Showing all 19 books
In his book The Social Function of Science (1939) talking about science in colonial India, J D Bernal wrote about the lack of a comprehensive critical tradition and of an internal security. Ever since I first read the comment in the 70s, I have wondered what exactly the two phrases meant. At the outer level was the obvious fact of colonialism but there were other intertwined layers needing exploration.
Bivabati Bose, author's mother and wife of Sarat Chandra Bose, 1889-1950, Indian freedom fighter and political activist.
An English translation of a classic of Gujrati Children's literature. Dariyalal is set in a Gujrati settlement in Zanzibar in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A ruthless Indian slave driver has a change of heart and exercises his valour, power and determination to compel a whole community to give up trading in slaves in eastern Africa.
This collection brings together essays by a number of scholars, researchers and professionals in the field of music, offering a wide range of viewpoints and approaches to the impact of modernity on the traditional practices of North Indian classical music. Specialists in the field of history of technology, instrument-making, record collection and preservation, as well as performing artists and researchers in the history and aesthetics of music focus on the impact ...
Through her close study of how criminals were handled and treated in the British prisons in Colonial Bengal in the period under review, Dr. Madhurima Sen shows an administration wavering between the new ideas in the air perceiving the prison as a site of moral reform of the convict and the punitive thrust that came more naturally to the colonial rulers. She ferrets through a large body of archival material, documents, reports, and reminiscences, to reconstruct ...
It was Dr R K Dasgupta who suggested a new edition of Portraits and Memories by S C Sengupta (Jijnasa, Calcutta 1975). We would have liked Dr Dasgupta to contribute to this volume a memorial piece on the author in the manner in which he had recorded his recollections of some of his teachers and contemporaries. Dr Dasgupta has not been keeping well for some time, and regretting his inability, he advised us to use an earlier piece he had written on S C Sengupta ...
Early responses to his work by major contemporaries like Jeans, Eddington, Russell, Mitchell, and Harlow Shapley, a more recent scholarly documentation of his work and its repercussions, and evaluations by younger Indian scientists. They add up to offer an image of Saha as man, scientist and politician – and humanist – against the setting of the complex historic experience of colonial India moving towards independence and development. Saha’s role in ...
Originally written in Bengali, these nine sensitive and poignant short stories depicts the sordidness, degeneracy and boredom of the dispossessed middle class in Bengal. These nine stories by Somen Chanda portray with great realism and sensitivity the anguish, frustrations and concerns of the rural middle class in Bengal during 1940s. Though realistic, these stories also have a certain lyrical quality about them, which is a hallmark of Bengali literature.
In generating craze, creating hype, engendering glamour and promoting extravaganza, the glittering and apparently burgeoning face of the Indian film industry masks an enigma. At the best of times, a chaotic mess of speculative activities, shadowy deals and unabashed profligacy; and at the worst of times, reeking of mindlessness, throwing economic logic and business ethics to the winds, it is a high-risk sector, hovering perilously between successive periods of ...
Even as Victorian England sought means and methods to 'manage' its poor through new laws, the colonial rulers of India found the European poor in India a threat to the myth of superiority and homogeneity they were busy building up for the British ruling class.This study focuses on this particular section of European settlers in India, referred to in contemporary official papers as the 'low Europeans' or 'mean whites'; which loosely meant a ...
Aishika Chakraborty, dancer and dance scholar, brings together a comprehensive selection of the dance writings of Ranjabati Sircar (1963-99)--essays, seminar papers, interviews, reviews, production notes--illustrating a highly critical and percipient mind discovering and articulating fresh possibilities in the new Indian dance; and critiquing a wide range of international performances from an original point of view; with photographs by Avinash Pasricha, Dayanita ...