The first in a series of publications emerging from the transoceanic platform kal, RITUALS proposes queer and trans- feminist ecologies, embodiments and mythmaking. The contributions trace and disrupt cross-colonial legacies through bodies of water lapping at the shorelines of the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Atlantic. kal RITUALS is an ode to transterritorial alliances that disrupt binary contours of time and being. A collective work by The Many Headed Hydra, kal RITUALS connects art, research and publishing. Put together by a self-organized artistic platform that spans Karachi, Berlin and beyond, the book emerges from a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word, kal. Zubaan
Catagory: Society & Social Sciences
Nehru’s India Hindi / Nehru Ka Bharat / नेहरु का भारत
संप्रभुता, लोकतंत्र, धर्मनिरपेक्षता, गरीब समर्थक दृष्टिकोण और आधुनिक वैज्ञानिक दृष्टिकोण – भारतीय स्वतंत्रता आंदोलन के मूल मूल्यों को संक्षेप में ‘भारत का विचार’ कहा गया है। जवाहरलाल नेहरू ने न केवल स्वतंत्रता संग्राम के दौरान इन मूल्यों के लिए लड़ाई लड़ी, बल्कि स्वतंत्रता के बाद नवजात राष्ट्र में उन्हें लागू करने में भी महत्वपूर्ण भूमिका निभाई। उनका जीवन, दर्शन और कार्य भारत के लिए उनके दृष्टिकोण पर प्रकाश डालते हैं : इसका सभ्यतागत अतीत, स्वतंत्रता के बाद के राष्ट्र के लिए रोड मैप और भविष्य की संभावनाएँ। इतिहास और भारत के सांस्कृतिक अतीत के बारे में नेहरू की समझ पर ध्यान केंद्रित करते हुए, पुस्तक सांप्रदायिकता की उनकी गहरी समझ और धर्मनिरपेक्षता के प्रति उनकी प्रतिबद्धता के लिए एक खिड़की खोलती है। लोकतांत्रिक समाज में उनका पूर्ण विश्वास और भारतीय धरती पर इसके पोषण में उनका अमूल्य योगदान, और वैज्ञानिक सोच से ओतप्रोत समाज के साथ-साथ एक स्वतंत्र और समतावादी अर्थव्यवस्था के निर्माण में उनके प्रयास, हमें बीसवीं सदी के महानतम व्यक्तियों में से एक के जीवन और कार्य के बारे में कई अंतर्दृष्टि प्रदान करते हैं। उनके निधन के छह दशक बाद, क्या नेहरू के सिद्धांत, जो भारत के स्वतंत्रता आंदोलन के मूल्यों को दर्शाते हैं, अभी भी प्रासंगिक हैं?
A Multilingual Nation
How does India live through the oddity of being both a nation and multilingual? Is multilingualism in India to be understood as a neatly laid set of discrete languages or a criss-crossing of languages that runs through every source language and text? The questions take us to reviewing what is meant by language, multilingualism and translation. Challenging these institutions,
A Multilingual Nation illustrates how the received notions of translation discipline do not apply to India. It provocatively argues that translation is not a ‘solution’ to the allegedly chaotic situation of many languages, rather it is its inherent and inalienable part.
An unusual and unorthodox collection of essays by leading thinkers and writers, new and young researchers, it establishes the all-pervasive nature of translation in every sphere in India and reverses the assumptions of the steady nature of language, its definition and the peculiar fragility that is revealed in the process of translation.
Secession of the Successful
Why are so many of our fellow citizens disentangling from the political and economic future of India to invest in the destiny of other nations? Are Non-Resident Indians turning irreversibly into Non-Returning Indians? Is enhancing soft power a fair trade off for losing priceless human capital? And, perhaps most pertinently, is India becoming, after Russia and China, the constricting land of intolerance and authoritarianism from which the elites flee in droves, seeking greener and more liberal pastures—not to forget tax havens.
Marshalling his magisterial scholarship into highly readable prose, Sanjaya Baru raises all these questions and more in Secession of the Successful: The Flight Out of New India, which more than being a tome is a wakeup call we had better heed.
Charlottesville
In August 2017, over a thousand neo-Nazis, fascists, Klan members, and neo-Confederates descended on a small southern city to protest the pending removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. Within an hour of their arrival, the city’s historic downtown was a scene of bedlam as armored far-right cadres battled activists in the streets. Before the weekend was over, a neo-Nazi had driven a car into a throng of counter-protesters, killing a young woman and injuring dozens.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Deborah Baker has written a riveting and panoptic account of what unfolded that weekend, focusing less on the rally’s far-right leaders than on the story of the city itself. University, local, and state officials, including law enforcement, were unable or unwilling to grasp the gathering threat. Clergy, activists, and organizers from all walks of life saw more clearly what was coming and, at great personal risk, worked to warn and defend their city.
