Political Imaginaries in Twentieth-Century India

Political Imaginaries in Twentieth-Century India PDF Author: Mrinalini Sinha
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350239798
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 467

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Book Description
This volume reconsiders India's 20th century though a specific focus on the concepts, conjunctures and currency of its distinct political imaginaries. Spanning the divide between independence and partition, it highlights recent historical debates that have sought to move away from a nation-centred mode of political history to a broader history of politics that considers the complex contexts within which different political imaginaries emerged in 20th century India. Representing the first attempt to grasp the shifting modes and meanings of the 'political' in India, this book explores forms of mass protest, radical women's politics, civil rights, democracy, national wealth and mobilization against the indentured-labor system, amongst other themes. In linking 'the political' to shifts in historical temporality, Political Imaginaries in 20th century India extends beyond the interdisciplinary arena of South Asian studies to cognate late colonial and post-colonial formations in the twentieth century and contribute to the 'political turn' in scholarship.

Political Imaginaries in Twentieth-Century India

Political Imaginaries in Twentieth-Century India PDF Author: Mrinalini Sinha
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135023978X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
This volume reconsiders India's 20th century though a specific focus on the concepts, conjunctures and currency of its distinct political imaginaries. Spanning the divide between independence and partition, it highlights recent historical debates that have sought to move away from a nation-centred mode of political history to a broader history of politics that considers the complex contexts within which different political imaginaries emerged in 20th century India. Representing the first attempt to grasp the shifting modes and meanings of the 'political' in India, this book explores forms of mass protest, radical women's politics, civil rights, democracy, national wealth and mobilization against the indentured-labor system, amongst other themes. In linking 'the political' to shifts in historical temporality, Political Imaginaries in 20th century India extends beyond the interdisciplinary arena of South Asian studies to cognate late colonial and post-colonial formations in the twentieth century and contribute to the 'political turn' in scholarship.

Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages

Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages PDF Author: Prathama Banerjee
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350355038
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
The essays in this volume explore the myriad ways in which caste (varna and jati) has been theorized and critiqued in multiple philosophical, religious, logical and narrative traditions in India. Spanning ancient, medieval and modern times, and in diverse classical and vernacular languages, the chapters show how the social fact of caste, and imaginations of kinship, community and humanity were historically subject to epistemological, spiritual, and existential debate in both elite and popular circles in India. Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages seeks to bridge the interdisciplinary gap between historians and sociologists by focusing on texts that help us think across the sociological and philosophical, the political and the religious, the epistemological and the aesthetic, and indeed, the elite and the popular. The volume also sets up a conversation between scholars specializing in different regions, archives, and historical periods and demonstrates how caste imaginaries have been deeply diverse and contested in India's past. Reconstructing these diverse traditions of social and existential criticism helps us in our contemporary struggles against caste hierarchy and untouchability and enriches our contemporary critical repertoire.

Forms of the Left in Postcolonial South Asia

Forms of the Left in Postcolonial South Asia PDF Author: Sanjukta Sunderason
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350179183
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
This book explores the aesthetic forms of the political left across the borders of post-colonial, post-partition South Asia. Spanning India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the contributors study art, film, literature, poetry and cultural discourse to illuminate the ways in which political commitment has been given aesthetic form and artistic value by artists and by cultural and political activists in postcolonial South Asia. With a focused conceptualization this volume asks: Does the political left in South Asia have a recognizable aesthetic form? And if so, what political effects do left-wing artistic movements and aesthetic artefacts have in shaping movements against inequality and injustice? Reframing political aesthetics within a postcolonial and decolonised framework, the contributors detail the trajectories and transformations of left-wing cultural formations and affiliations and focus on connections and continuities across post-1947/8 India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Workplace Relations in Colonial Bengal

Workplace Relations in Colonial Bengal PDF Author: Anna Sailer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350233544
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
This book connects the history of labour movements with the transformation of workplace relations in South Asia from the late 19th century to the 1930s. Contending that labour conflicts in the Bengal jute industry must be understood against the backdrop of a radical change in the organisation of work in this period, Sailer shows how this led to a rupture in worker's relations in the workplace and beyond. Moving away from polarities such as class/culture or modernity/tradition and reconsidering the context around industrial conflicts in this period, Workplace relations in Colonial Bengal offers a new framework to analyse the changing organisation of work in colonial India, and identifies the implications for worker relations both inside and outside the factory. Focusing on a major colonial era industry, this book opens up new perspectives n the history of workers and colonial capitalism in modern India.

