Author: Veena Dass
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 1999
Language: English
Pages: 230
ISBN/UPC (if available): 978-0-19-564052-6
Description
This book identifies certain critical moments in the history of contemporary India. These events concern Partition, sati, minority rights, the Bhopal industrial disaster, the nature of the Indian state, and various socio-legal issues. Veena Dass redescribes these events and their implications within the framework of anthropological knowledge.
The critical events, that author analyses, have all instituted new sorts of action, which have in turn redefined traditional categories such as codes of purity and honor, the meaning of martyrdom, and the construction of a heroic life. The author shows how these forms took shape and were appropriated by a variety of political actors.