Manohar Publishers and Distributors: 08/26/12

26 August, 2012

The Other Sikhs: A View from Eastern India (Volume I)

By- Himadri Banerjee

The Sikhs are universally respectful and proud of their Gurus’ intimate contact with eastern India, representing the territories of Assam, Bengal and Orissa under British rule. It may be debated, however, whether the Gurus’ disciples are generally aware of how the Panthic message has been transmitted and perceived over the centuries in this part of the country. Their comparative lack of enthusiasm may be partly due to the bulky nature of these sources as well as the difficulty of having them together in a public library or any single private collection. These materials are in regional languages and carry a distinct local flavor, differing significantly from those of the manjha-malwa-doaba watershed. They suggest not only the spirit of plurality in Indian cultural traditions, but also Sikhism’s intimate link with it. Their identification and appreciation is likely to enrich our understanding of Sikhism in the wider context of the Indian unity and diversity.

The present study seeks to deal with some of these interesting issues recorded in three eastern Indian languages, namely, Assamese, Bengali and Oriya published over a century between the First Sikh War (1845) and the Partition of India (1947). In the process it outlines the history of the Sikhs and reveals how the message of Sikhism has been perceived in the context of different local issues by numerous eastern Indian authors.

Himadri Banerjee holds the Chair of Guru Nanak Professor of Indian History, Department of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. His

ISBN 81-7304-495-3 2003 280p. Rs.550/ pounds 19.99

MANOHAR PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS
4753/23 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002
Phones: 23284848, 23289100
Fax: 23265162
E-mail: manbooks@vsnl.com
sales@manoharbooks.com

To order your copy at www.manoharbooks.com

The Mughal State and Culture 1556-1598: Selected Letters and Documents from Munshaat-i-Namakin

By- Ishtiyaq Ahmad Zilli

Insha collections compiled in India during the medieval period are an important source of information for the history of the medieval state and society. But scholars working in the area were severely handicapped in their attempts to use this potential source because properly edited texts of the majority of these collections were not available.

Munshaat-i-Namakin is one such Insha collection that was compiled during the last years of Akbar’s reign. It covers the period 1556 to 1598. Its compiler, Abul Qasim Namakin, was a nobleman of eminence and served under Akbar and Jahangir.

It is one of the largest collections dating from the Mughal period. The documents provide extremely valuable information on a wide range of subjects relating to the political, institutional, social, cultural, legal and even religious aspects of Akbar’s reign. Besides, it contains scores of appointment orders relating to different branches of the cnetral as well as provincial administration, providing specific information about the duties and functions of state officials. It also contains copies of important diplomatic correspondence some of which are not available anywhere else.

Insha was a popular branch of literature during the medieval period. in addition to those who were interested in it as a matter of taste, it was an essential reference tool for those who aspired to enter government service. Insha collections, which contained specimen documents and drafts for various occasions served as guides for acquiring the necessary skill in the art of drafting, which was an important requirement for government servants.

Apparently many of the documents in the collection were received by the compiler when he was a Mughal officer working in different capacities. Selections from the writings of other distinguished writers have also been included. Munshaat-i-Namakin is a unique source of history as well as a book of great literary interest for it contains the only available specimen, of a number of documents for various categories.

Ishtiyaq Ahmad Zilli retired as Professor of History, Aligarh Mulsim University. His academic work relates to mainly Sufism and Indo-Persian hitoriography.

ISBN 81-7304-738-3 2007 540p. Rs.1350/ Pounds 70

The Impact of Armed Conflicts on Women in South Asia

By- Ava Darshan Shreshta and Rita Thapa (eds)

Published in association with Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, Colombo

The book exposes the different ways in which violent conflicts increase patriarchal controls on women and the impact of militarization on women and men, on masculinities and femininities. In all the societies and communities under discussion in the five countries, the authors point to the different ways in which women react and respond to the conflict. They become victims of various acts of repression and abuse. The book exposes that even armed militant women choose to respond to violence with violence. On the other side militants’ mothers respond to violence with non-violent means of political agitation.

