Culture, Vernacular Politics, and the Peasants: India, 1889-1950 : An Edited Translation of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati's Mera Jivan Sangharsh (My Life Struggle) /
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India's twentieth-century struggle for political freedom was and remains an epic achievement in the human experience. Quite apart from its global influence, this is perhaps as familiar a story as it is remarkable, given the legacy of Gandhi, among others of that small generation of founders, whose unique leadership roles are rightly considered to have been transformational in the achievement of freedom in 1947, and in the promulgation of the Constitution of January 1950. But it must then also be said that the roles of the founding leadership were balanced and in many ways defined by the people of India themselves, primarily its peasants, whether the generic masses of Gandhi's definition and direction, or the independent and self aware peasants of the field. It is this broader peasant story, and particularly that of the deeply engaged peasants of the kisan andolan, the peasant movement of the late 1920s and the 1930s, that appears here in the words of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati. It was their shared experience, or as Sahajanand put it more pointedly and more accurately, their common struggle. In fact, Sahajanand and the peasants had lived this history, and the Swami recorded it for posterity in his 1952 Hindi memoir Mera Jivan Sangharsh ( My Life Struggle ), translated here for the first time by Walter Hauser and Kailash Jha. Given Sahajanand's direct involvement in this history, his representation of the peasant story from the perspective of the peasants amounts to a paradigm shift in how the lives of the peasants of India have been understood and represented over time, either in politics or in scholarship. The intimacy, detail, and ethnographic richness of peasant activism as conveyed by Sahajanand is simply unique. This is true for many reasons, not least because the peasants understood fully what their struggles and movement meant, not only in social, cultural, and economic terms, but equally so in political, conceptual, and ultimately in human terms. It was their voice, loud and clear, and hence their history.
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1 online resource (760 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004753921
My Life Struggle : A Translation of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati's Mera Jivan Sangharsh /
:
India's twentieth-century struggle for political freedom was and remains an epic achievement in the human experience. Quite apart from its global influence, this is perhaps as familiar a story as it is remarkable, given the legacy of Gandhi, among others of that small generation of founders, whose unique leadership roles are rightly considered to have been transformational in the achievement of freedom in 1947 and in the promulgation of the Constitution of January 1950. But it must then also be said that the roles of the founding leadership were balanced and in many ways defined by the people of India themselves, primarily its peasants, whether the generic masses of Gandhi's definition and direction, or the independent and self- aware peasants of the field. It is this broader peasant story, and particularly that of the deeply engaged peasants of the kisan andolan, the peasant movement of the late 1920s and the 1930s, that appears here in the words of Swami Sahajanand Saraswati. It was their shared experience, or as Sahajanand put it more pointedly and more accurately, their common struggle. In fact, Sahajanand and the peasants had lived this history, and the Swami recorded it for posterity in his 1952 Hindi memoir Mera Jivan Sangharsh (My Life Struggle), translated here by Walter Hauser and Kailash Jha. Given Sahajanand's direct involvement in this history, his representation of the peasant story from the perspective of the peasants amounts to a paradigm shift in how the lives of the peas¬ants of India have been understood and represented overtime, either in politics or in scholarship. The intimacy, detail, and ethnographic richness of peasant activism as conveyed by Sahajanand is simply unique. This is true for many reasons, not least because the peasants understood fully what their struggles and movement meant, not only in social, cultural, and economic terms, but equally so in political, conceptual, and ultimately in human terms. It was their voice, loud and clear, and hence their history.
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1 online resource (464 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004753914
Memories of a Malabar Lady : M. Sreekumari Vasudevan's Reminiscences of Life with Justice K.S. Menon 1926-1956 /
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Memories of a Malabar Lady: M. Sreekumari Vasudevan's Reminiscences of Life with Justice K.S. Menon, 1926-1956 , emerged from conversations between a mother and son spanning a decade. It recalls Sreekumari Vasudevan's early life in the company of her father, K.S. Menon, whose career in the law took them from Mamballikalam, the matrilineal family estate in Malabar, to Madras, other places in Madras Presidency, and the princely state of Jodhpur. It is a story of smaller units and individuals in a sprawling joint family and a young woman's widening arc of experience. The book is remarkable for how Hari Vasudevan combines the skills of a professional historian and the empathy of a son to fashion the story of an era through the personal, modest and smaller scenes of historical change. This book was in manuscript form when Hari passed away, and was finalized for publication by Ravi Vasudevan.
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1 online resource (272 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004752764
Serving India : A Political Biography of Subimal Dutt (1903-1992), India's Longest Serving Foreign Secretary /
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This is the first academic biography of Subimal Dutt, best known as India's longest serving Foreign Secretary, covering the nearly nine eventful decades of his life. It tells the story how a Bengali village boy without any connections had one of the most distinguished careers of his generation without ever forgetting his roots. Struggling all his life between professional ambition and deep spirituality, Dutt never transformed into one of those 'brown Englishmen' so typical of South Asia's civil servants, but remained a strictly impartial, straightforward and incorruptible officer of - as he formulated it himself - the 'vernacular type'. Intellect and discipline brought him into the Indian Civil Service and soon to Delhi, where he excelled as an outstanding administrator and moved into the field of foreign relations. After an interlude as Indian Agent in Malaya, as Bengal's Secretary for Agriculture he held a most important posting during the Second World War. Working closely with Nehru in his capacity as Commonwealth and later Foreign Secretary for over twelve years, he became one of the most influential advisors of India's first Prime Minister. His career seemed to come to an end as Secretary to the President and later Vigilance Commissioner, but in 1972 he was appointed India's first High Commissioner to Bangladesh, building bridges between the country of his birth and the one he had chosen in 1947. Though Dutt made it a point to be nearly invisible throughout his career, thereafter he did everything possible to be rediscovered posthumously.
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1 online resource (616 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004752467
My Journey : A Tale of two Births /
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My Journey: A Tale of Two Births is the unputdownable saga of the two avatars of the eminent Odissi danseuse Ileana Citaristi. Growing up in the times of hippie culture, among the flower children of the seventies, Ileana Citaristi's life is a fascinating story of a rebellious soul which migrates across continents, from the small town of Bergamo in the mountainous ranges of north Italy to bustling Cuttack on the east coast of India. In this autobiography, Ileana recounts her journey, going back in time to the sixties, in her frst avatar, doing it all; from a rebellious teenager to acting in theatre, from researching in Western psychoanalysis of Carl Gustav Jung to Tibetan mandala, from hitch-hiking across a pre-Taliban Kabul to entering India and learning Kathakali in Kerala, from being high on LSD to turning vegetarian, and finally metamorphosing from a bohemian foreigner to a disciplined Indianized shishya. In the second avatar she takes a gigantic leap of faith, when she embraces an alien land and language as her own and surrenders everything at the feet of her Guru, Shri Kelucharan Mohapatra, to learn the ancient art form of Odissi, she is able to give shape to the inner strivings of her soul.
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1 online resource (284 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004752337