This is a book that examines the nineteenth-century cultural history of Orissa from the postcolonial angle by drawing primarily from literary sources. It focuses on issues such as feudalism and colonial modernity, language politics and the rhetoric of progress, westernisation, nativity and border crossing. It brings the archival material to centre stage and employs theatrical tools from the fields of gender, translation and culture studies. The book shows the intersections between colonial subjugations and postcolonial longings.
This volume will mark a new trend in dealing with women’s varied experiences of life: individual introductions situate the narrator in a context – and then her voice takes over, with no intervention from the editors (except to provide footnotes wherever necessary). The personal narrative — be it an autobiography, a letter or a diary — has come to be recognised as an acceptable data source in history and social science. Literary critics and students of literature too find considerable use in reading the personal writings of poets, fiction and crime writers. In this book, readings of personal narratives help in painting various images of lives that we can only know at second hand. The mélange includes memoirs, published articles, ‘portraits from memory’, a collection of essays , and an oral interview. In all, the self was the focus. The writings of Sailabala, Li Gotami, and Shakuntala go beyond a recounting of their lives and deal with spiritual and travel experiences. Three of the essays are excerpts from published autobiographies — Sarala Devi Chaudhurani’s Jeevaner Jharapata (Life’s Fallen Leaves), Kalpana Dutt’s Reminiscences and Sailabala Das’s A Look Before and After. Vidyagauri Nilkanth’s writings are essays and a selection of amazingly candid letters exchanged with her husband. Anasuya Sarabahi’s is an interview in Gujarati with niece Gira and Monica’s a selection from an unpublished memoir. Li Gotami, whose original name was Rutty Petit, travelled to Manasarovar, and a few of the magazine articles on this amazing journey have been reproduced here. Whichever form a woman chooses, writing about her self, is emancipatory; she may be a person who has so far received little attention from the family or the world. Or she may be one who is a well-known public figure – yet little is known about her childhood. So she writes about many selves – life is not about one coherent self but rather one of many lives and experiences. In other words,
Women in the State of Odisha have played an important role in development, however they remain mostly invisible in policy and research. This anthology undertakes a journey from the States' rich historical tradition to its present stage of development to locate women's spaces in this process. This book helps in refocusing attention on economic, political and social dimensions of women and development. Through discussing areas of health, education, employment, migration and political role of women in decision-making institutions, the authors suggest that only when women or any oppressed groups gained substantially on these fronts, would it have greater dignity and power in society. The absence of analytical work on women's role in the development of the State in being increasingly felt. This volume, we hope, will fill to some extent, the intellectual gap in feminist literature. This book is co-published with Aakar Books, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the print versions of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
This book aims to sketch the diversities of South Asian social History, focusing on Orissa. It highlights the problems of colonialism and its impact upon the lives of the colonised, even as it details the manner in which the internal order of exploitation worked. Based on archival and rare, hitherto untapped sources, including oral evidence, it brings to life diverse aspects of Orissa’s social history, including the environment; health and medicine; conversion (in Hinduism); popular movements; social history of some princely states; and the intricate connections between the marginal social groups and Indian nationalism. It also focuses on decolonisation, and explores the face of patriarchy and gender-related violence in post-colonial Orissa. This volume will be of interest to students of history, social anthropology, political sociology and cultural studies, as well as those associated with non-governmental organisations and planners of public policy.
This eighth volume of The Shakespearean International Yearbook presents a special section on 'European Shakespeares', proceeding from the claim that Shakespeare's literary craft was not just native English or British, but was filtered and fashioned through a Renaissance awareness that needs to be recognized as European, and that has had effects and afterlives across the Continent. Guest editors Ton Hoenselaars and Clara Calvo have constructed this section to highlight both how the spread of 'Shakespeare' throughout Europe has brought together the energies of a wide variety of European cultures across several centuries, and how the inclusion of Shakespeare in European culture has been not only a European but also a world affair. The Shakespearean International Yearbook continues to provide an annual survey of important issues and developments in contemporary Shakespeare studies. Contributors to this issue come from the US and the UK, Spain, Switzerland and South Africa, Canada, The Netherlands, India, Portugal, Greece, France, and Hungary. In addition to the section on European Shakespeares, this volume includes essays on the genre of romance, issues of character, and other topics.