The authors articulate a general position on the need to redefine democracy within the South Asian context, in a way which recognizes minority rights and acknowledges the nature of all South Asian states as multicultural and multinational. Within this overarching framework,
the authors see women’s involvement in militancy and in peace building as enabling a new construction of democracy, human rights and citizenship. The need for a reconceptualization of security to mean human security and peace with justice, rights and equality is both
advocated and emphasized.

In this process, the authors address the need to begin to deconstruct the exercise of masculinist power in its different forms, especially as played out in war and conflict.

Ava Darshan Shreshta (PhD) is working as a Social Development/General Consultant in Nepal. She has worked for the government, United Nations agencies, bilateral agencies and several donors including the International Non-Governmental Organizations for the past two decades. She is also affiliated to many NGOs. Her research work primarily focuses on poverty, reproductive health, micro credit, employment and empowerment of women. More recently she has been researching on conflict/insurgency and its impact on women.

A feminist activist, Rita Thapa is globally recognized for her ground-breaking work in
founding Tewa, the Nepal Women’s Fund. Currently she is engaged in peace-building work primarily through ‘Nagarik Aawaz’ which she helped found in 2001. Rita is former chair of the Board of the Global Fund for Women and is a current board member of the Urgent Action Fund.

ISBN 81-7304-724-3 2007 228p. Rs.575/ pounds 40

The Archaic and the Exotic: Studies in the History of Indian Astronomical Instruments

By- Sreeramula Rajeswara Sarma

The Fifteen papers collected in this volume are related to the author’s investigations into the history of astronomical instruments in India. This history, so far untouched by others, is dominated by two currents: on the one hand the resilience of certain archaic instruments that held sway for long, on the other the receptivity of Indian astronomers towards exotic instruments from other cultures. Hence the title: The Archaic and the Exotic.

The first part of the volume seeks to define the context in which the author’s studies on Indian instruments are undertaken and emphasizes the need for a combined study of Sanskrit astronomical texts and the extant instruments, besides pictorial depictions of instruments, notably in Mughal miniature paintings.

The four papers in part II are devoted to an ‘archaic’ instrument, namely the sinking
bowl variety of water clock, its history, its technical specifications and a ritual connected to its installation.

The astrolabe and the celestial globe are the exotic instruments received enthusiastically in India from the Islamic World. The five papers in part III deal with the history of the astrolabe in India: its promotion by Firuz Shah Tughluq, the dominant role played in its production
by a family of instrument makers from Lahore under the patronage of the Mughal rulers, Sanskrit manuals composed on it, and certin indiviudal specimens of the Indo-Persian and Sanskrit astrolabes.

The last two papers, comprising part IV, deal with the history of the celestial globe in India and the globes crafted by two seventeeth-century instrument makers.

Sreeramula Rajeswara Sarma studied Sanskrit at Visva Bharati, Santiniketan, and Idology at Philipps University, Marburg, and taught Sanskrit at Aligarh Muslim Univerfsity until his retirement in 1997. Subsequently he has been editor of the Indian Journal of History of
Science, and visiting professor at Kyoto University, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and at Harvard.

The main areas of his interest are the history of science in India and the intellectual exchanges between the Sanskrit and Islamic traditions of learning. He is currently preparing a descriptive catalogue of some 400 Indian astronomical instruments preserved in India and abroad.

ISBN 81-7304-571-2 2008 320p. Rs.795/ pounds 50

MANOHAR PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS
4753/23 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002
Phones: 23284848, 23289100
Fax: 23265162
E-mail: manbooks@vsnl.com
sales@manoharbooks.com

To order your copy at www.manoharbooks.com

Splendors of Rajasthani Paintings: Gulistan of Alwar School

By- Neeru Misra

Several illustrious poets, littérateurs, mystics, thinkers and social reformers flourished in the thirteenth-century India and Persia. Ferishta, Jalaluddin Rumi, Amar Khusrau and Sheikh
Sa‘adi are some of the great contemporaneous names Gulistan or Garden of Roses, is the most popular composition of Sa‘adi, and has been translated in several languages.

