Business Brahmins: The Gauda Saraswat Brahmins of South Kanara

Business Brahmins: The Gauda Saraswat Brahmins of South Kanara

By- Harald Tambs-Lyche

Village studies have dominated anthropological writing on India for a long time, though more recently, much has been written on the big cities. This study is original in focusing on a small-town bourgeoisie.

Udupi, in South Kanara (north of Mangalore), was just a famous pilgrimage centre, then an administrative unit, until the Gauda Saraswat Brahmins arrived there in the 1890s. They were instrumental in creating a flourishing market and town, and their businesses still form the core of the local economy.

Written like a piece of local history, this book tells the story of the town from the perspective of these ‘Business Brahmins’, but it also presents an analysis of kinship, religion and community in a Brahmin caste which, in some ways, does not correspond to the received ideas of Brahmin orthodoxy.

As Konkani speakers from Goa, they constitute an ethnic minority as well as the main part of the local bourgeoisie. This blend of caste, class and ethnicity nevertheless merges into a strong and integrated identity, while its various aspects lead the author to take a critical attitude to those who would reduce the complexity of social stratification in India to a single model of the ‘caste system’.

Udupi is a small town and easily identified, so no attempt has been made to mask the main actors by using fictitious names. The author feels that any criticism that may emerge of them is amply compensated for by documenting their important role in building and developing the lively urban community that Udupi is today.

Harald Tambs-Lyche studied anthropology in Bergen and at SOAS, London. 

ISBN  978-81-7304-902-6    2011   326p.   Rs.1095/ pounds 55

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Beauty in Money: Numismatic Art and Technology of Early South India (Up to and Including the Pallava Period)

Beauty in Money: Numismatic Art and Technology of Early South India

(Up to and Including the Pallava Period)

By- S. Suresh

Art historical studies have hitherto been mostly confined to sculptures, paintings, furniture and jewellery. Boldly moving away from the conventional approach to the study of coins as mere economic entities, the present volume is the first systematic, comprehensive and analytical study of ancient Indian coins as objects of art. Coins, like historical monuments, sculptures and paintings, have a symbolic meaning behind the visual form and epitomize the socio-religious conditions and the art traditions in which they emerged. Focusing on the coins of south India, the study, combining empirical data with theoretical insights, explores the subtle interrelationships between the steady evolution of coinage and the simultaneous development of art in this region.

Tracing thematic, iconographic and stylistic affinities between the art in coins and the art in stone, the study clearly reveals that as sculptural art was more pervasive than numismatic art, the latter recurrently felt the impact of the former. Often, the mint masters and coin makers, faithfully reproduced, on a miniature scale, specimens of sculpture and architecture on the coins.  At the same time, coins too were rarely featured in other mediums of art. Probing the metallic composition and the process of production of the coins of different dynasties and periods, the present study also analyses the technical constraints of numismatic art.

The volume includes an exhaustive corpus, prepared for the first time ever, of the symbols and devices on the coins of the major dynasties of ancient south India.

The book will be of interest to archaeologists, numismatists, art historians and economic historians. 

S. Suresh is presently in the U.S. as a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Washington D.C. and the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation of the University of Maryland. He is Tamil Nadu State Convener of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and Academic Director, Bharat Travel Services, Chennai. He was earlier Nehru Visiting Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

ISBN  978-81-7304-909-5    2011   244p.   Rs.795/ pounds 45

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Asia Annual 2009:Paradigms of Security in Asia

Asia Annual 2009:Paradigms of Security in Asia

By- Arpita Basu Roy (ed.)

Security is increasingly becoming a complex concept acquiring new nuances with debates over its scope. There are arguments as to whether the current approache(s) to the study of security is(are) any longer suitable for dealing with the changing nature of contemporary security. At another level, the debate over security is if there can be geographical and cultural connotations to security and security studies in opposition to the state/power centric Western approach. Further there are criticisms related to increasing securitization of issues which, it is argued, may lead to politics of exception.

