Then hard, now soft

Tulika Books, Delhi has brought out two of its earlier hardcover titles in paperback. 

The first is An Early Communist: Muzaffar Ahmad in Calcutta, 1913–1929 by Suchetana Chattopadhyay who teaches history at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India.  

From an occasionally employed, lower middle-class Bengali Muslim intellectual on the borderline of starvation in the city, he was to become ‘the chief accused’ at the Meerut communist trials started by the colonial government in 1929. What was the road travelled before challenging imperialism ‘from the dock’? In 1913 Muzaffar Ahmad (1889–1973) was just one more individual adrift in the sea of migrants arriving from rural Bengal to Calcutta. His ambition was to be a writer. Yet in the vortex of metropolitan upheavals, his life would take a completely different turn. Taking Muzaffar Ahmad’s early career (1913–29) as its chronological frame, this book examines the dialectical interplay between social being and a wider social consciousness in late colonial Bengal which drew a section of Muslim intellectuals to communism.

Muzaffar’s life converged with a significant phase in the social and political history of India and the world: 1913 marked the eve of the First World War, while the Wall Street stockmarket crash set off the Great Depression in 1929.During this period, especially after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, socialist ideas and communist activism became politically familiar in different parts of the globe. In the post-First World War climate, many alienated urban intellectuals– from Cairo to Shanghai – stood at the crossroads of established identities and radical currents. Informed by working-class protests from below and a leftward turn in the literary/cultural fields, many in India were also moving away from the political routes open to those from their social background to combat colonialism and identifying with alternative visions of decolonization.

By tracing this process in the context of Calcutta through Muzaffar Ahmad’s transitions, the little investigated history of the left in Bengal prior to Meerut is unravelled, and is related to the convergences between individual radicalization and the emergence of a new political space in a colonial city. The connected histories of communism, port-cities, Bengal Muslims, workers, intellectuals, youth, migration, colonial intelligence, early left organization, radical prose, local/regional activism and internationalist currents are also probed in this context.

 Vijay Prashad says in Frontline (Aug.–Sept. 2011): In her remarkable book ... the historian Suchetana Chattopadhyay locates the social and political growth of Muzaffar Ahmad in the city, not just in the intellectual byways of College Street but also in the slums of the working class, the area in the centre of the city where many of the streets are now named for Muzaffar Ahmed and his comrades (such as Abdul Halim).

In our History section, Rs 350,  ISBN:  9788189487935

The second title is Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency by Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore, and a critic and writer on cinema, art and culture. He is author and editor (with Paul Willemen) of the Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema, and author of Ritwik Ghatak: A Return to the Epic.

Nowhere has the cinema made more foundational a public intervention than in India, and yet the Indian cinema is consistently presented as something of an exception to world film history. What if, this book asks, film history was instead written from the Indian experience? Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid reconstructs an era of film that saw an unprecedented public visibility attached to the moving image and to its social usage. The cinema was not invented by celluloid, nor will it die with celluloid’s growing obsolescence. But ‘celluloid’ names a distinct era in cinema’s career that coincides with a particular construct of the twentieth-century state. This is not merely a coincidence: the very raison d’être of celluloid was derived from the use to which the modern state put it, as the authorized technology through which the state spoke and as narrative practices endorsing its authority as producer of the rational subject.

Arguing that there was a ‘spectatorial pact’ around the attribution of state authority to the celluloid apparatus, Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid explores the circumstances under which social practices surrounding the celluloid experience also included political negotiations over its authority. While modern states everywhere have put the cinema to varied and by now familiar uses, in India we had the politicization of key tenets associated with the apparatus itself. Indian cinema throws significant new light on the uses to which canonical concepts such as realism could be put, and on the frontiers at which cinematic narrative could operate.

The book throws new light on a phenomenon that is arguably basic to all cinema, but which India’s cinematic evidence throws into sharpest relief: the narrative simulation of a symbolically sanctified rationality at the behest of a state. This evidence is explored through three key moments of serious crisis for the twentieth-century Indian state, in all of which the cinema appears to have played a central role. Bollywood saw Indian cinema herald a globalized culture industry considerably larger than its own financial worth, and a major presence in India’s brief claim to financial superpower status. The debate on Fire centrally located spectatorial negotiations around the constitutional right to freedom of speech at a key moment in modern Indian history when Article 19 was under attack from pro-Hindutva forces. And the Emergency (1975–77) saw a New Indian Cinema politically united against totalitarian rule but nevertheless rent asunder by disputes over realism, throwing up new questions around the formation of an epochal moment in independent India.

This hefty tome is in our Film Studies section,  Rs 650,  ISBN:  9788189487973 

A Hard Place

PENNY JOHNSON is an independent researcher who works closely with the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University, where she edits the Review of Women’s Studies.  She is an Associate Editor of the Jerusalem Quarterly.

RAJA SHEHADEH is a Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in Ramallah. He is the founder of the pioneering non-partisan human rights organisation, Al Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, and the author of several books about international law, human rights and the Middle East.

 

Together, they have edited Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home, soon to be out from Women Unlimited, New Delhi.

