Inherent in colonialism was the idea of self-legitimation, the most powerful tool of which was the colonizer's claim to bring the fruits of progress and modernity to the subject people. In colonial logic, people who were different because they were inferior had to be made similar - and hence equal - by civilizing them. However, once this equality had been attained, the very basis for colonial rule would vanish. 'Colonialism as Civilizing Mission' explores British colonial ideology at work in South Asia. Ranging from studies on sport and national education, to pulp fiction to infanticide,...

In 1943 a slim volume of poetry, 'Tar Saptak', burst onto the Hindi literary scene. It gave voice to seven young poets who were determined to experiment both with the content and form of poetry. 'Tar Saptak' heralded the beginning of Prayogvad (Experimentalism), which in turn became Nayi Kavita (New Poetry). Taken from Nayi Kavita, this parallel text anthology interprets it not as a narrow literary movement but as a modernist tendency still flourishing in Hindi poetry.

The collection includes seven poets who first published in one of the Saptaks: Agyeya Muktibodh, Shamsher, Raghuvir...

This major study reconsiders the creation of the Gandhian legend through the myriad texts and images that helped spread it through both India and the Western world. In revealing how the picture of the Mahatma as saint-as-politician was founded on Indian nationalistic selectivity and limited Western representations of Gandhi, Claude Markovits shows how Gandhi's legend has obscured the facts of his public career. Gandhi's professional role in the public sphere, Markovits argues, was heavily influenced by his long and critical phase of maturation in South Africa, a period often dismissed as...

Set against today's context of globalization and the decline of large-scale industry, Lost Worlds is a detailed exploration of the world of labour in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century South Asia. Using a wide range of oral and archival sources as well as popular literature, Chitra Joshi reconstructs working class lives, exploring their everyday worlds at the workplace and within community life, as well as their moments of conflict and struggle. In its analysis of the complex relationship between past and present, memory and history, culture and practice, community and nation,...

This volume of essays focuses on the fresh set of problems that post-Independence historiography has brought to the fore. It covers areas such as the integration of archaeology with narratives of early Indian history; the trajectories of social change and social formation; the historical position of ideology and its shifts; and, importantly, how ways of communicating knowledge of the past is now increasingly under non-academic fundamentalist onslaught. 'Studying Early India' also investigates the profound impact of colonialism on the study of India's early past, the new methods and...

India became independent in 1947 and, after nearly three years of debate in the Constituent Assembly, adopted a Constitution that came into effect on 26 January 1950. This Constitution has lasted until the present, with its basic structure unaltered, a remarkable achievement given that the generally accepted prerequisites for democratic stability did not exist, and do not exist even today. Half a century of constitutional democracy is something that political scientists and legal scholars need to analyze and explain. This volume examines the career of constitutional-political ideas...

'The Bengal Borderland' constitutes the epicentre of the partition of British India. Yet while the forging of international borders between India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma (the 'Bengal Borderland') has been a core theme in Partition studies, these crucial borderlands have, remarkably, been largely ignored by historians. While South Asia is poorly represented in borderland studies, the study of South Asian borderlands appears indispensable because here a major and intensely contested experiment in twentieth-century border making took place. Without direct reference to the borderlands...

'Colonial Childhoods' is about the politics of childhood in India between the 1860s and the 1930s. It examines not only the redefinition of the 'child' in the cultural and intellectual climate of colonialism, but also the uses of the child, the parent and the family in colonizing and nationalizing projects. It investigates also the complications of transporting metropolitan discourses of childhood, adulthood and expertise across the lines of race. Focused on reformatories and laws for juvenile delinquents, and boarding schools for aristocratic children, it illuminates a vital area of...

The essays in this volume bring together historians and anthropologists to reflect on the place of history within present-day conditions. The central focus here is on aspects of the popular, on the ways in which the popular relates to the scientific, the professional, the aesthetic, the religious, the legal and the political. These essays represent a critique of the disciplinary practices of history. They examine the historian's practices and assumptions, being mainly concerned with finding a set of practices of history-writing that are both truthful and ethical. They are united by the...

This book throws new light on post-colonial evaluations of the Partition and its effect on eastern India. Until very recently, a striking state of 'near silence' has existed concerning the violence encountered by those who fled across the Bengal border. 'Bengal Partition Stories' addresses this silence through the retelling of stories inspired by the division of Bengal, the mass exodus that followed and their repercussions on the cultural, social and economic character of the region, modern India as a whole and the newly-formed nation of Bangladesh.

Despite numerous critical...