Bollywood without Borders

Rachel Dwyer is Professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema at SOAS, University of London. She is the editor of the well regarded series, ‘South Asian Cinema’, published by Oxford University Press, and is an authority on the many facets of Indian cinema. With Jerry Pinto,  journalist and writer, she has edited Beyond the Boundaries of Bollywood: The Many Forms of Hindi Cinema for OUP. 

Indian cinema is now almost synonymous with ‘Bollywood’, both within India and globally. But does this shorthand tell the whole story? Does it encompass the range of India’s cinematic production? Beyond the Boundaries of Bollywood explores forms of Hindi cinema that cannot be termed ‘Bollywood’, including those that predate it, and those that are undeniably discrete from it. 

Combining essays and interviews, this volume analyses the many meanings of ‘Bollywood’ by looking at cinema in Bombay (now Mumbai) in the 1920s, the transition to sound, horror films, film songs, and much more. In the process the book addresses issues which are essential to understanding the history of Hindi cinema and film culture. The interviews bring out ideas and reflections on the current situation from key figures including Anurag Kashyap, Bina Paul, and Abhay Deol in the industry. From DVD pricing and its effect on filmmaking to the development of ‘hatke’ cinema and the role of film festivals in shaping popular culture––the first-hand insights shed new light on how Hindi cinema and its audiences are always in flux.

The book consists of scholarly articles by Dwyer, Ravi Vasudevan, Jerry Pinto, and others, and a series of interviews by Jerry Pinto with current Bollywood personalities such as Anurag Kashyap, Jabbar Patel, Abhay Deol and others.  

M K Raghavendra, critic and author of a recent book,  Seduced by the Familiar: Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema (OUP,  2008) calls it  "a welcome addition to the literature available on Indian cinema ... The introduction is cogently written and is comprehensive in its treatment of the varied contents.’

 In our Film Studies section, in hardcover, 320 pages, Rs 695. ISBN: 9780198069263

Tennessee Vaishnavites

An exhibition at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts Nashville, Tennessee (and which will be on till the end of May 2011) is Vishnu: Hinduism’s Blue-Skinned Savior.


The exhibition is exemplary and novel- the first such in the US, and the gallery where it is being held is not one of the usual suspects, the Met or the Smithsonian, or any one of the usual places where Indian art is showcased. Nashville is, after all, known more for the Grand Ole Opry, and Tennessee for Elvis (or, depending on your orientation, Oak Ridge). The curatorial team, led by Joan Cummins, is remarkable. They have pulled out all the stops in putting together a spectacular exhibition.... This is one museum to travel to, and soon!

The exhibition is divided in three parts, Images of Vishnu (from which the photograph on the catalogue shown above),  The Avatars of Vishnu, and  Worshiping Vishnu. The description on the website- and regrettably, this is all that I have managed to see- educates and informs: 

Of the three supreme deities, Vishnu is the most multifaceted. Although he is celebrated as the great creator of the cosmos, he most often serves as its savior, descending from heaven to save the world—and lesser gods—from powerful demons and myriad threats. He assumes many shapes in his quest to maintain balance and order. Sometimes he appears in primary form, with four arms, flying on his eagle, Garuda. On other occasions, he takes a more limited, mortal body to live on earth as an animal or man. These earthly bodies, or avatars, have their own talents and personalities but share Vishnu’s blue skin tone. This feature distinguishes them from mere mortals and reflects Vishnu’s associations with the sea and sky and his cool, tranquil approach to saving the world. 

 Mapin, Ahmedabad, have copublished the catalogue of the exhibition. Vishnu-one of the Hinduism’s most important and powerful deities-is the great preserver, vanquishing those who seek to destroy the balance of the universe. For his followers he is also creator and the destroyer, the cause of all existence. His many traits are embodied in his impressive physical form, the weapons he carries, the Goddesses who are his consorts, and the eagle Garuda, on whom he flies down from heaven. In Hindu legend, Vishnu descends to earth in many manifestations, known as avatars, to fight powerful demons and to save his devotees. The avatars range in form from Varaha the boar to Parashurama the Brahmin warrior, and in character from Narasimha the ferocious half man half lion, to Krishna the charismatic prince-cowherd.

The legends of Vishnu have inspired some of the greatest art, literature, and ritual traditions in India. This catalogue examines the many faces of Vishnu and the ways that the God has been represented, from antiquity to the present.

Essays by noted historians of South Asian art delve deeply into the regional and sectarian traditions of Vishnu Worship in India. Illustrations and discussions of almost 200 works of art, in a wide range of media and borrowed from collections across the North Atlantic, reveal the rich diversity of India’s art and religious culture.