“Palestine-in-exile,” says Rana Barakat, “is an idea, a love, a goal, a movement, a massacre, a march, a parade, a poem, a thesis, a novel and, yes, a commodity, as well as a people scattered, displaced, dispossessed and determined.”

How do Palestinians live, imagine and reflect on home and exile in this period of a stateless and transitory Palestine, a deeply contested and crisis-ridden national project, and a sharp escalation in Israeli state violence and accompanying Palestinian oppression? How can exile and home be written?

In this volume of new writing, fifteen innovative and outstanding Palestinian writers—essayists, poets, novelists, critics, artists and memoirists—respond with their reflections, experiences, memories and polemics. What is it like, in the words of Lila Abu-Lughod, to be “drafted into being Palestinian?” What happens when you take your American children, as Sharif Elmusa does, to the refugee camp where you were raised? And how can you convince, as Suad Amiry attempts to do, a weary airport official to continue searching for a code for a country that isn’t recognised?

Contributors probe the past through unconventional memories, reflecting on 1948 when it all began. But they are also deeply interested in beginnings, imagining, in the words of Mischa Hiller, “a Palestine that reflects who we are now and who we hope to become”. Their contributions—poignant, humorous, intimate, reflective, intensely political—make for an offering that is remarkable for the candour and grace with which it explores the many individual and collective experiences of waiting, living for, and seeking Palestine.

Ahdaf Soueif  says "How can an essentially sad story give such pleasure? The answer is in these narratives: these stories, memoirs, poems are a pleasure and an education; personal, vivid, original, sometimes witty, always accomplished and always honest. They are a testimonial to the human spirit, and to the growing contribution of Palestine to literature."

In our Fiction section, Rs. 395 ISBN: 9788188965731

Salaam Sage

Two books from Sage, India on street children, their plight, and prospects.

FROM STREET TO HOPE: Faith Based and Secular Programs in Los Angeles, Mumbai and Nairobi for Street Living Children by  Neela Dabir and Naina Athale of the TISS, Mumbai  attempts to sketch a holistic picture of the street child phenomenon across the globe. Globally, street-living children are the most fluid population of vulnerable children. They are conspicuous yet subsist on the fringes of the marginalized. This book attempts to sketch a holistic picture of the street child phenomenon across the globe. 

The book incorporates empirical data from a cross-cultural study of this phenomenon in three mega cities—Mumbai, Nairobi and Los Angeles—and some of the best practices developed by faith-based and secular organizations to help street-living children. These data include global estimates, analysis of the causative factors, occupations of these children, as also the resulting problems. The book also gives new insights into the impact of state policies to support secular and faith-based organizations, and the way social service is practised by such organizations in India, Kenya and USA. 

The authors take the readers through the social construction of the street child phenomenon over the years by weaving socio-political, cultural and historical perspectives in understanding the circumstances surrounding them. 

In our Sociology section, 336 pages in hardcover, Rs 500.  ISBN:9788132105138 

The second title is FROM ECSTASY TO AGONY AND BACK: Journeying with Adolescents on the Street by Barnabe D'Souza of the Don Bosco Research Centre in Mumbai.

This book  presents the journey of adolescent street drug-addicts—from psychological brokenness resulting from family disruption to the process of mending; from abuse, trauma and vulnerability to building up of self-esteem, talents and personality; and finally to the process of moving off the streets. 

Based on the author’s experience of working with the street children for over 26 years, the book explores the universe of street children interestingly, yet empathetically. The author discusses laws and policies affecting street children; root causes and their effects on them and their families; and the various stakeholders like agencies, employers, and institutions involved in their care and guidance. 

The participatory action research discussed here views children as their own psychologists, creating meanings for themselves out of their own experiences and understanding. By taking ownership of their actions, street children begin to structure their moving off the streets, facilitating their rehabilitation and reintegration into society, thereby improving their status. 

   

Also in our Sociology section, 252 pages in paperback, Rs 250.  ISBN: 9788132107033

Making the Devi

R Mahalakshmi of JNU's Centre for Historical Studies has recently published her thesis, The Making of the Goddess: Korravai-Durga in the Tamil traditions.

A fascinating study of the metamorphosis of the indigenous martial deity Korravai into the independent Durgā and the demure Pārvatī The figure of the mother goddess is common to many cultures and she has, over the centuries, undergone substantial changes. The Making of the Goddess breaks new ground by analysing the impact of shifting socio-economic and political contexts upon the transformations. From the seventh century CE onwards, as the state apparatus in the Tamil south expanded, it gave rise to more complex social structures. The expansion was supported ideologically through the spread of institutionalized religions, which transformed the cultural landscape. The agglomeration of the motifs, symbols and myths of cultic practices in existence from ancient times led to the growth of a syncretic goddess tradition that brought various independent female deities within the new brahmanical pantheon. 

 The result of years of rigorous research, The Making of the Goddess offers valuable insights into the understanding of patriarchies, gender and identity through an astute analysis of mythologies, inscriptions and literature. The accompanying photographs of religious iconography provide visual references to understand the processes of absorption, contestation, marginalization and syncretism in the evolution of goddess traditions. 

An unusual offering from Penguin, in our Religion and History sections.  416 pages in paperback, Rs 499. ISBN:  9780143417422