MARRIAGE, LOVE, CASTE AND KINSHIP SUPPORT
Lived Experiences of the Urban Poor in India
Shalini Grover

‘This book provides a new and welcome perspective on contemporary marriage and co-habitation patterns among the Indian urban, low-caste poor. This is a subject on which little previous anthropological research has been done; consequently, much that has been written on it is replete with stereotypes. The rich ethnography, with its large number of extended case studies of the marital experiences of individual women and married couples, is one of the work’s strong points. It should be widely read by anyone interested in the Indian family and kinship structure or in issues of poverty, marriage, and urban life more generally.’
- Professor (Emerita) Sylvia Vatuk, University of Illinois

‘This book deserves a large audience. With fascinating case studies and detailed ethnographic material, Shalini Grover enriches our understanding of how poor urban women in Delhi negotiate their married lives, move in and out of relationships, and mobilise support from their kin or from women-led informal courts. Using her data to argue robustly against the many unfounded presumptions about gender politics, love, marriages, intimacy, and married women’s relationships with their families of origin, she makes important interventions into wider debates about gender, marriage and kinship.’
- Professor Patricia Jeffery, University of Edinburgh‘Shalini Grover’s ethnography of marriage, re-marriage and arbitration in an urban squatter colony makes a significant contribution to recent feminist and anthropological research on marriage, kinship and law in India. Grover provides rich vignettes of cultural negotiations around marriage: gender- and caste-inflected ideologies of roles in marriage, the cushion provided by kin support, conjugality in the shadow of the law. We see the ways in which marriage is dynamically shaped through kin and labour demands, and legal pluralities emerging through innovative NGO and caste council actions. My favourite is the chapter on mahila panchayats, “women’s courts” which work to change the adversarial contours of marital disputes but are nonetheless embedded in normative gendered scripts.’
- Professor Srimati Basu, University of Kentucky

Also available as ebook at: http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/marriage_love_caste_and_kinship_support/

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256 pp 215x140 mm Hardback 9 illustrations
Published price Rs 595
ISBN 978-81-87358-56-5
Pub date November 2010

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Marriage, Love, Caste and Kinship Support: Lived Experiences of the Urban Poor in India makes use of interesting case studies and photographs to describe the everyday life in a squatter settlement in Delhi.
The book helps to understand the marital experiences of these people most of whom belong to the Scheduled Caste and live in one identified geographical space. The author describes the shifts within their marriages, remarriages and other kinds of unions and their striking diversities, which have been described with care. Shalini Grover also examines the close ties of married women with their mothers and natal families.
An important contribution of the book lies in the unfolding of the role of women-led informal courts, Mahila Panchayats, and their influence in conflict resolution. This takes place in a distinctly different mode of community-based arbitration against the backdrop of mainstream legal structures and male-dominated caste associations.
The book will be of interest to students of sociology and social anthropology, gender studies, development studies, law and psychology. Activists and family counsellors will also find the book useful.

Shalini Grover is author of several papers on marriage and kinship including ‘Lived Experiences: Marriage, Notions of Love and Kinship Support Amongst Poor Women in Delhi’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 43(1), 2009. This book was written during her tenure as a Sir Ratan Tata Fellow in Sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi.

ContentsForeword by Professor Patricia Uberoi
Acknowledgements
Glossary
1: Mapping the Debate on Marriage
2: Revisiting Arranged Marriages: Marital Roles, Conflict and Kinship Support
3: Courtships and Love Marriages
4: Secondary Unions and Other Conjugal Arrangements
5: Informal Dispute Settlement: The Mahila Panchayats
6: Towards the Democratization of Marriage and Relationships: ConclusionAnnexure
Bibliography
Index

Reissued: Cultural History of Modern India

READINGS IN HISTORY
CULTURAL HISTORY OF MODERN INDIA
Edited by Dilip M. Menon

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197 pages 215x140 mm 13 b/w photographs
First Edition Paperback 2006
Second impression 2011 Rs 195
ISBN 978-81-87358-25-1
HISTORY, CULTURE STUDIES, SOCIOLOGY
Pub date 2011

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THE HISTORY of modern India has been narrated largely in terms of the nationalist movement, personalities and what has been seen as the ‘high’ politics of the state. Recent shifts in history writing have tried to bring in subordinated histories of regions and of groups. We are moving towards a wider understanding of politics, history and of the ordinary people who make history. This collection tries to push the emerging paradigm further by moving away from conventional notions of the history of the nation and indeed of the political.

