Neelam Srivastava

Toral Jatin Gajarawala

Jack Webb

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

Reflecting the diversity of postcolonial print cultures, this book examines the cultural output that serve as the intellectual forces behind opposition to colonial orders.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Postcolonial Print Cultures

English literature is studied, at some stage or other, by almost every middle and upper-class person in India. Its importance as a discipline, or as a body of texts, that shapes the minds, attitudes, behavior and social aspirations of India's educated urban elite is often fundamental. Yet some of the most basic questions about English literary studies in India--their relevance and validity, their social functions, their institutional contexts, their pedagogic and publishing practices--are never posed. The seventeen essays in this volume break the silence and ask why. This volume will be invaluable to those interested in sociology, history, colonialism and culture, and to all who teach or study English literature anywhere in the world.

English Literary Studies in India

The Lie of the Land

You-me Park

This cutting-edge volume bridges two significant bodies of recent Austen scholarship, one emphasizing the issue of gender and one centralising the history of colonialism and slavery.

The Postcolonial Jane Austen

Anuradha Dingwaney Needham

In this timely, nuanced collection, twenty leading cultural theorists assess the contradictory ideals, policies, and practices of secularism in India.

The Crisis of Secularism in India

While secularism has been integral to India’s democracy for more than fifty years, its uses and limits are now being debated anew. Signs of a crisis in the relations between state, society, and religion include the violence directed against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 and the precarious situation of India’s minority religious groups more generally; the existence of personal laws that vary by religious community; the affiliation of political parties with fundamentalist religious organizations; and the rallying of a significant proportion of the diasporic Hindu community behind a resurgent nationalist Hinduism. There is a broad consensus that a crisis of secularism exists, but whether the state can resolve conflicts and ease tensions or is itself part of the problem is a matter of vigorous political and intellectual debate. In this timely, nuanced collection, twenty leading Indian cultural theorists assess the contradictory ideals, policies, and practices of secularism in India. Scholars of history, anthropology, religion, politics, law, philosophy, and media studies take on a broad range of concerns. Some consider the history of secularism in India; others explore theoretical issues such as the relationship between secularism and democracy or the shortcomings of the categories “majority” and “minority.” Contributors examine how the debates about secularism play out in schools, the media, and the popular cinema. And they address two of the most politically charged sites of crisis: personal law and the right to practice and encourage religious conversion. Together the essays inject insightful analysis into the fraught controversy about the shortcomings and uncertain future of secularism in the world today. Contributors. Flavia Agnes, Upendra Baxi, Shyam Benegal, Akeel Bilgrami, Partha Chatterjee, V. Geetha, Sunil Khilnani, Nivedita Menon, Ashis Nandy, Anuradha Dingwaney Needham, Gyanendra Pandey, Gyan Prakash, Arvind Rajagopal, Paula Richman, Sumit Sarkar, Dwaipayan Sen, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Shabnum Tejani, Romila Thapar, Ravi S. Vasudevan, Gauri Viswanathan

The Scandal of the State is a revealing study of the relationship between the postcolonial, democratic Indian nation-state and Indian women’s actual needs and lives. Well-known for her work combining feminist theory and postcolonial studies, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan shows how the state is central to understanding women’s identities and how, reciprocally, women and “women’s issues” affect the state’s role and function. She argues that in India law and citizenship define for women not only the scope of political rights but also cultural identity and everyday life. Sunder Rajan delineates the postcolonial state in implicit contrast with the “enlightened,” postfeminist neoliberal state in the West. Her analysis wrestles with complex social realities, taking into account the influence of age, ethnicity, religion, and class on individual and group identities as well as the shifting, heterogeneous nature of the state itself. The Scandal of the State develops through a series of compelling case studies, each of which centers around an incident exposing the contradictory position of the Indian state vis-à-vis its female citizens and, ultimately, the inadequacy of its commitment to women’s rights. Sunder Rajan focuses on the custody battle over a Muslim child bride, the compulsory sterilization of mentally retarded women in state institutional care, female infanticide in Tamilnadu, prostitution as labor rather than crime, and the surrender of the female outlaw Phoolan Devi. She also looks at the ways the Uniform Civil Code presented many women with a stark choice between allegiance to their religion and community or the secular assertion of individual rights. Rich with theoretical acumen and activist passion, The Scandal of the State is a powerful critique of the mutual dependence of women and the state on one another in the specific context of a postcolonial modernity.

Women, Law, and Citizenship in Postcolonial India

The Scandal of the State

DIVA major postcolonial feminist theorist explores the gendered nature of citizenship and the state./div

You-Me Park

This volume offers a unique contribution to both postcolonial studies and Austen scholarship by: * examining the texts to illumine nineteenth century attitudes to colonialism and the expanding Empire * revealing a new range of interpretations of Austen's work, each shaped by the critic's particular context * exploring the ways in which the study of Austen's novels raises fresh issues for post-colonial criticism. Bringing together work by highly-respected critics from four continents and a range of disciplines, this newly paperbacked volume allows sometimes surprising and always fascinating new insights into some of the most frequently studied - and best loved - novels in the English language.

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

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