On the literary and sociopolitical activism of Kanaiyalal Maneklal Munshi, 1887-1971; biographical presentation; includes an English translation of his Gujarati play Dhruvasvāminīdevī.

"This fascinating book presents a wide-ranging collection of interdisciplinary research on Gujarati identities in India and the diaspora. An international group of women researchers from different academic backgrounds has gathered a rich set of data that provide fresh insights and raise many searching questions. We find here theoretical and practical perspectives linked to social, cultural, historical, literary and personal concerns that will appeal to and challenge a wide readership. A most remarkable volume on which the editors are to be congratulated." Professor Ursula King FRSA University of Bristol "In this welcome volume, women scholars draw out the many facets of identity as it is forged in the minds and bodies, and social, spiritual and business worlds of Gujaratis in India and the diaspora. It is rare indeed to find a book which discusses in such detail the impact of gender and ethnicity on the research process as well as on the lives of those studied." Professor Kim Knott University of Lancaster

Offering a unique cross-cultural study, this book provides a detailed account of the relationship between classical antiquity and the British colonial presence in India. Vasunia shows how classical culture pervaded the minds of the British colonizers, and highlights the many Indian receptions of Greco-Roman antiquity.

This book is a historical study of modern Gujarat, India, addressing crucial questions of language, identity, and power. It examines the debates over language among the elite of this region during a period of significant social and political change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Language debates closely reflect power relations among different sections of society, such as those delineated by nation, ethnicity, region, religion, caste, class, and gender. They are intimately linked with the process in which individuals and groups of people try to define and project themselves in response to changing political, economic, and social environments. Based on rich historical sources, including official records, periodicals, literary texts, memoirs, and private papers, this book vividly shows the impact that colonialism, nationalism, and the process of nation-building had on the ideas of language among different groups, as well as how various ideas of language competed and negotiated with each other. Language, Identity, and Power in Modern India: Gujarat, c.1850–1960 will be of particular interest to students and scholars working on South Asian history and to those interested in issues of language, society, and politics in different parts of the modern world.

The present volume springs out of a festschrift confernece to honor the career of Walter Hauser, professor emeritus of history at the University of Virginia and pioneer scholar in the study of Indian peasant movements. Because Hauser's work focuses on Bihar and the peasant leader, Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, some of the authors, such as the late Arvind Narayan Das, Christopher Hill, and Sho Kuwajima, are concerned directly with peasant politics in Bihar. Other authors, such as Harry Blair, Majid Siddiqi, Harold Gould, and the late James R. Hagen, constrast agrarian history and politics in Bihar to other parts of India. A third group, including Stuart Corbridge, Ron Herring, and Ruhi Grover, investigate related questions in agrarian history and politics from regions formally outside of Bihar. A fourth group of authors, including Peter Robb, Ajay Skaria, and William R. Pinch, examine culture, religion, and meaning that inform (and are informed by) peasant politics. A fifth set of authros, Frederick H. Damon, Peter Gottschalk, and Mathew Schmalz, provide ethnographic context. Damon takes readers from Bihar to Melanesia and many points in between, with a focus on ethno-botany over three millennia; Gottschalk and Schmalz provide a closely detailed examination of a Bihari village, focusing in particular on the problem of religion. Importantly, these authors structure their investigations around a reversal of the ethnographer's gaze'. In this spirit of reflexive reversal, the volume concludes with a reflection on the project' of South Asian studies in the United States by Hauser himself, focusing on (but not limited to) his experiences at the University of Virginia.

On the literary and sociopolitical activism of Kanaiyalal Maneklal Munshi, 1887-1971; biographical presentation; includes an English translation of his Gujarati play Dhruvasvāminīdevī.