Books in the Anthem South Asian Studies series

A profound analysis of a broad range of issues, providing a masterly overview of rural development in India.

A far-reaching and extensive rethinking of India's political and economic structures at every level, engagingly presented by a team of eminent academics and practitioners.

Rural India Facing the 21st Century is a unique study of rural development in South India, concluded over a twenty-year period. Set against the context of international, national and state policies, the book focuses on a wide number of themes, including the stagnation of the ‘green revolution’, growing differentiation and inequality, the ecological crisis, resistance to reform, corruption and the enduring need for state intervention in rural development. Written by an international team of young scholars under the direction of Professor Harris-White, Rural India Facing the 21st Century draws together a profound analysis of a broad range of issues to provide a masterly overview of overall rural development. Its highly original methodology and findings will be of considerable interest for development policy.

Inherent in colonialism was the idea of self-legitimation, the most powerful tool of which was the colonizer''s claim to bring the fruits of progress and modernity to the subject people. In colonial logic, people who were different because they were inferior had to be made similar - and hence equal - by civilizing them. However, once this equality had been attained, the very basis for colonial rule would vanish. Colonialism as Civilizing Mission explores British colonial ideology at work in South Asia. Ranging from studies on sport and national education, to pulp fiction to infanticide, to psychiatric therapy and religion, these essays on the various forms, expressions and consequences of the British ‘civilizing mission’ in South Asia shed light on a topic that even today continues to be an important factor in South Asian politics.

This volume offers a collection of lucid, theoretically stimulating articles that explore and analyse the institutions and values which are salient in understanding political practices in South Asia. Combining a wide range of theoretical and empirical approaches, and blending the work of experts long established in their respective fields with refreshing and innovative approaches by younger scholars, this collaborative and cross-disciplinary endeavour facilitates a deeper understanding of the subcontinent's diverse and complex political and democratic practices in the 21st century.

This volume offers the first English translation of one of India's most celebrated works of anticolonial resistance. It is also the first edition of the play to provide an extensive historical-critical commentary and to draw on a comprehensive range of colonial archival documents.

Studies on the Carvaka/Lokayata is the first attempt at a scientific study of the Carvaka/Lokayata, the materialist system of philosophy that flourished in ancient India between the eighth and twelfth centuries CE, and which has since disappeared. Despite the paucity of material relating to the Carvaka, a reconstruction of its basic tenets reveals it to be the lone contender standing against the perceived binary of pro-Vedic Brahminical schools on the one hand, and the non-Vedic Buddhist and Jain schools on the other.This study seeks to disprove certain notions about the Carvaka/Lokayata, particularly that the Carvaka-s did not approve of any instrument of cognition other than perception, and that they advocated unalloyed sensualism and hedonism. In contrast, this volume offers evidence to show that the Carvaka-s, despite their difference of opinion in other areas, did admit inference in so far as it was grounded on perception. Furthermore, the author argues that the common belief that all materialists are nothing but sensualists is a misconception, as no authentic Carvaka aphorisms have been cited by the movements opponents to support this view.This study also seeks to establish the fact that a pre-Carvaka school of materialism existed in India, although there is no way to prove that the Carvaka system grew out of it. Yet if the evidence provided by the Manimekalai and indirectly supported by the Mahabharata is admitted, it could be suggested that the two schools existed simultaneously.

This collection brings together the research papers of Patrick Olivelle, published over a period of about ten years. The unifying theme of these studies is the search for historical context and developments hidden within words and texts. Words and the cultural history represented by words that scholars often take for granted as having a continuous and long history are often new and even neologisms, and thus provide important clues to cultural and religious innovations. Olivelles book on the Asramas, as well as the short pieces included in this volume, such as those on ananda and dharma, seek to see cultural innovation and historical changes within the changing semantic fields of key terms. Closer examination of numerous Sanskrit terms taken for granted as central to Hinduism provide similar results. Indian texts have often been studied in the past as disincarnate realities providing information on an ahistorical and unchanging culture. This volume is a small contribution towards correcting that method of textual study.

