Manohar Publishers and Distributors

30 November, 2012

The Good Country: Individual, Situation and Society in Saurashtra

The Good Country: Individual, Situation and Society in Saurashtra

By- Harald Tambs-Lyche

Dealing with Saurashtra, a complex but little studied part of western India, this book extends monographic treatment to an entire region, and thereby reveals the dynamic and changing nature of relations between castes. Town, village and hamlet all participate as backgrounds for the image people in Saurashtra have of their society, while the ever-present past informs them of the past itinerary of present groups, and provides a diachronic perspective on the power relations that inform the system and pervades the consciousness of the regional population. Their knowledge of society extends both through changing relations over time and variation within the region. Though considerable, such knowledge is always and necessarily partial. Constant but differing efforts are made to relate such knowledge to the precepts of caste society as structuring the image of the whole. But such efforts are made by people who are differently situated, and who construct contradictory images, of which the most important, traditionally, are those emanating from the feudal past, and those linked to the merchant communities. Thus caste cannot fruitfully be seen as a single structure, in static and synchronic terms. By analysing interaction in various settings, the author shows how the encounters of daily life are embedded in the rank consciousness peculiar to India, while difference is constantly underscored in hierarchizing discourse. In this study, the individual emerges as an agent of the hierarchical order, with an image of the self just as individual as his Western counterpart though differently constructed.

Harald Tambs-Lyche received his Ph.D. from the Univesity of Bergen in 1972. After early work on Indian immigrants in Europe, he has worked on Saurashtra since 1973, and has published a volume on the emergence of its traditional society: Power, Profit and Poetry (Manohar, 1997); and edited a collection of articles on The Feminine Sacred in South Asia (Manohar, 1999), A study of Scandinavian missionaries among the Santals, in collaboration with Marine Carrin, is being prepared for publication. He is presently working on ethnic and religious revitalization in Karnataka, and a Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Picardie–Jules Verne, Amiens, France.

ISBN 978-81-7304-417-5 2004 354p. Rs.795/Pounds 55

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25 November, 2012

The Forging of Nationhood

By- Gyanendra Pandey and Peter Geschiere (eds.)

Unlike most writings on nationalism, and the related concepts of development and modernity, this book is the product of a conversation begun among historians of the South—or what used to be known as the ‘Third World’. It shows how much there is to learn about these facets of the modern world from closer attention to the experience of the directly or indirectly colonized parts of Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America and, no less importantly, from direct interaction between scholars from these regions.

The notions of nationhood and liberal development have been disseminated so successfully in recent times that they have come to be viewed almost as ‘natural’. It is easy to forget how long and difficult the struggle has been to establish ideas of popular sovereignty and individual equality as universally applicable rights. For, as this book demonstrates, the rhetoric of the inclusive claims of liberty and equality that nationalism and other related movements promote is accompanied by the practice of exluding numerous classes, communities and individuals from precisely these claims. This happens to be the case both within, and across, nations. Indeed, the story of nationalism and of modern ‘civilization’ could scarcely have been written without such exclusions.

Several papers in this volume show how members of excluded groups can suffer from nationalism’s impatience with difference, and conclude with the hope of reforming the nation state. Yet their collective contributions also suggest that the concept of the essential, cultural nation—and perhaps therefore the idea of the nation itself, as it has been handed down to us—needs serious questioning; and with that of course the existing forms of the modern state.

Gyanendra Pandey was Professor of History at the University of Delhi from 1986 to 1998, before moving to his present position as Professor of History and Anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA.

Peter Geschiere taught History and Anthropology at the Free University (Amsterdam), the Erasmus University (Rotterdam) and the EHESS (Paris/Marseille). At present he is Professor of African Anthropology at Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam.

ISBN 81-7304-425-2 2003 304p. Rs.500/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

24 November, 2012

The Feminine Sacred in South Asia

By- Harald Tambs-Lyche (ed)

Published in association with

Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, France

South Asia is the only major region where the ‘Great Goddess’ is still a living reality for believers—yet its society remains male-dominated. Drawing their examples from ritual practice, myth, and sacred texts the contributors to this volume discuss the place of the feminine within the sacred sphere of South Asian religion. The theme is full of contradictions, for the impurity of woman must be held against the powers she incarnates, and the religious status of these powers is an old theme of debate among Hindu and Buddhist thinkers. Finally, the feminine pole in religious thought cannot simply be equated with human womanhood. . . . Yet the very presence of feminity in the sacred sphere contrasts with its exclusion from scriptural Islam or from protestantism, and offers, perhaps, to women a mode of religious expression in an idiom where gender is a central paradigm of thought.

