The Concerned Indian's Guide to Communalism

The Concerned Indian's Guide to Communalism PDF

Author: K. N. Panikkar

Publisher: Viking

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13:

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What do we mean when we say India is a secular country? How is secularism defined and to what extent are secular tenets reflected in our public and private life? Are there hidden communal agendas that are innate to the socio-cultural ethos of India, and can these ýcommunal elementsý as they are so often referred to indeed undermine the integrity of the country? These are questions that must concern every educated and intelligent citizen as India makes its way into the new millennium. In a year that has seen the gruesome murder of the missionary Graham Staines, the resignation of the foreign-born president of the Congress from her post following protests about her un-Indianness, and the fall of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre by a single vote, it has become more necessary than ever to take a hard look at the ýunity in diversityý that India as a nation-state is supposed to represent, and to identify the strands of communalism that run through our socio-political fabric. In this remarkable and timely book edited by K.N. Panikkar who provides an illuminating introduction on the subject, six commentators on contemporary India reveal the stark truth about the communal, sectarian and segregationist tendencies that have always lurked behind our secular facade. While Romila Thaparýs essay provides a historical overview of communalism in India, Rajeev Dhavan pinpoints the legal underpinnings of the secular identity that is propounded in Indiaýs Constitution. Sumit Sarkar looks closely at the vexed issue of conversions which is at the centre of current debates on communalism. Jayati Ghosh, on the other hand, studies the destructive effects of communal agendas on the liberalized economy. Tanika Sarkarýs essay straddles the twin issues of gender and communalism to show how all marginalized sections are rendered equally vulnerable by the spread of communalism. Finally, Siddharth Vardarajan looks at the interesting relationship between communal thought and its representations in the media and popular culture. Thought provoking and incisive, The Concerned Indianýs Guide to Communalism urges us to question where we stand with regard to communalism at the close of the millennium, and challenges us to fashion a truly secular identity for ourselves in the twenty-first century.

Colonialism and Communalism

Colonialism and Communalism PDF

Author: M. Christhu Doss

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-04-09

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 1040019994

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Christhu Doss examines how the colonial construct of communalism through the fault lines of the supposed religious neutrality, the hunger for the bread of life, the establishment of exclusive village settlements for the proselytes, the rhetoric of Victorian morality, the booby-traps of modernity, and the subversion of Indian cultural heritage resulted in a radical reorientation of religious allegiance that eventually created a perpetual detachment between proselytes and the “others.” Exploring the trajectories of communalism, Doss demonstrates how the multicultural Indian society, known widely for its composite culture, and secular convictions were categorized, compartmentalized, and communalized by the racialized religious pretensions. A vital read for historians, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and all those who are interested in religions, cultures, identity politics, and decolonization in modern India.

Personal and National Destinies in Independent India

Personal and National Destinies in Independent India PDF

Author: Rositta Joseph Valiyamattam

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2016-09-23

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 144381430X

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Personal and National Destinies in Independent India is an innovative analysis of the interface between individual lives and national history, between citizen and state in modern India, as reflected in contemporary fiction. It critiques the selected works of a host of distinguished Indian English novelists such as Gurcharan Das, Arun Joshi, Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy, Meher Pestonji, Kiran Desai, Vikas Swarup, David Davidar, Aravind Adiga, Manjula Padmanabhan and Tarun Tejpal. The author offers a new interpretation of twelve major novels with reference to the enormous framework of nearly seventy years of the history and politics, culture and economy of independent India. This is a study of fiction that re-writes the grand Indian narrative from a genuine, subaltern point of view and pays tribute to the heroism of ordinary Indians in times of extraordinary transformation. In these times of conflict and disparity which threaten democratic values, these novelists advocate an inclusive and humane India with a strong moral core instead of aggressive or elitist nationalism. They represent an era of painful introspection, an attempt to keep the soul of the nation alive. This unique project would be of interest to students and scholars of Literature, Political Science and History, especially Post-colonial studies. The vast scope of the time period, geographical expanse, social groups, writers and works covered here makes the work comprehensive and contemporary; very few such works on recent Indian history and fiction exist as of now.

Veins of Devotion

Veins of Devotion PDF

Author: Jacob Copeman

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0813544491

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Veins of Devotion details recent collaborations between guru-led devotional movements and public health campaigns to encourage voluntary blood donation in northern India. Focusing primarily on Delhi, Jacob Copeman carefully situates the practice within the context of religious gift-giving, sacrifice, caste, kinship, and nationalism. The book analyzes the operations of several high-profile religious orders that organize large-scale public blood-giving events and argues that blood donation has become a site not only of frenetic competition between different devotional movements, but also of intense spiritual creativity.

