Manohar Publishers and Distributors

06 November, 2012

RSS’S Tryst with Politics: From Hedgewar to Sudarshan

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. Hedgewar the founder of the RSS, had a clear political mission, while M.S. 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 foundation 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 314p. Rs.325/Pounds 18.99

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Punjab Politics, 1936–1939

The Start of Provincial Autonomy

Governor’s Fortnightly Reports and other Key Documents

By - Lionel Carter (Comp. and ed.)

This volume produces the texts of 123 fortnightly reports and other documents sent to the Viceroy by the Governors of the Punjab or their secretaries between 1936 and 1939. The Governors’ descriptions of their many tours throughout the Province provide a vivid picture of the Punjab in these last self-confident years of the Raj. There is much discussion of political developments taking place within the various communities. Congress was relatively weak in the Punjab at the start of the volume but its growing importance is evident at the close. The volume is dominated by the personality and activities of the Muslim Premier of the ruling Unionist Party, Sir Sikander Hyat Khan. His negotiation of a Pact with Jinnah’s Muslim League in October 1937 was to prove a milestone of the pre-independence years. The documents show the problems which arose in the actual working-out of the arrangements then agreed.

For more than 10 years. Lionel Carter was a member of the team (led by Nicholas Mansergh) which produced the British Government’s series of Documents on the Transfer of Power to India, 1942-47. From 1980 until 1999, Carter served as Secretary and Librarian of the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge. Carter has compiled a volume of Chronicles of British Business in Asia, 1850-1960 (Manohar, 2002) and has edited Mountbatten’s Report on the Last Viceroyalty (Manohar, 2003).

ISBN 978-81-7304-568-4 2004 444p. Rs.995/Pounds 60

Power, Politics and Rural Development: Essays on India

By- G.K. Lieten

Based on fifteen years of intensive anthropological and sociological fieldwork, this book presents provocative insights in the daily life of men and women in various villages of India.

The topics dealt with are varied as also important and policy relevant. The author deals with the propensity of the village panchayats and their actual working in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, the impact of land reforms on development, the causes of the high human development index in Kerala, communalism at the village level, the views of poor villagers on the post-modernist views on development, child labour and family views on children as capital, and with the changing world view in relation to religion, caste and the position of women.

The author deals with these issues drawing on a multifaceted background, taking care at the same time that the views of the villagers, and their daily concerns come through as the principal empirical evidence.

G.K. Lieten has a long-standing research interest in South Asia, which started with his studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi in the early 1970s. He has written and edited a dozen books on India, the latest of which deal with land reforms in West Bengal and the functioning of panchayats in Uttar Pradesh. He is presently working on the development debate and on issues related to child labour in various developing countries. Kristoffel Lieten is a professor at the University of Amsterdam, where he teaches development sociology, and is associated with the Amsterdam School of Social Science Research.

ISBN 81-7304-475-9 2003 284p. Rs.575/Pounds 45

05 November, 2012

The Plough and The Pen : Peasantry, Agriculture, and the Literati in Colonial Bengal

By- Bipasha Raha

Since the 1830s Bengal witnessed a vast outpouring of creative writing. Their authors came from diverse social background. In some cases their portrayal of the peasantry was a manifestation of their coherent agrarian thinking. The interest centred on the legal and social status of peasants; types of tenures and their obligations; organization of agrarian production; impact of world economic forces on agrarian economy and; existing land legislations.

This book brings forward hitherto unexplored aspects of literati perception of peasants and agriculture in colonial Bengal. It focuses on representation of the peasant in different literary genres, on issues related to agriculture and rural resuscitation at a time when there was intensification of the nationalist movement and the necessity of acquiring a mass base becomes crucial for some members of the literati. Analysis of vernacular literature, including tract literature and those authored by men not well known socially, much of it still untapped, makes this book a pioneering one.

This book will be of interest to students, researchers and scholars of history, sociology, literature and South Asian studies.

Bipasha Raha is Associate Professor of History at Visva-Bharati (a central University), Santiniketan. She was awarded the Charles Wallace Fellowship by the Charles Wallace India Trust.

