Rebels with a Cause

Mark Juergensmeyer is Director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies and professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This month Navayana bring out an Indian edition of his book, Religious Rebels in the Punjab: The Ad Dharm Challenge to Caste.

"What happens when untouchables decide they are not Hindus and refuse to subscribe to the concepts undergirding caste? They form their own religion. The Ad Dharm movement of Punjab, founded in the 1920s by Mangoo Ram, stakes claim as a religion separate from and superior to both Hinduism and Sikhism. In this pioneering work, Juergensmeyer chronicles the history of the Ad Dharm movement based on extensive field research, sociological surveys and interviews that weave the life stories of dalit leaders into the history of the movement. He also the explore Ad Dharm’s links with organisations supported by the dalits: Arya Samaj, Valmiki Sabha, Ambedkar and Dalit Panther movements, Christianity, Marxism, the Congress party, Radhasoami Satsang, and the lifestyle of modern secularism.

The Ad Dharm movement continues to influence the cultural and political life of dalit activists almost a hundred years later. In 2003, protestors against the treatment of dalits of village Talhan were identified as ‘Ad Dharmis’. In 2009, a leader of the Ravidas ashram in village Ballan was killed by an irate ‘upper caste’ Punjabi when he was visiting a Ravidas Temple in Vienna. Tensions surfaced between dalit and non-dalit Punjabis in the region and around the world. Juergensmeyer’s historical study has relevance to the continuing political struggle of dalits both regionally and globally."

In our Dalit Studies section, Rs 400, paperback, 382 pages. ISBN: 9788189059002

From the people to the people

Daanish Books, based in New Delhi, focus on publishing and distributing books that can be vehicle of social transformation, and intend to take forward this initiative of a group of activists in independent and alternative publishing to represent the most incisive writing on the increasingly complex and challenging contemporary situations. They also hope to act as a bridge between the worlds of theory and practice and between academics and activism and to initiate and strengthen the process of dialogue both across cultural and social divides and between diverse political/ideological streams—socialist, liberal, Gandhian, nationalist, and the radical Left.

A recent title is The Gobal Economic Crisis: A People’s Perspective — Fiasco of Neo-liberalism that was reviewed by S L Rao in this week's The Hindu Book Review ("this is a book for the ideologically committed").

"The current great global economic crisis, undoubtedly a phenomenon of historic salience, has a special relevance for the marginalized people all over the world. The various exercises to understand its proximate causes tend to go all out to blame the deregulation of the market economy, especially of its overblown financial sector, at the expense of the deep-seated structural and institutional changes experienced by the globalized world economy. Today, the discomfiture of the agencies that are at the root of such drastic failures monopolizes attention but the lasting disastrous effects on vast sections of the global economy, particularly in the third world, are mentioned only in passing. The policy responses too, while making some rhetoric concessions to hard reality, seem to bend over backwards to rescue, at the cost of the general public, the failed mega businesses based on the specious plea that these are too big to be allowed to fail. How ironic, that so many times, such vast numbers are allowed to suffer long-lasting losses caused by the agencies bailed out at enormous public expense.

These and other related issues are presented and analyzed in this volume. What is of special concern in India is that while the fiasco of neo-liberalism is universally recognized, the Indian policy establishment has been in a denial mode. Further, it is unable to muster enough intellectual, moral and political courage to accept the reality and set the agenda to deal with the crisis, at least to minimize the suffering of the people."

Its another point of view. In our Politics and Economics sections, in hardcover, 268 pages. Rs 450, ISBN: 9788189654696

Criss crossings

There is a woman on market street who
is not there. She is waiting without waiting,
counting out time, three, two, three.

This fragment of a poem by John Siddique appears in the latest issue of Moving Worlds, Region/Writing/Home: Relocating Diasporic Writing in Britain.

Now in its ninth volume, MovingWorlds "is a forum for creative work as well as criticism, literary as well as visual texts, writing in scholarly as well as more personal modes, in English and translations into English. It is open to experimentation, and represents work of different kinds and from different cultural traditions. It reappraises acknowledged achievements and promotes fresh talent. Its central concern–the transcultural–is the movement of cultures across national boundaries, and the productive transformations resulting from these criss crossings."