The six essays in this collection present original and pioneering forays in the study of cricket, oral history, gender studies, film, popular culture and Indian classical music. Whether looking at issues of caste on the seemingly level playing field of cricket in early twentieth century India; or how a nineteenth century housewife comes to pen the first autobiography by an Indian woman; calendar art reflecting deeper notions of religion and community; or how an idea of ‘pure’ classical music faces the challenge of technology, these essays show how ideas of self, community and art are formed within a larger politics. Moreover, culture far from being a refuge from the political is also the space within which politics comes to be worked out.

Contents
Introduction
Cricket and Caste: The Heroic Struggles of the Palwankar Brothers – Ramachandra Guha
A Book of Her Own, A Life of Her Own: The Autobiography of a Nineteenth-century Woman – Tanika Sarkar
The Past in the Present – Rustom Bharucha
National Identity and the Realist Aesthetic – Sumita S. Chakravarty
‘Unity in Diversity’? Dilemmas of Nationhood in Indian Calendar Art – Patricia Uberoi
Guru and Gramophone: Fantasies of Fidelity and Modern Technologies of the Real – Amanda Weidman

Dilip M. Menon is Mellon Chair in Indian Studies and Professor of History at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

New in Paperback The Enigma of the Kerala Woman

The ENIGMA OF THE KERALA WOMAN
A Failed Promise of Literacy
Edited by Swapna Mukhopadhyay

'I am very interested to learn about your book on Kerala women which you have just published. I look forward to getting hold of a copy and reading it. ...I know Swapna’s work and expect it to be very interesting and good. ...I will, ... personally benefit greatly … [from] the book.'
AMARTYA SEN,
Nobel Laureate and Lamont University Professor, Harvard University

‘The strength of this book is its methodological pluralism and combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The photographs and narratives support the essays by providing a glimpse into the everyday processes of the social construc­tion of gender. … It is an important resource for the body of research which demonstrates that only policies that are informed by an under­standing of entrenched power structures and explicitly target it can produce trans­formative and empowering outcomes. Its wide-angled overview drawing upon a range of recent academic work on Kerala opens up many possibilities for further detailed research.’
JANAKI SRINIVASAN,
Economic and Political Weekly

203 pages 215x140 mm Paperback 14 b/w photographs (visual anthropology)
First Hardback edition in 2007
Rs 295
ISBN 978-81-87358-44-2
SOCIOLOGY, DEMOGRAPHY, GENDER STUDIES, ECONOMICS
Pub date 2011

The Enigma of the Kerala Woman: A Failed Promise of Literacy consists of multi-disciplinary research carried out on various aspects of gender relations in Kerala by scholars from a range of social science disciplines under The Gender Network, a regional network of researchers investigating the phenomenon of gender under varied social and economic settings. The introductory chapter provides an overarching framework for the individual studies. Breaking new ground in analytical and methodological dimensions of Women’s Studies, the papers collectively seek to provide an answer to the ‘enigma’ of the Kerala woman.

The book comes alive through two separate sections. The first one is devoted to case studies of women from the area of research and the second to photographs of Kerala women in various social settings with detailed anthropological captions. The two sections complement each other in supporting the main theme of the book. The book has a rich body of data which provides comparative figures relating to development indices for Kerala in relation to some other states as well as India as a whole.

Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Section 1
1. Understanding the Enigma of Women’s Status in Kerala: Does High Literacy Necessarily Translate into High Status? - Swapna Mukhopadhyay
2. Gender Disparity in Kerala: A Critical Reinterpretation - S. Irudaya Rajan and Sreerupa
3. Mental Health, Gender Ideology and Women’s Status in Kerala - Swapna Mukhopadhyay, Jayanti Basu and S. Irudaya Rajan
4. Re-forming Women in Malayalee Modernity: A Historical Overview- J. Devika and Avanti Mukherjee
SECTION 2
5. Living as a Woman: Some Case Studies
SECTION 3
6. Gender Disparity in Kerala: Some Visual Images
Index

Swapna Mukhopadhyay is former Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth and former Director at the Institute of Social Studies Trust, New Delhi. She is currently involved as an advisor in some international development projects and occasionally teaches courses in Economics at various universities in the city. She also plays the violin and teaches Western classical music at the Delhi School of Music.

