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In January 2004, the Tourism Ministry of the Government of India announced its plan of developing a 100-acre strip of land on the banks of the river Yamuna into a riverside promenade with parks and fountains which would be marketed as major tourist attractions. At the time this plan was unveiled, the riverbank and bed along this stretch was occupied by the Yamuna Pushta ‘jhuggi-jhonpdi’ colony, a string of settlements home to around 35,000 working class families - more than 150,000 people – some of whom had lived here for over three decades. In February and April 2004, homes and community buildings along the banks of the Yamuna were razed to the ground in several 24-hour long operations. Having followed the events leading up to the so-called ‘voluntary’ demolitions which exploded into intense protests and forceful and violent suppression by the authorities, the authors of this present volume decided to expand the scope of their research and undertake a comprehensive household survey to map the situation on the ground in one of the relocation sites, Bawana, with respect to the commitments made in key policy documents. In carrying out the household survey, they chose women as their primary interlocutors since they are ideally situated to unravel and expose the interconnections and synergy between patriarchy and other systems of domination and inequality.

A critical exposé of a travesty in the name of urban development, Swept off the Map raises uncomfortable questions about the collective responsibility of authorities and all citizens in ensuring that uprooted communities such as the one from Pushta live with dignity in the face of the repeated assaults on their identities, homes, rights and lives.

In this important new book, Sudha Rajagopalan explores the consumption of Indian popular cinema in post-Stalinist Soviet society. In doing so, she highlights the enthusiastic response Indian popular films and their stars received from the Soviet audience, as well as the discursive and institutional context in which this consumption occurred from the mid-fifties till the end of the Soviet era in 1991.The death of Stalin in 1953 was followed by the introduction of important changes in government policy in the Soviet Union, including a relative liberalisation of leisure and culture which revealed the state’s resurgent interest in addressing popular tastes. The renewed import and screening of foreign entertainment films in the Soviet Union was one of the most visible outcomes of this change.

Drawing on oral history methodology and archival research in Russia, the author analyses the ways in which Soviet movie-goers, policy makers, critics and sociologists responded to, interpreted and debated Indian cinema in the Soviet Union between 1954 and the end of the eighties. Complemented by contemporary press and archival photos which capture the rapturous reception given to actors like Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Shashi Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan and Mithun Chakraborty as well as Soviet film posters announcing films like Awara, Betaab and Chandni, this engaging book, which is also the first monograph on Indian cinema abroad among non-diasporic audiences, is a must-read not only for students and scholars of film history and cultural studies, but every such lay reader who has grown up on a regular diet of popular Indian cinema.

Sudha Rajagopalan is an independent scholar and writer, currently based in the Netherlands.

The political transition from rule by the Muslim Mughal dynasty to British colonial rule led to a basic religious reorientation among Indian Muslims. At this time of transformation in the early nineteenth century, a key Muslim movement called the Tariqah-i Muhammadiyah or Mummahadi movement, also referred to as the Mujahidin or Indian Wahhabi movement, gathered force in northwest India. Although the Muhammadi reformers gained recognition by waging a jihad (holy war), a much familiar and feared word today, the jihad was only one manifestation of a fundamental change in religious thought and organization. Using Muhammadi sources as well as the contemporary account of the movement by Muslims and British observers, this incisive study makes an important comment on the historical interaction of social and religious forces in the nineteenth century in the Indian subcontinent.

While basing itself on a Sufi world-view, organization and concepts inspired by the intellectual system of the eighteenth-century theologian, Shah Wali Allah, the Tariqah-I Muhammadiyah put forth a reformist program attacking the prevalent practices at the tomb of saints and mystics, and belief in any mediation between man and God. Widespread Muhammadi preaching and religious literature in the popular Urdu language presented the Divine Law to all classes of Indian Muslims for the first time. The Muhammadi were also among the first Muslims anywhere to use the printing press to spread their fundamentalist message. In proclaiming religious purification and revival as well as holy war to the Indian masses during a time of rapid historical change, the Muhammadi reformers helped to shape a new individual and communal identity and also initiated a process of Islamic reform in India. Pearson’s major contribution in this important volume is to show how the intellectual history associated with Shah Wali Allah was transformed in the nineteenth century to an activist, organized ‘mass movement’ that drew upon techniques technologies, notably printing and popular preaching, introduced to India by British officials and Christian missionaries.

Harlan O. Pearson graduated from the University of Minnesota and completed his Ph. D. at the Department of History at Duke University. After teaching at the University of Minnesota as a visiting Assistant Professor, he studied computer science and has worked as a software engineer developing communications and network systems.

 

'They would describe in detail the houses they had lived in: the rooms with carved rosewood furniture and the pictures of their ancestors on the walls, the balcao where the mando would be sung, the verandah where one would have his siesta on an Indo-Portuguese chair, the oratory or the throne of light where the rosary would be said before dinner, the kitchen blackened by the smoke of the sorpatels, baked bebincas and steamed sannas; the well, the paddy fields, or even the mango, chikoo or jackfruit trees known for the quality of fruit they produced. The house was an inextricable part of their life, heritage and history.'

