Writer, thinker, public intellectual, human rights activist–Ashis Nandy occupies an extraordinary place in the public life of India. The author of many groundbreaking works, he enjoys wide readership, and is one of the world’s leading cultural theorists. Nandy’s work covers a vast terrain and has offered some of the most trenchant critiques of the modern nation-state system, the supposed rationality of science, the pretensions of development, and the zero-sum politics of our times. Writing on subjects as diverse as the popular Hindi film, psychoanalysis, the cinema of Satyajit Ray, childhood, Gandhian politics, the politics of utopias, and the politics of the future, he lays bare the oppressive nature of modernity and provides a different framework for social action and alternative conceptions of culture. This volume is the first attempt to engage with the work of one of the most exciting thinkers of our times. One section consists of Nandy’s essays: some of which are autobiographical in nature; some written for The Times of India suggest his stature as a public intellectual while others point to the principal themes in his work, besides furnishing evidence of his unique sensibility. A separate section offers some analytical perspectives on Nandy’s work by contributors including leading scholars in the academy, as well as outside it. Scholarly and topical, this volume is essential reading for students of Indian society, culture, politics and history; political psychologist and theorists; cultural critics; and scholars across disciplines.
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