New in Paperback: India and China in the Colonial World

INDIA AND CHINA IN THE COLONIAL WORLD
Edited by Madhavi Thampi

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266 pages 215x140 mm Paperback
Rs 295
ISBN 978-81-87358-53-4
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, HISTORY, POLITICS, ECONOMIC HISTORY

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India and China in the Colonial World brings together thirteen essays by eminent Indian and Chinese scholars as well as young researchers who look at the multidimensional interaction between the two countries. This interaction was of many kinds and took place at various levels. This volume casts new light on some of the problems that have confronted the relations between India and China as new states and, in doing so, challenges stereotyped images of this relationship.

The major areas of India-China relationships covered in this book include some aspects of the situation during and after World War II. Some papers, such as those on the importance of Shanghai in Sino-Indian trade, the presence of the Chinese community in India and Indians in China; Indian fighters in the Taiping Rebellion; Gandhi and the Chinese in South Africa; and ties between south-west China and north-east India during World War II; present the findings of new research. Others such as those pertaining to India-China relations in the period, such as the opium trade; the controversial visit of Rabindranath Tagore to China; and the complexity of Subhash Chandra Bose’s position with relation to both China and Japan have been put in a new light.

The essays in this book are particularly relevant as they help to understand the relationship between India and China in the context of a historical perspective.

Madhavi Thampi teaches Chinese History in the Department of East Asian Studies of Delhi University. She is the author of Indians in China, 1800-1949 (Delhi, 2005) and co-author of China and the Making of Bombay (Mumbai, 2009). She is an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi, and Associate Editor of China Report.

Contents
Introduction - Madhavi Thampi
TRADE AND ECONOMIC INTERACTIONS
Pathways of the Poppy: India’s Opium Trade in the Nineteenth Century - Asiya Siddiqi
Shanghai: A Window for Studying Sino-Indian Relations in the Era of Colonialism and Imperialism
- Chen Zhilong
CHINESE IN INDIA, INDIANS IN CHINA
The Chinese Community of Calcutta: Their EarlySettlement and Migration - Ramakrishna Chatterjee
The Indian Community in China and Sino-Indian Relations - Madhavi Thampi
CULTURAL INTERACTION
The Controversial Guest: Tagore in China - Sisir Kumar Das
Turning Point of India-China Relations in the Twentieth Century: The Linkage Role of Tan Yun-shan
- Huang Chih-lien
NATIONAL AND REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS IN INDIA AND CHINA
The 1857 Rebellion and Indian Involvement in the Taiping Uprising in China - B.R. Deepak
Gandhi and the Chinese Community in South Africa - Mira Sinha Bhattacharjea
Nehru, Chiang Kai-shek, and the Second World War- Avinash Mohan Saklani
Subhash Chandra Bose’s Perspective on China - Girish Chandra Maiti
EMERGENCE OF A NEW RELATIONSHIP
Links between Yunnan and India during the Second World War- Ge Yikun and Li Wei
Indian Perceptions of the Emergence of the People’s Republic of China - Shalini Saksena
Perceptions and India–China Relations at the End of the Colonial Era - Surjit Mansingh
Appendix
Index

TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY IN INDIA
State, Business and Labour in a Global EconomyDilip Subramanian

‘This is an impressive achievement that fills a major gap in the literature, that is genuinely inter-disciplinary, and that calls on a range of Francophone literature on the sociology of industry and work that is seldom cited in studies of Indian industry.’
Jonathan Parry, FBA
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology,
London School of Economics and Political Science

‘[The work]… has the potential to become a benchmark study in government-business-labour relations during the import-substituting industrialization era in India…. The proposed work evidently has a global readership….’
Tirthankar Roy,
London School of Economics and Political Science


Also available as ebook at: http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/telecommunications_industry_in_india/


690 pages 215x140 mm Hardback
Published price Rs 895
ISBN 978-81-87358-42-8
BUSINESS HISTORY, LABOUR HISTORY, SOCIOLOGY OF WORK, POLITICS
Pub Date July 2010
Telecommunications Industry in India represents the first comprehensive study of a state-run enterprise in the telecommunications industry. The study traces over a period of half a century (1948-2009) the growth and decline of Indian Telephone Industries (ITI). At the heart of the monograph stands one central interrogation: How does the socio-technical system of production in a state-controlled firm shape the relations linking the four main actors: the state, management, union and workers?

