Permanent Black: 50 books
Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation
Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism
Language: English
Release Date: May 13, 2013
This book is a brilliant historicisation and scathing critique of many of the dominant concepts by which Indians generally, and north Indian Hindus more specifically, think and live today. Historians, sociologists, political scientists and serious readers who wish to understand how the immediate past has shaped Indias life will value this incisive work of a major historian.
Hindu Pasts
Women, Religion, Histories
Language: English
Release Date: June 15, 2016
In her Introduction to this book—which showcases her work as a scholar of social, literary, and religious history—Vasudha Dalmia outlines the central ideas which thread her writings: first, to understand in greater historical depth the relationship between language, religion, and society in India,...
The Province of the Book
Scholars, Scribes, and Scribblers in Colonial Tamilnadu
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
The first Indian language book ever to be printed was in Tamil, in 1577. After many fits and starts and some spectacular achievements, print and the culture of book publishing became well-recognized facets of Tamil society during the late colonial period. The Province of the Book explores the wonderful...
Rebels, Wives, Saints
Designing Selves and Nations in Colonial Times
Language: English
Release Date: December 13, 2012
Tanika Sarkars writings on women, religion, and nationhood in the context of colonial Bengal have been pathbreaking. In this new book of connected essays, she gives a new direction to the same themes, this time by focusing on some of the key historical texts within which these identities were given shape....
by GHANSHYAM SHAH
Language: English
Release Date: August 24, 2018
Language: English
Release Date: August 24, 2018
The Indian constitution seeks to prevent the perpetuation of caste and build a casteless social system. But this has not happened over the fifty-odd years since Indian independence, and shows little sign of happening in the near future. Therefore no understanding of Indian politics is possible without...
Sexuality, Obscenity, Community
Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India
Language: English
Release Date: December 13, 2012
The cultural imagination of Hindu India is the subject of this book. Anyone interested in the prehistory of present-day tensions between Hindus and Muslims will find it exceptionally valuable. Charu Gupta shows how gendered notions about women's sexuality and Muslim debauchery were used to pull together...
Gandhi's Conscience Keeper
C. Rajagopalachari and Indian Politics
Language: English
Release Date: December 13, 2012
Hailed by Mahatma Gandhi as his conscience keeper, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (18781972; better known as Rajaji) epitomized the practical wisdom, religious tolerance, and statesmanship that Gandhi brought to the nationalist movement. He articulated how Gandhis ideas and practices could be reconciled...
by SUMIT SARKAR
Language: English
Release Date: August 24, 2018
Language: English
Release Date: August 24, 2018
The political context in which the Historian of India finds himself today, says Sumit Sarkar, is dominated by the advance of the Hindu Right and globalised forms of capitalism. Simultaneously, the historians intellectual context is now dominated by the marginalisation of Marxism and a shift to cultural...
Media and Modernity
Communications, Women, and the State in India
Language: English
Release Date: December 13, 2012
Two puzzles of modern Indiaone well known, the other overlookedform the core of this book. For fifty years, the state of Kerala has been famed, first as a home of Communists, then as a perplexing model of development. But why Communists? And why development, especially in a place where the economy usually...
Raga’n Josh
Stories from a Musical Life
Language: English
Release Date: October 5, 2016
Sheila Dhar’s autobiographical stories, essays, and memoirs are classics of modern Indian prose. An accomplished singer, the world she inhabited included renowned north Indian classical musicians such as Begum Akhtar, Siddheshwari Bai, Fayyaz and Niaz Ahmed Khan, Kesar Bai Kerkar, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan,...
Lost Worlds
Indian Labour and Its Forgotten Histories
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
This book takes the present context of globalisation and the decline of large-scale industry as its entry point into the worlds of labour in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using a wide range of oral and archival sources as well as popular literature, Chitra Joshi reconstructs working...
by Ramachandra Guha
Language: English
Release Date: June 15, 2016
Language: English
Release Date: June 15, 2016
“Inside every thinking Indian there is a Gandhian and a Marxist struggling for supremacy”, says Ramachandra Guha in the opening sentence of this wonderfully readable book of ideas, opinions and reflections. A substantial portion of the book expands on this salvo: it analyses Gandhians and pseudo-Gandhians,...
Merchants, Traders, Entrepreneurs
Indian Business in the Colonial Era
Language: English
Release Date: November 15, 2012
The merchant world represents a relatively neglected area in South Asian history. Merchants were important actors in the economic, political, social, and cultural life of India, and deserve more attention than they have been given. This book therefore bridges a gap by bringing together a number of issues...
Languages of Belonging
Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir
Language: English
Release Date: November 15, 2012
Despite its centrality to the political life of India and Pakistan, Kashmir has met with rather perfunctory treatment from historians of South Asia. The few works of history and politics that have appeared on this region, moreover, insist on defining Kashmiri culture, history and identity in terms of...