Manohar Publishers and Distributors

07 September, 2012

Tradition and Archaeology: Early Maritime Contacts in the Indian Ocean

By- Himanshu Prabha Ray and Jean – Francois Salles (Eds.)

This volume compromises a collection of studies extending from the fourth century BCE to the fifteenth century CE and includes updated versions to the Introduction and Preface. The two broad themes examined are archaeological evidence of maritime links, and technological studies of water-craft involved in trade and communication. This inter-disciplinary dialogue provides new insights on early seafaring in the Indian Ocean and questions several theories that have continued to be repeated in archeological and historical writing.

Trade did not cease with the decline of empires; instead there were relocations in routes and changes in the participants involved. A focus on traditions of ship-building and navigation in a study of maritime contacts emphasizes the role of innovation and technological change vis-à-vis tradition and continuity. This addition to the corpus of research on Indian Ocean studies will be useful to archaeologists, historians, and ethnographers investigating the evolution of maritime technologies.

Himanshu Prabha RAY is Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her recent publications include Colonial Archaeology in South Asia 1944-1948: The Legacy of Sir Mortimer Wheeler, OUP, 2008; The Archaeology in South Asia, CUP, 2003; and edited volumes, Reimagining Aśoka: Memory and History, OUP, 2012 (edited by Patrick Olivelle, Janice Leoshko and Himanshu Prabha Ray); Sacred Landscapes in Asia: Shared Traditions, Multiple Histories, Manohar, 2007.

Jean-Francois SALLES is Director of the Franc- Bangladesh Archaeological Mission to Mahasthangarh and was until recently Researchers, Dept, of Archéologie et histoire de l’Antiquité, Institut Francais du Proche-Orient, Amman, Jordan. His publications include France-Bangladesh Joint Venture Excavations at Mahasthangarh: First Interim Report, 1993-1999, edited by Md. Shafiqul ALAM and Jean-Francois SALLES, 2001 and “Pundranagara. Cité antique de Bengale”, sans la direction de J.-F. Salles, Indicopleustoi, Archaeologies of the Indian Ocean, Brepols, Turnhaut, 2007.

ISBN 978-81-7304-947-7 2012 368p. Rs.1595/ pounds 90

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The Tejas Story: The Light Combat Aircraft Project

By- Air Marshal Philip Rajkumar (Retd.)

The Indian Light Combat Aircraft (Tejas) has had a long and checkered developmental history. Ever since the programme commenced with the formation of the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) in 1985, the project has been beset with difficulties like finding a suitable person to be the Chief Designer, marshalling talent and resources, the economic crisis of 1991 and the post-Pokharan II US technology sanctions.

Now for the first time the public will have an opportunity to know what went on inside the project with the publication of The Tejas Story, by Air Marshal Philip Rajkumar (Retd) who worked in the project for nine years from 1994 to 2003. He was in charge of the flight test programme which is a crucial phase in the development of any aircraft. His first person account written from that perspective is an absorbing read.

The author traces in some detail the development of the all important fly-by-wire flight control system, which was being developed in India for the first time. The less than ideal relationship between the three key players in the project, ADA, HAL and the IAF can be read between the lines. In spite of this, the many challenges overcome by the development team is a heartwarming success story of Indian technological endeavor.

The book must be read by all those keen on following India’s progress towards self-reliance in the defence sector.

Air Marshal Philip Rajkumar was born in 1941, graduated with a science degree from Central College, Bangalore and was commissioned in the Flying Branch of the Indian Air Force in 1962. After specializing as an experimental test pilot in 1972, he spent the next three decades participating in numerous indigenous aeronautical development projects both as a test pilot and programme manager. He retired in 2003 as the Director, Aeronautical Development Agency after spending his last nine years of service working in the LCA project.

ISBN 81-7304-764-2 2007 190p. Rs.525/ pounds 35

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The Nadars of Tamilnad: The Political Culture of A Community in Change

By- Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr.