The original contribution of this book lies in combining business history and labour history within a single conceptual framework. The author evaluates the broader conclusions about the telecommunications industry and public sector through the lens of an individual firm to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of change in the globalizing Indian economy.

The work is well in command of the literature on the global business history counterparts of ITI in the telecommunications industry. It is further strengthened by the use of French material on the subject which is now accessible for the first time in English.

Dilip Subramanian is Associate Professor at the Reims Management School and is affiliated to the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

ContentsIntroduction1. The Construction of a Monopoly
2. The History and Politics of Technological Change
3. The Burden of Monopoly and State Regulation
4. The Advent of Competition: Fallout of Global Telecommunications Deregulation
5. Market Forces in Full Play: Management Gains or Losses for Labour?
6. Spheres of Practice: An Ethnography of Printed Circuit Board Assembly Work
7. Workers and Independent Unionism
8. Rank-and-File Challenge to Union and Management Authority
9. Passions of Language and Caste
ConclusionEpilogue
Index

NATURE, CULTURE AND RELIGION AT THE CROSSROADS OF ASIA
Edited by Marie Lecomte-Tilouine


‘A rich and wide-ranging collection that should be consulted by anyone who wants to know what meaning “nature” has in Asian world religions and in many contemporary Asian societies.’
David N. Gellner
Professor of Social Anthropology
University of Oxford

‘This interdisciplinary book is a significant, original and valuable contribution to…the Himalayan environment. …The book will appeal to students of the Himalaya and of the environment generally and…to scholars in religious studies. Several of the essays will work well in courses in Himalayan anthropology and religion as well as in environmental studies.’
Arjun Guneratne
Macalester College
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388 pages 215x140 mm 14 illustrations Hardback
Published price Rs 750
ISBN 978-81-87358-46-6
CULTURE STUDIES, HIMALAYAN ANTHROPOLOGY, RELIGION, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
Pub date June 2010
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Nature, Culture and Religion at the Crossroads of Asia explores how ethnic groups living in the Himalayan regions understand nature and culture. The first part addresses the opposition between nature and culture in Asia’s major religious traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Shamanism. The second part brings together specialists of different representative groups living in the heterogeneous Himalayan region. They examine how these indigenous groups perceive their world. This includes understanding their mythic past, in particular, the place of animals and spirits in the world of humans as they see it and the role of ritual in the everyday lives of these people. The book takes into account how these various perceptions of the Himalayan peoples are shaped by a globalized world. The volume thus provides new ways of viewing the relationship between humans and their environment.
Marie Lecomte-Tilouine is Senior Researcher in Social Anthropology at CNRS, France, and teaches at the Institut National des Langues Orientales, Paris. She has recently published Hindu Kingship, Ethnic Revival and Maoist Rebellion in Nepal (Collected Essays), Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2009.

Contents
Introduction - Marie Lecomte-Tilouine
PART I – Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Shamanism
At the Articulation of Nature and Artifice - Charles Malamoud
Nature and Culture in Tibetan Philosophy - Stéphane Arguillère
Allah, Saints and Men in Islam - Marc Gaborieau
Variations in Shamanist Siberia - Roberte N. Hamayon
PART II – Himalayan Case Studies
To be more Natural than Others - Marie Lecomte-Tilouine
Subjectivity and Governance in the Himalayan Environment - Ben Campbell
Political Aspects of the Territorial Cult among the Mewahang Rai - Martin Gaenszle
‘Wilderness of the Civilization’ - Subhadra Mitra Channa
Love and Vengeance in Indus Kohistan - Claus Peter Zoller
Conceptions on Tibetan Relics - Rachel Guidoni
Plant Growth Processes and Animal Health in Northwest Yunnan - Andreas Wilkes
Terrace Cultivation and Mental Landscapes in Southern Yunnan - Pascal Bouchery
The Sacred Confluence, between Nature and Culture - Chiara Letizia
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SSP-OBS Publication

EDUCATION, UNEMPLOYMENT AND MASCULINITIES IN INDIA
Craig Jeffrey, Patricia Jeffery and Roger Jeffery

"...[T]hrough close ethnographic work, the authors throw new light on larger debates about development, education and employment in India, and raise important issues and questions that demand further exploration and debate by sociologists and policymakers alike."

