Bøger om Indien

"Castes in India" by B.R. Ambedkar is an incisive and seminal work that examines one of the most enduring social institutions in Indian society-caste. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the caste system, its historical origins, and its profound impact on Indian society. Ambedkar delves into the complex structure of caste, dissecting its divisions, hierarchies, and oppressive practices that have shaped the lives of millions for centuries. He presents a comprehensive critique of the caste system and offers a vision for its eradication and emancipation. He passionately argues for social justice, equality, and the importance of individual rights, challenging the entrenched notions of superiority and discrimination perpetuated by the caste system. Ambedkar's groundbreaking work remains a cornerstone in the discourse on caste and social reform in India, and his profound insights and unwavering commitment to social reform make this book an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the complexities of caste and its impact on Indian society.

War and Peace in Contemporary India examines the importance of institutions and the role played by international actors in crucial episodes of India's strategic history. The contributions trace India's tryst with war and peace from immediately before the foundation of the contemporary Indian state, to the last military conflict between India and Pakistan in 1999.The focus of the chapters included in this edited volume is as much on India as it is on Pakistan and China, its opponents in war. The chapters offer a fresh take on the creation of India as a regional military power, and her approach to War and Peace in the post-independence period. Importantly, it advances the broader work on Indian strategic history during the Cold War and after, an otherwise under-studied intellectual landscape. The book offers fresh insights based on archival work, as well as a closer conceptual reading of Indian, British and American decision making at times of war and peace in contemporary India.This book will be of great interest to scholars, researchers and students interested in strategic studies, diplomatic and military history, international diplomacy, as well as Indian history and politics.The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies.

This book explores new avenues of international research in comparative federal studies. It re-examines the conceptual tools and methodologies for understanding federal systems, and the role of comparative federalism in the dissemination and implementation of federal concepts. It highlights the influence of comparative federalism on constitution-making as well as constitutional reforms.The volume provides innovative and pragmatic perspectives from both the Global North and the Global South, with case studies drawn from established federations such as India, Canada, Australia, and Austria, and emerging federal systems such as Italy and South Africa. Advocating a combined approach that integrates modern and traditional theoretical routes with practical insights and contemporary analyses, it discusses the issues of multilevel elections and federal governance; coalition governments and multiparty democracy in parliamentary federal systems, such as India; minority empowerment; gender budgeting; self-governance; multinational federalism; unitary states; the nation-state; and degenerating federalism. It also breaks new ground by looking at federalism from a gender perspective and deals with tools for measuring fiscal responsibility, and a social and cultural index.A tribute to the intellectual legacy of Ronald L. Watts, this volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of political science, federalism, comparative federal studies, political studies, comparative politics, governance, public administration and law, development studies, South Asian studies, and Global South and North studies as well policymakers, international government bodies, research institutes, development experts, and other organisations working in the area.

The emergent culture of crime writings in late 19th century colonial Bengal (India) is an interesting testimony to how literature is shaped by various material forces including the market. This book deals with true crime writings of the late 1800s published by 'lowbrow publishing houses' - infamous for publishing 'sensational' and the 'vulgar' literature - which had an avid bhadralok (genteel) readership.The volume focuses on select translations of true crime writings by Bakaullah and Priyanath Mukhopadhyay who worked as darogas (Detective Inspectors) in the police department in mid-late nineteenth century colonised Bengal. These published accounts of cases investigated by them are among the very first manifestations of the crime genre in India. The writings reflect their understandings of criminality and guilt, as well as negotiations with colonial law and policing. Further, through a selection of cases in which women make an appearance either as victims or offenders, (or sometimes as both,) this book sheds light on the hidden gendered experiences of the time, often missing in mainstream Bangla literature.Combining a love for suspense with critical readings of a cultural phenomenon, this book will be of much interest to scholars and researchers of comparative literature, translation studies, gender studies, literary theory, cultural studies, modern history, and lovers of crime fiction from all disciplines.

In this volume, an effort has been made to uncover a deeper understanding of marketing perspectives of tourism in India using an interdisciplinary approach.

This book explores the meanings and perceptions of development and the dialectics of theory, policy and practice. It looks at how theory translates into policy, and the disconnections in its design and implementation in the Indian context.The book focuses on the influence of capitalist globalisation, democratisation, decentralisation and neoliberal economic reforms on the development discourse in India and how these have challenged the traditional role of the 'state', the meaning of citizenship, and public participation. Through an analysis of case studies from various parts of the country, it bridges the gap between policy prescriptions and practices and unpacks the institutional, political and policy-led compulsions and incompatibilities which most often remain unreported. It also discusses the intersections between policymaking and the politics of class, caste and gender, and emphasises the role bureaucracy plays in institutional governance.The volume includes articles from professionals ranging from academics, practitioners and activists. It will be of interest to scholars and researchers of public policy, development studies, South Asian politics, and economics as well as policy makers and practitioners in government and civil society.