R/W/H contains creative writing by a number of diasporic subcontinentals. In addition to John Siddique, Basir Sultan Kazmi, Shamshad Khan and Fadia Faqir, there is also an uncommon autobiographical piece, Across the Indian Ocean: Chinese Hybridity in South Africa by Tanya Chan-Sam.

On the Moving Worlds page in our Journals section.

Recycle!

India has a dubious record in the recycling business. Alang, home to the largest ship breaking and recycling yard, is also notorious for the lax standards that are prevalent as far as individual safety is concerned. And of course, they will break down any ship (remember Clemenceau?) regardless of the environmental consequences...

On a smaller scale, recycling is an important component of the very small scale in the urban economy, from the ubiquitous kabadiwalla who makes a round of residential areas every day, to the local recyclers who deal in any and every form of trash.

Of Poverty and Plastic: Scavenging and Scrap Trading Entrepreneurs in India's Urban Informal Economy will shortly be published by OUP India. The author, Kaveri Gill, is Consultant with the Planning Commission of India and she completed the book while holding a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge.

Of Poverty and Plastic "applies an interdisciplinary, approach to poverty analysis, using a mix of survey and ethnographic data to challenge received notions of the nature and extent of narrow income poverty and multiple deprivations experienced by those working in the informal waste recovery and plastic recycling economy of Delhi.

A detailed analysis of specialization, capital, and value in various segments of this labour-intensive, green informal market is undertaken, with explicit recognition of its wider social and political institutional context, and how it is shaped by unequal interactions with civil society and the state. In particular, the book focuses on the identity and agency of subordinate scheduled caste groups living literally and metaphorically on the edge of the city in negotiating a decent life in today's neoliberal environment.

The case studies of the ban on recycled polythene bags and the industrial relocation order illustrate the channels through which these actors collectively seek to resist the perceived anti-urban poor status quo, driven by powerful middle class coalitions through legislation or judicial fiat, with varying degrees of success. In doing so, the book exposes the complex, and at times contrary, policy reality binding poverty and deprivation, formal and informal markets, the state and citizenship in contemporary urban India. "

Soon available in our Development Studies section, in hardcover, Rs 650. ISBN: 9780198060864

Past imperfect

Kancha Ilaiah, Professor at the Osmania University in Hyderabad has written emphatically on Dalit issues, and many of his books have featured in this blog- including the charming Turning the Pot, Tilling the land from Navayana and Why I am not a Hindu, from Samya. His latest title is from Sage, Post Hindu India. A Discourse in Dalit-Bahujan, Socio-Spiritual and Scientific Revolution.

"This book is entirely different from books that have been written on Indian civil societal relations, spiritual character, political economy, philosophical foundations, scientific roots, cultural essence and historicity. It takes a journey from tribals upwards and looks at the pyramid of the communities in an inverse order.

In this book each community that was/is historically treated as unclean by Hindu Spiritual Fascism emerges as not only more clean than the Brahmin self, but also more nationalistic than that self. It draws the battle lines between spiritual fascism and spiritual democracy and predicts the possible course of an inevitable civil war between the hegemonized and the hegemonizer in the realms of spiritual life, social life and political life. It holds the hegemonic forces responsible for the ensuing war of weapons. It puts altogether unknown weapons in the hands of Dalitbahujans to seize power in all fields from the forces that made the nation surrender before external forces. Each chapter in this book shows how we did not know the historical strength of castes that was seen to be unworthy of study and how such castes have the potential to re-position the very self of the nation. At the same time the author critiques the intellectual imagination of the dominant communities from an altogether new point of view."

In our Dalit Studies section, 340 pages, paperback. Rs 295, ISBN: 9788178299020

PIO

The Government of India's effort at global inclusiveness gave us this acronym for Persons of Indian Origin. Exactly who is entitled to this appelation is not entirely clear, but some Indian ancestry seems to be required. But not even that, I suspect. Nevertheless, many people can and do claim PIO status for what its worth.

Three Essays Collective's latest book is a study of migrants from India. Specifically on the diaspora in Malaysia in comparison to those in the Caribbean and Australia and Fiji. INDIAN TRANSMIGRANTS: Malaysian and Comparative Essays is by Ravindra K Jain, National Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science Research, whose "empirical studies in this book radiate from the vicissitudes of migrants from India to Malaysia on to those in the Caribbean and further on to Australia. Given the range, intensity and magnitude of contemporary transnational migrations, it seems entirely appropriate to designate this ‘world on the move’ as comprising, from our point of view, of Indian transmigrants. The movement and global adaptations of this population are spread beyond single home and host societies to multiple locales both vertically and horizontally. The spectrum of globalization in our times necessitates comparisons over still larger territories; therefore, while focusing on particular Indian transmigrants, East and West, Jain’s perspectival vision encompasses the entire field of modern Indian diaspora.