Economic & Political Weekly

"The focus on masculinity, education, modernity, and social status among rural young men in northern India highlights the problems with education in India. The authors explore the mindset of those for whom rural education is a system that often fails, demonstrating a volatile mix of disenfranchisement on the one hand and underemployment on the other."

Susan S. Wadley, Syracuse University

"The book is important for both academics and policy makers: 'we question accounts of education as an unproblematic social good within development academia'. Not quite the condemnation of education as causing the problem, but a warning that education on its own will not achieve its goals, and that with some people in some contexts, it can have its 'dark side'."

Alan Rogers, University of East Anglia

Social Science Press-Orient BlackSwan Joint Publication
256 pp 215x140 mm Hardback
ISBN 978-81-87358-58-9
Published price Rs 695
Pub Date May 2010
DEVELOPMENT STUDIES, SOCIOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY, POLITICS

Education, Unemployment and Masculinities in India re-evaluates debates on education, modernity, and social change in contemporary development studies and anthropology. Education is widely imputed with the capacity to transform the prospects of the poor. But in the context of widespread unemployment in rural north India, it is better understood as a contradictory resource, providing marginalized youth with certain freedoms but also drawing them more tightly into systems of inequality.
The book advances this argument through detailed case studies of educated but unemployed or underemployed young men in rural western Uttar Pradesh. This book draws on fourteen months' ethnographic research with young men from middle caste Hindu, Muslim, and ex-Untouchable backgrounds. In addition to offering a new perspective on how education affects the rural poor in South Asia, Education, Unemployment and Masculinities in India includes in-depth reflection on the politics of modernity, changing rural masculinities, and caste and communal politics.
Contents
1 Introduction
2 The Political Economy of Uttar Pradesh
3 Masculinity on a Shoestring?
4 From Canefield to Campus (and Back Again): The Social Strategies of Educated Jats
5 Dalit Revolution? New Politicians in Uttar Pradesh
6 Muslims’ Strategies in an Age of Insecurity
7 Down and Out in Nangal and Qaziwala: The Cultural Politics of Resentment
8 Conclusions
Bibliography
Index

Craig Jeffrey is Associate Professor in Geography and International Studies at the University of Washington. He has published widely, including papers in World Development, Modern Asian Studies, Annals of the Association of American Geographers and Development and Change.
Patricia Jeffery is Professor of Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Her recent books include (with Roger Jeffery) Don’t Marry Me to a Plowman: Women’s Everyday Lives in Rural North India (Westview Press and Vistaar, 1996).
Roger Jeffery is Professor of Sociology of South Asia at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. His recent books include (with Patricia Jeffery) Population, Gender and Politics:Demographic Change in Rural North India (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

LITERATURE AND NATIONALIST IDEOLOGY
Writing Histories of Modern Indian LanguagesEdited by Hans Harder

400 pp 215x140 mm Hardback
Published price Rs 695
ISBN 978-81-87358-33-6
Tentative Pub Date March 2010
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE, LINGUISTICS, HISTORY, SOCIOLOGY

‘This volume takes on…big questions, making a sophisticated and significant contribution to the great tradition of assessing the emergence of literary modernity in South Asia.’- Vasudha Dalmia, Professor of Hindi and Chair of the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California

Also available as ebook at: http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/literature_and_nationalist_ideology/

Writing histories of literature means making selections, passing value judgments, and incorporating or rejecting foregoing traditions. The book argues that in many parts of India, literary histories play an important role in creating a cultural ethos. They are closely linked with nationalism in general and various regional ‘sub-nationalisms’ in particular.