Religious Identities and the Global South

Religious Identities and the Global South PDF

Author: Felix Wilfred

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-01-04

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 3030607380

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This book offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary account of religious identities in the Global South. Drawing on literature in various fields, Felix Wilfred analyzes how religious identities intersect with the processes of globalization, modernity, and postmodernity. He illustrates how the study of religion in the Global North often revolves around questions of secularism and fundamentalism, whereas a neo-Orientalist quality often attends study of religion in the Global South. These approaches and theorizing fail to incorporate the experiences of lived religion in the South, especially in Asia. Historically, the religions in the South have played a highly significant role in resistance to the domination by the colonial forces, an important reason for the continued attachment of the peoples of the South to their religious universe. This book puts the two regions and their scholarly norms in conversation with one another, exploring the social, political, cultural, and economic implications.

Social Movements in India

Social Movements in India PDF

Author: Raka Ray

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2005-03-25

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 1461643414

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Social movements have played a vital role in Indian politics since well before the inception of India as a new nation in 1947. During the Nehruvian era, from Independence to Nehru's death in 1964, poverty alleviation was a foundational standard against which policy proposals and political claims were measured; at this time, movement activism was directly accountable to this state discourse. However, the role of social movements in India has shifted during the last several decades to accompany a changed political focus—from state to market and from reigning ideologies of secularism to credos of religious nationalism. In the first volume to focus on poverty and class in its analysis of social movements, a group of leading India scholars shows how social movements have had to change because poverty reduction no longer serves its earlier role as a political template. Nonetheless, particular sectors of social movement politics remain the holding vessels for India's egalitarian conscience. With distinctive chapters on gender, lower castes, environment, the Hindu Right, Kerala, labor, farmers, and biotechnology, Social Movements in India will be attractive to students and researchers in many different disciplines. Contributions by: Amita Baviskar, Anuradha Chakravarty, Vivek Chibber, Gopal Guru, Patrick Heller, Ron Herring, Mary John, Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, Neema Kudva, Gail Omvedt, Raka Ray, and Tanika Sarkar.

The Language of the Gods in the World of Men

The Language of the Gods in the World of Men PDF

Author: Sheldon Pollock

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2009-06

Total Pages: 705

ISBN-13: 0520260031

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"The scholarship exhibited here is not only superior; it is in many ways staggering. The author's control of an astonishing range of primary and secondary texts from many languages, eras, and disciplines is awe-inspiring. This is a learned, original, and important work."—Robert Goldman, Sanskrit and India Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Gender and Neoliberalism

Gender and Neoliberalism PDF

Author: Elisabeth Armstrong

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-11-07

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1317911415

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This book describes the changing landscape of women’s politics for equality and liberation during the rise of neoliberalism in India. Between 1991 and 2006, the doctrine of liberalization guided Indian politics and economic policy. These neoliberal measures vastly reduced poverty alleviation schemes, price supports for poor farmers, and opened India’s economy to the unpredictability of global financial fluctuations. During this same period, the All India Democratic Women’s Association, which directly opposed the ascendance of neoliberal economics and policies, as well as the simultaneous rise of violent casteism and anti-Muslim communalism, grew from roughly three million members to over ten million. Beginning in the late 1980s, AIDWA turned its attention to women’s lives in rural India. Using a method that began with activist research, the organization developed a sectoral analysis of groups of women who were hardest hit in the new neoliberal order, including Muslim women, and Dalit (oppressed caste) women. AIDWA developed what leaders called inter-sectoral organizing, that centered the demands of the most vulnerable women into the heart of its campaigns and its ideology for social change. Through long-term ethnographic research, predominantly in the northern state of Haryana and the southern state of Tamil Nadu, this book shows how a socialist women’s organization built its oppositional strength by organizing the women most marginalized by neoliberal policies and economics.

Subalterns and Raj

Subalterns and Raj PDF

Author: Crispin Bates

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-16

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 1134513755

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Subalterns and Raj presents a unique introductory history of India with an account that begins before the period of British rule, and pursues the continuities within that history up to the present day. Its coverage ranges from Mughal India to post-independence Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, with a focus on the ‘ordinary’ people of India and South Asia. Subalterns and Raj examines overlooked issues in Indian social history and highlights controversies between historians. Taking an iconoclastic approach to the elites of South Asia since independence, it is critical of the colonial regime that went before them. This book is a stimulating and controversial read and, with a detailed guide to further reading and end-of-chapter bibliographies, it is an excellent guide for all students of the Indian subcontinent.

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