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.

ISBN: 978-81-906186-0-1
Page extent: 260pp. + 32pp. of b/w and colour illustrations
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Paperback
Price: Rs 350
U.S Rights sold

'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.

Size: Royal
Pages: 152pp.
Binding: Paperback
With more than 100 colour and black & white photographs
ISBN: 978-81-903634-7-1
Price: Rs 495

Islamic Reform and Revival in Nineteenth-century India: The Tariqah-i Muhammadiyah
with a Foreword by David Lelyveld

Harlan O. Pearson
New Perspectives on Indian Pasts

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.

Size: Demy Octavo
Pages: 284pp.
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 978-81-903634-5-7
Price: Rs 295

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.

ISBN: 81-903634-6-8
Extent: 328pp.
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Paperback
Price: Rs 395

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.

ISBN: 81-903634-2-5
Extent: 348pp.
Size: Crown Quarto
Binding: Hardback
Price: Rs 895

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.

ISBN: 81-903634-8-4
Extent: 72pp.
Size: Royal
Binding: Paperback
Price: c. Rs 295

To see some of the pages from the book please click on the following thumbnails.

Beautifully written. The best and most comprehensive study on Islamic mysticism in the English language.
Religious Studies Review

Students of Islam and of comparative religion--as well as those who respond to mysticism--are deeply in the author's debt for giving us what will surely be the standard treatment of Sufism for a long time to come.
America

Mystical Dimensions of Islam presents, for the first time, a balanced historical treatment of the transnational phenomenon of Sufism—Islamic mysticism—from its beginnings through the nineteenth century. Through her sensitivity and deep understanding of the subject, Annemarie Schimmel, an eminent scholar of Eastern religions, draws the reader into the mood, the vision, and the way of the Sufi in a manner that adds an essential ingredient to her analysis of the history of Sufism.

Besides exploring the origins of the mystical movement and its development through different stages, the author also examines the various aspects of mystical poetry in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Sindhi, Panjabi, and Pashto. The author skillfully demonstrates how Sufi ideals permeated the whole fabric of Muslim life, providing the average Muslim—villager or intellectual—with the virtues of perfect trust in God and the loving surrender to God's will.

Professor Schimmel's long acquaintance with Turkey, Iran, and the Indian subcontinent provides a unique emphasis to the study, and the author's personal knowledge of Sufi practice in these regions lends a contemporary relevance to her work.

This is the first time the work of this renowned Islamic studies scholar is being brought to India.

Annemarie Schimmel (1922-2003) was a renowned German scholar of Islam and author of eighty books, including Gabriel’s Wing: A Study into the Religious Ideas of Sir Muhammad Iqbal (1963), Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddin Rumi (1978), Islam in the Indian Subcontinent (1980), Muhammad is His Messenger (1985), Islamic Names (1989), A Two-Coloured Brocade: The Imagery of Persian Poetry (1992), and Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to Islam (1994),

ISBN: 81-903634-9-2
Extent: 538pp.
Size: Royal
Binding: Paperback
Price:  Rs 495

Forming a pair with the classic, Aryans and British India, this pioneering work examines the phenomenon discussed in the former book from a different perspective and in a different local expression, that of colonial Madras in the Ellis years, especially the years from the founding of the College of Fort St George in 1812 to the untimely death of Ellis in 1819. This was a period when the most interesting interactions about languages and nations were taking place between Indian and English scholars in Madras, resulting eventually in a distinctive Madras School of Orientalism. In this book Trautmann in his trademark expertly incisive manner highlights the most spectacular and durable results of the intellectual production of the Madras School of Orientalism, which he calls the Dravidian proof. Mandatory reading for all students and scholars of ancient and modern Indian history, this book is a most compelling sequel to the classic Aryans and British India.

Thomas R. Trautmann is Professor of History and Anthropology at the University of Michigan, USA. He is the author of Dravidian Kinship (1981) and Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship (1987). He is the editor of Time, Histories and Ethnologies (co-edited 1995), Transformations of Kinship (1998), and The Aryan Debate (2004).

