Beyond Nationalist Frames: Relocating Postmodernism, Hindutva, History

by Sumit Sarkar, SUMIT SARKAR

Overview

The political context in which the Historian of India finds himself today, says Sumit Sarkar, is dominated by the advance of the Hindu Right and globalised forms of capitalism. Simultaneously, the historians intellectual context is now dominated by the marginalisation of Marxism and a shift to cultural studies and postmodern critiques. In this scenario, how may a thinking historian practice the craft of history? The theme which unites these essays is sumit sarkar's consistent critique of the limits of 'nationalist frames'. He shows that despite there divergent forms---chauvinistic or beneign, political-statist or culturalist---nationalist frameworks have limited modern South Asian history. Sarkar argues for moving towards flexibly marxian social history and politics imbued with democratic, socialist-feminist, and internationlist values. The 'Hindu Bomb', the history of relations between communities, the issue of relegious propogation and conversion, ideas of nation and women in tagore's fiction, and the relationship of left-wing, historiography to post modern ideas are some of the things critically analysed in this major collection by the countries best-known historian of 'Modern India'.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788178244181
Publisher:	Permanent Black
Publication date:	01/15/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	944 KB

Table of Contents

Introduction. 1. Colonial times: clocks and Kali-yuga. 2. Identities and histories: some lower-caste narratives from early twentieth-century Bengal. 3. Intimations of Hindutva : ideologies, caste, and class in post-Swadeshi Bengal. 4. Two Muslim tracts for peasants: Bengal 1909-1910. 5. Nationalism and ‘Stri-Swadhinata’: the contexts and meanings of Rabindranath’s Ghare-Baire. 6. Postmodernism and the writing of history. 7. The BJP bomb and nationalism. 8. Christianity, Hindutva, and the question of Conversions. 9. Hindutva and history. Index.