This volume examines Indian diasporic communities in various countries including the UK, Trinidad, Portugal, Netherlands, and Fiji, among others, and presents new perspectives on the shifting nature of Indian transnationalism.

Anil Gharai is arguably one of the most significant authors of Bangla and Dalit literature in India. This volume of English translations of some of his most celebrated works seeks to introduce his writings to a new readership.

This handbook presents a multilayered and multidimensional history of state formation in premodern India. It explores dense and rich local and subregional historiography from the mid-first millennium BC to the eighteenth century in South Asia.

This handbook presents an authoritative account of the development of movements, thoughts, and policies of OBCs (Other Backward Classes) in India. it is a comprehensive work on the politics of identity and plurality of experiences of OBCs in India, featuring many eminent scholars working in the field of social justice and social exclusion.

This handbook presents a comprehensive study of the post-reform Indian Economy, three decades after the economic liberalization started in the early 1990s.

This book, authored by the late Princeton music scholar Harold Powers, discusses a single Indian r¿ga called R¿tigaula. R¿tigaula's pitch structure, conventions surrounding its performance, and its treatment in historical Indian music treatises are comprehensively described. Powers's unique approach to theorizing r¿ga examines r¿ga structure and meaning in this monograph too, from the perspective of musical communication and discourse. From within this perspective, Powers shares his thoughts about music's connection to language, and the relationship between r¿ga expression and linguistic communication.

This volume looks at the concept of the 'local' in Indian history. Through a case study of Bengal, it studies how worldwide currents-be it colonial governance, pedagogic practices or intellectual rhythms-simultaneously inform and interact with particular local idioms to produce variegated histories of a region. It examines the processes through which the idea of the 'local' gets constituted in different spatial entities such as the frontier province of the Jangal Mahal, the Sundarbans, the dry terrain of Birbhum-Bankura-Purulia and the urban spaces of Calcutta and other small towns. The volume further discusses the various administrative as well as amateur representations of these settings to chart out the ways through which certain spaces get associated with a particular image or history. The chapters in the volume explore a variety of themes-textual representations of the region, epistemic practices and educational policies, as well as administrative manoeuvres and governmental practices which helped the state in mapping its people.An important contribution in the study of Indian history, this interdisciplinary work will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of science and technology studies, history, sociology and social anthropology and South Asian studies.

Retelling Time challenges the hegemony of colonial modernity over academic disciplines and over ways in which we think about something as fundamental as time. It reclaims a bouquet of alternative practices of time from premodern South Asia, which stem from worldviews that have been marginalized.These practices relate to a range of classical and vernacular genres including aläk¿ra, therav¿da, yoga, r¿makath¿, tasawwuf, ¿y¿räga, pur¿¿a, trik¿-tantra, navya-ny¿ya, pratyabhijñ¿, carita, k¿¿¿y¿¿¿am and mägala k¿vya. These represent multiple languages such as Sanskrit, Persian, Pali, Prakrit, Awadhi, Malayalam, Kannada, and Bengali, as well as diverse streams, from Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sufi Islam to logic, yoga, tantra, theatre, and poetics. Retelling Time questions the modern Eurocentric belief in an empty, homogenous, abbreviated, secular and irreversible time. It proposes instead that that premodern South Asia invested time with cultural function and value, which ranged from the contingent to the transcendent, the quotidian to the cosmic, the fleeting to the eternal, and the social to the spiritual. Accordingly, time was reworked --- stretched, melded, collapsed, recursed, rolled over, and even extinguished. Sacred, social, aesthetic, scientific, fictional, historical, and performative South Asian traditions are seen here in conversation with one other, mediated by an ethical paradigm. Their collective challenge is to decolonize our ways of knowing and being.This book will be of interest to scholars of South Asian history, philosophy of history, anthropology, literature, Sanskrit, post colonial studies, cultural studies, studies of temporality and of the Global South.

