Author: Dilip M Menon
Publisher: Social Science Press
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 175
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8187358254
Description
The history of modern India has been narrated largely in terms of the nationalist movements, 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. Six essays 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 20th century India; or how a 19th 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
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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