Commercial cinema has always been one of the biggest indigenous industries in India, and remains so in the post-globalization era, when Indian economy has entered a new phase of global participation, liberalization and expansion. Issues of community, gender, society, social and economic justice, bourgeois-liberal individualism, secular nationhood and ethnic identity are nowhere more explored in the Indian cultural mainstream than in commercial cinema. As Indian economy and policy have gone through a sea-change after the end of the Cold War and the commencement of the Global Capital, the largest cultural industry has followed suit. For example, the global Indian community (known in Indian official terms as the Non-Resident Indian or the NRI) has become an integral part of the cultural representation of India.The politics and ideology of Indian commercial cinema have become extremely complex, offering a fascinating case-study to scholars of Global Culture. Of particular interest is the re-positioning of individual identity vis-à-vis nation, religion, class, and gender. On one hand, the definition of ''nationhood'' and/or community has become much more fluid, keeping in tune with the sweeping universal claims of globalization; the films have consequently revised the scope of their narratives to match India''s emerging global business ambitions. On the other hand, the political realities of India''s long-standig enmity with Pakistan and the international rise of ''Hindutva'' has also contributed to a new strain of jingoism in Indian cinema. ''Bollywood and Globalization'' is a significant scholarly contribution to the current debate on Indian cinema, nationhood and Global Culture. The articles represent a variety of theoretical and pedagogical approaches, and the collection will be appreciated by students and scholars alike.

This book assesses the validity of anti-politics critiques of development, first popularised by James Ferguson, in the peculiar context of India. Fergusons memorable metaphor of development as an Anti-Politics Machine that serves to entrench state power and depoliticize development continues to appeal to those cynical of the widespread tendency of development discourses to treat various issues apolitically. The book examines this problem in India, a country where development planners after independence adopted a scientific stance and claimed to distance themselves from mass politics, but also one where the groundswell of democratic political mobilization has been considerable in recent decades. In a country with an extremely differentiated landscape of authority and diverse politics, what does it mean for the state to undertake a project (or indeed, projects) of depoliticization; for as scholars inspired by Foucault and Gramsci have variously agreed, depoliticization is a tentative project where outcomes are far from certain. The book examines these questions within the new context provided by decentralization, the potential of which to reorganize relationships amongst different levels of the state greatly complicates the very pursuit of depoliticization as a coherent state practice. It looks at these issues through a highly technocratic state watershed development programme in India that has witnessed key transformations towards participation in recent years.

This volume brings together sixteen articles on the religions, literatures and histories of South and Central Asia in tribute to Patrick Olivelle, one of North America's leading Sanskritists and historians of early India.

In the aftermath of considerable seismic unrest caused by the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, this volume focuses on exposing the coastal vulnerability of the region. Despite a plethora of enquiries into natural disasters in different parts of the globe, there is now a more conspicuous concern than ever for the South East Asian region. This global concern has become all the more prevalent since the Hyogo Declaration in January 2005 and the recent Asian Summit in Indonesia. The purpose of this treatise is to bring the characteristics of the disastrous events of the region to the fore, seeking to present not only the continuing fatalities and fragilities of the area, but also the possibilities for coping with natural disasters. The book’s layout is specifically shaped by the nature of the damage and threat caused by these disasters, particularly concerning the communities at risk and their responses. This book will appeal to those involved in both global and local organizations as administrators, facilitators, stakeholders and activists, as well as Governmental / Non Governmental agencies, societies including organizations such as ESCAP, UNDP, WMO, UNESCO, UNCRD.

'The Anthropologist and the Native' is a multidisciplinary volume of twenty essays by internationally known scholars of different persuasions, honouring the distinguished anthropologist Gananath Obeyesekere.

The ascetic, devotional sect known as the Mahanubhavs Those of the Great Experience arose in 13th century Maharashtra. The Mahanubhavs initially experienced a fairly rapid expansion, particularly across the northern and eastern regions of Maharashtra. However, by the end of the 14th century their movement went underground as they sought a defensive isolation from the larger Hindu context, and they withdrew to remote areas and villages. Although the prominent leaders of the early Mahanubhavs were Brahmans (often converts from the prevailing advaita vaisnavism), their followers were and are mostly non-Brahmans, i.e. low caste people and even untouchables. Thus the Mahanubhavs were met with prejudice and distrust outside their own closed circles, and this isolation continued until the beginning of the 20th century. This volume offers an overview of the origins and main religious and doctrinal characteristics of the Mahanubhavs, with a particular focus on the aspects that reveal their difference and nonconformity.