ISBN 978-81-7304-941-5 2003 318p. Rs.975/Pounds 50

Perso-Arabic Hybrids in Hindi: The Socio-Linguistic and Structural Analysis

By- Agnieszka Kuczkiewicz-Fraś

From the very beginning of its existence Hindi has been subjected to foreign influences. Close contact with Persian brought to India by Muslim invaders, lasting for several centuries, has borne fruit in the form of an enormous quantity of borrowings of different types. It has also reached the most advanced stage in the whole process of enriching one language by the elements of the other—the phenomenon of hybridization, creating words of mixed Perso-Hindi etymology, has appeared.

Though hybrid words exist probably in every language, in Hindi their role is particular. They demonstrate its extraordinary ability for syncretising new, alien components without much harm to itself.

The main aim of this book is to show the scale of hybrid Perso-Arabic word-formation in Hindi and to discuss the factors that have been influencing this hybridsation. The features and linguistic processes crucial to it have also been pointed out.

Agnieszka Kuczkiewicz-Fraś studied Indian Philology in Poland and did her M.A. and Ph.D. in Hindi linguistics from the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland, where she presently teaches Hindi, Urdu and Indian History. She has published several articles on Hindi-Urdu linguistics and on the problems of translation from Indian literataure.

ISBN 81-7304-498-8 2003 190p. Rs.400/Pounds 35

02 November, 2012

People’s Movements in the Princely States

By- Y. Vaikuntham (ed)

People’s movements in the Princely States forms an important aspect in the history of modern India with 45 per cent of the land and 24 per cent of the people, the Princely States played second fiddle to the imperial dictates. From the nineteenth century, till they joined Indian Union in 1947-8, mostly lived under the umbrella of the British. They never took serious measures or introduced steps for radical transformation of the states. There was no coherent place for the princes in the British Imperial ideology. When the princes were using different strategies to retain centralized power, the people fought against the princes to demand for responsible government and later to force them to join Indian Union. This was an absorbing encounter and an incredible story. In fact, not many books are there to cover as many states discussing the situation in the Princely States. In fact, the growth of nationalism in those autocratic Princely States was difficult, slow and painstaking. The present book tries to answer some of these issues. This book broadly covers number of Princely States, including Hyderabad, Mysore, Travancore, Jammu & Kashmir, Gwalior and small states like Nilgiri in Orissa, Banaganapalle in Andhra Pradesh. Simultaneously along with anti-colonial struggle, the people’s movements in Princely States symbolizes their struggle against the feudal and autocratic princes, which helped in the ushering of Indian Union once India got Independence.

Yallampalli Vaikuntham is a Professor of History and Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, Osmania University. He was a former Vice-Chancellor of Kakatiya University, Warangal.

ISBN 978-81-7304-528-8 2004 246p. Rs.500/Pounds 40

Paradigms of Dissent and Protest: Social Movements in Eastern India (c. ad 1400-1700)

By- Basanta Kumar Mallik

This book focuses on the historical perspectives of state formation in Orissa from sixth century to sixteenth century ad and on the process of how tribals were integrated and their indigenous culture was assimilated into the Sanskritic mainstream life.

The cultural deprivation of the larger common people initiated widespread dissents and protests. The leadership of this movement was taken up by a team of Sudramunis of the pre-Colonial Orissa. The composition of epics like the Mahabharata, the Jagamohan Ramayana, the Harivamsa and other devotional poems in colloquial Oriya by the Sudramunis was indeed, an intellectual challenge against the orthodoxy and literary hegemony of the established order which has been vividly analysed in this book. ‘Knowledge can not be monopolized by a particular section of society nor it can be expressed in a particular language’ was the lofty message of these Sudramunis.

The study of the regional cultural interaction between Orissa, Bengal and Assam has been well defined emphasizing the spread of egalitarian outlook through the Samkirtan movement of Sri Chaitanya. The period ad 1400-1700 in the history of eastern India has proved to be very important that it witnessed an emerging trend not only of the protest against social cleavages but also an endeavour to the assimilatory compromise with a changing direction of the order for social cohesion.

Basanta Kumar Mallik teaches History in the Utkal University, Vani Vihar, Bhubaneswar.

ISBN 978-81-7304-522-6 2004 230p. Rs.475/Pounds 40