all countries from this appellation as the most honorable distinction of my rank”- Raja Serfoji.




The Many Lives of Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna


Book Description

Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna, an internationally renowned Carnatic musician from the illustrious musical lineage of composer Saint Tyagaraja, wore many hats in his lifetime. Having made a stage debut at the age of seven, he was hailed as a child prodigy. From then till the time he passed away, at age eighty-six in 2016, he continued to be in the spotlight, not just for his extraordinary talent and versatility as a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, but as a composer, playback singer and even, briefly, as a character actor. He was a primary school dropout, a teenage poet and composer, a restless mind, a polyglot, a legacy upholder, a wordsmith, an ice cream lover and a pathbreaker. This is a story of the many lives of Dr Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna. Veejay Sai's in-depth research into his life and work led him deep into unseen archival material and across the Carnatic musical landscape of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Fortified by interviews with his family members, disciples and peers, The Many Lives of Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna, a definitive biography of the musical genius, is not only a revealing account of the personal traits and facets of an unparallelled genius, but is also a portrait of India's classical music world, a place as much of beauty as of untrammelled egos.




Cosmopolitan Asia


Book Description

One key concept in the large body of scholarship concerned with theorizing social relations is the idea of 'cosmopolitanism'. This book unpacks the idea of cosmopolitanism through the linked knowledges of the Global South. It brings into dialogue an inter-disciplinary team of local and transnational scholars who examine various temporal, cultural, spatial and political contexts in countries as different, yet connected, as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, India, Bangladesh, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. The book also considers a wide range of subjects – present and historical, real, as represented in literature and in theatre, and as theorized in philosophy – across these diverse contexts, but always focusing on regions and places where inter-Asian intermingling has taken place. The conclusions arrived at are varied and considerably enrich social theorizing. The book reveals a cosmopolitanism that is much more specifically Asian than the cosmopolitanism usually associated with the West, demonstrates how concepts of 'nation', 'local' and 'globalization' play out in practice in Asian settings, and re-examines concepts such as migration, diaspora, and the construction of identities. The book has much to offer scholars engaged in history, literary studies, anthropology and cultural studies.




Shyamji Krishnavarma


Book Description

This book is the first critical biography on Shyamji Krishnavarma — scholar, journalist and national revolutionary who lived in exile outside India from 1897 to 1930. His ideas were crucial in the creation of an extremist wing of anti-imperial nationalism. The work delves into a fascinating range of issues such as colonialism and knowledge, political violence, cosmopolitanism, and diaspora. Lucidly written, and with an insightful analysis of Krishnavarma’s life and times, this will greatly interest scholars and researchers of modern Indian history, politics, the nationalist movement, as well as the informed lay reader.