The Truths and Lies of Nationalism as Narrated by Charvak
The Truths and Lies of Nationalism as Narrated by Charvak

Author: Partha Chatterjee

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2022-03-01

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1438487789

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Written in the voice of the mythical atheist, naysayer, and general all-purpose heretic of Indian philosophy, The Truths and Lies of Nationalism as Narrated by Charvak presents a completely new way of telling the history of Indian nationalism. Severely criticizing the doctrines of both Hindu nationalism and pluralist secularism, it examines the ongoing debates over Indian civilization and recounts in detail how the present borders of India were defined by British colonial policy, the partition of 1947, and the integration of the princely states and the French and Portuguese territories. The emphasis is not so much on the state machinery inherited from colonial times but on the moral foundation of a new republic based on the solidarity of different but equal formations of the people. After a trenchant critique of the present-day conflicts over religion, caste, class, gender, language, and region in India, the book proposes a new politics of revitalized federalism. Intended for a general readership, and eschewing academic jargon, this book will be of interest to anyone concerned about the future of India.

Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World
Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World

Author: Partha Chatterjee

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780816623112

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"If it isn't obvious from the title of this book that this is going to be full of postmodern jargon, it becomes clear quite quickly that Chaterjee prefers difficult terms like 'problematic', 'thematic' and 'discourse' without always defining them - he even admits his admiration for Rorty, Barthes, Foucault and Derrida. Nonetheless, underneath all of this verbiage is a strong and convincing argument about the three stages of nationalism in India: the moment of departure (epitomized by Bankimchandra Chatttopadhyay), the moment of manoeuvre (Gandhi) and the moment of arrival (Nehru). Chatterjee clearly shows how nationalism in India was akin to Gramsci's concept of the 'passive revolution' - i.e. merely a drive towards independence, not towards transforming or breaking up colonial instutions. He argues that, instead of supporting nationalism, we should instead challenge the marriage between reason and capital. From the title of this book one might expect Chatterjee to draw links to other anti-colonial nationalisms but he doesn't; rather he only discusses India (not even other parts of South Asia). While this approach doesn't really make this book too useful for examining anti-colonial nationalisms in general, for someone like me who has never read a book on Indian nationalism this is a good introduction." -- from Amazon.ca.

Partition's Legacies
Partition's Legacies

Author: Joya Chatterji

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2021-01-01

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 143848335X

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Partition's Legacies offers a selection of Joya Chatterji's finest and most influential essays. "Partition, nation-making, frontiers, refugees, minority formation, and categories of citizenship have been my preoccupations," she writes in the preface, and these are also the major themes of this book. Chatterji's first book, Bengal Divided, shifted the focus from Muslim fanaticism as the driving force of Partition towards "secular" nationalism and Hindu aggression. Her Spoils of Partition rejected the idea of Partition as a breaking apart, showing it to be a process in the remaking of society and state. Her third book, Bengal Diaspora, cowritten with Claire Alexander and Annu Jalais, challenged the idea of migration and resettlement as exceptional situations. Partition's Legacies can be seen as continuous with Chatterji's earlier work as well as a distillation and expansion of it. Chatterji is known for the elegance of her prose as much as for the sharpness of her insights into Indian history, and Partition's Legacies will enthrall everyone interested in modern India's apocalyptic past. "What emerges from the essays," David Washbrook writes in the introduction, "is often quite startling. The demarcation of Partition followed no master plan or even coherent strategy but was made up of myriad ad hoc decisions taken on the ground, often by obscure actors. Refugee policy, immigrant rights, and even definitions of national citizenship ... were produced by no deus ex machina but out of day-to-day struggles on the streets and in the courts."

The Religious, the Spiritual, and the Secular
The Religious, the Spiritual, and the Secular

Author: Robert Neil Minor

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1999-01-01

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9780791439913

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The Religious, the Spiritual, and the Secular presents an account of Auroville, a city in contemporary southeast India, and the vision of founder and well-known guru Sri Aurobindo. Auroville's eventual takeover and the promotion of its goals by the Indian government leads to a thought-provoking discussion of the meaning of "secularism" in India.

Christianity and Politics in Tribal India
Christianity and Politics in Tribal India

Author: G. Kanato Chophy

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2021-11-01

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 1438485832

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Through an ethnohistorical study of the Nagas—a congeries of tribes inhabiting the Indo-Myanmar frontier—this book explores an unusually interesting region of India that is all too often seen as peripheral. G. Kanato Chophy provides a distinct vantage point for understanding the Nagas in relation to colonialism, missionary encounters, identity politics, and cultural change, all seamlessly woven around American Baptist mission history in this region. The book also analyses India's cacophonous postindependence democracy in order to delineate multifaith issues, multiculturalism, and ethnicity-based political movements. Within the West, episodic memories of the "Great Awakening," a significant landmark in the history of Protestantism, have faded into archival records. But among the Nagas of the Indo-Myanmar highlands, Baptist Christianity persists as the dominant religion, influencing the daily lives of nearly three million people. Focusing variously on evangelical faith, missionary zeal, ethnic identities, political struggle, and complex culture wars, Christianity and Politics in Tribal India is an original and major study of how Protestant missions changed the history and destiny of a tribal community in one of the unlikeliest regions of South Asia.