This book deals with roots of Indian geographical thoughts with reference to its historical base, cultural context and visionary message. As a consequence of long cultural history the resultant lifeworld in India converges like a drama and dance of space-time function with transference and transformation. In the passage of time emerged a metaphysical frame of thought, the varieties of heritagescapes, and simultaneously grown the senses to heritage ecology. Of course, attempts have been scanty but the richness always portrayed in literature and literary geography. Historical and cultural geographies in India have not caught that much attention in the academia; however on micro-level distinct attributes are interpreted in the recent literature. Going back to the ancient notions of nature theology, religioscapes and rituals have developed a complex network of belief systems in the Hindu traditions. In these traditions the motherly river Ganga serves as symbol, system and metaphor in the Indian culture. Continuity of cultural manifestations is actively maintained and continued in the Indian villages, where lives three-fourths of India’s population, and serve like a ‘place ballet’. India’s catastrophic march on the road of development and technology is entangled with obstacles and socio-spatial gaps that need to be re-considered in the light of cultural background and historical legacy. All these issues are examined, emphasising dualistic and complimentary perspectives in the West and the East. Contents: Viewpoints on the book: v-viii; List of Tables, List of Figures: xi-xvi; Foreword: Prof. Martin J. Haigh (Oxford Brooke University, UK): 1-8; Preface, Acknowledgements: 9-21, 1. Metaphysics and Sacred Ecology: Cosmos, Theos, Anthropos: 23-57, 2. Lifeworld, Lifecycle and Home: 58-97, 3. Landscape as Text: Literary Geography and Indian Context: 98-128, 4. Historical Geography of India: Trends in the 21st century: 129-162, 5. Cultural Geography of India: Trends in the 21st century: 163-195, 6. Geographic Milieu and Belief Systems: An Appraisal: 196-226, 7. Sacred space and Faithscape: 227-266, 8. The Ganga River: Images and Symbol of India: 267-302, 9. Indian Village: A Phenomenological Understanding: 303-350, 10. Heritagescapes of India: Appraising Heritage ecology: 351-393, and 11. Development in India: Appraising Self Retrospection: 394-422; index: 423-430; author 431.
In the twelfth issue of The Shakespearean International Yearbook, a Special Section in eight essays explores India's intense engagement with Shakespeare, the longest of any country outside the Western world. Treating cinema, theater and education in particular, contributors examine how Shakespearean traffic has been routed through many languages and cultural contexts across the subcontinent, from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Introducing a new Yearbook feature, this volume also presents two review essays; the essay topics are 'New Biography Studies, Queer Turns in Theory, and Shakespearean Utility,' and 'Textual Studies, Performance Criticism, and Digital Humanities'. The special section is further supplemented by two additional essays, on Hamlet and Shylock respectively. Among the contributors are Shakespearean scholars from India, Poland, the UK, and the US.
In Cultural Constellations, Place-Making and Ethnicity in Eastern India, c. 1850-1927, Swarupa Gupta outlines a fresh paradigm moving beyond stereotypical representations of eastern India as a site of ethnic fragmentation. The book traces unities by exploring intersections between (1) cultural constellations; (2) place-making and (3) ethnicity. Centralising place-making, it tells the story of how people made places, mediating caste / religious / linguistic contestations. It offers new meanings of ‘region’ in Eastern Indian and global contexts by showing how an interregional arena comprising Bengal, Assam and Orissa was forged. Using historical tracts, novels, poetry and travelogues, the book argues that commonalities in Eastern India were linked to imaginings of Indian nationhood. The analysis contains interpretive strategies for mediating federalist separatisms and fragmentation in contemporary India.
This book sheds new light on the dynamics of the colonial encounter between Britain and India. It highlights how various analytical approaches to this encounter can be creatively mobilised to rethink entanglements of memory and identity emerging from British rule in the subcontinent. This volume reevaluates central, long-standing debates about the historical impact of the British Raj by deviating from hegemonic and top-down civilizational perspectives. It focuses on interactions, relations and underlying meanings of the colonial experience. The narratives of memory, identity and the legacy of the colonial encounter are woven together in a diverse range of essays on subjects such as colonial and nationalist memorials; British, Eurasian, Dalit and Adivasi identities; regional political configurations; and state initiatives and patterns of control. By drawing on empirically rich, regional and chronological historical studies, this book will be essential reading for students and researchers of history, political science, colonial studies, cultural studies and South Asian studies.