Literary historiography helps to establish a national literature in a way that is not always unproblematic: systematic representation of literary works and authors is as much part of this story as conscious omissions or political spins in the making of a literary heritage.The contributors to this volume look at a great variety of aspects of the historiography of modern regional languages of India. The approach excludes classical languages of India from this approach, except Tamil which is considered a modern and a classical language at the same time. It includes the late yet undoubtedly successful arrival of English in the nation’s literary corpus.

Hans Harder teaches Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany.

Contents
Introduction - Hans Harder
1. Shaping a Literary Space: Early Literary Histories in Malayalam and Normative Uses of the Past - Udaya Kumar
2 Drowning in the Ocean of Tamil: Islamic Texts and the Historiography of Tamil Literature - Torsten Tschacher
3. From Scattered Archives to the Centre of Discourse: Histories of Telugu Literature in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Heiko Frese
4. Beyond the Nation: A Comparatist’s Thoughts on some Foundational Categories in the Literary Historiography of ‘Post’-colonial South Asian Literatures- Ipshita Chanda
5. Dinesh Chandra Sen’s ‘The Folk Literature of Bengal’: The Canonization of Folk and the Conception of the Feminine - Sourav Kargupta
6. Ethics or Aesthetics? Obscenity as a Category for Evaluating the Hindi Public Sphere in Colonial North India - Charu Gupta

7. George Abraham Grierson’s Literary Hindustan - Ira Sarma
8. The Impact of Sectarian Lobbyism on Hindi Literary Historiography: The Fascinating Story of Bhagvadacharya Ramanandi - Purushottam Agrawal
9. The Politics of Exclusion?: The Place of Muslims, Urdu and its Literature in Ramchandra Shukla’s ‘Hindi Sahitya ka Itihas’ - Navina Gupta
10. A Discourse of Difference: ‘Syncretism’ as a Category in Indian Literary History - Thomas de Bruijn11. Unscripted: The People of Arunachal Pradesh in Literary and other National Histories - Stuart Blackburn
12. Indian Literature in English and the Problem of Naturalisation - Hans Harder
13. The Mahatma as Proof: The Nationalist Origins of the Historiography of Indian Writing in English - Snehal Shingavi

THE MANY WORLDS OF SARALA DEVI: A DiaryTranslated from Jeevaner Jharapata
Sukhendu Raywith an Introduction by Bharati Ray&

THE TAGORES AND SARTORIAL STYLES: A Photo EssayMalavika Karlekar

Also available as ebook at: http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/the_many_worlds_of_sarala_devi_and_the_tagores_and_sartorial_styles/

228 pp 215x140 mm Hardback 15 illustrations
Published price Rs 550
ISBN 978-81-87358-31-2
Pub date January 2010

This charming book The Many Worlds of Sarala Devi and The Tagores and Sartorial Styles, as the titles suggest, contain two separate but related writings on the Tagores. The Tagores were a pre-eminent family which became synonymous with the cultural regeneration of India, specifically of Bengal, in the nineteenth century.
The first writing is a sensitive translation of Sarala Devi’s memoirs from the Bengali, Jeevaner Jharapata, by Sukhendu Ray. It is the first autobiography written by a nationalist woman leader of India. Sarala Devi was Rabindranath Tagore’s niece and had an unusual life. The translation unfolds, among other things, what it was like to grow up in a big affluent house Jorasanko, that had more than 116 inmates and a dozen cooks! The second writing by Malavika Karlekar is a photo essay, creatively conceived, visually reflecting the social and cultural trends of the times, through styles of dress, jewellery and accoutrements. The modern style of wearing a sari was introduced by Jnanadanandini Devi, a member of the Tagore family.
The introduction by the well-known historian, Bharati Ray, very perceptively captures the larger context of family, marriage, women’s education and politics of the time which touched Sarala Devi’s life. She points out that if memoirs are a kind of social history then women’s diaries record social influences not found in official accounts and are therefore, a rich source of documentation.

