Author: Amal Kumar Mukhopadhyay
Publisher: Calcutta : K.P. Bagchi
ISBN:
Category : Bengal (India)
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Get Book Here

Book Description
Contributed articles.

Author: Vinay Lal
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198887167
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Get Book Here

Book Description
The book, the third volume to emerge from the enterprise known as 'The Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics', attempts to further the collective's ambition to put into question the certitudes of conventional social science discourse, decolonize the dominant knowledge frameworks, and understand how the intellectual and cultural resources of Indian civilization may be deployed to think both, about some problems in contemporary politics and culture, and to introduce greater plurality into the world of modern knowledge systems. Some of the collective's members remain deeply committed to reinitiating metaphysics into politics, and similarly, the collective's enduring interest in Narayana Guru is reflected in at least three chapters. Although engagement with Gandhi and Ambedkar is a familiar part of the Indian intellectual landscape, other chapters on offer pivot around histories of power, performative traditions, and modes of worship. Unlike the scholarship that is now the norm, organized around a distinct theme, this volume exhibits a more daring approach to India's intellectual traditions, traversing the world of Kannada intellectuals, the Kashmir Shaiva tradition, a Marathi Bhakti poet, and a contemporary Indian philosopher, as much as conceptual ideas drawn from a wide array of Indian texts and experiences.

Author: Clem Seecharan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789766400712
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Get Book Here

Book Description
Clem Seecharan has written a useful documentary history of Bechu, the first Indian to testify before the Royal Commission in 1897. Now who was this Bechu? He was, in Seecharan's words, "an indefatigable gadfly," who in letters to the local press revealed the conditions of Indian indentureship: poor wages, sexual exploitation of women by overseers and managers, and the virtual impossibility for Indians to obtain justice because of the collusion between colonial authorities and the planters. This knowledge we owe to economic historian Alan Adamson who "discovered" Bechu in the 1960s. Yet the man himself remained somewhat of a mystery, something Bechu himself seems to have cultivated. Seecharan has now filled a number of lacunae in our understanding with this two-part volume. The first section focuses on Bechu and the British Guianese environment in the late nineteenth century, while the second part includes letters and memoranda by Bechu (and reactions to them by local opponents).

Author: Mahruba T. Mowtushi
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000802175
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines textual representations of Africa in the Indian imagination from 1928 to 1973. It critically analyses Bengali literature during this period, their imitation of colonial racial prejudices and how it allowed Bengalis to fashion their identity. It analyses the development of ‘Africa’ as an idea and historical reality through the writings of five Bengali writers including the Bengali novelist Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, the children’s author Hemendra Kumar Roy, the poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore, the playwright Ganesh Bagchi and the surrealist poet and founding editor of Transition magazine Rajat Neogy. The book shows how these writers engage with the idea of Africa and their influence in the construction of the Bengali cultural identity during the freedom struggle, the Partition of Bengal in 1947 and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. The book offers readers a glimpse of the exotic imaginary locales of Africa while offering an in-depth look into the interconnected histories, cartographic routes and cultural exchange between India and Africa. A first of its kind, this book will be an excellent read for students and scholars of literature, comparative literature, history, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, South Asian studies, African studies and diaspora studies. .

Author: Mikey Leung
Publisher: Bradt Travel Guides
ISBN: 1841624098
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Get Book Here

Book Description
This updated guidebook, with a focus on responsible tourism, offers greater coverage than any other to the Chittagong Hill Tracts where 13 different ethnic groups live, and to the world's largest mangrove forest at the Sundarbans. Personal insights and anecdotes guide trailblazing travellers to those aspects of the country that are almost unknown to visitors - dolphin and whale watching, winter bird-watching in the northern wetlands and golden Bengal's silk and archaeological highlights.

Author: Richard M. Eaton
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520917774
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 387

Get Book Here

Book Description
In all of the South Asian subcontinent, Bengal was the region most receptive to the Islamic faith. This area today is home to the world's second-largest Muslim ethnic population. How and why did such a large Muslim population emerge there? And how does such a religious conversion take place? Richard Eaton uses archaeological evidence, monuments, narrative histories, poetry, and Mughal administrative documents to trace the long historical encounter between Islamic and Indic civilizations. Moving from the year 1204, when Persianized Turks from North India annexed the former Hindu states of the lower Ganges delta, to 1760, when the British East India Company rose to political dominance there, Eaton explores these moving frontiers, focusing especially on agrarian growth and religious change.

Author: Pranab Chatterjee
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9781433108204
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book details the evolution of Bengali culture (in both Bangladesh and West Bengal) since antiquity and argues for its modernization. Originally peripheral to Hindu civilization based in North India, Bengali culture was subjected to various forms of Sanskritization. Centuries of invasions (1204-1757) resulted most notably in the Islamization of Bengal. Often there were conflicts between Sanskritization and Islamization. Later colonization of Bengal by Britain (1757) led to a process of Anglicization, which created a new middle class in Bengal that, in turn, created a form of elitism among the Bengali Hindu upper caste. After British rule ended (1947), Bengali culture lost its elitist status in South Asia and has undergone severe marginalization. Political instability and economic insufficiency, as reflected by many quantitative and qualitative indicators, are common and contribute to pervasive unemployment, alienation, vigilantism, and instability in the entire region. A Story of Ambivalent Modernization in Bangladesh and West Bengal is appropriate not only for Bengali intellectuals and scholars but for sociologists, political scientists, cultural anthropologists, historians, and others interested in a case study of how and why a given culture becomes derailed from its path toward modernization.

Author: Satadru Sen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317410688
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores the life and times of the pioneering Indian sociologist Benoy Kumar Sarkar. It locates him simultaneously in the intellectual history of India and the political history of the world in the twentieth century. It focuses on the development and implications of Sarkar’s thinking on race, gender, governance and nationhood in a changing context. A penetrating portrait of Sarkar and his age, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern Indian history, sociology, and politics.

Author: Richard Maxwell Eaton
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520080775
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Get Book Here

Book Description
In all of the South Asian subcontinent, Bengal was the region most receptive to the Islamic faith. This area today is home to the world's second-largest Muslim ethnic population. How and why did such a large Muslim population emerge there? And how does such a religious conversion take place? Richard Eaton uses archaeological evidence, monuments, narrative histories, poetry, and Mughal administrative documents to trace the long historical encounter between Islamic and Indic civilizations. Moving from the year 1204, when Persianized Turks from North India annexed the former Hindu states of the lower Ganges delta, to 1760, when the British East India Company rose to political dominance there, Eaton explores these moving frontiers, focusing especially on agrarian growth and religious change.

Author: Sarah Besky
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520303245
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Get Book Here

Book Description
What is the role of quality in contemporary capitalism? How is a product as ordinary as a bag of tea judged for its quality? In her innovative study, Sarah Besky addresses these questions by going inside an Indian auction house where experts taste and appraise mass-market black tea, one of the world’s most recognized commodities. Pairing rich historical data with ethnographic research among agronomists, professional tea tasters and traders, and tea plantation workers, Besky shows how the meaning of quality has been subjected to nearly constant experimentation and debate throughout the history of the tea industry. Working across fields of political economy, science and technology studies, and sensory ethnography, Tasting Qualities argues for an approach to quality that sees it not as a final destination for economic, imperial, or post-imperial projects but as an opening for those projects.