As a pioneering and singularly wide-ranging narrative of the diaspora, based primarily on the author’s fieldwork, this book unravels facets of socio-cultural pluralism, hybridization, ethnic movements, politico-economic mobility and global modernity over a vast territory. The rich ethnographic detail is interleaved throughout with acute analysis and interpretation. The methodology adopted here invites comparisons over a still wider terrain and is therefore of immense relevance to all students of globalization, international migration, socio-cultural transformation and political economy in the new millennium, with special reference to the Asia-Pacific region."

Jain was educated at Lucknow University and the Australian National University, Canberra, and taught social anthropology and sociology at Oxford (1966-74) and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (1975-2002) besides holding research and teaching positions in many other parts of the world.

Along with other TEC titles, in hardcover, 242 pages, Rs. 550, ISBN:9788188789733

What does it mean...

... to be an untouchable in India? Don’t all Indians look the same? Isn’t untouchability a thing of the past?"

The playful calligraphy, the crafts motifs and the bright illustrations belie the darkness of the subject matter in Navayana's forthcoming The Despair of Touch, a biographical work by B R Ambedkar which the Gond Adivasi artists – Durgabai Vyam, Subhash Vyam and Roshni Vyam – illustrate with a fresh, non-realist interpretation wherein they weave historical incidents with contemporary real-life stories of experiences of untouchability in India.

"In a little-read work, India’s foremost and radical writer on issues of caste and untouchability, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956), recounts his experiences of growing up untouchable and being routinely discriminated against. Born into an ‘untouchable’ mahar family, Bhimrao gets a taste of untouchability very early in his life, in his school. Against all odds, he uses education as a weapon to get over the stigma of caste, but realizes that a doctorate from Columbia University and a degree from London School of Economics would still not get him a room for rent in India in 1917. Experiences similar to Ambedkar’s in early twentieth century continue to haunt a large section of India’s 170 million dalits. They are still denied housing, water and the basic dignities of life."

Soon to be in our Biograpy, Dalit Studies, and General Sections. ISBN: 9788189059170

The Scholars Cull Fest, 2009

Today, 9th of October, 2009, Scholars without Borders had the second of our Annual Cull Fests where we were giving away a few hundred books to anyone who wants them, and who can come and pick them up from JNU is just over. The books were all pre-owned and on diverse topics, ranging from detective fiction, to philosophy.

The books were donated by academics, some of whom teach or taught at the JNU.

The venue of the cull fest was the foyer of the School of Physical Sciences building on the JNU campus, and the giveaway started at 10:00 am, and lasted till 11:30. While the books were free of cost*, there was a limit of 5 books per person (to see that the books go around more...).

Now that is is over, here are some pictures. It took less than an hour and a half before all the books were gone!

*As there is some physical effort and expense involved in putting this together, a contribution per book was suggested. Robin (of SwB) is one of the people who put in the physical effort- his picture is to the right...

A new suggestion that has been made to us is that such events are needed more often. We think thats a great idea... But it needs your help! Do get rid of books from your shelves if you are not going to read them again, ever. Whatever the type of book, there is always someone else who might be grateful for it...

Next year's Cull Fest will have a small addition- A Cull Exchange. Bring N books, take N books. Look for it on these pages!

Banned!

Bengali Books proscribed under the Raj, a new title from Samskriti, is by Sisir Kar of the Ananda Bazar Patrika. A translation of Kar's 1988 book in Bangla, British Shashoney Bajeyapto Bangla Boi (Ananda Publishers, Kolkata) the book analyses the historical background of the national movement in Bengal and the events that led to the proscription of a large number of Bengali publications.