Sukhendu Ray has published several translations from Bengali literature of which the more recent ones are, The Winged Horse from Thakurmar Jhuli (OUP, 1997); Rabindranath Tagore’s Chokher Bali (Rupa, 2006) and Sukanta Chaudhuri ed. Selected Writings for Children: Rabindranath Tagore (OUP, 2006).
Bharati Ray is Honorary Professor, Department of History, Calcutta University. She is the author of Early Feminists in Colonial Bengal: Sarala Devi Chaudhurani and Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (OUP, 2002); From Independence Towards Freedom: Indian Women since 1947 (OUP, 1999) and From the Seams of History: Essays on Indian Women (OUP, 1995).
Malavika Karlekar is Editor, Indian Journal of Gender Studies and the Curator of Re-presenting Indian Women 1875-1947: A Visual Documentary. Her recent publications include Remembered Childhood: Essays in Honour of André Béteille co-edited with Rudrangshu Mukherjee (OUP, 2010); In So Many Words: Women’s Life Experiences from Western and Eastern India co-edited with Aparna Basu (Routledge, 2008) and Re-visioning the Past: Early Photography in Bengal 1875-1915 (OUP, 2005).

Joint publication SSP-OBS

THE SUNDARBANS
Folk Deities, Monsters and Mortals
Sutapa Chatterjee Sarkar

212 pages 215x140 mm Hardback 10 illustrations
Published price Rs 550
ISBN 978-81-87358-35-0
HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY, ETHNOGRAPHY, ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY
Pub Date January 2010

The lower deltaic Bengal, the Sundarbans has always had a life of its own, unique in its distinctive natural aspect and social development. Geographical and ecological evidence indicates that most of the area used to be once covered with dense, impenetrable jungle even as patches of cultivation sprang intermittently into life and then disappeared. A continuous struggle ensued between man and nature, as portrayed in the punthi literature that thrived in lower deltaic Bengal between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.

The construction of a permanent railroad connecting Calcutta to Canning further facilitated the influx of new ideas and these, subsequently, found expression in the spreading of co-operative movements, formation of peasant organizations, and finally culminated in open rebellion by the peasants (Tebhaga Movement). The struggle between men and the dangerous forests was therefore overshadowed by the conflict among men.

This book will be of great interest to students of history, sociology, anthropology and economic geography.

Sutapa Chatterjee Sarkar is Reader, Department of History, West Bengal State University.

Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
Maps
Abbreviations
1. The Sundarbans Folk Deities, Monsters and Mortals: Introduction
2. Fearsome Forests and Rising Tides: A Historical Geography of the Sundarbans
3. The Sundarbans in punthi Literature
4. Tilman Henckell: An Advocate of Colonial Paternalism
5. Land Reclamation from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century
6. Development of the Port at Canning and Gosaba Co-operative
7. Tebhaga in Kakdwip
8. The Sundarbans in Modern Bengali Fiction
9. The Mangrove and the Man: A Conclusion
Glossary
Index

In Paperback: Religious Division and Social Conflict

RELIGIOUS DIVISION AND SOCIAL CONFLICT
The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in Rural IndiaPeggy Froerer

316 pages 215x140 mm Paperback 8 b/w photographs
Rs 295
ISBN 978-81-87358-51-0
SOCIOLOGY, ETHNOGRAPHY, RELIGION, POLITICS

Pub date December 2009

Also available as ebook at: http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/religious_division_and_social_conflict/

Religious Division and Social Conflict: The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in Rural India is an ethnographic account of the emergence of Hindu nationalism in a tribal (adivasi) community in Chhattisgarh, central India. It is argued that the successful spread of Hindu nationalism in this area is due to the involvement of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a militant Hindu nationalist organization, in local affairs. While active engagement in 'civilizing' strategies has enabled the RSS to legitimize its presence and endear itself to the local community, the book argues that participation in more aggressive strategies has made it possible for this organization to fuel and attach local tensions to a broader Hindu nationalist agenda.

ContentsAcknowledgements
Note on Transliteration
Glossary of Selected Words
1. Introduction
2. Adivasi Hindus and the RSS
3. Adivasi Christians and the Church
4. Health, Biomedicine and the RSS
5. Local Corruption and the Politics of Inclusion
6. Land Relations and Local Tensions
7. Liquor Disputes and the Communalization of Local Tensions
8. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Peggy Froerer is Lecturer in Anthropology, School of Social Sciences, Brunel University, UK.