Among the various communities of south India, the Nadars have perhaps most clearly evidenced the impact of change over the past 200 years. Considered by high-caste Hindus in the early nineteenth century to be of extremely low status, the Nadars—toddy-tappers, climbers of the palmyra palm—suffered severe social disabilities and were among the most depressed communities in the Tamil country. Because of their sensitive response to social and economic change over the past century and a half, the Nadars have today become one of the most successful groups in the South, in both economic and political terms, and considerable command respect. From among their numbers have come leaders in business, industry, and the professions; and in politics, Kamaraj, their illustrious son, brought fame to the caste as Chief Minister of Madras and as President of the Indian National Congress.

The Nadars have had a turbulent and colorful history. Their struggle to rise above their depressed condition assumed dramatic forms in a series of escalating confrontations between the caste and its antagonists. From the breast-cloth controversy through the sack of Sivakasi to the Nadar Mahajana Sangam, the Nadars’ rise, exemplifying the processes of mobilization in Indian society, provides rich material for an analysis of the political life of a community in
change.

When the book was first published in 1969, Lloyd Rudolph wrote, ‘Hardgrave illuminates in ways hitherto unexplored the processes of social and political change that have so profoundly affected India. I judge his book to be one of the most important and exciting studies in the Indian field in recent years.’ With this re-issue. The Nadars of Tamilnad is again available, and its compelling portrayal of a caste in transition stands as, one reviewer wrote. ‘one of the landmarks in South Indian social history’.

Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr. is the Louann and Larry Temple Centennial Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, Departments of Government and Asian Studies at the University of Texas of Austin.

ISBN 81-7304-701-4 2006 352p. Rs.895/ pounds 55

06 September, 2012

Pathway to India’s Partition (Volume III): The March to Pakistan 1937-1947

By- Bimal Prasad

This volume, the third in the trilogy on the Pathway to India’s Partition, shows the key role played by Jinnah in the last phase of the journey to that goal.

It also provides the hollowness of the so-called revisionist thesis, that although claiming to work for the creation of Pakistan, Jinnah actually did not believe in that demand and was really working for a compromise which might succeed in bringing about a strong central government for a united India and that this had indeed been the real objective of the Pakistan resolution of 1940 - an absurd proposition. The contents of this volume also reveal the absurdity of the view propounded by the revisionists and others that if, in spite of Jinnah’s efforts to the contrary, India had to be divided and Pakistan created, this was due to the mistakes of the Congress leaders.

Finally, the volume illustrates the acute agony experienced by Gandhi who looked upon the prospect of the Partition with extreme pain and abhorrence and still felt compelled to go along with the proposal for Partition as accepted by the Congress Working Committee and asked the members of the All India Congress Committee to do the same, on the ground that in the communally surcharged atmosphere in India in 1947 there was really no other alternative.

Bimal Pradad, formerly Professor of South Asian Studies and Dean, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi) and India’s Ambassador to Nepal, is at present Honorary Director, Rajendra Prasad Academy (New Delhi) and Chairman, National Gandhi Museum (New Delhi).

ISBN 81-7304-250-0 2009 646p. Rs.1250/ pounds 80

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Pathway to India’s Partition (Volume II): A Nation within A Nation 1877-1937

By- Bimal Prasad

This volume seeks to analyse the evolution of Muslim nationalism from 1877 to 1937. This exercise has resulted in highlighting certain trends which have been so far either ignored or underplayed, at any rate in India. It, for instance, shows that two nation theory was an old as the movement for Muslim awakening and solidarity and almost all its leaders firmly believed in it.

Similarly the idea of Pakistan, instead of being born in 1933 with Rehmat Ali’s forceful espousal of it, is shown to be steadily circulating, particularly in the Punjab, since mid- 1920s. Again, contrary to what has been generally imagined so far, Jinnah as well as Iqbal had become converts to that idea, as early as June 1937, before even the beginning of any serious talk for the installation of a so-called coalition government in U.P., and not after its failure.

On the other hand, the volume also reveals the strength of the growing sentiment of Hindu nationalism in 1920s, particularly in the Punjab and Bengal. The situation created by the juxtaposition of the two nationalisms is underlined by Lala Lajpat Rai’s declaration in 1924 that in view of the general Muslim attitude a divided India might provide the only solution to the communal problem. Equally significant was Gandhi’s repeated assertion in 1924-5 that he saw no solution of that problem except through prayer.