This volume then, contributing to the debate on feminity in South Asian religion, should also be of interest to scholars dealing with gender in a broader perspective.

Harald Tambs-Lyche, a social anthropologist, is professor of ethnology at the University of Picardie-Jules Verne, Amiens (France). He has worked on Gujaratis at home and abroad (London Patidars, Routledge, 1980; Power, Profit and Poetry, Manohar, 1997). He is currently doing fieldwork in Karnataka.

ISBN 978-81-7304-246-1 2004 148p. Rs.300/Pounds 35

22 November, 2012

The Bengal Sultanate: Politics, Economy and Coins (AD 1205-1576)

The Bengal Sultanate: Politics, Economy and Coins (ad 1205-1576)

By- Syed Ejaz Hussain

The book presents a comprehensive account of the politico-economic history of Bengal, from ad 1205 to 1576. It has made extensive use of coins and epigraphs to interpret and substantiate the historical narrative culled out from the contemporaneous chronicles and travelogues.

The first six chapters trace the political history. The topics like the date of Bakhtiyar Khalji’s conquest of Bengal; the rule of the Governors and later of the independent Sultans; Bengal’s relations with the neighboring kingdoms; and its role in the regional politics and economy in different phases of history, have been discussed in the light of some hitherto untapped historical material. The debate of Bengal’s isolation from the north and south India has also been revisited.

The seventh chapter traces the administrative hierarchy, power and functions of the state functionaries while in the eighth chapter the economy of the region, inter-local, coastal and foreign trade as well as the currency pattern have been described.

The entire narrative is enriched by a corpus of rare coins spread over 32 plates. Two appendices, the first giving the revised chronology of the rulers of Bengal, and the second listing the mint towns, together with thematic maps, make the book a veritable reference work for medieval Indian history and numismatics.

Dr Syed Ejaz Hussain belongs to the family of late Syed Luqman Haider, a devotee of education and learning, who founded the Town High School at Ara (Bihar) as early as 1882. In 1983, he topped in M.A. (History) from Magadh University, Bodh-Gaya and was awarded gold medal. He obtained Ph.D. degree in History from Patna University, Patna in 1991. Dr Ejaz has contributed a number of research papers in national and international conferences as well as in learned journals. He has toured extensively in India and abroad and has consulted the coin-cabinets such as those of the American Numismatic Society, New York; the British Museum, London and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. He has also received the Charles Wallace (India) Trust Fellowship to study the Sultanate coins in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and is preparing a Catalogue of the said series. Presently Dr Ejaz teaches History in Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan.

ISBN 81-7304-482-1 2003 486p. Rs.1100/Pounds 90

20 November, 2012

The Afghan War and Its Geopolitical Implications for India

By- Salman Haidar (ed)

Published in association with

Academy of Third World Studies, New Delhi

Few countries have been more affected by the US-led war against Afghanistan than India. There was initial hope that the war would stamp out the terrorism plaguing India but this was soon belied, and the Afghan situation remains highly unpredictable. By now, America’s interest has shifted elsewhere, yet the military presence it has established all around Afghanistan profoundly affects the geopolitical picture in the heart of Asia. The powerful lure of oil and gas has begun to open up a region once off limits to the West, and new commercial and political rivalries are taking shape.

The Academy of Third World Studies of Jamia Millia Islamia recently organized a seminar where a number of noted experts looked in depth at events in an around Afghanistan, its history, current situation and future prospects; also what it tells us about today’s unipolar world. The newly acquired significance of Central Asia is highlighted and the special situation of Iran analysed. There is also an account of how developments in Central Asia explain policy-making processes in the former hegemon Russia.

Collectively, these papers are an illuminating study of events whose full implications can only be guessed at but whose relevance to India’s future strategy cannot be bypassed.

Salman Haidar is a former diplomat who retired from the Indian Foreign Service in 1997 as Foreign Secretary. He is currently associated with the Academy of Third World Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, and also with the Centre for Research in Ruural and Industrial Development, Chandigarh.

