Bøger af Uma Chakravarti

This volume of essays moves the historiography of ancient India in the service of a history of the present. The cultural onslaught of a brahmanical saffron culture within popular discourse, and the fight against entrenched class and caste interests led by women, dalits, and other marginalized groups, frame this battle for 'ancient' India. Through an in-depth analysis of myths and original sources, the author provides novel grounds for contesting the foundations of such charged concepts as 'nation', 'civilization, ' and 'womanly honour'. Reading against the grain of canonical sources, she presents a distinctive reading of lesser known Buddhist Pali texts, the Jataka stories, and even contemporary texts like the TV serials Chanakya and Ramayana, to demonstrate the stratifications in early Indian society. The book brings to light several crucial concepts and categories that make possible a sensitive delineation of social alienation, class antagonism and gendered violence in ancient Indian society. The everyday histories of dasas, karmakaras, 'a'grihinis, bhaktins, and gahapatis provide an understanding of ancient India away from the clichéd invocations of ideal kings, brahmanas, and pativratas.

Fault Lines of History is the second volume in Zubaan's Sexual Violence and Impunity in South Asia series, to focus on India. This volume addresses the question of state impunity, arguing that when it comes to the violation of human and civil rights, particularly in relation to sexual violence, the state of India has played an active and collusive role, creating states of exception, where its own laws can be suspended and the rights of its citizens violated. Drawing on patterns of sexual violence in Kashmir, Northeast India, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, and Rajasthan, the contributors focus on the histories of militarization in regions of conflict, as well as the histories of caste violence that are often ignored out of convenience. The essays come together to offer an urgent call for action. Though the contributors acknowledge the difficult odds facing the victims and survivors of sexual violence, they urge resistance and an end to silence as the most important weapons in the fight to hold accountable the perpetrators of sexual violence.

Pandita Ramabai was one of India's earliest feminists. A high-caste Hindu widow, Ramabai converted to Christianity, an act that was seen not only as a betrayal of her religion but of her very nation. This title introduces one of the foremost thinkers of nineteenth-century India. It rescues Ramabai from the marginalization of her contemporaries.