Professor Bimal Prasad, formerly Professor of South Asian Studies and Dean, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi) and India’s Ambassador to Nepal, is at present Honorary Director, Rajendra Prasad Academy (New Delhi) and Honorary Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (New Delhi).

ISBN 81-7304-249-7 2000 470p. Rs.800/ pounds 65

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Pathway to India’s Partition (Volume I): The Foundations of Muslim Nationalism

By - Bimal Prasad

This is the first of a three-volume study of the background of India’s Partition, decidedly one of the seminal developments in the history of the subcontinent. Rejecting the widely held view that Partition was the result mainly of British manipulation and the mistakes or intransigence of certain Indian leaders, the author asserts that it was the result primarily of a powerful movement of Muslim nationalism. This volume is devoted to a discussion of this foundation of that nationalism.

Dealing at the outset with the legacy of the past, the author disputes the theory of a perpetual, centuries-old conflict between two antagonistic civilisations in the political arena. At the same time he shows how both the Muslim and the Hindu elites had already become conscious of their separate identities before the era of their modern political awakening began in the second half of the nineteenth century.

He then moves on to discuss the nature of the economic divide between the two communities and the intellectual as well as emotional environment of the Muslim elite. At the end the focus turns to Hindu nationalism and British policy both of which, in varying degrees, worked as props for Muslim nationalism.

In every chapter an effort has been made to synthesize the results of latest researchers as also to prevent fresh interpretations.

Professor Bimal Prasad, formerly Professor of South Asian Studies and Dean, School of international Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi) and India’s Ambassador to Nepal, is at present Honorary Director, Rajendra Prasad Academy (New Delhi).

ISBN 81-7304-248-9 1999 320p. Rs.600/ pounds 50

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Amma and Other Stories

By- Omprakash Valmiki and Naresh K. Jain (tr. and Introduction)

Amma and Other Stories is an English translation of fifteen stories of the leading Hindi dalit writer, Omprakash Valmiki, best known for his autobiography Joothan.

Together these stories vocalize the anguish and anger of the lowliest of the low in the caste hierarchy. More specifically, they deal with their sufferings at the hands of the dominant high castes and their questioning of their oppressors; their slender hopes and their small dreams; and their problems of identity as they try to make their way up the social and economic ladder. Omprakash Valmiki lists women of all classes among the dalits and there is a story in the collection that shows a high caste woman suffering at the hands of her male relatives. Softer emotions of love and longing are also not left out. Valmiki is acutely aware of the caste hierarcy among the dalits themselves and his story ‘Shavayatra’ makes for a deeply poignant reading. ‘Amma’ of the title is almost an epic tale of a dalit woman’s resolve to keep her progeny away from the broom and the canister.

At their best the stories are not merely dalit stories but a deeply human collection that will compel attention, engage the sympathies of the readers and make them ask inconvenient questions. The stories will also add a new dimension to dalit discourse.

The English translation is being published in the hope that the stories will reach a much wider audience and will sensitize readers to the travails of the dalits and their efforts to make a space for themselves, and help prepare the climate for social change.

Omprakash Valmiki, a leading Hindi dalit writer and author of the celebrated autobiography Joothan (1994) has published three collections of poetry Sadiyon ka Santaap [The Centuries-old Anguish], Bas! Bahut Ho Chuka [Stop it! That’s Enough] (1997) and Ab Aur Nahin [Not Any More] (2008); and two collections of short stories, Salaam [Obeisance] (2000) and Ghuspaithiye [Intruders] (2003). He has also written Dalit Sahitya Ka Saundarya Shastra [The Aesthetics of Dalit Literatue] (2001) and a history of Valmiki community, Safai-Devata [God of Cleanliness] (2008).

Naresh K. Jain, formerly Reader in English, School of Correspondence Courses, University of Delhi, has written several books including Love in Modern American Drama and is the editor of Women in Indo-Anglian Fiction: Tradition and Modernity.

ISBN 81-7304-783-9 2008 244p. Rs.595/ pounds 40