The world of socio-aesthetics is the serene world of human ascent and excellence. To Mahatma Gandhi, a poignant aesthetic visionary par excellence, the orbit of socio-aesthetics incorporates careful and cautions cultivation of nobler sentiments and finer sensibilities like Truth, Goodness, Beauty and so on for endless advancement of man in the efforescence of myticism. The fusion of Sarvodaya, Non-violence, religion, education and symbolism for the desirable end-in-view of socio-aesthetics as Gandhi advocates and translates till the last day of his life, bears ample testimony to the socio-aesthetic fullness of vision of humankind.

This book is about Madeleine Slade (1892-1982) and Catherine Mary Heilemann (1901-1982), two English associates of Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi (1869-1948), known in India as Mira Behn and Sarala Behn. The odysseys of these women present a counternarrative to the forces of imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and globalized development. The book examines their extraordinary journey to India to work with Gandhi and their roles in India’s independence movement, their spiritual strivings, their independent work in the Himalayas, and most importantly, their contribution to the evolution of Gandhian philosophy of socio-economic reconstruction and environmental conservation in the present Indian state of Uttarakhand. The author shows that these women developed ideas and practices that drew from an extensive intellectual terrain that cannot be limited to Gandhi’s work. She delineates directions in which Gandhian thought and experiments in rural development work and visions of a new society evolved through the lives, activism, and written contributions of these two women. Their thought and practice generated a new cultural consciousness on sustainability that had a key influence in environmental debates in India and beyond and were responsible for two of the most important environmental movements of India and the world: the Chipko Movement or the movement against commercial green felling of trees by hugging them, and the protest against the Tehri high dam on the Bhagirathi River. To this day, their teachings and philosophies constitute a useful and significant contribution to the search for and implementation of global ideas of ecological conservation and human development.

The Agent in the Margin: Nayantara Sahgal’s Gandhian Fiction is a comprehensive study of the literary works of Nayantara Sahgal, daughter of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit—the first woman president of the United Nations General Assembly—and niece of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister. Clara A.B. Joseph introduces Mahatma Gandhi’s political and philosophical to literary analysis and utilizes non-structuralist aspects of Louis Althusser’s theories of ideology to trace how characters marginalized by gender, class, race, and language in Sahgal’s work assume agency, challenging poststructuralist theories of cultural and ideological determinism. She considers how gender complicates autobiography and how the roles of daughter, virgin, wife, widow, and alien serve (often ironically) to highlight human dignity.

- This volume brings together several images, maps and plans to present the conservation plan for Chandigarh- Forms an invaluable resource for other similar structures of the Modern eraOne of the most ambitious developmental schemes planned on India's independence was the city planning of Chandigarh - a symbolic gesture towards the country's future. Designed by Pierre Jeanneret in 1962 to evoke a lotus flower afloat in a pond, Gandhi Bhawan - dedicated to the work of Mahatma Gandhi - is a testament to the culmination of modernism as an aesthetic, historic and inter-cultural movement in India. Situated within the Panjab University campus, Gandhi Bhawan was conceived by Jeanneret as a platform to present his principles of Indian modernism, its design influenced by Gandhian ideals and the pinwheel toys of local children. This volume, supported by a grant from the Getty Foundation's Keeping it Modern initiative, documents the thorough research and conservation planning effort for Gandhi Bhawan, including comprehensive testing of its innovative building materials. Its impact stretches beyond the university, as the conservation plan outlined here forms an invaluable resource for other buildings of the modern era. With several images, maps and plans, this publication hopes to make accessible the work of many architects, engineers, conservators and scholars, ensuring the preservation of this architectural gem and the hopeful vision it embodies. Published in association with Panjab University, Chandigarh.