The importance of Adda (loosely and incompletely translated as chatting or discussion) in the social life of Bengal has been written about often enough- but here is tangible evidence of its importance in the intellectual and scholarly life as well! A casual discussion during the 1970's at a friend’s house in London on the availability of rare Bengali books and either useful documents in the India House library and the British Museum sparked Kar's interest in proscribed books... Coming back to India, he kept visiting libraries of documentary sources in different parts of the country. The effort paid off, resulting in the two books, one in Bangla, and the other in English which draw heavily on classified government documents hitherto unavailable to historians and researchers, the cities examples of how writers, printers and publishers victims of political presecution had been oppressed for propagating the message of militant nationalism.

The dread of the free diffusion of knowledge had always prompted the panicky government to impose restrictions on press freedom. The first Press Act was introduced in 1823 by the then Governor General John Adams, when the avowed policy of the government had been “to keep the natives of India in the profoundest possible state of barbarism and darkness.”

As the revolutionary movement in Bengal gained momentum, particularly after 1905, the government conveniently introduced new laws to suppress the freedom of expression. The press Act of 1910 was followed by a series of draconian laws, which obviously helped the rulers in their attempt the gag the press. Scores of books, newspaper, magazines and even manuscripts were banned under the Indian Press (Emergency Powers) act of 1931 and the Defence of India Rules, a systematic account of which has been chronicled in this book. Meticulously documented, this treatise on banned Bengali books is a thorough study which is based on essentially all available evidence.

An important book, not just for the history of the nationalist era, but also relevant for today. In our History and in our Media Studies sections, Rs 595. In paperback, 440 pages, ISBN: 9788187374640

The Art of Learning

We have written earlier on Eklavya, the uncommon NGO based in Bhopal. They have a new book out, Learning through Art by Jane Sahi and Roshan Sahi.

"This book perceives art as an active way of learning and aims at helping teachers to integrate art activity into school life. The activities are designed to include all children and enrich regular lessons of language, math and environment studies."

In our For Children Section, Rs 250. ISBN: 9788189976262

Revolution's High Priest

Leftword have brought out the Fidel Castro Reader, edited by David Deutschmann and Deborah Shnookal.

"At last, a comprehensive anthology of one of the 20th century’s most influential political figures, the Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.

Fidel Castro has been an articulate and incisive political thinker and leader, who has outlasted 10 hostile US presidents. With the wave of change now sweeping Latin America, this book sheds light on the continent’s future as well as its past.

As the first selection of Fidel Castro’s speeches to be published since the 1960s, this is an essential resource for both scholars and general readers."

Castro's admirers are admirable themselves, and they have been generous in praise. Gabriel García Márquez: “Fidel’s devotion to the word is almost magical.” Nelson Mandela: “Fidel Castro is a man of the masses… The Cuban revolution has been a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people.” Alice Walker: “Fidel’s is a singing and dancing intellect… In Fidel this passion is expressed in his priestly dedication to revolution.”

In our Politics section, and in Collected Works. Paperback, xiv+525 pages, Rs 450. ISBN: 9788187496908.

Packaging Culture

Pramod K Nayar at the University of Hyderabad writes engagingly and extensively on modern culture. (When he is not writing about some of our history, that is. But more of that another time...) His latest book, Packaging Life: Cultures of the Everyday follows his earlier Reading Culture: Theory, Praxis, Politics, both from Sage as was Seeing Stars which we wrote about in January this year. Its been a prolific year for Professor Nayar.

Packaging Life "is a study of the cultural politics of four aspects of everyday life—health, comfort, risk and mobility—as manifest in public culture. The book explores the commodification of these aspects, arguing that our experience and perception of these are mediated by discourses circulating in the mass media.

The author explores how notions of ‘good’ health, ‘cosmopolitan’ identities, and ‘luxurious’ lifestyles are constructed, arguing that such constructions, or what this book calls ‘packaging’, encourage us to buy particular commodities, adopt certain lifestyles, assimilate specific political beliefs and develop significant anxieties. Discourses, he suggests, morph into consumer practices, where particular kinds of bodies, objects, and practices are established as the norm—safe, stylish and cosmopolitan—so that they appear natural, legitimate and desirable and lead us, consumers, to buy, practice, believe in and adopt them. He also analyzes or tries to ‘unpack’ this underlying discourse within images, rhetoric, narratives and representations so that we understand the politics behind them.

