New Books in South Asian Studies

Ritu G. KhanduriView on AmazonCaricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2014) is a wonderful piece of visual anthropology by Ritu Gairola Khanduri, which uses the history of cartoons, from colonial to current times, to talk about various aspects of Indian society from the state, to political society to modernity. Through archival material and fascinating discussions with cartoonists, the book reveals the various ways in which cartoons talk in India, past and present.  

Mukulika BanerjeeView on AmazonWhy India Votes? (Routledge, 2014) is the latest book by Mukulika Banerjee and is a deep, engaging and continually surprising account of elections in India. Weaving together ethnographic research in fieldsites across the country, the book privileges the voice of ordinary voters as they experience the campaign, play with language and enter the polling booth. The answer to Why India Votes? is as complex as it is fascinating and the book will be of interest to scholars of South Asia and democracy, as well as general readers who want to understand the world's largest regularly organised event.

Cabeiri RobinsonView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Islamic Studies] The idea of jihad is among the most keenly discussed yet one of the least understood concepts in Islam. In her brilliant new book Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists (University of California Press, 2013), Cabeiri Robinson, Associate Professor of International Studies and South Asian Studies at the University of Washington engages the question of what might an anthropology of jihad look like. By shifting the focus from theological and doctrinal discussions on the normative understandings and boundaries of jihad in Islam, Robinson instead asks the question of how people live with perennial violence in their midst? The focus of this book is on the Jihadists of the Kashmir region in the disputed borderlands between India and Pakistan, especially in relation to their experiences as refugees (muhajirs). By combining a riveting ethnography with meticulous historical analysis, Robinson documents the complex ways in which Kashmiri men and women navigate the interaction of violence, politics, and migration.  Through a careful reading of Kashmiri Jihadist discourses on human rights, the family, and martyrdom, Robinson convincingly shows that the very categories of warrior, victim, and refugee are always fluid and subject to considerable tension and contestation. In our conversation, we talked about the relationship between the categories of Jihad and Hijra as imagined by Kashmiri Jihadists, the ethical and methodological dilemmas of an ethnographer of Jihad, the mobilization of the human rights discourse by Kashmiri militant groups to legitimate violence, and the intersections of family, sexuality, and martyrdom. All students and scholars of Islam, South Asia, and modern politics must read this fascinating book that was also recently awarded the Bernard Cohn book prize for best first book in South Asian Studies by the Association for Asian Studies.

View on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Buddhist Studies] In India in the Chinese Imagination: Myth, Religion, and Thought (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), eleven scholars (including editors John Kieschnick and Meir Shahar) examine the Chinese reception of Indian ideas and myth, and address Chinese attempts to recreate India within the central kingdom.  Beginning with Victor Mair's argument that it was Buddhist theories about reality that allowed fiction to flourish in China, and ending with Stephen R. Bokenkamp's study of celestial scripts that Daoists created in response to the appearance of Sanskrit and the Devanāgarī script in China, the volume focuses primarily on the fourth to tenth centuries but addresses dynamics that were at play both before and after this six-century period. While many previous studies that address the impact of India on China do so by focusing on the Chinese transformation of Buddhism and on the degree to which Chinese Buddhism retained this or that Indian feature, this volume differs in that it looks at the influence of Indian thought (particularly religious thought and myths) beyond the confines of Buddhism proper.  Meir Shahar and Bernard Faure's respective contributions are good examples of this, as they demonstrate that some of the Indian deities and demons who came to China with Tantric Buddhism exchanged their Buddhist robes for Daoist ones, or escaped into the wider world of Chinese religious thought and practice.  Another central theme of the book is the way in which Chinese turned to Indian models for religious and political ends, or, in other cases, attempted to recreate India within China.  Shi Zhiru, for example, explains how a tenth-century king of Wuyue sought to manufacture and distribute 84,000 stūpas, a clear emulation of the great Indian king Aśoka. In addition to the aforementioned scholars, the volume contains chapters by Yamabe Nobuyoshi, Ye Derong, the late John R. McRae, Robert H. Sharf, and Christine Mollier.  This book will be of particular interest to those wanting to learn more about Indian myth in East Asia, the Chinese reception of Indian ideas and symbols, the interaction between Daoism and Buddhism, the adapting of Buddhist monasticism to Chinese familial organization, Bodhidharma, the influence of Buddhism on Chinese literature, and the Chinese response to Buddhist doctrinal dilemmas.

Nausheen H. AnwarView on AmazonIn Infrastructure Redux: Crisis, Progress in Industrial Pakistan and Beyond (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Nausheen H. Anwar explores double-edged narratives of development. Through detailed case studies of Sialkot and Faisalabad, as well as analyses of development in Pakistan since independence and the impact of liberalized trade policies on industrial labour, the book explores how ideas of both crisis and progress frame the country's infrastructure.

Pamela PriceView on AmazonThe Writings of Pamela Price: State, Politics, and Cultures in Modern South India: Honour, Authority, and Morality (Orient BlackSwan, 2013) is a wonderful collection of ten essays by historian Pamela Price, that originally appeared between 1979 and 2010. The essays, as well as touching on the concepts of honour, authority and morality in different south Indian regions also broadly address questions of continuity and change. Drawing on debates from anthropology and political science, the book offers insights into how these above mentioned concepts shift across historical periods and how they appear in different linguistic and cultural regions.

