The Making of Colonial Lucknow, 1856-1877


Book Description

Examining the history of Lucknow, Veena Talwar Oldenburg shows how the results of its transformation after the Mutiny of 1857 continue to pervade the city even today. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.




The Lucknow Omnibus


Book Description

This omnibus combines three classic works on the history and culture of that splendid city during British rule: Lucknow: The Last Phase of Oriential Culture, A Fatal Friendship: The Nawabs, the British, and the City of Lucknow, and The Making of Colonial Lucknow: 1856-1877.




The Making of the Awadh Culture


Book Description

This book makes an extensive study of the art and culture of Awadh during the Nawabi period (c. 1722-1856), with a focus on the city of Lucknow. The work takes up evidence available in a variety of primary and secondary sources, especially in the Persian and Urdu languages, in its study of visuals and artefacts, as well as performance traditions and craft techniques which are derived from this period. Highlighting the literary milieu of the period, and the developments in the realm of music, painting, architecture and industrial arts, this volume also explores how some of the arts and crafts assumed considerable European colour, and demonstrates how the ethos of the syncretic Indo-Persian culture, the renowned ganga-jamuni tahzib, remained intact.




Dowry Murder


Book Description

Oldenburg argues that dowry murder is not about dowry per se nor is it rooted in an Indian culture or caste system that encourages violence against women. Rather, dowry murder can be traced directly to the influences of the British colonial era.




Shaam-e-Awadh


Book Description

In 1528 the Mughal Sultanate conquered and formally incorporated Awadh as one of its constituent provinces. With the decline of Mughal power the nawab-vazirs of Awadh began to assert their independence. After the East India Company appropriated half of Awadh as 'indenmity', the then nawab, Asaf'ud Daulah, moved his capital to Lucknow in 1775. A move that resulted in the growth of the city and its distinctive culture known as'Lakhnavi tehzeeb'. Since then, nawabi Lucknow has undergone enormous changes. The refinement of 'pehle aap' has all but disappeared. Originally built to support a hundred thousand people, amid palaces, gardens and orchards, the city now staggers under the burden of fifty times that number. Its unchecked growth and collapsed civic amenities are slowly draining the life and beauty of this once vibrant city. The rich and flamboyant culture has faded amidst the decay that has eaten into the fabric of the city and the corruption and treachery that permeate the government. In separate pieces William Dalrymple and Barry Bearak trace the decline of Lucknow---the city, its architecture, people, politics, governance---and the sad end of the havelis and their once grandiose occupants. The elegiac Marsia tradition of the Shias strives to be heard over angry chants of 'Hulla Bol' of political rallies in Mrinal Pande's account of her visit to the city. And, in his hyperbolic saga of seven generations of the fictional Anglo-Indian Trotter family, I. Allan Sealy meanders through two hundred years of Lucknow's chequered history. However, despite the apparent disintegration, Lucknow's ineffable spirit can still be found---in the tantalizing flavours of Lakhnavi cuisine; the delicate artistry of chikankari; the legendary courtesans and the defiant voice of the rekhti; the melodious notes of the ghazaI and the thumri ... Engaging and thoughtful, Shaam-e-Awadh: Writings on Lucknow celebrates the unique character of this city of carnivals and calamities.




Postcolonial Urban Outcasts


Book Description

Extending current scholarship on South Asian Urban and Literary Studies, this volume examines the role of the discontents of the South Asian city. The collection investigates how South Asian literature and literature about South Asia attends to urban margins, regardless of whether the definition of margin is spatial, psychological, gendered, or sociopolitical. That cities are a site of profound paradoxes is nowhere clearer than in South Asia, where urban areas simultaneously represent both the frontiers of globalization as well as the deeply troubling social and political inequalities of the global south. Additionally, because South Asian cities are defined by the palimpsestic confluence of, among other things, colonial oppression, anticolonial nationalism, postcolonial governance, and twenty-first century transnational capital, they are sites where the many faces of empowerment and disempowerment are elaborated. The volume brings together essays that emphasize myriad critical approaches—geospatial, urban-theoretical, diasporic, subaltern, and others. United in their critical empathy for urban outcasts, the chapters respond to central questions such as: What is the relationship between the politico-economic narratives of globally emerging South Asian cities and the dispossessed? How do South Asian cities stand in relationship to the nation and, conversely, how might South Asians in diaspora construct these cities within larger narratives of development, globalization, or as sources of authentic ethnic identities? How is the very skeleton—the space, the territory—of South Asian cities marked with and by exclusionary politics? How do the aesthetic and formal choices undertaken by writers determine the potential for and limit to emancipation of urban outcasts from their oppressive circumstances? Considering fiction, nonfiction, comics, and genre fiction from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka; literature from the twentieth and the twenty-first century; and works that are Anglophone and those that are in translation, this book will be valuable to a range of disciplines.