‘Unpacking’ cultural politics, this book demonstrates, is the disentangling of the insidious regulatory frames of representation so that we generate dissident reading practices for public culture. The book is an essential reading for those who want to understand modern urban cultural rhetorics. Scholars and practitioners working in the fields of media and communication, consumer behaviour studies and cultural studies will find it highly engaging as well as provocative."

In our Culture Studies section, in hardcover, 252 pages. Rs 595. ISBN:9788132102403

His life, his message

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.

A sentiment, when evaluated against the backdrop of the problems that Gandhi did manage to solve, that only serves to inspire.

Today will see the release of My Life is My Message, the English translation of Narayan Desai’s epic four-volume biography in Gujarati, Maru Jivan Ej Mari Vani.

In writing this biography, Narayan Desai has drawn "from a wealth of sources—what Gandhi wrote in letters, books and newspapers, spoke in intimate conversations with his fellow “servant co-workers”, and in speeches and interviews, besides what those around him wrote and spoke about him". A Gandhijan who spent much of his childhood in Gandhi's ashrams- he is the son of Mahadev Desai, Gandhi's personal secretary- his biography reflects this unique and very personal relationship.

"Most biographies of Mahatma Gandhi tell the story of a great political leader who led India to freedom. But for Gandhi, his politics was a part of his spiritual quest. Swaraj meant self-rule and not merely political autonomy, and Gandhi’s struggles were meant to aid the quest for individual self-perfection. Everything he did—the Dandi march or his fasts for self-purification—was part of this struggle for self-realisation.

This English translation of Narayan Desai’s epic four-volume biography in Gujarati, Maru Jivan Ej Mari Vani—hailed as one of the finest insights into the life of Gandhi—brings alive Gandhi’s quest as one indivisible whole, in which “the political” is not outside the realm of “the spiritual”. My Life is My Message liberates the Gandhi story from the constraining tyranny of political discourse and gives centrestage to his “soulsearchings”. The struggle within and the struggle without, are both seen as aspects of the same reality—just as the inner journey of the self is depicted in its interaction with the life of the collective. What emerges is a full picture of Gandhi."

The translation is by Tridib Suhrud of the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Infomation and Communication Technologyin Gandhinagar, Gujarat. In some ways an unlikely juxtaposition of names, and in some ways, very appropriate.

In our Gandhi Studies section, in four volumes, paperback. Rs 2990. ISBN: 9788125037064

Environmentality

is a remarkable institution, especially in a developing nation like ours. Established in 1974, with environmental awareness well ahead of the times, the institute has long been aware of the "problems that mankind is likely to be faced with in the years ahead on account of the gradual depletion of the earth’s finite energy resources which are largely non-renewable and on account of the existing methods of their use which are polluting.

Over the years the Institute has developed a wider interpretation of this core purpose and its application. The central element of TERI’s philosophy has been its reliance on entrepreneurial skills to create benefits for society through the development and dissemination of intellectual property. The strength of the Institute lies in not only identifying and articulating intellectual challenges straddling a number of disciplines of knowledge but also in mounting research, training and demonstration projects leading to development of specific problem-based advanced technologies that help carry benefits to society at large.

One arm of their activities is the TERI Press that is "committed to publishing the best work at all levels from core textbooks to reference publishing to high-quality, general-interest books of contemporary relevance in the energy sector, environmental sciences, and technology and development studies."

Some of the best material for understanding the world around us comes from teri. Consider, for instance their recent book, Simplifying Climate Change (Based on the findings of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report) which "aims to simplify the scientific details outlined in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report and thereby produce a document that can be understood by the general reader. It presents a review of the focus laid under each of the Working Group reports on the science; impacts, adaptation and vulnerability; and mitigation issues in a reader-friendly manner."

In our Environmental Science section, in paperback, Rs 295, pages. ISBN: 9788179932360

Or, in view of the fact that October 2 is Gandhi Jayanti, their recent Mahatma Gandhi and the Environment by T N Khoshoo that "presents a selection of Mahatma Gandhi's views on the environment and elaborates on their relevance today. It is particularly relevant in this day and age, when the threat of climate change is looming large and natural resources are fast depleting. It will be of interest to all those who are concerned about protecting the earth’s environment and its natural resources. The book presents Mahatma Gandhi’s views on sustainable use of resources and minimal damage to the environment for the sake of future generations. "

In our Gandhi Studies section as well, 155 pages, in hardcover. Rs 250. ISBN: 9788179932230.