Sarah BeskyView on AmazonIn this wonderful ethnography of Darjeeling tea, Sarah Besky explores different attempts at bringing justice to plantation life in north east India. Through explorations into fair trade, geographic indication and a state movement for the Nepali tea workers, Besky critically assesses the limits of projects that fail to address underlying exploitative structures. The Darjeeling Distinction: Labor and Justice on Fair-Trade Plantations in India (University of California Press, 2014) is a readable and theoretically nuanced book that should be of interest to many.

Kavita DatlaView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Islamic Studies] In her brilliant new book, The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India (University of Hawaii Press, 2013), Kavita Datla, Associate Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College, explores the interaction of language, nationalism, and secularism by focusing on the religious and social imaginaries of important twentieth century Muslim scholars from the state of Hyderabad, especially those associated with the institution of Osmania University. How were Urdu and Arabic mobilized for projects of nationalism by the pioneers of Osmania University, and in what ways can a history of such intellectual and social projects complicate the religion/secular binary? This is among the central questions that anchor the conceptual stakes of this important book. By effortlessly weaving together a close reading of previously unexplored primary texts with nuanced historiographical analysis of the colonial context, Datla presents an intellectually rich and exciting examination of modern Indian Muslim understandings of and engagements with the question of nationalism. In our conversation, we talked about the problem of the religion/secular binary, Hyderabad and Osmania University, the role of language in the construction of religious and national identity, translation and nationalism, and Urdu's relationship in colonial India with other languages. This book will be of great interest and benefit to scholars and students of modern Islam, nationalism, South Asia, and Muslim education.

Jamie CrossView on AmazonDream Zones: Anticipating Capitalism and Development in India (Pluto Press, 2014), the excellent new book by Jamie Cross, explores the ways in which dreams of the future shape the present. Centring in and around a large Special Economic Zone in south India, the book analyses anticipation amongst politicians, managers, workers, land-owners and activists.  

View on AmazonLoraine Kennedy's The Politics of Economic Restructuring in India: Economic Governance and State Spatial Rescaling (Routledge, 2014) is a timely and important intervention into the debate on how economic liberalisation is transforming the Indian state. The book's central argument is that these reforms have 'rescaled' the Indian state, with important consequences for growth and economic governance. This is perused through analyses of state strategies, Special Economic Zones and urban development, amongst others.

Harleen SinghView on AmazonThe Rani of Jhansi was and is many things to many people. In her beautifully written book The Rani of Jhansi: Gender, History, and Fable in India (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Harleen Singh explores four representations of the famous warrior queen who led her troops into battle against the British. Analysing her various representations – as a sexually promiscuous Indian whore, a heroic Aryan, a great nationalist and a folk symbol of indigenous resistance – the book critically discusses what wider issues are stake in these depictions of such a mythical and marginal woman.

Ayona DattaView on AmazonThe Illegal City: Space, Law and Gender in a Delhi Squatter Settlement (Ashgate, 2012) by Ayona Datta is a detailed account of how the law interweaves in everyday life in a squatter settlement in Delhi. The book forefronts space and gender as it explores the what it means to be illegal, not just informal, and how this distinction plays out in both public and private spaces. Rich in theory and ethnography the book is a beautiful exploration of how macro process invade the most intimate of spaces.

Amrita PandeView on AmazonAmrita Pande's Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India (Columbia University Press 2014) is a beautiful and rich ethnography of a surrogacy clinic. The book details the surrogacy process from start to finish, exploring the intersection of production and reproduction, complicating and deepening our understanding of this particular form of labour.

View on AmazonIf you're going to teach a broadly themed survey course, you'll probably need to assign some readings. One option is to assemble one of those photocopied course readers, full of excerpts taken from different sources. However, what you gain in flexibility may be sacrificed in coherence of presentation. A textbook produced by a single author might be more nicely packaged for student consumption, but then, how many different things can one author be an expert in? The best of both approaches would be found in a single-volume collection of essays, written by experts in their respective fields, newly commissioned for the volume in question, and all presented according to a shared format. Karen Pechilis and Selva J. Raj's South Asian Religions: Tradition and Today (Routledge, 2012) provides just such a collection, designed with both faculty and students in mind. Contributors to the book include Vasudha Narayanan, M. Whitney Kelting, Sunil Goonasekera, Nathan Katz, M. Thomas Thangaraj, Karen G. Ruffle, Joseph Marianus Kujur, and Pashaura Singh. In this interview, editor Karen Pechilis discusses her decisions behind the form and content of the book, shares her experiences using the book in one of her own classes, and unexpectedly turns the tables on the interviewer regarding how he came to be interested in such things. This podcast is dedicated to the memory of Selva J. Raj.

Aswin PunthamabekarView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Popular Culture] Aswin Punthamabekar's From Bombay to Bollywood: The Making of a Global Media Industry (New York University Press, 2013) offers a deeply researched and richly theorized look at the evolution of the world's largest film industry over the past few decades.  Combining ethnographic research with close textual analyses of Bollywood films, Punthamabekar shows how the media industry's growth has been complexly intertwined with India's emerging place in the global economy.  The book offers a nuanced look at globalization, bringing to light the tensions and productivities that emerge when a highly powerful, historically localized industry enters the world of multinational capitalism.