ISBN 978-81-7304-558-5 2004 200p. Rs.425/Pounds 40

Text and Context in the History, Literature and Religion of Orissa

By- Angelika Malinar, Johannes Beltz and Heiko Frese (eds)

The last decades of the twentieth century have witnessed an enlarged understanding of the notion of ‘text’ as not only comprising written documents, but also rituals, artifacts and the like. Thereby, ‘texts’ were brought closer to the social religious or historical contexts that help to interpret texts. Scholars, traditionally divided in different disciplines that deal either more with texts (historians, philologists, etc.) or with contexts (sociologists anthropologists, etc.) became interested in the methods and perspectives of the other disciplines. This has resulted in a renewed interest in the theoretical issues implied in the notions of text and context. The essays in this volume reflect these debates and show how they influence and enrich research on South Asia.

Anthropologists, historians, literary critics, philologists and historians of religion deal with the mutli-layered interplay between texts and contexts in past and present Orissa. Orissa, renowned for the cults related to the Jagannatha Temple in Puri, is marked by a rich cultural diversity. In dealing with the interdependence between text and context the eassys provide fresh insights to the complexity and fluidity of cultural contexts that use text as stable points of reference. The traditions of Orissa are considered in their uniqueness as well as in their relationship to South Asian cultural contexts on a larger scale.

Angelika Malinar is Associate Professor at the Institute for Indian Languages. Literatures and Art History of Free University of Berlin. Her major publications are on the history and the modern religious movements of Hinduism, epics and Puranas, Indian philosophy and aesthetics, and modern Hindi literature.

Johannes Beltz is Research Fellow at the South Asia Institute of the University of Heidelberg. He studied theology and Indian religions in Halle, Strasbourg, Lausanne and Paris, and received his Ph.D. in 1999. Currently, he is Assistant Curator at the Rietberg Museum, Zurich.

Heiko Fress, Ph.D., is Research Associate at the University of Kiel. He is presently working on a research project on historiography in seventeenth to twentieth century Orissa sponsored by the German Research Council.

ISBN 978-81-7304-566-0 2004 520p. Rs.1150/Pounds 95

19 November, 2012

Terrorism Post 9/11: An Indian Perspective

By- P.R. Chari and Suba Chandran (eds)

India has been facing a wide range of terrorist threats emanating from diverse groups with objectives purporting to being inspired by leftist, rightist, secular and sectarian ideologies. Some groups are plainly criminal organizations. They have used different tactics to achieve their ends ranging from hit and run tactics to fidayeen (suicide) attacks. The terrorists have used a variety of weapons to create mayhem including small arms. Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), shoulder fired rockets and human bombs. Since India lies between two volatile regions—South East Asia and Central Asia that are centres for arms and drugs smuggling, the availability of weapons to the terrorists is not a problem.

9/11 changed the contours of the international system. It also enhanced the terrorist threat to India. Pakistan’s role in the War against Terrorism has informed its promotion of terrorist activities across its eastern border after it was coerced into assisting the US campaign against terrorism on Pakistan’s western border and in Afghanistan. The terrorist attacks against the J&K Assembly and the Indian Parliament, the Army camp at Kaluchak and the Akshardham/Raghunath temples are manifestations of this new reality.

This volume brings together the entire range of issues relating to terrorism in India, the efforts made by the Indian government to combat this menace, its successes and failures, besides profiling some of the significant terrorist groups in South Asia. A documentation section provides information on the legal framework available to assist the anti-terrorism campaign.

P.R. Chari, former member of the Indian Administrative Services, has held several important positions including Additional Secretary, Ministry of Defence and Director, Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses. He was International Fellow, Centre for International Affairs, Harvard University and is currently Director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS) He has worked extensively on nuclear disamandment non-proliferation and Indian defence issues and is the author of many distinguished publications.

Suba Chandran has been with the IPCS since 1998 and currently is working on the Ford Foundation study on India’s Security Problematique. With a doctoral degree from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, his research interests include Pakistan, Kashmir Indo-Pak relations and suicide terrorism. He is a recipient of the Ford ACDIS Fellowship and will be working at the ACDIS, University of Illinois starting from June 2003 for six months on Limited War between India and Pakistan.

ISBN 81-7304-510-0 2003 310p. Rs.450/Pounds 19.99