ISBN: 81-903634-0-9
Extent: c. 300pp.
Size: Royal
Binding: Hardback
Price: c. Rs 595

A scooter ride of a book, whizzing past the intriguing metaphors of Tamil culture….scholarly, relaxed and informal…'
Shiv Visvanathan
Outlook

'Few are the scholars who now travel between these now separate [bilingual] worlds [of English and the mother tongue]. One of these exceptions is the brilliant social historian A.R. Venkatachalapathy, who writes fluently in English and more fluently in Tamil….'
Ramachandra Guha

'A.R. Venkatachapathy deftly combines social and cultural history, and draws on a spectrum of literary sources…. [His essay on coffee] could also form part of an as yet unwritten history of consumption in colonial India.'
Sanjay Subrahmanyam

This delightful new volume represents that rare thing in Indian history-writing—a thoroughly engaging read! Venkatachalapathy’s writings on the cultural history of nineteenth-century Tamil Nadu would be enjoyed equally by both the academic-minded scholar looking for a nuanced and lucid narrative based on thorough research, as well as the lay informed reader in search of a classic good read.

The essays fall into two distinct sections. Those in the first section contribute to an as yet unwritten history of consumption in colonial India. Taking up both material (coffee, tea and tobacco) and cultural (the cartoon, the city and modern literature) artefacts, the first five chapters explore how these were consumed in colonial Tamil society. The chapters in the second part are broadly concerned with the politics of language, literature and identity in colonial Tamil Nadu. A historical exploration of how the Tamil literary canon was constructed leads to chapters on the ways in which this canon was used to construct identity. The author draws from sources as varied as fiction, essays, reviews, comment, advertisement, and notices to bring to life a rich and vibrant cultural history.

A.R. Venkatachalapathy took his Ph.D. in history from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi for his dissertation on the print culture in colonial Tamil Nadu. Presently he is Associate Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. He has earlier taught at Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli, the University of Madras and the University of Chicago. An accomplished Tamil writer, he has written/edited over fifteen books in Tamil combining rigorous scholarly discipline with literary flair. He is also the translator of Sundara Ramaswamy’s J.J.: Some Jottings (Katha, 2004).

ISBN: 81-902272-9-7
Extent: 228pp.
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Hardback
Price: Rs 495
 

Since the late 1950s when he first began to paint, landscape elements have remained a constant point of reference in Paramjit Singh’s canvasses. With titles as innocuous as Monsoon Light, Red in the Woods, Evening Light, and Lakes these canvasses throw open to the viewer and collector an exquisite mélange of colour, light, and the fragrance of the vibrant countryside. In this present volume, noted art critic, Ella Datta, familiarises the reader and art lover with details of the veteran artist’s life, the influences which shaped his art, and the streams of thought which gave substance to the mystical landscapes that he is renowned for. Based on extensive interviews with the artist, the volume includes some of his best-known work, which includes landscapes, as well as the more rarely seen black & white drawings and pastels. Ella Datta’s eminently readable account of the artist’s life and work is supplemented by valuable photographs from the Singh family archives.

Ella Datta is a well-known art critic, regularly contributing articles on contemporary Indian art to national dailies such as the Hindustan Times and the Telegraph. She is also the author of a number of titles on contemporary Indian artists including Ganesh Pyne: His Life and Times (1998).

ISBN: 81-902272-8-9
Extent: 132pp. (including 60 four-colour reproductions of the artist’s landscapes)
Size: Crown Quarto
Binding: Hardback
Price: Rs 1395

‘Highly accessible and a major step forward in understanding Islam, this book should be read from the schoolroom to the State Department.’
Francis Robinson

‘A thoughtful and finely balanced primer on contemporary Islam.’
New York Review of Books

Making a radical departure from the recently proliferating publications on Islam—journalist exposés on terrorist intrigues and solemn expositions on the clash of civilizations - renowned Islamicist Carl Ernst offers in this book a sympathetic yet reasoned and analytical view of the Islamic religious tradition and the contemporary issues that Muslims face. He introduces  the  reader  to  the  profound  spiritual and
intellectual resources of Islam while clarifying debate and highlighting diversity within the tradition. Writing from within the framework of religious studies and the historical context he describes how Protestant definitions of religion and anti-Muslim prejudice have affected views of Islam in Europe and America. He also discusses the contemporary importance of Islam in both its traditional settings and its new locations and provides a context for understanding extremist movements like fundamentalism. Ernst concludes with an overview of critical debates on important contemporary issues such as gender and veiling, state politics, and science and religion. Revealing the human face of Islam, this timely and important volume aims at stimulating conversation between Muslims and non-Muslims in a world that they have commonly inherited.