The courtyard house of Goa harks back to a long tradition of dwellings with a central space open to the skies circumscribed by rooms on all sides, a model as much functional in keeping the house cool in the hot climate, as of sacred inspiration. Along the famed Konkan coast, we find references to courtyard houses from the later medieval period onwards. Indeed, in order to find a suitable precedent to the patio house of Goa we need look no further than the domestic and monumental architecture of Vijayanagar. While the churches and sacred buildings of Goa have been the focus of a majority of studies on the built heritage of Goa, in more recent times, there has been increasing awareness that the resplendent houses of Goa are as deserving of careful attention. For visitors returning from Goa, images of the houses with colourful facades and romantic porches are as evocative of their Goan sojourn as those of the magnificent, whitewashed churches.

However, today this distinct domestic architecture of historical Goa faces a deep threat. Once, the symbols of prosperity, many have today fallen into disrepair. In this lovingly detailed and thoroughly documented new book, Angelo Silveira takes us on a journey through the form of the Goan courtyard house, and the traditional techniques and materials which contributed to the construction of this unique dwelling.

He also makes us aware of the need for a more concerted programme to conserve the courtyard house of Goa, and leaves us with a few tips on the same. This is a book as much for the student of architecture, or practising architect as it is for anyone who has ever visited or plans to visit Goa. Illustrated with more than 100 colour and black&white photographs, it is a treat for the eyes, as well as an important comment on the need to save a unique built heritage of India.

Angelo Costa Silveira is a conservation architect of Goan origin based in Lisbon, Portugal.

 

What is wonderful about this book is the originality of Reddy’s ethnography. She significantly advances—really, transforms—discussions that until now were largely dependent on less comprehensive work. With Respect to Sex will reframe entirely the dominant conversation on hijra identity, which has seen it as being reducible to gender. This is an important book that will be read and reread by a broad range of scholars.
Lawrence Cohen

With Respect to Sex extends the theoretical context of work on gender in precisely the right direction, moving away from the idea of alternative genders as rigid categories and viewing them instead as multiple identities. Reddy’s deep and intimate ethnography makes this book an important contribution to the discipline of anthropology and to gender studies more generally.
Serena Nanda

In an important, intimate, rich and eminently readable ethnography, Gayatri Reddy creates a portrait of a community of hijras in Hyderabad that suggests that one cannot see hijras simply through the lens of gender and sexual difference because that is not how hijras understand themselves. Tracing their presence from an era of Hyderabadi royal patronage to the shifting social and cultural landscapes of modernity and nationalism and finally to contemporary neo-liberalism, Reddy shows the ever-changing, complicated and multi-faceted matrix of class, caste, religion, and regional identities and practices that underlie hijra understandings of both their identity and their difference. At stake, she says, are questions of nationalism, citizenship, identity, religion, class, sex, and economics.

Gayatri Reddy is assistant professor of anthropology and gender and women's studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

 

This book tells two interwoven stories. At a macro level, it tells a story of the pleasures and compromises of cultural sharing in the making of imperial architecture. At a micro level it sets out to recover conversations between people—the Indo-Britons—who met at the building interface in south India, where two very different aesthetic and material practices collided. The narrative is set between 1800 and 1880—the historical gap in which a colonial state appeared in India and Indian architects disappeared from British view.

Shanti Jayewardene-Pillai is trained as an architect in Sri Lanka and the UK. She obtained her Masters in architectural history from University College London and her DPhil from the University of Oxford. She has practised as an architect in Sri Lanka and the UK and taught history at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London University. She now lives in Oxfordshire.

 

Over the last few years there has been an increasing interest in studying masculinities in the south Asian region. Masculinities, the gender system that makes men, remains the least researched pool of darkness of the south Asian reality. We certainly know the obvious—the visible, hegemonic masculinity that bristles and valorously displays its wares but what about various other masculinities, those that remain silent, pushed under and un-recognised. What is the story of these masculinities? How do these masculinities relate with each other? Are they locked in some form of permanent conflict? Why are some forms of masculinity more assertive and more public? How do these masculinities impact on gender relations? Are various forms of masculinities definite, unbreakable, permanent or do they form historically, decay, change and transform? This graphic book, a mixed-media production comprising drawings, photographs, text and video frames attempts to frame these questions in a creative and reader-friendly mode.

Drawing on popular culture, socialisation charts used in schools, poetry, personal stories and documentary footage, the book brings together main theories, key concepts and empirical research on masculiniites. Designed to be an introduction to the study of masculinities, it utilises a south Asian tapestry to discuss the state of knowledge in the field.

Rahul Roy is an independent documentary film maker. Besides directing a number of internationally acclaimed films on the theme of masculinities, he has also written widely on men and gender issues.