Ancient India in Historical Outline: Revised and Enlarged Edition

Ancient India in Historical Outline: Revised and Enlarged Edition

By- D.N. Jha



This book is a substantially modified and enlarged version of the author’s Ancient India: An Introductory Outline (Delhi, 1977) and surveys the major developments in India’s social,
economic and cultural history up to the end of the ancient period and the beginning of the early middle ages and explains the rise and growth of states with reference to their material basis. Special attention has been paid to the elements of change and continuity in society, economy and culture, and to the changing forms of exploitation and consequent social
tensions as well as to the role of religion and superstition in society. The book demolishes the popular historiographical stereotypes created by the Hindu-chauvinist communal writings. It also gives the lie to the view that the Indian society has been stagnant and changeless—a view which was propagated by Western scholars in the heyday of British imperialism and continues to be peddled ingeniously in our own times.


The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi . . . and the demolition of the Baburi Masjid are two . unforgettable milestones in the unfolding of the backward-looking Hindu revivalist and
fascist politics of contemporaneous India.

Since both Harappa and Mohenjodaro are situated now in Pakistan, the Hindu revivalists are busy locating the epicentre of the Harappan culture in the elusive Saraswati valley.



Dwijendra Narayan Jha graduated from Presidency College, Calcutta, in 1957 and obtained M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in 1959 and 1964 respectively from Patna University where he taught history up to 1975. He retired professor of history at the University of Delhi.





ISBN 81-7304-755-3 2008 386p. Rs.975/ Pounds 55


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An Encounter of Peripheries: Santals, Missionaries, and Their Changing Worlds, 1867-1900

An Encounter of Peripheries: Santals, Missionaries, and Their Changing Worlds, 1867-1900

By- Marine Carrin and Harald Tambs-Lyche



This book partakes of the post-colonial reassessment of the nineteenth century, where agency is seen to lie, not just with the colonizing centre, but also with the colonized periphery. Here,
missionaries from a peripheral part of Europe—including a Norway striving to decolonize
itself—try to convert the Santals, an Indian tribe which had rebelled against the intruding colonial order. Provincializing the European origins of the missionaries, the authors try to explore the Santal response.

Missionary sources have been used to recast such encounters, but the response seldom has had a documented voice. The Santals, however, wrote thousands of pages as part of the missionary project to document their culture, showing their efforts to reconstruct and reappropriate their own culture. Subaltern voices emerge, as working-class missionaries and Santals meet, bypassing the centres of hegemony, and oppose the disenchantment of colonial experience
to the memory of a glorious past.

For some years, a space is created at the edge of empire, where the missionary adventurer, and Santals in search of a new identity, together build a new Christian community. The missionaries succeed only because of the Santal engagement—born, not just from their appropriation of missionary ideas, but also from their resistance to the Hindu majority and to internal colonialism. But soon colonial power relations erode missionary independence, as they come to depend on the churches of their homeland, while the Santals are absorbed into
the exploitative economics of colonialism. The space allowed by an ‘encounter of peripheries’ is closed.



Marine Carrin is Director of Research, CNRS at the LISST, Centre of Anthropology, Toulouse, France. She has worked for many years on the Santals and is currently working on the bhuta cults and other aspects of religion and society in South Canara, India.



Harald Tambs-Lyche is professor of social anthropology at the University of Picardie—Jules Verne, Amiens, France. He is currently working on a monograph on the Gauda Saraswat Brahmins of South Canara, India.





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“Chhe – Saat ”: Memoir of an Officer of the 6th/7th Rajput Regiment

“Chhe – Saat ”: Memoir of an Officer of the 6th/7th Rajput Regiment

By- Stuart Ottowell

The 6/7th Rajputs were raised at Trichinopoly in 1941 as a direct need for wartime expansion of the Indian Army. This memoir of the 6/7th’s North-West Frontier days in 1942 to its fight south through Burma against the Japanese is a unique insight into the Rajputs’ fighting qualities and attitude to life.

As the first wartime raised battalion in the Regiment it had the good fortune to attract well trained Senior VCOs, NCOs and Officers from the regular Rajput battalions, who all contributed to its development. It joined in activities on the North-West Frontier serving at Quetta, Peshawar, Darndil, Rasmak and on the Kojak Pass. Jungle training followed before joining 17 Indian Division at Ranchi then departing for Imphal and the final campaign in Burma, including the pivotal battle of Meiktila and then to Rangoon and beyond. The vital task was to ensure the successful containment of the 33rd Japanese Army in Southern Burma. Indicative of the Battalion’s achievement and demonstrating the high esteem in which it was held, was a remarkable letter received from the Chief of Staff of the Japanese Army upon leaving Burma. There can be few equivalent plaudits in the annals of warfare. On his return to the UK in 1945 the author had the honour of presenting a Japanese sword to FM Montgomery on behalf of all Officers, VCOs and men of the 6th Battalion.

Stuart Ottowell held a wartime ‘Emergency Commission’ having passed out from Officer Training School (OTS) in 1942 at Belgaum. He chose the 7th Rajput Regiment and an active service battalion. After the War he sought a career in civilian life. He joined the Rajput Dinner Club (UK) in 1948 and subsequently became its Honorary Secretary. F.M. Cariappa attended the Club’s 50th Dinner in 1973 and in 1998 the final Dinner was held under the author’s presidency. HRH the Duke of Edinburgh was the principal guest. Present and future Colonels of the Regiment, Lieutenant General H.S. Bagga VSM and Brigadier M.L. Naidu VSM attended. Since 1987 the author has been a frequent guest at the Regimental Reunions, and the Meiktila Day celebrations with the 6th Battalion. 

