'Cultural History Of Modern India Edited By Dilip M. Menon Definitely Qualifies For Interesting Reading&The Different Approach Attempted Through The Book Indubitably Is A Fresh Endeavour For A Multidisciplinary Approach With Sociologists, Art Historians And Music Theorists Working Within A Historical Paradigm.' The Statesman, 9 December 2006 The History Of Modern India Has Been Narrated Largely In Terms Of The Nationalist Movement, Personalities And What Has Been Seen As The 'High' Politics Of The State. Recent Shifts In History Writing Have Tried To Bring In Subordinated Histories Of Regions And Of Groups. We Are Moving Towards A Wider Understanding Of Politics, History And Of The Ordinary People Who Make History. This Collection Tries To Push The Emerging Paradigm Further By Moving Away From Conventional Notions Of The History Of The Nation And Indeed Of The Political. The Six Essays In This Collection Present Original And Pioneering Forays In The Study Of Cricket, Oral History, Gender Studies, Film, Popular Culture And Indian Classical Music. Whether Looking At Issues Of Caste On The Seemingly Level Playing Field Of Cricket In Early Twentieth Century India; Or How A Nineteenth Century Housewife Comes To Pen The First Autobiography By An Indian Woman; Calendar Art Reflecting Deeper Notions Of Religion And Community; Or How An Idea Of Pure Classical Music Faces The Challenge Of Technology, These Essays Show How Ideas Of Self, Community And Art Are Formed Within A Larger Politics. Moreover, Culture Far From Being A Refuge From The Political Is Also The Space Within Which Politics Comes To Be Worked Out.

In a second edition of their successful Concise History of Modern India, Barbara Metcalf and Thomas Metcalf explore India's modern history afresh and update the events of the last decade. These include the takeover of Congress from the seemingly entrenched Hindu nationalist party in 2004, India's huge advances in technology and the country's new role as a major player in world affairs. From the days of the Mughals, through the British Empire, and into Independence, the country has been transformed by its institutional structures. It is these institutions which have helped bring about the social, cultural and economic changes that have taken place over the last half century and paved the way for the modern success story. Despite these advances, poverty, social inequality and religious division still fester. In response to these dilemmas, the book grapples with questions of caste and religious identity, and the nature of the Indian nation.

Presents a brief account of Indian culture in the nineteenth century. The work reveals an inner consistency by examining the entire cultural tradition in the light of the two fundamental principles that have shaped India's destiny throughout her long history: unity in the midst of diversity, and continuity at the heart of change. The author has shown the simultaneous working of these two basic features in all the important areas of Indian culture in the nineteenth century' philosophical and religious thought, literature, and the arts.

This book provides an interpretive and comprehensive account of the history of India between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, a crucial epoch characterized by colonialism, nationalism and the emergence of the independent Indian Union. It explores significant historiographical debates concerning the period while highlighting important new issues, especially those of gender, ecology, caste, and labour. The work combines an analysis of colonial and independent India in order to underscore ideologies, policies, and processes that shaped the colonial state and continue to mould the Indian nation.

This book provides an interpretive and comprehensive account of the history of India between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, a crucial epoch characterized by colonialism, nationalism and the emergence of the independent Indian Union. It explores significant historiographical debates concerning the period while highlighting important new issues, especially those of gender, ecology, caste, and labour. The work combines an analysis of colonial and independent India in order to underscore ideologies, policies, and processes that shaped the colonial state and continue to mould the Indian nation.

This book examines the nature and function of history-writing in India by focusing on early modern traditions of historiography with particular reference to Bengal. Situating distinctive cultures of history vis-à-vis their relevant political and cultural contexts, it highlights the richness, variety and politically sensitive character of a range of oral and textual narratives. Kumkum Chatterjee also makes a significant contribution to the intellectual and cultural history of early modern India by exploring interactions between regional, vernacular cultures on the one hand and the Islamicate, Persianized culture of the Mughal Empire on the other. Strongly grounded in primary sources, The Cultures of History in Early Modern India re-examines the concepts of authority, evidence and method in early modern historiography. It also discusses the debates surrounding the culture of history writing in India.

Religious authority and political power have existed in complex relationships throughout India’s history. The centuries of the ‘early modern’ in South Asia saw particularly dynamic developments in this relationship. Regional as well as imperial states of the period expanded their religious patronage, while new sectarian centres of doctrinal and spiritual authority emerged beyond the confines of the state. Royal and merchant patronage stimulated the growth of new classes of mobile intellectuals deeply committed to the reappraisal of many aspects of religious law and doctrine. Supra-regional institutions and networks of many other kinds - sect-based religious maths, pilgrimage centres and their guardians, sants and sufi orders - flourished, offering greater mobility to wider communities of the pious. This was also a period of growing vigour in the development of vernacular religious literatures of different kinds, and often of new genres blending elements of older devotional, juridical and historical literatures. Oral and manuscript literatures too gained more rapid circulation, although the meaning and canonical status of texts frequently changed as they circulated more widely and reached larger lay audiences. Through explorations of these developments, the essays in this collection make a distinctive contribution to a critical formative period in the making of India’s modern religious cultures. This book was published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.