Thomas Bloom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1999) (From the backcover: "The rise of strong nationalist and religious movements in postcolonial and newly democratic countries alarms many Western observers. In The Saffron Wave, Thomas Hansen turns our attention to recent events n the world's largest democracy., India. Here he analyzes Indian receptivity to the right-wind Hindu nationalist party and its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which claims to create a polity based on ;ancient' Hindu culture. Rather than interpreting Hindu nationalism as a mainly religious phenomenon, or a strictly political movement, Hansen places the BJP within the context of the larger transformations of democratic governance in India." Hansen demonstrates that democratic transformation has enable such developments as political mobilization among the lower castes and civil protections for religious minorities. Against this backdrop, the Hindu nationalist movement has successfully articulated the anxieties and desires of the large and amorphous Indian middle class. A form of conservative populism, the movement has attracted not only privileged groups fearing encroachment on their dominant positions but also 'plebeian' and impoverished groups seeking recognition around a majoritarian rhetoric of cultural pride, order, and national strength. Combining political theory, ethnographic material, and sensitivity to colonial and postcolonial history, The Saffron Wave offer fresh insights into Indian politics and, by focusing on the links between democracy and ethnic majoritarianism, advances our understanding of democracy in the postcolonial world.").
Thomas Blom Hansen, Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2001) (From the backcover: "When Bombay changed its to Mumbai in 1995, it was the culmination of a long process that transformed India's primary symbol of modernity and cultural diversity into a site of intense ethnic conflict and violent nationalism. Wages of Violence is a startling account of how the city's atmosphere, dominated public languages, and power structures have changed since the 1960s." "The book centers on how Shiv Sena, a militant Hindu movement, has advanced a new, 'plebeian' political culture and has undermined democratic rule in India's premier city. Drawing on a large body of archival material and conversations with people from all walks of life, Thomas Blom Hansen paints a vivid picture of this dynamic and violent movement." "Challenging conventional views of recent trends in Indian politics, Hansen shows that the xenophobic public culture of today's Mumbai has deep roots in the region's history and its contested identities. We are also given reveling insights into the city's Muslim communities and the authorities' understanding and control of the ethno-religious subcultures in the city. Hansen argues cogently that Shiv Sena's success represents the violent possibilities of the 'vernacularization' of democracy in India. Unfolding at a juncture where the globalization of India's economy is having a deepening impact on the live of ordinary people, this is a story that resonates with the implications of urban growth in both India and beyond.").
Isabel Hofmeyr, Gandhi's Printing Press: Experiments in Slow Reading (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2013) ("Gandhi ... sought to slow down reading and textual production more generally. He favored hand printing and encouraged a style of reading that was patient, that paused rather than rushed ahead. He interspersed news reports with philosophical extracts, and encouraged readers to contemplate what they read rather than to hurtle forward. In effect, he experimented with an anti-commodity, copyright-free, slow-motion newspaper." "In exploring these ideas, Gandhi worked with two obvious and everyday truths, namely, that serious reading can only be done at the pace of the human body and that each reader must read on his or her own behalf. If we are to read thoughtfully, we cannot speed up the pace at which we read and cannot outsource the activity to someone else. In a Gandhian world such slow reading became one way of pausing industrial speed, and in so doing it created small moments of intellectual Independence. Reading might happen within the world of industrialized time but did not need to be entirely driven by its logic. This focus on bodily rhythm as a way of interrupting industrial tempos became central to Gandhi's larger and world-famous critiques of modernity that questioned the equation of speed with efficiency and technology with progress." Id. at 4.).
Pankaj Mishra, ed. & intro., India in Mind (New York: Vintage Departures/Vintage Books, 2005) (From Robyn Davidson, Desert Places: "The world is divided between those cultures which touch their own feces and those which don't. And it seems to me that those which do have a greater understanding of humankind's relationship to earth, our alpha and omega." Id. at 48, 53. From Andre Malraux, Anti-Memoirs: "Man can experience the presence of universal Being in all beings, and of all beings in universal Being; he discovers then the identity of all appearances, wether they be pleasure and pain, life and death, outside himself and within Being; he can reach that essence in himself which transcends his transmigrated souls, and experience its identity with the essence of a world of endless returning, which he escapes through his ineffable communion with it. But there is something at once bewitching and bewitched in Indian thought, which as to do with the feeling it gives us of climbing a sacred mountain whose summit constantly recedes; of going forward in darkness by the light of the torch which it carries. We know this feeling through some of our saints and philosophers; but it is in India alone that Being, conquered from universal appearance and metamorphosis, does not part company with them, but often becomes inseparable from them 'like the two sides of a medal,' to point the way to an inexhaustible Absolute which transcends even Being itself." Id. at 163, 173.).
Patrick Olivelle, trans., The Law Code of Manu (Oxford World's Classics) (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2004) ("The Law Code of Manu or Manava Dharmasastra (MDh) is undoutbtedly the most celebrated and best known legal text from ancient India." Id. at xvi. "Fame invite controversy, and in India itself during the twentieth century Manu became a lightening rod for both the conservative elements of the Hindu tradition and the liberal movements intent on alleviating the plight of women and low-caste and outcaste individuals. For the latter, Manu became the symbol of oppression. His verses were cited as the source of legitimation for such oppression, even though the same or similar passages are found in other and older documents." Id. at xvii. "A man who wishes to promote the Law should instruct creatures about what is best without hurting them, employing pleasant and gentle words. Only a man whose mind and speech have been purified and are always well-guarded acquires the entire fruit of reaching the end of the Veda. Though deeply hurt, let him never use cutting words, show hostility to others in thought or deed, or use aberrant language that would alarm people." "Let a Brahmin always shrink from praise, as he would from poison; let him ever yearn for scorn, as he would for ambrosia--for, a man who is scorned sleeps at ease, wakes up at ease, goes about in the world at ease; but the man who scorned him perishes." Id. at 35. "A man who is unrighteous, who has gained his wealth dishonestly, and who always takes delight in causing injury will never achieve happiness in this world. Even when he has been bought low as a result of his righteous conduct, let him never turn to unrighteous ways, seeing how quickly the fortunes of unrighteous and evil men are reversed." Id. at 77.).
Aman Sethi, A Free Man: A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi (New York & London: Norton, 2012).
Ananya Vajpeyi, Righteous Republic; The Political Foundations of Modern India (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2012) (From the bookjacket: "What India's founders derived from Western political traditions as they struggled to free their country from colonial rule is widely understood. Less well known is how India's own rich knowledge traditions of two and a half thousand years influenced these men as they set about constructing a nation in the wake of the Raj. In Righteous Republic, Ananya Vajpeyi furnishes this missing account, a groundbreaking assessment of modern Indian political thought." "Taking five of the most important founding figures--Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B. R. Ambedkar--Vajpeyi looks at how each of them turned to classical texts in order to fashion an original sense of Indian selfhood. The diverse sources i which these leaders and thinkers immersed themselves included Buddhist literature, the Bhagavad Gita, Sanskrit poetry, the edicts of Emperor Ashola, and the artistic and architectural achievements of the Mughal Empire. India's founders went to these sources not to recuperate old philosophical frameworks but to invent new ones. In righteous Republic, a portrait emerges of a group of innovative, synthetic, and cosmopolitan thinkers who succeeded in braiding together two Indian knowledge traditions, the one political and concerned with social questions, the other religious and oriented toward transcendence.").