ISBN  81-7304-763-4    2008   156p.   Rs.475/ pounds 35

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Asia Annual 2007: Envisaging Regions

Asia Annual 2007: Envisaging Regions

By- H.S. Vasudevan and Anita Sengupta (eds.)



In Asia Annual 2007, contributors have engaged with the notion of ‘regions’ in Asia from the standpoint of various disciplines of social sciences. In their choice of regions under discussion, the contributors have tackled Asiatic Russia, Central Asia, West Asia and South Asia—which, interestingly, comprise the very regions that have attracted the greatest attention in the realm of Area Studies since the Cold War.



The articles in this volume have approached the question of ‘regions’ from the standpoint of history, international relations and economics, which bring out the interdisciplinary character of the imagination of any region. All the contributors have emphasized the amorphous character of the category of the ‘region’ itself. They have argued that the process of conceptualization of an ‘area’ or a ‘region’ is strongly rooted in the historial conjuncture when the concept
develops. A logical conclusion which could follow from such an understanding of the
category of ‘region’ is that there is little or nothing in the featuers of a ‘region’ (barring its geography) that is immutable. This calls for an interrogation of the very discipline of Area Studies itself. The volume also includes other essays, research notes, review articles and reviews of books.





Anita Sengupta Fellow, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkatta.




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RSS’s Tryst with Politics: From Hedgewar to Sudarshan

RSS’s Tryst with Politics: From Hedgewar to Sudarshan

By- Pralay Kanungo



This RSS is perhaps the most controversial organization in contemporary India. This book explores the mission, method and motive of the RSS and suggests that the ideological core of the RSS- Hindu Rashtra- is political and not cultural. It argues that K.B. Golwalkar, his successor, despite his saintly appearance and overt distaste for ‘politics’, sharpened and amplified its ideology. Nevertheless, deep down the RSS remained political.

This book goes on to delineate how Balasaheb Deoras, the third chief, who did not have much of a fancy for ‘culture’, plunged into Indian politics on the organizational and ideological foundations created by his predecessors. Deoras seriously pursued the homogenizing agenda of the RSS to integrate different sections like the Dalits, tribals and women into the fold of the Hindu Rashtra, Rajendra Singh, the successor of Deoras, consolidated the political mission by getting control over the State and reaching out to civil society more effectively. K.S. Sudarshan, the present chief, while attempting to retain a tight control over State power, simultaneously reinforces Hindutva.

The author concludes by arguing that the RSS- from Hedgewar to Sudarshan- continues its tryst with politics to convert India into a Hindu Rashtra.

Highly readable and of contemporary relevance, this book would be of immense interest to political scientists, political sociologists and all those interested in present-day India.



Pralay Kanungo is Reader at the Department of Political Science, Ramjas College, University of Delhi. His current research is on aspects of Hindu identity and diaspora in the United States, for which he has been awarded a Fellowship by the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi.

ISBN 81-7304-506-2 2003 315p. Rs.325/ Pounds 00


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Sikh Identity: Continuity and Change

Sikh Identity: Continuity and Change

By- Pashaura Singh and N. Gerald Barrier (Eds.)

The collection of seventeen essays, two critical introduction, and a keynote speech, resulted from an International Conference on ‘Sikh Identity: Continuity and Change’ held at the University of Michigan in 1996.



The contributions are in four sections which include Introduction and Keynote Speech: Symbols of Identity and Sikh Tradition; Recent Contemporary Sikh Identity; Politics, Social Issues and Contemporary Sikh Identity. The scholarship covers a wide range of be’, a class notion of identity. Emphasized are the connections between formal, conscious and organized processes of institutional development/identity markers and the informal, unconscious and spiritual ways in which people come to know themselves. These in turn fashion responses to how others understand and accept identity. The papers address ‘Who is a Sikh?’ and provides insights from disciplines such as history, sociology, anthropology, political science and religion.



Doctrine, code of conduct, historical interpretation, authority and creative responses to changing circumstances are issues that do not lend themselves to easy solutions. Yet an open exchange of ideas and alternatives hopefully should reduce tension and lead to a resolution of differences acceptable to Sikhs as a whole. This volume makes a positive contribution toward that process.





Pashaura Singh, Assistant Professor of Sikh Studies at the University of Michigan, teaches and publishes regularly about Sikh tradition, religion and history.

N. Gerald Barrier, Professor of History at the University of Missouri- Columbia has published widely on Sikh and Punjab history. Among his recent works are edited volumes on the Sikh Diaspora and the interpretation of Sikhism within the diaspora.

ISBN 81-7304-401-5 2001 400p. Rs.350/ Pounds 00


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Social Stratification and Change in India

Social Stratification and Change in India

By- Yogendra Singh



The book offers a profile of Indian sociology in terms of its concepts and theories. It carries the reader through the creative historical period of Indian sociology following independence up to the end of the nineties. It reviews critically the studies conducted during this period on the themes of social change. Its focus is on the adequacy of concepts and theoretical schemes in these studies, but in course of this examination the dilemmas and structural contradictions in the process of social stratification and change in India have also been exposed. Prepared originally as trend reports on concepts and theories of social stratification and change in India the book carries a new and updated introduction on the two substantive themes in a conceptual theoretical perspective.

The book is in many ways sociology on Indian sociology. It exposes the foundations of concepts and theories on which most Indian studies on social stratification and change are based.



Yogendra Singh is Professor of Sociology in the Centre for the Study of Social Systems at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has taught and lectured at several universities in India and abroad, and done field work in Asian countries.

ISBN 81-7304-188-1 2009 272p. Rs.180/ Pounds 00


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