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Sikhism
Hew McLeod |
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 Sikhism
began with Guru Nanak (b.1469). At the end of the 17th
century, the 10th and the last Guru, Guru Gobind Singh
established the order of the Khalsa. After his death, his
authority as a Guru was transferred to the collection of
sacred scriptures, known thereafter, as the Guru Granth
Sahib. The Sikh community underwent a major change at the
end of the 19th century with the rise of the Singh Sabha
movement. Observant Sikhs, both men and women, bear the
outward physical signs known as the Five Ks, the most
obvious of which is to leave their hair uncut.
Extent: c. 334pp.
Price: c. Rs 350
Size: 7.75”x 5”
Binding: Paperback
Forthcoming in 2009 |
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Devotional Islam and Politics in British India: Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and His Movement, 1870–1920
Usha Sanyal |
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Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi (1856–1921) was a major Sunni
Muslim scholar in North India at the height of British rule
in India. In his legal writings (fatwa), he laid out a clear
vision of how Muslims should conduct themselves in the
absence of political power. He advised his followers to
follow the ‘Sunna’ or ‘path’ of the Prophet Muhammad in all
they said and did. However, there were major differences in
the interpretation of what, in practical terms, this meant,
and his views were not accepted by other Sunni Muslims of
the time, especially the religious scholars (`ulama) of
Deoband.
This book lays out the views and supporting arguments of the
Ahl-e Sunnat movement by taking a close look at Ahmad Riza’s
Urdu writings.
Extent: 365pp.
Price: c. Rs 450
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Paperback
ISBN 978-81-906668-6-2 |
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After Conversion: Cultural Histories of
Modern India
Saurabh Dube |
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 In
this imposing new volume, Saurabh Dube writes against the
grain of understandings which often set up objects of
intellectual inquiry as the singular yardstick for judging
the scholarly novelty and theoretical validity of
intellectual endeavours. The essays here eschew widely
present intellectual habits which may be seen as part of the
business-as-usual of the academy, and attempt to establish
critical exchanges and interactions between different
perspectives in the task of academic endeavour. In the first
section called 'Questions of Conversion', Dube addresses
questions of conversion by examining colonial writings of a
vernacular Christianity and by tracking the transformations
of caste and sect in South Asia. In the next section called
'Personal Portraits', he writes of an artist friend and his
anthropologist father, seeking to conjoin crucial concerns
of histories of anthropology with those of an ethnographic
biography of a subject of anthropology, and to combine
critical considerations of ethnographies of art with those
of an anthropological history of a dalit imagination. The
third and final section presents a contemporary event in the
shape of a critical commentary before turning to some of the
ways in which questions of modernity have been discussed in
scholarship on South Asia.
Saurabh Dube is Professor of History, Center for
Asian and African Studies, El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico
City.
Extent: c. 250pp.
Price: c. Rs 295
Binding: Paperback
Size: Demy Octavo
ISBN: 978-81-906186-6-3
Forthcoming in December 2009
Series: New Perspectives on Indian Pasts
Rights: Available |
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High Noon and the Body
Kyla Pasha |
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 'High
Noon and the Body’ is the first published collection of
Pakistani feminist poet Kyla Pasha's poetry. These are
intensely personal poems, speaking to lovers, God and the
poet herself, and while borders, wars, geography and women
are the warp and weft of Kyla's verses, they are ultimately
poignant love poems. As she herself says in an interview,
she writes about what is close to her and the reader.
Extent: c. 100pp.
Price: c. Rs 150
Size: 7.75” x 5”
Binding: Paperback
Forthcoming in January 2010
Rights: Available |
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The Scourge Of The Mission: Marco
Della Tomba In Hindustan
David N. Lorenzen |
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 An
unusual and engrossing effort by a career academic, this
book tells the life story of the Italian Capuchin friar,
Padre Marco della Tomba (1726–1803. Padre Marco worked in
Bettiah, near Patna, as a missionary of the Tibet-Hindustan
Mission sponsored by the Congregation of Propaganda Fide in
Rome, and during his time there, he recorded and commented
on a number of critical events of the late eighteenth
century in the subcontinent's history. The fascinating
account is told in the first person since more than half the
book is translated directly from essays and letters written
in Italian by Padre Marco, while the remaining parts have
been written by David Lorenzen mostly on the basis of
Marco's letters and essays and those of some of his
colleagues in the Mission. For long we have read volumes on
the tumultuous eighteenth century by South Asian historians.
This unusual effort places an important source directly in
the hands of interested readers.