In our Art section, in hardcover, 296 pages. Rs 3500, ISBN: 9788189995485

Not just Silk

Arup Banerji teaches Tsarist Russian and Soviet history at the Department of History, Delhi University. He has published short studies on the recent politics and economy of the Russian Federation and on the Silk Routes. His investigation of an aspect of the early Soviet Union appeared in 1996 as Merchants and Markets in Revolutionary Russia: 1917-30 and his exploration of the structures, processes and experiences implicit in creating historical knowledge in imperial Russia and the Soviet Union appeared in 2008 as Writing History in the Soviet Union: Making the Past Work. His new book from Three Essays Collective is Old Routes: North Indian Nomads and Bankers in Afghan, Uzbek and Russian Lands.

This book is a study of commercial relations between north India, the Uzbek Khanate of Bukhara and Russia between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Studies of India’s foreign trade have tended to overlook commercial flows passing through the north-western frontier, destined for Afghanistan, Central Asia and Russia. This volume attempts to redress this imbalance.

It does this by initially identifying the geographical and political factors that complicated the trade as well as afforded merely tentative estimates of its volumes. In the chapters that follow, the economic power of Sindhi bankers from Shikarpur over most of south Central Asia is explained and the reliance upon nomad Afghan horse traders to transport textiles, spices, bullion, gems and drugs over the Himalayas detailed. The existence of a substantial body of British military intelligence is used to buttress the commercial fortunes of the principal trade marts of Multan and Shikarpur in the nineteenth century. Finally, the book seeks to provide a historical context to established scholarship on Indo-Russian trade in the twentieth century by probing into its origins from the seventeenth century.

In our History section, in hardcover, 272 pages, Rs 450, ISBN: 9788188789726

Macho Hindu

Chandrima Chakraborty, Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University will soon have a book out from Permanent Black, Masculinity, Asceticism, Hinduism: Past and Present Imaginings of India.

This book analyses the links between religion, masculinity, and asceticism in Indian political and cultural history. Through an examination of nationalist discourse in the writings of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Raja Rao, V. D. Savarkar, M. S. Golwalkar, and many others, Chakraborty reveals how ideas about masculinity and Hindu asceticism came to be reworked for cultural and political purposes. Over the colonial period, Indian leaders and the literati were impelled to contest colonialist views of Hindu effeminacy. In the process, asceticism became a critical site for notions of masculinity.

Chakraborty also argues that the politics of the contemporary Hindu Right relies heavily on selective and manipulated images of Hindu asceticism and manliness, drawn selectively from such writers. Inaccuracies and distortions within Hindu Right politics are shown up by careful analysis of the many different ways in which masculine asceticism was actually imagined and written about.

Ignoring disciplinary divisions, this book cuts through politics, history, cultural studies, and literary analysis to offer an excellent view of concepts such as aggression, effeminacy, manliness, spirituality, asceticism, and nationalist virtue as these have been configured and reconfigured over the past century and a half.

Soon in our History, Culture, and Literary Criticism sections, in hardcover, 276 pages Rs 695. ISBN 9788178242989

But let me explain...

Law, Like Love 

Law, say the gardeners, is the sun,

Law is the one

All gardeners obey

To-morrow, yesterday, to-day.

...

Law is as you know I suppose,

Law is but let me explain it once more,

Law is The Law.

The most enjoyable part of having a book blog is the serendipities that it brings about... Yoda Press' new book got me searching for a theme, and I found the origin of their title in a poem by Auden, some verses from which are copied above... 

Arvind Narrain and Alok Gupta edit Law Like Love: A queer perspective of law in India.  A timely book (although it lacks the Auden comma), this is one that Nivedita Menon  calls  "A creative exploration of the intimacies that couple Law and Love---inspiring, moving and scholarly, these essays irrevocably queer the familiar."

With the landmark Delhi High Court victory in July 2009, sexuality and the law entered mainstream, legal and public discourse in India inviting both celebration and resistance. How do we understand this conversation? The July judgement stands on the shoulders of a much longer history, argue the writers in this contemporary and critical volume on queering the law. A longer history that shapes, unsettles and challenges both legal and queer histories and begins new conversations on the intersections between bodies, politics, activism, sexuality, identity and law. Some playful, some critical and others reflective and irreverent, this unique collection of pieces brings the life, structures and institutions of law alive and shine with relevance in the contemporary moment.

In our Gender Studies and Law sections, in paperback, 648 pages, Rs 650. ISBN 9789380493144

The book, part of the YODA PRESS Sexualities series, was released at The Attic in Connaught Place New Delhi on Thursday 21 April, with readings by Mayur Suresh and Siddharth Narrain, and  Nivedita Menon, Gautam Bhan, Arvind Narrain as discussants.