This volume studies the urbanisation trends of medium-sized cities of India to develop a typology of urban resilience. It looks at historic second-tier cities like Nashik, Bhopal, Kolkata and Agra, which are laboratories of smart experiments and are subject to technological ubiquity, with rampant deployment of smart technologies and dashboard governance.The book examines the traditional values and systems of these cities that have proven to be resilient and studies how they can be adapted to contemporary times. It also highlights the vulnerabilities posed by current urban development models in these cities and presents best practices that could provide leads to address impending climate risks. The book also offers a unique Resilience Index that can drive change in the way cities are imagined and administered, customised to specific needs at various scales of application.Part of the Urban Futures series, the volume is an important contribution to the growing scholarship of southern urbanism and will be of interest to researchers and students of urban studies, urban ecology, urban sociology, architecture, geography, urban design, anthropology, cultural studies, environment, sustainability, urban planning and climate change.

This book offers fresh theoretical, methodological and empirical analyses of the relation between religion and the city in the South Asian context.Uniting the historical with the contemporary by looking at the medieval and early modern links between religious faith and urban settlement, the book brings together a series of focused studies of the mixed and multiple practices and spatial negotiations of religion in the South Asian city. It looks at the various ways in which contemporary religious practice affects urban everyday life, commerce, craft, infrastructure, cultural forms, art, music and architecture. Chapters draw upon original empirical study and research to analyze the foundational, structural, material and cultural connections between religious practice and urban formations or flows. The book argues that Indian cities are not 'postsecular' in the sense that the term is currently used in the modern West, but that there has been, rather, a deep, even foundational link between religion and urbanism, producing different versions of urban modernity. Questions of caste, gender, community, intersectional entanglements, physical proximity, private or public ritual, processions and prayer, economic and political factors, material objects, and changes in the built environment, are all taken into consideration, and the book offers an interdisciplinary analysis of different historical periods, different cities, and different types of religious practice.Filling a gap in the literature by discussing a diversity of settings and faiths, the book will be of interest to scholars to South Asian history, sociology, literary analysis, urban studies and cultural studies.

This book examines the evolution and journey of regional language television channels in India. The first of its kind, it looks at the coverage, uniqueness, ownership, and audiences of regional channels in 14 different languages across India, covering Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Urdu, Assamese, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Odia, Punjabi, and Malayalam. It brings together researchers, scholars, media professionals, and communication teachers to document and reflect on language as the site of culture, politics, market, and social representation.The volume discusses multiple media histories and their interlinkages from a subcontinental perspective by exploring the trajectories of regional language television through geographical boundaries, state, language, identities, and culture. It offers comparative analyses across regional language television channels and presents interpretive insights on television culture and commerce, contemporary challenges, mass media technology, and future relevance.Rich in empirical data, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of media studies, television studies, communication studies, sociology, political studies, language studies, regional studies, and South Asian studies. It will also be useful to professionals and industry bodies in television media and is broadcasting, journalists, and television channels.

This volume unravels the underlying power relations that are masked in the present discourse of ecological sustainability and conflicts over natural resources. Current discussions on environment emphasise the use and abuse of the environment in various ways. This book looks at the inter-linkages of discourse, resources, risk and resistance in the contemporary neoliberal world. While exploring the experiences of neoliberalisation of nature in India, it brings out the intersections of conservation and management, science and gender, community politics and governance policies.The volume highlights the cultural politics of resistance from multiple sites and regions in India in the recent context (be it land, water, forest, flora or fauna or urban commons). It discusses the ways in which environmental issues have come up and been appropriated, while examining the role of the State and actors such as corporates, traders, consultants, ecotourism companies, green activists and consumers, and consequences of 'green' appropriation and the 'growth' story. The major themes of the volume are the interrelations of nature, culture and power; neoliberal governance and the environment; access to and use and management of land, natural resources and environment; community politics and livelihoods; marginalised groups and local communities; marketisation and the environment; and new forms of re-appropriation and resistance.This book will be of great interest to students and researchers in sociology, environmental studies, environmental history, environmental anthropology, political ecology, political science, geography, law and human rights, economics and development studies as well as to environmental activists, policy makers and those in media and journalism.

This anthology demonstrates the significance of Raja Rao's writing in the broader spectrum of anti-colonial, postcolonial, and diasporic writing in the 20th century. In addition to highlighting Rao's significant presence in Indian writing, the volume presents a range of previously unpublished material which contextualises Rao's work within 20th-century modernist, postmodernist, and postcolonial trends. Exploring both his fictional and non-fictional works, Reading India in a Transnational Era engages with issues of subaltern agency and national belonging, authenticity, subjectivity, internationalism, multicultural politics, postcolonialism, and literary and cultural representation through language and translation.A literary volume that discusses gender and identity on both socio-political grounds, apart from dealing with Rao's linguistic experimentations in a transnational era, will be of interest among scholars and researchers of English, postcolonial and world literature, cultural theory, and Asian studies.