Makarand R. Paranjape

This Book Is A Pioneering And Timely Intervention In The Critical Scene Today. It Poses A Challenge To The Dominant, Market-Driven, Globalising, And Totalising Intellectual And Cultural Trends Of Our Times Which Threaten To Marginalize And Subdue Our Native Ways Of Life. The Fifteen Essays Included Here Introduce And Define The Concept, Analyse Its Classical, Medieval, And Colonial Background, Trace Its Evolution Into The Contemporary Critical Field, Debate Its Strengths And Weaknesses, And, Finally, Attempt To Put It Into Practice By Applying It To Contemporary Literary Works. The Work Is An Attempt To Show That There Are Alternative Possibilities Of Facing Up To Our Present Cultural Crises.

Essays in Criticism

Nativism

Compared to how it looked 150 years ago at the eve of the colonial conquest, today’s India is almost completely unrecognizable. A sovereign nation, with a teeming, industrious population, it is an economic powerhouse and the world’s largest democracy. It can boast of robust legal institutions and a dizzying plurality of cultures, in addition to a lively and unrestricted print and electronic media. The question is how did it get to where it is now? Covering the period from 1800 to 1950, this study of about a dozen makers of modern India is a valuable addition to India’s cultural and intellectual history. More specifically, it shows how through the very act of writing, often in English, these thought leaders reconfigured Indian society. The very act of writing itself became endowed with almost a charismatic authority, which continued to influence generations that came after the exit of the authors from the national stage. By examining the lives and works of key players in the making of contemporary India, this study assesses their relationships with British colonialism and Indian traditions. Moreover, it analyzes how their use of the English language helped shape Indian modernity, thus giving rise to a uniquely Indian version of liberalism. The period was the fiery crucible from which an almost impossibly diverse and pluralistic new nation emerged through debate, dialogue, conflict, confrontation, and reconciliation. The author shows how the struggle for India was not only with British colonialism and imperialism, but also with itself and its past. He traces the religious and social reforms that laid the groundwork for the modern sub-continental state, proposed and advocated in English by the native voices that influenced the formation India’s society. Merging culture, politics, language, and literature, this is a path breaking volume that adds much to our understanding of a nation that looks set to achieve much in the coming century.

Making India: Colonialism, National Culture, and the Afterlife of Indian English Authority

Poet, nationalist, freedom-fighter and the first woman to become the Governor of a state in independent India, Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949) was one of the most colourful and dynamic personalities of her time. She was not only closely associated with Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, but became, in 1925, the first native woman to become the President of the Indian National Congress. This volume, the only authoritative selection of her works, comes with a revised and extended Introduction, which not only places the poet s life and art in its context, but provides a new way of understanding her significance and achievement.

Selected Poetry and Prose

Sarojini Naidu

An adventure into the heart of spiritual India that could change the way you think and live . . . Acts of Faith: Journeys to Sacred India is a sensitive and enriching exploration of the essential meaning and inner dynamics of sacred India. Through a series of deeply textured narratives of well-known masters, ashrams and sacred sites, it engages with that area of contemporary India where the profane and the sacred intersect, each transforming the other. This unusual pilgrimage shows how the pathway to the Divine is plural and open, rather than closed or restricted. While there are many travel books on India, few combine an inquiry into the meaning of India with actual visits to sacred sites, encounters with contemporary gurus, and reflections on perennial themes like ‘faith’ and ‘love’. Using both textual sources and actual experiences, Acts of Faith tries to define what constitutes the sacred, making for a highly interesting cartography of ‘India of the spirit’.

Journeys to Sacred India

Acts of Faith

Harsha V. Dehejia

Papers presented at two colloquia held in New Delhi in 2001 and 2002 respectively.

Saundarya, the Perception and Practice of Beauty in India

This new anthology features nearly 200 poems by thirty-one poets representing over 160 years of Indian Poetry in English.

Indian Poetry in English

Papers presented at the International Conference on Science and Spirituality in Modern India, held at New Delhi during 5-7 February 2006.

Science, Spirituality and the Modernization of India

‘Altered Destinations’ addresses the complex interrelations of state, nation and identity in India through the medium of culture, and compellingly reframes the debate in the context of the Gandhian concept of swaraj. Engaging with Gandhi’s classic text ‘Hind Swaraj’, which envisioned an entirely new form of identity and governance in India in opposition with its colonial past, Paranjape extends the discussion by exlporing how ideas of autonomy, selfhood, and cultural independence have been expressed, depicted and studied.

Self, Society, and Nation in India

Altered Destinations

Body Offering

This anthology offers an eclectic and wide-ranging selection from the writings and speeches of Swami Vivekananda in commemoration of his 150th birth anniversary. The scholarly introductions place Vivekananda's works in the context of his times, and discuss Hinduism and other religions, the sciences, the freedom struggle, and the making of modern India.

A Contemporary Reader

Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) popularised Vedanta in the West and reformed Hinduism in India. He also inspired the mass movement that made India a modern nation. In showcasing his life and work, this Reader balances the two main aspects of his life: the religious and the secular, the spiritual and the practical, the devotional and the rational. Included here are the most significant and representative texts from every major genre and phase — selections from his speeches, essays, letters, poems, translations, conversations, and interviews — arranged for easy reading and reference. With a scholarly Introduction highlighting his contemporary relevance, separate section introductions and a detailed biographical Chronology, this volume provides a rare insight into one of India’s greatest minds. This volume will interest scholars and students of modern Indian history, religion, literature, and philosophy as well as general readers.

Debashish Banerji

This volume is a critical exploration of multiple posthuman possibilities in the 21st century and beyond. Due to the global engagement with advanced technology, we are witness to a species-wise blurring of boundaries at the edge of the human. On the one hand, we find ourselves in a digital age in which human identity is being transformed through networked technological intervention, a large part of our consciousness transferred to "smart" external devices. On the other hand, we are assisted---or assailed---by an unprecedented proliferation of quasi-human substitutes and surrogates, forming a spectrum of humanoids with fuzzy borders. Under these conditions, critical posthumanism asks, who will occupy and control our planet: Will the "superhuman" merely serve as another sign under which new regimes of dominance are spread across the earth? Or can we discover or invent technologies of existence to counter such dominance? It is issues such as these which are at the heart of this new volume of explorations of the posthuman. The essays in this volume offer leading-edge thought on the subject, with special emphases on postmodern and postcolonial futures. They engage with questions of subalternity and feminism vis-à-vis posthumanism, dealing with issues of subjugation, dispensability and surrogacy, as well as the possibilities of resistance, ethical politics or subjective transformation from South Asian archives of cultural and spiritual practice. This volume is a valuable addition to the on-going global dialogues on posthumanism, indispensable to those, from across several disciplines, who are interested in postcolonial and planetary futures.

Makarand R. Paranjape

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