For more details, see http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=161108910616920

Basic Kumarappa

The Gandhian economist J C Kumarappa held that “The wealth of a nation consists not in  what a few possess, but in the extent to  which  the  majority  can satisfy  their  daily wants, especially needs. Looked at  from this angle, increase in the number  of  millionaires  in  a  country  need  not  indicate  increase  in  the  prosperity  of  the nation. Indeed, it may indicate the  opposite,  if  the  accumulated  wealth  was  occasioned  by  restricted distri  bution.  When judging the well-being of  a  nation,  our  consideration  should centre round the way in which purchasing power is distributed among  the citizens.…  Democracy cannot exist where there is  starvation, nakedness and poverty alongside of glut and glamorous living,  which condition indicates exploitation  of the weak by the strong.” 

Pranjali Bandhu of the South Asia Study Centre in Udhagamandalam, Tamil Nadu has a new book out, BACK TO BASICS: A J C KUMARAPPA READER. With a foreword by T G Jacob, also of the SASC, this has been published by Odyssey. 

This volume puts together selected writings by the Gandhian economist J.C. Kumarappa (1892-1960) in the contemporary context of aggressive neoliberal economics being executed by global corporations with national governments in the role of able facilitators. 

The selection covers themes like Kumarappa’s economic thought, his politics of anti-imperialism and world peace, his views on religion– particularly on Christianity–,his ideas about education, science, agriculture, the village economy and the land question, cottage and large-scale industries and on the socialist models presented by the then Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Self-reliance and sustainability are vital themes in his oeuvre; in short, an economy of permanence.   

In paperback, in our Economics and Development Studies sections, 432 pages, Rs 750. ISBN:  9788190061551                                        

Basu's Miscellany

Oxford University Press have just brought out a collection of Kaushik Basu's essays and articles that have appeared in newspapers and magazines across the world as An Economist's Miscellany. 

One set of  resonances that the book's title makes is to the delightful set of writings collected in A Mathematician's Miscellany by J E Littlewood, and Littlewood's Miscellany by Bela Bollobas.  Having read these in the dim and distant past, the announcement of Kaushik Basu's book gave me a chance to refresh my memory of these (not very heavy) volumes.

A memorable quote in A Mathematician's Miscellany,  "The surprising thing about this paper is that a man who could write it would"  applies to An Economist's Miscellany as well... along the lines of "Where does he find the time?!"  Basu is, in addition to being Chief Economic Adviser in the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, the  C. Marks Professor in the Department of Economics at Cornell University. In addition to holding these positions of considerable responsibility, he has also written and edited a large number of books, journals articles and reports on matters economic. The volume of essays showcase other dimensions of Basu's interests.

‘Philosophy has to be deductive, poetry romantic, plays and fiction humorous, and politics intriguing if they are to catch my attention,’ writes Kaushik Basu. All these interests are on display in An Economist’s Miscellany, which brings together an eclectic collection of writings on the world of academe, politics, and policy.


Basu sweeps a vast canvas, from recession and the global economic crises, foreign policy, and financial scams, to art and aesthetics. In this slim volume he offers unique glimpses of his inner world—his excitement and apprehensions on moving from academics to government and policymaking; his thoughts on his mother turning 90; and persons, ideas, and books that have influenced him.


An Economist’s Miscellany also puts on display his literary forays—translations of two Bengali short stories and a four-act play. The stories are hilarious and yet have scathing social content: one illustrates the intricacies of moneylending and the debt trap, while the other provides a critique of religious obscurantism and bigotry. The play, light-hearted and facetious, presents a slice of everyday life in an academic setting. Basu has written extensively on diverse fields of economics and, more generally, the social sciences. This collection displays the full range of his wisdom and humour, and above all his celebration of everyday human follies and foibles. Memoirs, travel writing, fiction, essays, and games—they are all here, and will give readers not just the pleasure of reading but also ideas and riddles to ponder over.

Ashish Nandy observes: What makes economics a dismal science is not only its dehumanized, asocial, antiseptic worldview but also often its humourless, self-sure, pompous practitioners. An Economist’s Miscellany is a charming, playful, self-questioning book that refuses to vend certitudes. Instead it invites the reader to enter the convivial world of Kaushik Basu where the discipline is not an all-consuming, clenched-teeth profession but a more modest, uncertain, human enterprise, contaminated by life.’


In our Essays and Nonfiction section, in hardcover, 240 pages, Rs 345. ISBN: 978019807250

Upfront and Personal

Without Dharmanand Kosambi (1876–1947) there could have been no D D Kosambi in more than just the procreational sense. The unique characteristics- and indeed character- of Kosambi père moulded that of his son as surely his wanderlust did, taking him from Goa to Banaras, to Sikkim and Burma, barefoot and hungry, and eventually to Harvard, where Kosambi fils would have his defining education...