To understand why their warnings fell on deaf ears, Baker does a deep dive into American history. In her research she discovers an uncannily similar event that took place decades before when an emissary of the poet and fascist Ezra Pound arrived in Charlottesville intending to start a race war. In Charlottesville, Baker shows how a city more associated with Thomas Jefferson than civil unrest became a flashpoint in a continuing struggle over a nation’s founding myths.
Meet the Savarnas
In the early 2000s, India was expected to ‘shine’ and emerge as a rising superpower. It was the post-1990s golden generation— professionals fresh out of B-schools and engineering programmes —who were supposed to take us there. The Great Indian Dream was ready to lift-off. Except we never left the ground.
No one could really explain what went wrong. Some blamed politicians, some corruption, some capitalism and some communal polarization. Most people missed the giant elephant in the room—caste.
Caste in India is mostly researched and reported from the experience of the oppressed. Caste as a privilege is not understood well. How do caste elites respond to modernity? How do they understand culture, intimacy, love and tradition? Were their ideas, institutions and imaginations ever even capable of delivering upon the Great Indian Dream?
In Meet the Savarnas, Ravikant Kisana goes where few authors have dared: to document the lives, the concerns and crises of India’s urban elites, to frame the savarnas as a distinct social cohort, one that operates within itself and yet is oblivious of its own social rules, privileges and systems.
R.D. Karve
Raghunath Dhondo Karve was among the stormy and controversial figures of his time in Maharashtra. Born to Dhondo Keshav Karve, a social reformer who advocated for women’s rights and widow remarriage, RD Karve studied the subjects of birth control and the science of lovemaking. In 1927, Raghunath started the Samaaj Sawaasthya (Health of the Society) magazine in Marathi. The thoughts he propagated through this magazine were too radical for the society of his time and the orthodoxy who often raised obstacles and filed several cases against him. Originally written in Marathi by Dr Anant Deshmukh, and translated by Nadeem Khan, RD Karve: The Champion of Individual Liberty is a meticulously researched biography of a reformer and a social criticism of the times.
Caste Matters (Hindi)/Jati Zinda Hai/जाति ज़िंदा है
इस धमाकेदार किताब में, सुरज मिलिंद एंगडे, जाति से जुड़े गहरे विश्वासों को चुनौती देते हैं और इसकी कई परतों को खोलते हैं। यह इंक़लाबी किताब यह दिखाती है कि जाति किस तरह इंसान की रचनात्मक शक्ति को कुचलती है। ये किताब बताती है कि जाति किस तरह उत्पीड़न के दूसरे रूपों जैसे नस्ल, वर्ग और लिंग से खौफनाक रूप से मेल खाती है। यह किताब असमानता पर विचार करने के साथ-साथ एक संघर्ष का आह्वान भी करती है।
Adivasi or Vanvasi
‘An extremely important and timely book’ — Nandini Sundar, Professor Department of Sociology, Delhi University.
Akhil Bhartiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, popularly known as Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram or VKA is the tribal wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). As the largest tribal organization in the country, it works in many areas of Kerala, Jharkhand and the North-east of India. Till the late 1970s, VKA’s work was limited to a few districts of Chhattisgarh (then Madhya Pradesh), Jharkhand (then Bihar), and Odisha but it has gradually and continuously expanded its footprint in different parts of the country.
It is noteworthy that from its inception VKA focused on spreading Hindu values by organizing religious rituals in tribal areas and working in the area of education and hostels. It has tirelessly worked to provide medical help to the tribals from the mid-1960s. However, after the late 1970s, it started to work in different aspects of tribal communities’ lives. By the 1990s, it also formally began to raise questions related to the rights of tribal communities over forest land and its resources.
Exploring its genesis, historical journey, the nature of ideological discourse, and various functions of the VKA, this book opens a window to the contribution of an organization, which largely remained untold and therefore unknown. Deeply researched and evocative, Adivasi or Vanavasi would immensely interest anyone interested to understand modern India’s history, politics and changing landscape of Indian society.
Mother Mary Comes to Me
Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, this is a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’.
Born out of the onrush of memories and feelings provoked by her mother Mary’s death, this is the astonishing, often disturbing and surprisingly funny memoir of the Arundhati Roy’s life, from childhood to the present, from Kerala to Delhi.
With the scale, sweep and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity and warmth of her essays, this book is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace – a memoir like no other.
Any depiction of smoking in this book is for representational purposes only. Penguin Random House India does not promote or endorse tobacco use