The Imaginary Institution of India - Politics and Ideas

Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-0-231-15223-5
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 312 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 212 mm, Gewicht: 356 g

For decades Sudipta Kaviraj has worked with and improved upon Marxist and subaltern studies, capturing India's social and political life through its diverse history and culture. While this technique has been widely celebrated in his home country, Kaviraj's essays have remained largely scattered abroad. This collection finally presents his work in one convenient volume and, in doing so, reasserts the brilliance of his approach.

As evidenced in these essays, Kaviraj's exceptional strategy positions Indian politics within the political philosophy of the West and alongside the perspectives of Indian history and indigenous political thought. Studies include the peculiar nature of Indian democracy; the specific aspects of Jawaharlal Nehru's and Indira Gandhi's regimes; political culture in independent India; the construction of colonial power; the relationship between state, society, and discourse; the structure of nationalist discourse; language and identity formation in Indian contexts; the link between development and democracy, or democratic functioning; and the interaction among religion, politics, and modernity in South Asia. Each of these essays explores the place of politics in the social life of modern India and is powered by the idea that Indian politics is plastic, reflecting and shaping the world in which people live.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kaviraj, Sudipta

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Literature as the Mirror of Modernity1. On the Advantages of Being a Barbarian2. Literature and the Moral Imaginations of Modernity3. The Two Histories of Literary Culture in Bengal4. A Strange Love of Abstractions: The Making of a Language of Patriotism in Modern Bengali5. Tagore and Transformations in the Ideals of Love6. The Poetry of Interiority: The Creation of a Language of Modern Subjectivity in Tagore's Poetry7. Laughter and Subjectivity: The Self-Ironical Tradition in Bengali Literature8. Reading a Song of the City: Images of the City in Literature and Films9. The Art of Despair: The Sense of the City in Modern Bengali Poetry10. The Invention of Private Life: A Reading of Sibnath Sastri's Autobiography11. The Second MahabharataIndex

Über Autor(innen)

Sudipta Kaviraj is professor of Indian politics and intellectual history at Columbia University. He has taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and was an Agatha Harrison Fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford.