Every life form that inhabits the planet is valuable - be it an ant, a bird, an elephant or a tiger, even microbes and bacteria matter. The importance of biologically different life forms is highlighted for the first time at the world environment conference held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Now, the preservation of biodiversity is considered not only essential for our survival but also for ecological and environmental harmony. Now, we hear the word 'reverence for life' too often at different forums. This concept was earlier confined to the Jain community alone.

Interest for Jain studies has increased considerably in the last decades. Scholars will be thankful to the organizers of the 12th World Sanskrit Conference who, for the first time in such a conference, planned a special panel on this field. The ten papers collected in this volume show the importance, abundance and variety of topics that can be considered. Philological analysis still proves useful, whether it concentrates on one particular work or on clusters of texts. A study of the strategy of narrative and predication needs a historical approach, kavya literature lends itself to renewed and indepth interpretations. Finally the reader will observe the constant renewal of Jainism, as some new literary genre or a new sect are seen to have gained momentum in modern times.

In Stereotype confronts the importance of cultural stereotypes in shaping the ethics and reach of global literature. Mrinalini Chakravorty focuses on the seductive force and explanatory power of stereotypes in multiple South Asian contexts, whether depicting hunger, crowdedness, filth, slums, death, migrant flight, terror, or outsourcing. She argues that such commonplaces are crucial to defining cultural identity in contemporary literature and shows how the stereotype's ambivalent nature exposes the crises of liberal development in South Asia. In Stereotype considers the influential work of Salman Rushdie, Aravind Adiga, Michael Ondaatje, Monica Ali, Mohsin Hamid, and Chetan Bhagat, among others, to illustrate how stereotypes about South Asia provide insight into the material and psychic investments of contemporary imaginative texts: the colonial novel, the transnational film, and the international best-seller. Probing circumstances that range from the independence of the Indian subcontinent to poverty tourism, civil war, migration, domestic labor, and terrorist radicalism, Chakravorty builds an interpretive lens for reading literary representations of cultural and global difference. In the process, she also reevaluates the fascination with transnational novels and films that manufacture global differences by staging intersubjective encounters between cultures through stereotypes.

Global Bollywood brings together leading scholars to examine the transnational and transmedia terrain of Bollywood. Defining Bollywood as an arena of public culture distinct from Hindi-language Bombay cinema, this volume offers a new critical framework for analyzing the institutional, cultural, and political dimensions of Bollywood films and film music as they begin to constitute an important circuit of global flows in the twenty-first century.

Sarada Devi, 1853-1920, wife of Sri Ramakrishna, 1836-1886, Hindu religious leader.

All hell broke loose with a simple confession from Ramalinga Raju—founder and chairman of Satyam Computers, the fourth largest IT company in India with over 50,000 employees and business in more than 66 countries. His admission in 2009 of cooking the books to show exaggerated profits combined with the diving economy rocked India Inc and forced it to look inwards. With robust research, interviews, and stories—Zafar Anjum tracks the chronicle from Raju’s confession and Satyam free-falling, to the phoenix’s rise as Mahindra Satyam. This is a tale of betrayal and devastation, but more importantly of hope and resurrection. With an afterword by Anand Mahindra, chairman and managing director of Mahindra Group, The Resurgence of Satyam is the definitive book that will answer all that you wanted to know about the Satyam saga.