By presenting a new interpretation of Rabindranath Tagore's English language writings, this book places the work of India's greatest Nobel Prize winner and cultural icon in the context of imperial history and thereby bridges the gap between Tagore studies and imperial/postcolonial historiography.

Using detailed archival research, the book charts the origins of Tagore's ideas in Indian religious traditions and discusses the impact of early Indian nationalism on Tagore's thinking. It offers a new interpretation of Tagore's complex debates with Gandhi about the colonial encounter,...

This book provides a set of fresh and compelling interdisciplinary approaches to the enduring phenomenon of the guru in South Asia. Moving across different gurus and kinds of gurus, and between past and present, the chapters call attention to the extraordinary scope and richness of the social lives and roles of South Asian gurus. Prevailing scholarship has rightly considered the guru to be a source of religious and philosophical knowledge and mystical bodily practices. This book goes further and considers the social engagements and entanglements of these spiritual leaders, not just on...

Drawing on original ethnographic field-research conducted primarily with former guerrilla insurgents in southern and central Sri Lanka, this book analyses the memories and narratives of people who have perpetrated political violence. It explores how violence is negotiated and lived with in the aftermath, and its implications for the self and social relationships from the perspectives of those who have inflicted it.

The book sheds ethnographic light on a largely overlooked and little-understood conflict that took place within the majority Sinhala community in the late 1980s, known...

Since restrictions on commonwealth labour immigration to Britain in the 1960s, marriage has been the dominant form of migration between Pakistan and the UK. Most transnational Pakistani marriages are between cousins or other more distant relatives, lending a particular texture to this transnational social field. Based on research in Britain and Pakistan, this book provides a rounded portrayal incorporating the emotional motivations for, and content of, these transnational unions.

The book explores the experiences of families and individuals involved, including the neglected experiences...

During the period of 2000 to 2010, the tea plantations in India experienced a crisis and were at the threshold of transformation, framed by conflict and turbulence.

This book is an interdisciplinary and intersectional work examining the nature of victimhood and agency among women workers on tea-plantations in North Bengal, India. The author views tea plantations as social spaces, rather than only economic units of production. Focusing on the lived experiences of the workers from the perspective of their multiple identities, the author uses the everyday as the entry point for...

The Kalahandi district in the state of Odisha in Eastern India is regarded as an iconic region of underdevelopment and is often perceived to be the 'Somalia' of the country. It is also the site of a large number of governmental interventions.

This book focuses on governance in the state of Odisha and provides an ethnographic account of the changing forms of governmental actions in the development sector. It analyses the implementation of WORLP (Western Orissa Rural Livelihoods Project), a new generation watershed-based development project in Kalahandi district in Odish. It shows...

West Bengal has often been perceived as somewhat of an aberration in the wider context of a rather chaotic Indian democracy, as the Left Front (spearheaded by the Communist Party of India-Marxist, CPIM) demonstrated a rare instance of political stability, decisively winning seven consecutive democratic elections from 1977 to 2006. Its development record has also been substantial, with a focus on land reforms, the panchayati-raj institution, and an agriculture centric development agenda.

This book presents a reappraisal of the political economic history of the CPIM/Left Front...