David N. Lorenzen is Professor of South Asian History
at the Center for Asian and African Studies, El Colegio de
Mexico.
Extent: c. 200pp.
Price: c. Rs 425
Binding: Hardback
Size: Demy Octavo
ISBN: 978-81-906668-8-6
Forthcoming in 2009
For sale in South Asia only |
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Goan Churches: A History of Church Architecture in Goa
Paulo Varela Gomes |
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Goan churches is the first ever published, comprehensive
history of Catholic-church architecture in Goa, from the
first churches built in that territory in the early 16th
century to the first contemporary churches built in the
1950s. Beginning with the churches in and around Old Goa,
the book goes on to discuss the peculiarities of other
churches scattered through Goa, aiming at demonstrating that
the churches of Goa were Indian Catholicism’s first and
foremost cultural manifestation.
Paulo Varela Gomes was also the presenter of two television
documentary series for the Portuguese television, one of
which was about the Portuguese in India (O Mundo de Cá,
1995).
Extent: c.250pp.; including c. 200 illustrations
Size: Crown Quarto
Binding: Hardback
Rights available |
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Joan in India
Suzanne Falkiner |
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 In
1939, young Joan Falkiner’s spirited flight from South Yarra
to princely India and her marriage to the Muslim ruler of a
small state in Gujarat sent shockwaves through the Melbourne
society. Political reverberations were felt throughout the
Raj and – as the kingdoms were about to disappear forever in
the maelstrom of Indian Independence – as high as the
British throne. How did it all come about? Through
conversations about Melbourne, Mumbai and the South of
France, research in the India Official Library in London,
and the author’s personal journey while travelling in modern
India, Suzanne Falkiner traces the course of a most unusual
love story.
Extent: c. 332pp.
Price: c. Rs 395
Binding: Paperback
Size: Royal
Forthcoming in February 2010
For sale only in South Asia
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Ragi-Ragini: Chronicles from Aji's Kitchen
Anjali Purohit |
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 Ragi
by any other name would be called Ragi, Nachani, Nagli,
Kelvaragu, Mutthari, Coracano, finger millet or perhaps a
much neglected wonder food; an indigenous grain that has
been grown and consumed in India’s rural areas for
centuries. This is a collection of ragi recipes; some are
traditional, others are variations of the traditional and
some are entirely new innovations. The recipes are
accompanied by a sparkling little tale about Aji, the
author's genius grandmother, the author herself as a little
girl, and the transcendental ragi grain. Transcendental
because, as the author believes, it has the potential to
take a weak and ailing body and lead it towards health,
wisdom and self realisation. Adorning this unusual book are
sketches by the author of the traditional implements used to
cook with ragi.
Extent: c.150pp.
Price: Rs 425
Binding: Paperback
Size: 8.75”x 6.75”
Forthcoming in April 2010 |
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Playing the Nation Game: The Ambiguities of Nationalism in India:
Essays in Antinationalism
Benjamin Zachariah |
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 In
this impressive new work, Benjamin Zachariah questions the
tendency to regard nationalism as a necessary, inevitable
and natural basis upon which to organise the world. In doing
so, he embarks on a series of reflections on a longstanding
project in Indian historiography which has till today not
reached successful resolution: that of ‘decentring’ the
nation as the central focus of history-writing in and about
India. This outstanding collection presents essays held
together with one common thread: a concern with writing
histories of India that cannot be subsumed within a bland
and obligatory history of Indian nationalism, and a concern
with not writing histories of nationalism while writing
histories of absolutely anything or everything. Claiming to
speak from the perspective of internationalism and
celebrating the rootless cosmopolitanism of the merely
human, Benjamin Zachariah urges historians to begin the
completion of this incomplete yet necessary ‘decentring’
project by placing their own histories, politics, and
‘interests’ before a readership and leaving these open for
scrutiny and comment.
Benjamin Zachariah’s research interests centre on the social
and intellectual history of South Asia, in particular on
interactions between metropolitan and Indian ideas, and on
political culture, political rhetoric and standards of
political legitimacy in colonial and postcolonial India. He
studied history at Presidency College, Calcutta, and at
Trinity College, Cambridge, and now teaches international
history at the University of Sheffield.
Extent: c. 250pp.
Price: c. Rs 495
Binding: Hardback
Size: Demy Octavo
ISBN: 81-903634-5-X
Forthcoming in 2009 |
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Medicalisation of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
A Human Rights Resource Book
Arvind Narrain and Vinay Chandran |
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 The
emergence of the queer struggle which insistently questions
the normative understanding of gender and sexuality has
broadened our very understanding of what we mean by the
'political'. If previously it was taken for granted that
those born as women dress as 'women' and fall in love with
and marry men , today this norm is being questioned. There
are women and men who choose to fall in love with others of
the same gender and there are women and men who choose to
transit from their gender at birth to the other gender.
