Debrahmanising History


Book Description

Debrahmanising History Is A Sweeping And Radical Survey Of The Major Dalit-Bahujan Intellectuals And Movements Over 2500 Years Of Indian History, From Buddha To Ambedkar.




Debrahmanising History


Book Description

In some studies, the emancipatory thrust of this tradition is occasionally recognised, but it is seldom integrated with civilisational studies on Indian culture and society.




History and Politics In Post-Colonial India


Book Description

The writing of history in India has been fraught with controversies. From the storm over textbooks in the 1970s, and the furore over the Babri Masjid in the 1990s, to the flaring up of religious sentiments over 'beef-eating' and the Ram Sethu, this book provides a synoptic view of teaching and writing of history in post-colonial India. Michael Gottlob explores historical research and teaching as important components contributing to the development of a national identity and ideas of citizenship in post-colonial India. He shows how the urge to decolonize and recover the self has given rise to several approaches that attempt to 'reclaim' Indian history from its colonial past. The book discusses diverse areas like methodological research and public use of history; cultural identity and diversity; nationalism and communalism; and social movements and deconstructs their far-reaching implications in contemporary India. It also examines the role of women, Dalits, and Adivasis to understand their position in the multicultural reality of India.




Voices of Marginalisation: Literary Records of Trauma


Book Description

Present book Voices of Marginalisation: Literary Records of Trauma a legendry collection of chapters from notable faculties across India. Book has an effort to present some weaknesses of our Indian society and how to overcome from this scenario. Book has following contents: Contents: Preface Introduction to Voices of Marginalisation Literary Records of Trauma Gender Violence 1. Reading Rape Narratives: Re-living Trauma and Re-constructing the Self. Kanika Katyal 2. Of Ferris Wheels and Love Motels: An Inquiry into the Nature of Pain in Haruki Murakami’s Fiction. Chaandreyi Mukherjee 3. Trauma, Memory and New Alternatives: A Study of Shashi Deshpande’s Female Protagonists. Madhu Batta Conflict and Trauma 4. Fictionalising Trauma: Narrating Experiences of Women Caught in the Webs of Conflict. Mukuta Borah 5. Delineating the Alienated Writings: The Manipuri Vernacular in the Context of Armed Forces Special Powers Act. Raja Boboy Chiru and Bijit Sinha Pressures of Modernity and the Neo-Colonial State 6. Understanding Trauma Through Post-1947 Literary Production in India from Conflict Zones in India’s Northeast. Anuradha Ghosh ix 7. Recording National Emergency: Literature as History in Times of Censorship. Yamini Trauma and Caste 8. Trauma and Memory: Sociology of Dalit Autobiographies and Biographies. Vivek Kumar 9. Dalit Narratives: Frozen Trauma & Caste in Karukku and Joothan. Charu Arya 10. Representing Trauma: The Dalit Refugees of Bengal. Brati Biswas 11. Memory, History and Power: A Study of Kalyan Rao’s Untouchable Spring. Mukesh Kumar Bairva Memory and History 12. Stuttering Walks and Conflicting Archives: Moments of Trauma in W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz. Krishnan Unni P. 13. We Played at Disappearing: Analysing Memory and History in Alejandro Zambra’s Ways of Going Home. Mubashir Karim Notes on Contributors




The Changing World of Caste and Hierarchy in Bengal


Book Description

This book challenges the prevalent assumptions of caste, hierarchy and social mobility in pre-colonial and colonial Bengal. It studies the writings of colonial ethnographers, Orientalist scholars, Christian missionaries and pre-colonial literary texts like the Mangalkavyas to show how the concept of caste emerged and argues that the jati order in Bengal was far from being a rigidly reified structure, but one which had room for spatial and social mobility. The volume highlights the processes through which popular myths and beliefs of the lower caste orders of Bengal were Sanskritized. It delineates the linkages between sedantized peasant culture and the emergence of new agricultural castes in colonial Bengal. Moreover, the author discusses a wide spectrum of issues like marginality and hierarchy, the spread of Brahmanical hegemony, the creation of deities and the process of Sanskritization, popular Saivism, the cult of Manasa in Bengal and the revolt of 1857 and the caste question. Rich in archival sources, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of colonial history, Indian history, political sociology, caste studies, exclusion studies, cultural studies, social history, cultural history and South Asian studies, especially those interested in undivided Bengal.