The volume is an interdisciplinary effort designed to respond to the changing nuances of security. It intends to address the changing notions and critically examine the foregoing uncertainties and the resulting unpredictability in the international politics of Asia. It builds on quest in the region for new analytical and policy frameworks, as well as for a new architecture for regional security.

Arpita Basu is a Fellow at the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies (MAKAIAS), Kolkata and a Ph.D. from the Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University. She was also a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS), University of Cambridge and the recipient of the 10th Wrangler Pavate Fellowship for International Studies (2010).

ISBN  978-81-7304-908-8    2011   358p.   Rs.1050/ Pounds 70

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Asia Annual 2008: Understanding Popular Culture

Asia Annual 2008: Understanding Popular Culture

By- H.S. Vasudevan (Editor-in-Chief) and Kausik Bandyopadhyay (Issue Editor)

Popular culture has long been a site which articulates the complexities and diversities of the everyday life of the nation. People, society, nation – all confront, negotiate and internalize or exclude the variegated and nuanced forms of popular culture in their own ways from time to time. Popular culture thus represents people, redefines society, and, to be bold, reconditions humanity. Asia Annual 2008: Understanding Popular Culture attempts to reveal at least part, if not whole, of the processes of how significant variegated aspects of popular culture was/has become for parts of Asia and particularly for India – politically, socially, economically, culturally and emotionally.

The volume is an interdisciplinary effort designed to respond to the growing interest in popular culture throughout Asia. It intends to address the changing intellectual ways of constructing, reconstructing, deconstructing, texts and activities as popular culture. Popular culture, in such context, is a broad canvas to incorporate lived and textual cultures, the mass media, ways of life and discursive modes of representation. Central to the formation of these popular cultures are articulations of the economic, social and political spheres, and the volume offers contributions that highlight these issues. Asian popular culture is of interest to cultural, media, film, and sports studies, as well as social geography, history, business management, international relations, area and diaspora studies, post-modern and post-colonial theoretical formulations.

The volume therefore intends to bring together scholars who offer critical appreciation on various forms of popular culture within Asia and across its borders. It thus attempts innovative discussions and debates on the emergence and vibrancy of new forms of social, cultural and political strategies and representations of popular culture in literature, film, music, theatre, sport, media, advertisement, science, politics and visual cultures.

Kausik Bandopadhyay, former Fellow of the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, is Reader in History, West Bengal State University, Barasat.

ISBN  978-81-7304-844-9    2010   404p.   Rs.995/ pounds 80

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The Armed Forces of Independent India: 1947-2006

The Armed Forces of Independent India: 1947-2006

By- Kaushik Roy

The Indian Army with one million men is the third largest in the world. The Indian Air Force is the second biggest aerial armada in Afro-Asia. And the Indian Navy is the most powerful naval force among the Indian Ocean states. To cap it all, India’s nuclear arsenal is the sixth largest in the world. In this monograph, an attempt has been made to analyse the historical evolution of independent India’s armed forces. The development of the armed forces as an institution, its nature, purpose and the formulation of the doctrines as regards the functions of the Indian military are the central concerns of this volume. It also opens up the question regarding the nature of the Indian state.

The methodology followed is an amalgam of organizational culture analysis and history of idea approach. In order to assess India’s success in harnessing military power vis-à-vis other developing countries, a comparative methodology is followed. A proper evaluation of the Indian armed forces’ combat effectiveness is impossible without a detailed analysis of the militaries of Pakistan and China. The rigorous analysis of the empirical data will probably provide the Indian strategic managers with some policy relevance. The present volume besides catering to the military officers, strategic analysts and the various institutions specializing in security studies would also be of interest to political scientists and the students of contemporary history.

Kaushik Roy is an Associate Researcher at the Centre for the Study of Civil War (CSCW) at International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO). He is also a Lecturer in the Department of History, Presidency College, Kolkata.

ISBN  978-81-7304-778-7    2009   404p.   Rs.995/ pounds 60

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