Carl W. Ernst is W.R. Kenan Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of several books on Islam, including Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center, Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order in South Asia and Beyond (co-authored with Bruce B. Lawrence), and The Shambhala Guide to Sufism.

ISBN: 81-902272-9-7
Extent: 272pp.
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Hardback
Price: Rs 450

'Ruth Vanita's Gandhi's Tiger and Sita's Smile is a major contribution to public debates on issues of gender and sexuality that frames these issues in highly original and provocative ways. Vanita has an astonishing ability to make texts speak to each other. Her intimacy with medieval devotional literature, Urdu poetry as well as modern forms of popular culture result in essays that are sparkling with wit and humor and will make us reexamine what it is to become man, to become woman, or to become animal.'
Veena Das

'Ruth Vanita’s scholarship is staggering. She scours
 the intellectual landscape, from the Upanishads to writers of our times, from the tale of Oedipus to that of Ashtavakra, from Sappho to the story of lesbian love in the Bengal version of the Padma Purana. And, through it all, she builds up a case for a more humane society and for the tolerance of diversity, deftly demonstrating how the celebration of diversity has roots in ancient India.'
Kaushik Basu

The essays in this collection, written over the last five years, interrogate a variety of Indian texts and contexts along intersecting axes of gender, nation, and desire, addressing both the material and the representational. A couple of these essays grew out of seeds planted during the author’s years at Manushi (she is co-founder of this ground-breaking Indian feminist magazine). Most others emerged from further research in areas that first opened up to Vanita while working on Same-Sex Love in India and her subsequent books, Queering India and Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West. Intertextuality is a primary theme in these essays. Vanita is interested in the ways in which medieval texts speak to each other and draw on earlier canonical works, rewriting and transforming narrative in a spirit of respectful conversation. In very different registers, modern texts, such as nineteenth-century poetry and twentieth-century fiction and cinema, also converse with each other and with older texts. Another equally interesting but distinctly different area of enquiry addressed in these essays is the way texts are received in later periods or by other cultures in the same period. Boldly written, and addressing a number of issues which South Asian society would ‘rather not talk about’, this is a timely volume which effectively narrows the seemingly looming gap between sexuality and gender.

Ruth Vanita is Professor of Liberal Studies and Women’s Studies at the University of Montana.

ISBN: 81-902272-5-4
Extent: 336pp.
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Paperback
Price: Rs 350

Arvind and Gautam’s book weaves the threads of the LGBT movement together into a hard-nailed fist that punches hetero-normative India in its very belly….The knuckles in the book are two incredible essays by two women who tear into the construct called heterosexuality…a remarkable book that is a must for students of gender and sexual politics in India.'
Ashok Row Kavi
Sunday Hindustan Times

'Passionate, considered, this anthology pushes at the hypocrisies of a society that turns love into something queer…it is a book to be read, re-read and passed on—not by people sympathetic to queer issues but by those who are not.'
Mitali Saran
Tehelka

'In an age when voices of scholarship have become strident if not shrill, Aryans and British India is remarkably different, characterized as it is by gentle understatement, concern, and erudition.'
Kumkum Roy

(First time in paperback) In this landmark study, Thomas Trautmann delves into the intellectual accomplishments of the 'languages and nations' concept in British India, as well as the darker politics of race hatred which emerged out of it. He challenges the racial hypothesis through a powerful analysis of the feeble evidence upon which it is based. Issued for the first time in paperback format, this edition includes a new Preface in which the author discusses further ideas on the understanding of the Aryan theory and the languages and nations project, as well as the new scholarship supporting such ideas. The new preface also discusses the Aryan debate in contemporary India, which looks for a link between Aryans, Sanskrit, the Veda and the Indus Valley Civilization, and which has in recent times broadened into a tremendously politicized controversy. A compelling and carefully researched work, Aryans and British India has become mandatory reading, since its first publication in 1997, for historians, political scientists and commentators, anthropologists, and linguists, as well as scholars and students of cultural studies.

Thomas R. Trautmann is Professor of History and Anthropology at the University of Michigan, USA. He is the author of Dravidian Kinship (1981) and Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship (1987). He is the editor of Time, Histories and Ethnologies (co-edited 1995), Transformations of Kinship (1998), and The Aryan Debate (2004).

ISBN: 81-902272-1-1
Extent: 296pp.
Size: Royal
Binding: Paperback
Price: Rs 295