Cultural Histories of India


Book Description

This book explores the social and cultural histories of India, focusing on cultural encounters and representations of subaltern communities from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. Examining cultural encounters between Europeans and Indians during the precolonial and colonial periods, the book analyzes European, especially English, efforts to exoticize or investigate the social practices of the Other. It also presents the culturally conditioned Indian subject's perspective on Europe and the imperial society. The book engages with narratives of suppressed movements of tribals and dalits, of erosion of the culture and history of ancient communities, and recovers the local narratives of marginalized groups in Andaman and Malabar, which get superseded by the larger narrative of nation-building. Often relying on oral history instead of printed material and sociological fieldwork, the alternate histories are presented through unconventional, literary or semi-literary genres like travel narratives, fiction, films, and songs, thus presenting an alternative interpretation to the central narrative of the progress of mainstream India. Representing cultural history and the view from below, the book shifts its focus from the conventional historiography associated with political history and will be of interest to academics working in the field of cultural studies, the historiography of India, South Asian Studies and an interdisciplinary audience in history, sociology, literature, media, and English studies.




2005


Book Description

Annually published since 1930, the International Bibliography of Historical Sciences (IBOHS) is an international bibliography of the most important historical monographs and periodical articles published throughout the world, which deal with history from the earliest to the most recent times. The IBOHS is thus currently the only continuous bibliography of its kind covering such a broad period of time, spectrum of subjects and geographical range. The works are arranged systematically according to period, region or historical discipline, and alphabetically according to authors names or, in the case of anonymous works, by the characteristic main title word. The bibliography contains a geographical index and indexes of persons and authors.




A Social Theory of Corruption


Book Description

A social theory of grand corruption from antiquity to the twenty-first century. In contemporary policy discourse, the notion of corruption is highly constricted, understood just as the pursuit of private gain while fulfilling a public duty. Its paradigmatic manifestations are bribery and extortion, placing the onus on individuals, typically bureaucrats. Sudhir Chella Rajan argues that this understanding ignores the true depths of corruption, which is properly seen as a foundation of social structures. Not just bribes but also caste, gender relations, and the reproduction of class are forms of corruption. Using South Asia as a case study, Rajan argues that syndromes of corruption can be identified by paying attention to social orders and the elites they support. From the breakup of the Harappan civilization in the second millennium BCE to the anticolonial movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, elites and their descendants made off with substantial material and symbolic gains for hundreds of years before their schemes unraveled. Rajan makes clear that this grander form of corruption is not limited to India or the annals of global history. Societal corruption is endemic, as tax cheats and complicit bankers squirrel away public money in offshore accounts, corporate titans buy political influence, and the rich ensure that their children live lavishly no matter how little they contribute. These elites use their privileged access to power to fix the rules of the game—legal structures and social norms—benefiting themselves, even while most ordinary people remain faithful to the rubrics of everyday life.




Annihilation of Caste


Book Description

The classic analysis of the caste system with an extensive introduction by Arundhati Roy. “What the Communist Manifesto is to the capitalist world, Annihilation of Caste is to India.” —Anand Teltumbde, author of The Persistence of Caste. B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste is one of the most important, yet neglected, works of political writing from India. Written in 1936, it is an audacious denunciation of Hinduism and its caste system. Ambedkar – a figure like W.E.B. Du Bois – offers a scholarly critique of Hindu scriptures, scriptures that sanction a rigidly hierarchical and iniquitous social system. The world’s best-known Hindu, Mahatma Gandhi, responded publicly to the provocation. The hatchet was never buried. Arundhati Roy introduces this extensively annotated edition of Annihilation of Caste in “The Doctor and the Saint,” examining the persistence of caste in modern India, and how the conflict between Ambedkar and Gandhi continues to resonate. Roy takes us to the beginning of Gandhi’s political career in South Africa, where his views on race, caste and imperialism were shaped. She tracks Ambedkar’s emergence as a major political figure in the national movement, and shows how his scholarship and intelligence illuminated a political struggle beset by sectarianism and obscurantism. Roy breathes new life into Ambedkar’s anti-caste utopia, and says that without a Dalit revolution, India will continue to be hobbled by systemic inequality.




Oxford Handbook of Caste


Book Description

The Oxford Handbook of Caste brings together a wide range of essays encompassing various academic disciplines to lay the foundations for a new understanding of caste, capturing emerging research trends, imaginations, and the lived realities of caste.