India in the World

India in the World PDF Author: Rajeshwari Dutt
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000988392
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
If we look back at world history in the past five hundred years, it is evident that Indian ideas, peoples, and goods helped drive world connections. From the quest to reach the Indies that drove Iberian rulers to fund costly expeditions that ultimately connected the Old World with the Americas to Gandhi’s creed of non-violence that created transnational resistance movements, India has been crucial to world history. In what ways have the movement of goods, people, and ideas from India served to connect the world? Conversely, how has India’s global history shaped the many boundaries and inequalities that have divided the world despite—and at times because of—the transnational connections often lumped together under the aegis of globalization? Through its emphasis on both linkages and boundaries, India in the World examines the range of connections between India and the world in a truly global perspective.

Towards Peoples' Histories in Pakistan

Towards Peoples' Histories in Pakistan PDF Author: Kamran Asdar Ali
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350261211
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Book Description
After seventy-five years of independence, the history of Pakistan remains centered on the state, its ideology and the two-nation theory. Towards Peoples' Histories in Pakistan seeks to shift that focus away from histories of an imagined nation, to the history of its peoples. Based on the premise that the historiographical tradition in Pakistan has ignored the existence of people who actually make history, this book brings together historians, anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists to shed light on the diverse histories of the people themselves. Assembling histories of events and peoples missing from grand narratives of national history, the essays in this collection incorporate a diversity of approaches to the past as it opens the possibilities of multiple histories, the archives through which they are registered, and the various temporalities in which they persist. The volume highlights and recuperates the entangled nature of history and memory within Pakistan's social and cultural life. By critically examining both leftist and nationalist thought, Towards People's Histories in Pakistan explores competing visions of what is meant by 'the people', and charts new ground in developing the promise of people's histories both within Pakistan and beyond.

Across Colonial Lines

Across Colonial Lines PDF Author: Devyani Gupta
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350327042
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
Across Colonial Lines takes a multi-perspective approach to the study of empire and commodities, and encourages readers to look at commodity histories in alternative spatial and temporal contexts. It offers a comparative understanding of commodities in the Venetian, Portuguese, Dutch, French and British Empires. Highlighting the interwoven character of multiple commodity networks, this book situates commodities like gold, coffee, tea and indigo, to name a few, within pre-existing networks of labour, consumption and knowledge production. It explores the nexus between the local and the global, and highlights the role played by individual producers, petty traders, sailors and even consumers in creating regional circulations within a global political economy. In this volume, commodity networks are not just sites of production and trade, but also of political control, social organisation and consumption choices. They provide the impetus for globalisation from as early as the thirteenth century. Each chapter takes an individual commodity to illustrate the history of commodity transmission within imperial contexts. From early modern Venetian commerce to the trade networks of the Eurasian world; from the trading ambitions of British sailors to Portuguese global imperial ambitions; from the cross-imperial knowledge networks of indigo to the assertion of indigenous agency in Angola; and from the commodification of labour to the experience of tourism in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean World, Across Colonial Lines uses commodity networks as a lens to study empire building across varied yet connected geographies and chronologies.

On the Subject of Citizenship

On the Subject of Citizenship PDF Author: Suren Pillay
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350228966
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This volume brings together reflections on citizenship, political violence, race, ethnicity and gender, by some of the most critical voices of our times. Detailed and wide-ranging individual reflections, take the writings of prominent Ugandan political theorist Mahmood Mamdani as a touchstone for thinking about the world from Africa. Contributors apply this theory to argue that we cannot make sense of the political contentions of difference, identity and citizenship today without understanding the legacies of colonial rule on our world. Chapters examine the persistence of the past, and how we must reckon with its tragedies, its injustices, and its utopias in order to chart a new politics; the politics of possible futures that are more inclusive and more egalitarian, and that can think of difference in more equitable ways. In a time when the call to decolonize knowledge, and politics rings loud and clear, this is both a timely and a crucial intervention.

The Art of Freedom

The Art of Freedom PDF Author: Nico Slate
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 082299139X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 519

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Book Description
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (1903–1988) was a prominent socialist, anticolonial and antiracist activist, champion of women’s rights, and advocate for the arts and crafts. Defying the borders of gender, nation, and race, her efforts spanned social movements and played a leading role in the creation of modern India and the development of the Global South. In The Art of Freedom, Nico Slate showcases new archival materials to document Kamaladevi’s campaign to become the first woman elected to provincial office; her confrontation with Gandhi that helped open the salt protests of 1930 to women; her leadership of the All India Women’s Conference and the Congress Socialist Party; her pioneering work with refugees during the Partition of India in 1947; the major impact she had on the arts in postcolonial India; and her own career on the stage and screen. Slate also draws upon underexplored details from her personal life, providing new context for her experiences as a child widow, her remarriage to the mercurial actor/poet Harin Chattopadhyay, and her divorce (among the first civil divorces in modern India). Taken as a whole, Kamaladevi’s life offers a uniquely revealing vantage point on the making of modern India—a vantage point that centers the interconnections between struggles often seen as distinct, and that reminds us of the full promise of Indian democracy.