Communalism And The Writing Of Indian History

Revised version of papers presented at a seminar organised by All India Radio in October 1968.

Presents several essays in studies of Indian literature and film, by discussing how key authors offer contending, 'alternative' visions of India and how poetry, fiction and film can revise both the communal and secular versions of national belonging thatdefine current debates about 'Indianness'.

Seminar papers.

Although Indian popular cinema has a long history and is familiar to audiences around the world, it has rarely been systematically studied. This book offers the first detailed account of the popular film as it has grown and changed during the tumultuous decades of Indian nationhood. The study focuses on the cinema’s characteristic forms, its range of meanings and pleasures, and, above all, its ideological construction of Indian national identity. Informed by theoretical developments in film theory, cultural studies, postcolonial discourse, and “Third World” cinema, the book identifies the major genres and movements within Bombay cinema since Independence and uses them to enter larger cultural debates about questions of identity, authenticity, citizenship, and collectivity. Chakravarty examines numerous films of the period, including Guide (Vijay Anand, 1965), Shri 420 [The gentleman cheat] (Raj Kapoor, 1955), and Bhumika [The role] (Shyam Benegal, 1977). She shows how “imperso-nation,” played out in masquerade and disguise, has characterized the representation of national identity in popular films, so that concerns and conflicts over class, communal, and regional differences are obsessively evoked, explored, and neutralized. These findings will be of interest to film and area specialists, as well as general readers in film studies.

Explains the Hindi novel’s role in anticipating and creating the story of middle-class modernity and modernization in North India. Vasudha Dalmia offers a panoramic view of the intellectual and cultural life of North India over a century, from the aftermath of the 1857 uprising to the end of the Nehruvian era. The North’s historical cities, rooted in an Indo-Persianate culture, began changing more slowly than the Presidency towns founded by the British. Dalmia takes up eight canonical Hindi novels set in six of these cities—Agra, Allahabad, Banaras, Delhi, Lahore, and Lucknow—to trace a literary history of domestic and political cataclysms. Her exploration of the emerging Hindu middle classes, changing personal and professional ambitions, and new notions of married life provides a vivid sense of urban modernity. She argues that the radical social transformations associated with post-1857 urban restructuring, and the political flux resulting from social reform, Gandhian nationalism, communalism, Partition, and the Cold War shaped the realm of the intimate as much as the public sphere. Love and friendship, notions of privacy, attitudes to women’s work, and relationships within households are among the book’s major themes.

This Volume Of Essays Examines Some Of The More Important And Problematic Aspects Of The Swadeshi Movement, Such As The Relationship Between Terrorism And Non-Violent Resistance. Also Examined Here Are Foreign Influences On Bengal Terrorism And The Nature Of Bengali `Religious Nationalism`.

This new edition containing a preface and afterword, is a part of a larger exercise aimed at understanding the construction of Indian society, and politics as a whole in recent times by challenging the conventional analysis of communalism and providing alternative theoretical cues to grasp its nature and dynamics.