Gulistan is not a book of morals alone. It has been considered a treatise on good governance by padshahs and emperors. Regarded as elite reading, it was customary for the diplomats and traders travelling from Persia to Indian courts and vice versa, to present a copy of the manuscript to the high ranking nobles and kings as a mark of respect and recognition of their learning. As a consequence, a number of illustrated manuscripts of popular Persian anthologies were prepared under royal patronage. Many such works have survived and are available to us as a testimony to the art of calligraphy, book binding, illumination, illustration and miniature painting of the yesteryears.

With the decline of the Mughal empire, the artistic traditions of its ateliers found new
patronage under the regional principalities. The kingdom of Alwar in the nineteenth century under Banni Singh, while adopting the imperial Mughal traditions, established its own atelier where the present manuscript was created. The work is a rare confluence of the art of book and miniature painting, reproducing the celebrated Gulistan of Sa‘adi almost six hundred years after its original composition. The rich illustrations created in the Rajasthan court are a salutation to the magnificent Persian and Mughal miniature painting traditions.

Neeru Misra, heritologist and art historian holds a Masters and Doctorate in History from Allahabad University; has been the Head of the Department of Museum Studies at the
National Museum Institute, Delhi.

She has been associated with the academic programmes of the Smithsonian institution’s,
University of Madison and Thammasat University, Bangkok. Widely travelled, she is a
visiting faculty to a number of universities. She has been a Consultant with the United Nations Development Programme and is presently Senior Programme Director with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations under the Ministry of External Affairs.

ISBN 978-81-7304-788-6 2008 184p. Rs.1750/ pounds 50

MANOHAR PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS
4753/23 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002
Phones: 23284848, 23289100
Fax: 23265162
E-mail: manbooks@vsnl.com
sales@manoharbooks.com

To order your copy at www.manoharbooks.com

Speaking of Peasants: Essays on Indian History and Politics in Honor of Walter Hauser

By- William R. Pinch (ed.)

The present volume springs out of a festschrift conference to honor the career of Walter Hauser, professor emeritus of history at the University of Virginia and pioneer scholar in the study of Indian peasant movements.

Because Hauser’s work focuses on Bihar and the peasant leader, Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, some of the authors, such as the late Arvind Narayan Das, Christopher Hill, and Sho Kuwajima, are concerned directly with peasant politics in Bihar. Other authors, such as Harry Blair, Majid Siddiqi, Harold Gould, and the late James R. Hagen, constrast agrarian history and politics in Bihar to other parts of India. A third group, including Stuart Corbridge, Ron Herring, and Ruhi Grover, investigate related questions in agrarian history and politics from regions formally outside of Bihar. A fourth group of authors, including Peter Robb, Ajay Skaria, and William R. Pinch, examine culture, religion, and meaning that inform (and are informed by) peasant politics. A fifth set of authors, Frederick H. Damon, Peter Gottschalk, and Mathew Schmalz, provide ethnographic context. Damon takes readers from Bihar to Melanesia and many points in between, with a focus on ethno-botany over three millennia; Gottschalk and Schmalz provide a closely detailed examination of a Bihari village, focusing in particular on the problem of religion. Importantly, these authors structure their investigations around a reversal of the ethnographer’s ‘gaze’.

In this spirit of reflexive reversal, the volume concludes with a reflection on the ‘project’ of South Asian studies in the United States by Hauser himself, focusing on (but not limited to) his experiences at the University of Virginia.

William R. (Vijay) Pinch is Professor of History of Wesleyan University.

ISBN 81-7304-746-4 2007 540p. Rs.1195/ Pounds 70

MANOHAR PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS
4753/23 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002
Phones: 23284848, 23289100
Fax: 23265162
E-mail: manbooks@vsnl.com
sales@manoharbooks.com

To order your copy at www.manoharbooks.com