When Does History Begin?
When Does History Begin?

Author: Harjot Oberoi

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2022-01-01

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1438487363

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Focusing on important issues in Sikh religious identity and memory, Harjot Oberoi shows how premodern techniques of narrating the past and truth-telling in South Asia were deeply transformed by colonialism. Indian historiographical praxis has long been problematic. Al-Biruni, the eleventh-century polymath, was puzzled by how people in the subcontinent treated the protocols of history; it escaped his learning that Indian narrative constructions of the past were embedded in an intricate canon of poetical traditions and represented a radical departure from historical narratives in the Islamic, Sinic, and Greco-Roman worlds. Where others tended to search for "facts," people in South Asia looked for "affect." This alternative model for comprehending and evaluating the past—through aesthetics and gradients of taste—generated a crucially different variety of historical consciousness. Oberoi's examination of the Sikh tradition demonstrates what modern critical narrative achieves when it moves away from classical models, traversing significant moments in colonialism, coercion and protest in the Raj, the production of knowledge, the rise of secular nationalism, and modern notions of the self within and outside India.

I Am the People
I Am the People

Author: Partha Chatterjee

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2019-12-17

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 0231551355

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The forms of liberal government that emerged after World War II are in the midst of a profound crisis. In I Am the People, Partha Chatterjee reconsiders the concept of popular sovereignty in order to explain today’s dramatic outburst of movements claiming to speak for “the people.” To uncover the roots of populism, Chatterjee traces the twentieth-century trajectory of the welfare state and neoliberal reforms. Mobilizing ideals of popular sovereignty and the emotional appeal of nationalism, anticolonial movements ushered in a world of nation-states while liberal democracies in Europe guaranteed social rights to their citizens. But as neoliberal techniques shrank the scope of government, politics gave way to technical administration by experts. Once the state could no longer claim an emotional bond with the people, the ruling bloc lost the consent of the governed. To fill the void, a proliferation of populist leaders have mobilized disaffected groups into a battle that they define as the authentic people against entrenched oligarchy. Once politics enters a spiral of competitive populism, Chatterjee cautions, there is no easy return to pristine liberalism. Only a counter-hegemonic social force that challenges global capital and facilitates the equal participation of all peoples in democratic governance can achieve significant transformation. Drawing on thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, and Ernesto Laclau and with a particular focus on the history of populism in India, I Am the People is a sweeping, theoretically rich account of the origins of today’s tempests.

She Comes to Take Her Rights
She Comes to Take Her Rights

Author: Srimati Basu

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1999-02-25

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780791440964

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Using the contemporary workings of property law in India through the lives and thoughts of middle-class and poor women, this is a study of the ways in which cultural practices, and particularly notions of gender ideology, guide the workings of law. It urges a close reading of decisions by women that appear to be contrary to material interests and that reinforce patriarchal ideologies. Hailed as a radical moment for gender equality, the Hindu Succession Act was passed in India in 1956 theoretically giving Hindu women the right to equal inheritance of their parents’ self-acquired property. However, in the years since the act’s existence, its provisions have scarcely been utilized. Using interview data drawn from middle-class and poor neighborhoods in Delhi, this book explores the complexity of women’s decisions with regard to family property in this context. The book shows that it is not passivity, ignorance of the law, naiveté about wealth, or unthinking adherence to gender prescriptions that guides women’s decisions, but rather an intricate negotiation of kinship and an optimization of socioeconomic and emotional needs. An examination of recent legal cases also reveals that the formal legal realm can be hospitable to women’s rights-based claims, but judgments are still coded in terms of customary provisions despite legal criteria to the contrary.

Contending Nationalisms of Oromia and Ethiopia
Contending Nationalisms of Oromia and Ethiopia

Author: Asafa Jalata

Publisher: Global Academic Publishing

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781586842802

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Applies the concept of oppressor and oppressed nationalisms to explore the historical forces and social processes that have shaped modern Ethiopia.

The Flaming Feet and Other Essays
The Flaming Feet and Other Essays

Author: Doḍḍabaḷḷāpura Rāmayya Nāgarāj

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781906497804

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In this volume of sixteen essays, D. R. Nagaraj, the foremost non-Brahmin intellectual to emerge from India's non-English-speaking world, presents his vision of the Indian caste system in relation to Dalit politics--the Dalit being a self-designation for many groups in the lower castes of India. Nagaraj argues that the Dalit movement rejected the traditional Hindu world and thus dismissed untouchable pasts entirely; but he believes rebels too require cultural memory. Their emotions of bewilderment, rage, and resentment can only be transcended via a politics of affirmation. He theorizes the caste system as a mosaic of disputes about dignity, religiosity, and entitlement. Examining moments of caste defiance, he argues for a politics of cultural affirmation and creates a new cultural identity for Dalits. More significantly, he argues against self-pity and rage in artistic imagination, and for recreating the banished worlds of gods and goddesses. Nagaraj's importance lies in consolidating and advancing some of the ideas of India's leading Dalit thinker and icon, B. R. Ambedkar. He suggests an inclusivist framework to build an alliance of all the oppressed communities of India.