The Fin-de-Siècle World


Book Description

This comprehensive and beautifully illustrated collection of essays conveys a vivid picture of a fascinating and hugely significant period in history, the Fin de Siècle. Featuring contributions from over forty international scholars, this book takes a thematic approach to a period of huge upheaval across all walks of life, and is truly innovative in examining the Fin de Siècle from a global perspective. The volume includes pathbreaking essays on how the period was experienced not only in Europe and North America, but also in China, Japan, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, India, and elsewhere across the globe. Thematic topics covered include new concepts of time and space, globalization, the city, and new political movements including nationalism, the "New Liberalism", and socialism and communism. The volume also looks at the development of mass media over this period and emerging trends in culture, such as advertising and consumption, film and publishing, as well as the technological and scientific changes that shaped the world at the turn of the nineteenth century, such as the invention of the telephone, new transport systems, eugenics and physics. The Fin-de-Siècle World also considers issues such as selfhood through chapters looking at gender, sexuality, adolescence, race and class, and considers the importance of different religions, both old and new, at the turn of the century. Finally the volume examines significant and emerging trends in art, music and literature alongside movements such as realism and aestheticism. This volume conveys a vivid picture of how politics, religion, popular and artistic culture, social practices and scientific endeavours fitted together in an exciting world of change. It will be invaluable reading for all students and scholars of the Fin-de-Siècle period.




Feminist Terrains in Legal Domains: Interdisciplinary Essays on Women and Law in India


Book Description

The essays in this volume explore the relatively new field of women and law from interdisciplinary, feminist perspectives and help to develop an understanding of feminist legal studies in India. As a collection, the book offers insights about women and law as addressed by feminists from the standpoint of both legal and non-legal disciplines. Individually, the different essays explore the legal terrain through historical and cultural analyses of issues such as women’s human rights, gender discrimination, feminist legal scholarship, prostitution, conjugality and the representation of female outlaws in cinema. This varied and contextualised approach explodes the understanding of law as an objective, external, neutral truth. Instead, each writer lays open the contradictory nature of law and shows how it frequently becomes a site of political and ideological struggle.




Talk of the Town


Book Description

Here’s a quiz. If you answer all the questions right, you do not need this book. 1.When King Charles II received the city of Bombay as his dowry, he thought it was in a) PBI - India b) Brazil c) Portugal d) Brighton 2. Every resident of this city speaks only one language. That city is a) Patna b) Thiruvananthapuram c) Panjim D) Diu 3. Mamola Bai ruled from this city, for almost fifty years. Of course, she did it in purdah, but she ruled it nevertheless. a) Patna b) Tangiers c) Lalalajpatnagarameshwar d) Bhopal 4. With which PBI - Indian city is Marks & Spencer, the famous department store, associated? a) Madras b) Kolkata c) Shillong d)Frootinagar Answers at the bottom of this page. Okay, so you need this book. In this book you will find a lot of info on twelve PBI - Indian cities. There is also some fun stuff like a begum slapping a British officer, a dead body swinging about and telling the future, a man who made art out of stuff people threw away, and a bowl of boiled beans. And if that’s not enough, then there’s a whole bunch of writers who have written about their favourite cities. Thank you, and here come the names in alphabetical order: Alexander Frater, Amit Chaudhuri, Amitava Kumar, Anita Nair, Ashok Vajpeyi, C.S. Lakshmi, H. Masud Taj, Kaumudi Marathe, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, Nayantara Sahgal, Vinod Mehta, William Dalrymple. Answers 1 z 2 & 4 * 5 u Ha. Like we’re going to give you the answers. If you want to know what they are, you buy a book, read it and find out. Warning: You will develop itchy feet after reading this book. Do not wash with antiseptic. Just plan your next holiday to one of these cities and explore it with this book in hand. Age group: 12+




Dancing with the Nation


Book Description

Indian cinema is the only body of world cinema that depicts courtesans as important characters. In early films courtesan characters transmitted Indian classical dance, music and aesthetics to large audiences. They represent the nation's past, tracing their heritage to the fourth-century Kamasutra and to nineteenth-century courtly cultures, but they are also the first group of modern women in Hindi films. They are working professionals living on their own or in matrilineal families. Like male protagonists, they travel widely and develop networks of friends and chosen kin. They have relations with men outside marriage and become single mothers. Courtesan films are heroine-oriented and almost every major female actor has played this role. Challenging received wisdom, Vanita demonstrates that a larger number of courtesans in Bombay cinema are Hindu and indeterminate than are Muslim, and that films depict their culture as hybrid Hindu-Muslim, not Islamicate. Courtesans speak in the ambiguous voice of the modern nation, inviting spectators to seize pleasure here and now but also to search for the meaning of life. Vanita's groundbreaking study of courtesans and courtesan imagery in 235 films brings fresh evidence to show that the courtesan figure shapes the modern Indian erotic, political and religious imagination.