Equally there are questions being raised about whether
children at birth should be made to conform to a gender
through surgical intervention without their consent. This
questioning about some of the fundamental norms of society
is emerging from the perspective of the queer movement which
encompasses a multiplicity of desires and identities, each
and all of which question the naturalness, the rightness and
the inevitability of heterosexuality. By proudly calling
themselves queer, homosexual people are not only
re-appropriating a word historically used as part of a
language of oppression, they are also rejecting the power of
the oppressor to judge them in the first place.
However, much remains to be done in terms of activism within
the medical profession so that both attitudes to
homosexuality, inter-sexuality and transsexualism change
while the terms within which treatment is proffered are
radically revised. A good point to start is the writing both
within the medical profession as well as from within the
field of emerging queer activism which is beginning to
question heteronormativity in the field of medicine. This
book attempts to put together some of the initial writings
in one place as a comprehensive resource guide for
activists, NGOs, doctors, medical professionals, and all
those interested to know about this phenomenon which might
prove to be the very lynchpin for the success of the queer
movement in India.
Extent: 350pp.
Price: Rs 425
Binding: Paperback
Size: Crown Quarto
Forthcoming: July 2009
Rights: Available |
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Sikhs Online
Doris Jakobsh |
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 This
volume explores various aspects of Sikhs and the World Wide
Web, particularly within contexts of migration and diaspora.
In many ways, this notion of the virtual sangat, given its
inherent boundlessness, is especially suited to a community
as diverse and widespread as the Sikh community. The volume
will examine the processes of negotiation and manipulation
of social networks, individual and community dynamics,
issues of authority, representation, voice and
participation, with an attempt made to locate what appear to
be novel situations, namely the WWW as new media, within an
historical framework.
Extent: c.200pp.
Price: c. Rs 250
Binding: Paperback
Size: Demy Octavo
Forthcoming: December 2009 |
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Knowing Children
Aveek Sen |
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 How
do children know and store knowledge? How do we know
children? Are their mechanisms, at both ends, of
resisted/averted knowledge, of knowing and not knowing
simultaneously? Journalist, critic and writer, Aveek Sen
poses these ideas and practices of knowledge, by looking at
literature and the humanities as cognitive modes in this
intriguing new volume. As adult desires and childish
longings become inseparable in Sen's piece on the children
of sex workers in the little town of Shamsherganj in
Murshidabad district in Bengal, the railway children on
platforms in India pose other questions in another
compelling essay on children's voices, and their knowing,
often baffling, silences. Other chapters in the book look at
aspects like children's literature and the knowledge of
adoption (of being adopted) and the child's identity, even
as Sen moves towards exploding the myth of the universal
'innocence' of 'a child is a child is a child'.
Extent: c. 150pp.
Price: c. Rs 195
Binding: Paperback
Size: Demy Octavo
ISBN: 987-81-906668-4-8
Forthcoming in July 2010
Rights available |
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Images Of Transcendence: Towards A New Reading
Of Tyeb Mehta's Art
Ranjit Hoskote |
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 Ranjit
Hoskote's new volume offers a fresh interpretation of the
art of this distinguished Indian modernist. Hoskote
retrieves Mehta's paintings from inadequate art-historical
accounts that have placed him within a Eurocentric history
of twentieth-century art, and from the unexamined notions of
'autonomy' and 'abstraction' that have dominated the
available discourse on artists of Mehta's generation.
Instead, Hoskote contextualises Mehta in terms of a 'secret
history' of the sacred within the secular, drawing out the
connections between Mehta's apparently School of Paris style
and his cultural background in the Dawoodi Bohra
micro-minority. Hoskote also dramatises the emergence of a
private mythology in Mehta's work, over six decades, and his
negotiation between the painted image, the cinematic frame,
and the narrative.
Ranjit Hoskote is a cultural theorist, curator and
poet. He is the author of thirteen books, including five
studies of art and artists, five collections of poems, a
translation, an anthology of contemporary poetry, and a
cultural history of the non-European sources of European
culture.
Extent: c. 150pp.
Price: c. Rs 995
Binding: Paperback with flexi cover
Size: Crown Octavo
ISBN: 978-81-906186-7-0
Forthcoming in 2009
Rights: Available |
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