And now the sociologist Meera Kosambi, his granddaughter, has translated his autobiographical writings from the Marathi. Nivedan: The autobiography of Dharmanand Kosambi is published by Permanent Black who also recently brought out  Dharmanand Kosambi: The essential writings,  a collection of his  writings that was translated by Meera Kosambi: see our post on that book).

Dharmanand Kosambi came under the spell of the Buddha’s teachings during his adolescence. At an early age he set off on an incredible journey of austere self-training across the length and breadth of Britain’s Indian Empire, halting to educate himself at places connected with Buddhism.

His sojourns included living in Sri Lanka to master Pali, in a Burmese cave as a bhikshu, and in some viharas of North India—begging for monastic sustenance—as well as in Nepal and Sikkim which he reached after arduous, sometimes barefoot, treks. Over these itinerant years Dharmanand acquired such mastery of the Buddhist canon that he was variously appointed to teach and research at Calcutta, Baroda, Harvard, and Leningrad. 

As a thinker Dharmanand blended Buddhist ethics, Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of truth and non-violence, and the ideals of socialism. He exchanged letters with the Mahatma, worked for his causes, and died in the approved Buddhist/Jain manner by voluntary starvation at Sevagram ashram. Arguably, no Indian scholar’s life has been as exemplary as Dharmanand’s, or has approximated as closely to the nobility and saintliness of the Mahatma’s. 

The book has, in addition, a scholarly introduction by Meera Kosambi that puts the life, career and achievements of her grandfather in context.  

In our Biography, and Indian Literature in Translation sections,  in paperback, 204 pages, Rs 295. ISBN: 9788178243252

The Submarine

Tomaz Aquino Messias de Bragança was born in 1924 in Bardez. Leaving Goa for Mozambique, and following studies in  Portugal and in France, he worked for the end of Portuguese rule in Goa as well as in other Portuguese colonies.  An active journalist, he wrote in the  progressive Afrique-Asie (Paris) and Revolution Africaine (Algiers) and worked in various capacities in many parts of Africa. He was aboard the Tupolev TU 134 along with Samora Machel when it crashed at Mbuzini, a village in South Africa, on 19 October 1986.

Aquino de Bragança: Battles Waged, Lasting Dreams, the English translation of Aquino de Bragança: batalhas ganhas, sonhos a continuar that was published in Portuguese (Maputo: Ndjira, 2009) was  released in Panjim on April 2. The book, published by Goa1556, is by Bragança's wife Silvia, and includes reminiscences about his work and times. Aquino was known for his links with the liberation movements across Africa -- from Morocco to Algeria, Mozambique, Angola, Cabo Verde, and Sao Tome. Figures like Nelson Mandela and Julius Nyerere were his comrades.
 

When the MFA -- Movement of the Armed Force (Movimento das Forcas Armadas) -- overthrew the Caetano regime in Portugal on 25 April 1974, he was the person that the Mozambique liberation movement Frelimo turned to, sending him to Lisbon to evaluate the volatile situation.

After Mozambican independence, South African activist Ruth First and Aquino set about recruiting a group of committed radical scholars from Mozambique, South Africa, and Western Europe, and forming them into a research collective through the Centro de Estudos Africanos that focussed on current issues of social and political transformation. Ruth First was killed by the erstwhile apartheid South African regime, via a parcel bomb in 1982.
 

Aquino de Bragança was a trusted confidante of Samora Machel, and undertook numerous delicate diplomatic missions on behalf of the Frelimo government. Nicknamed "the submarine" in party and government circles, he was known for his ability to keep an exceedingly low profile.
 

In our Biography section, in paperback, Rs 350. ISBN: 978938073919

Reform Re-formed

The subject of social reforms has routinely formed a part of Indian history texts. The word 'reforms' normally conjures up the names of a few great individuals, invariably Hindu: upper-caste educated men from metropolitan cities, and one or two memorable women. This galaxy of remarkable persons identified and abolished abuses in social life, and their efforts brought about more progressive gender relations.

The editors of the present work argue the need to understand the history of social reforms from a much wider array of perspectives: for example, the connections between specific social abuses on the one hand, and, on the other, systems or traditions of gender practices across times, classes, castes, and regions. For instance, when we look at widow immolation or widow remarriage practices, we need to look also at the larger domain of gender relations which sanctified immolation or which outlawed widow remarriage: what arguments were used? What aspects of these practices did the reformers ignore? How did Orthodox practitioners defend such traditions?

There are also, the editors argue, other curious omissions in the existing literature: 'Most reforms passed through the grid of state legislation. Yet, there is little engagement even with the law-making machinery.... and far less with the judicial courts that enforced the laws and dealt with disputes around the new laws'. 

Sumit and Tanika Sarkar's Women and Social Reform in Modern India has now sold out two hardback printings, and Permanent Black brings a two volume paperback edition. 

In our Women's studies section,  940 pages, Rs 895. ISBN: 9788178241999