An Introduction to Changing India: Culture, Politics and Development provides a comprehensive view of todays rapidly changing India in a way that is both reader-friendly and scholarly, without requiring prior knowledge on the subject from its readers. It investigates Indian culture, politics, economics and technology, as well as population and environmental issues. Gender issues are also discussed throughout the book. The authors provide a balanced picture of the emerging Indias many triumphs, as well as its lingering problems and the ongoing battle for more inclusive growth. By drawing on anthropological fieldwork in rural and urban India, the authors give ordinary Indians a voice by exploring their aspirations for change, while also describing macro-level changes.The study draws from extensive reading of research reports and fieldwork by the authors, who have carried out anthropological research on kinship, gender issues, politics, class and caste, population issues and the appropriation of information technology in India since the 1990s.

With its close analysis of the phenomenon of the migration of Indian students to Australia, this book critically approaches the entanglement of the education industry with migration opportunities, and looks into the goals and aspirations of the Indian middle class. It discusses the overlaps of studies on migration and transnationalism, and raises questions on skilled migration.

This volume critically examines the notion of a ''new'' India by acknowledging that India is changing remarkably and by indicating that in the overzealous enthusiasm about the new India, there is collective amnesia about the other, older India. The book argues that the increasing consolidation of capitalist markets of commodity production and consumption has unleashed not only economic growth and social change, but has also introduced new contradictions associated with market dynamics in the material and social as well as intellectual spheres.

'Dialogics of Self, the Mahabharata and Culture: The History of Understanding and Understanding of History' explores the interrelationships between individual and cultural historical dynamics in interpreting texts, using key concepts from Bakhtin's theory of dialogics. This ambitious volume discusses the limits of fixed monologic discourses and the benefits of fluid dialogic discourses, and provides a cultural and psychological analysis of the epic Indian text the 'Mahabharata'. The problem addressed by 'Dialogics of Self, the Mahabharata and Culture' is not just how we understand and narrate history, but also how the very mechanism by which we understand and narrate history itself has a history. This volume is about the interplay of several histories that of the individual, individual's past relationship to the text, which in turn is dependent on the nature of encounters they have had in the past, and the history of the text, and the very history of understanding.

'The Retreat of Democracy' presents an expanded and reworked selection of Basu's best journalistic and academic writings on political and economic themes since the late 1990s. In addition to Basus critical essays on globalization and democracy, the book also moves onto wider terrain to ideas in economics, anthropological observations on social norms, the role of culture, and travel in India and abroad. While the essays range from studies on major economists such as Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz, to humorous encounters with Indian bureaucracy, two recurring themes run thoughout: first, that the ultimate objective of policy-making must be the progress of the disadvantaged, and ignoring market laws and individual incentives courts failure; second, that for the successful crafting of economic policy it is important to recognize markets as embedded in specific cultures and social norms. This volume is a clear, intelligible and highly engaging showcase of Basus global and humanistic views on politics, economics and democracy.

The first ever book on Mumbai written in the Marathi language, this is a historically fascinating and revealing urban biography of nineteenth-century India.

The Materiality of Politics uses a series of historical illustrations to reveal the physicality and underlying materiality of political processes. The political subject of the study is the collective political actor poised against governmental rules for stabilizing order. Samaddars tour de force propels readers through an account of blood, violence, bodies, controls, laws and conflicts. Politics is examined not as an abstraction, but as a real field of dynamic factors rooted in everyday life. Volume 1, subtitled The Technologies of Rule discusses the techniques of modern rule which form the basis of the post-colonial Indian state. Beginning with the rule of law, the volume analyses the nature and manifestations of constitutional rule, the relation between law and terror and the construction of extraordinary sovereign power. The author also investigates the methods of care, protection, segregation and stabilization by which rule proceeds. In the processes, the material core of the cultural and the aesthetic is exposed.

This fascinating book, based on extensive archival research in Britain and India, examines why mutineer-rebels chose to attack prisons and release prisoners, discusses the impact of the destruction of the jails on British penal policy in mainland India, considers the relationship between India and its penal settlements in Southeast Asia, re-examines Britains decision to settle the Andaman Islands as a penal colony in 1858, and re-evaluates the experiences of mutineer-rebel convicts there. As such this book makes an important contribution to histories of the mutiny-rebellion, British colonial South Asia, British expansion in the Indian Ocean and incarceration and transportation. Coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the mutiny-rebellion, this book will be of interest to academics and students researching the history of colonial India, the history of empire and expansion and the history of imprisonment and incarceration.