Unlike most partition narratives, the narratives of the Sindhis is not marked by violence and bloodshed. The Hindus of Sindh came to India by ship, camel and train, and were unharmed most of the time. The Burden of Refuge is about Partition, and the resettlement and fragmentation of the Sindhi Hindus of India. Rita Kothari traces the trajectory of the Sindhi Hindus from Sindh to India, specifically to Gujarat. The Burden of Refuge tells the story of the Sindhi Hindus of Gajarat beginning w...

How does India live through the oddity of being both a nation and multilingual? Is multilingualism in India to be understood as a neatly laid set of discrete languages or a criss-crossing of languages that runs through every source language and text? The questions take us to reviewing what is meant by language, multilingualism and translation. Challenging these institutions,A Multilingual Nation illustrates how the received notions of translation discipline do not apply to India. It...

The cultural universe of urban, English-speaking middle class in India shows signs of growing inclusiveness as far as English is concerned. This phenomenon manifests itself in increasing forms of bilingualism (combination of English and one Indian language) in everyday forms of speech - advertisement jingles, bilingual movies, signboards, and of course conversations. It is also evident in the startling prominence of Indian Writing in English and somewhat less visibly, but steadily rising, ...

Uneasy Translations: Self, Experience and Indian Literature interweaves the personal journey of an academic into reflections around self, language and translation with an eye on the intangibly available category of experience. It dwells on quieter modes of being political, of making knowledge democratic and of seeing gendered language in the everyday. In an unusual combination of real-life incidents and textual examples, it provides a palimpsest of what it is to be in a classroom;...

Situated in northern Kutch in Gujarat, the Banni grasslands lie on the border dividing India and Pakistan. It is home to diverse communities; while Muslim pastoralists form the majority, one also finds Dalit Hindus, and a community that is neither Hindu nor Muslim. Banni’s people, have for centuries, moved freely between Sindh (Pakistan) and Kutch (India)—a reason why, perhaps, the Indo-Pak border has not been able to produce a sense of bounded citizenship in them. While still referring to ‘S...

Fateema opened her diary and began writing: “Jihad as mentioned by the Prophet is a war against injustice and oppression. Islam means peace and surrender. Islam does not recommend killing innocent people. The Prophet released hundreds of slaves from bondage and sent themback to their native land.”There was a lot more she could write. She would one day. Not for others, but to her own people she would explain the meaning of the word ‘Islam’.For a bright young woman like Fateema Lokhandwala, the...

How does India live through the oddity of being both a nation and multilingual? Is multilingualism in India to be understood as a neatly laid set of discrete languages or a criss-crossing of languages that runs through every source language and text? The questions take us to reviewing what is meant by language, multilingualism, and translation. Challenging these institutions, A Multilingual Nation illustrates how the received notions of translation discipline do not apply to India. It prov...

Though contemporary European philosophy and critical theory have long had a robust engagement with Christianity, there has been no similar engagement with Buddhism—a surprising lack, given Buddhism's global reach and obvious affinities with much of Continental philosophy. This volume fills that gap, focusing on "nothing"—essential to Buddhism, of course, but also a key concept in critical theory from Hegel and Marx through deconstruction, queer theory, and contemporary speculative philosop...

English Heart, Hindi Heartland examines Delhi’s postcolonial literary world—its institutions, prizes, publishers, writers, and translators, and the cultural geographies of key neighborhoods—in light of colonial histories and the globalization of English. Rashmi Sadana places internationally recognized authors such as Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Vikram Seth, and Aravind Adiga in the context of debates within India about the politics of language and alongside other writers, includi...

The first volume of the People’s Linguistic Survey of India brings to the reader the journey undertaken in 2010, by a group of visionaries led by G. N. Devy to document the languages of India as they existed then. The aim of the People’s Linguistic Survey of India was to document these languages, spoken in India’s remotest corners. India’s towns and cities too have found a voice in this survey. What this journey did was to bring a groundswell of support from people from all walks of life, lea...

Minds Without Fear is an intellectual and cultural history of India during the period of British occupation. It demonstrates that this was a period of renaissance in India in which philosophy--both in the public sphere and in the Indian universities--played a central role in the emergence of a distinctively Indian modernity. This is also a history of Indian philosophy. It demonstrates how the development of a secular philosophical voice facilitated the construction of modern India...

How different is Pakistan's culture from that of India? Exploring various aspects of the arts, literature and heritage of Pakistan, Raza Rumi argues that culture in Pakistan is not particularly unique to the nation, but rather a part of the cultural identities shared by South Asians. From the songs of Kabir and the ballads of Bulleh Shah to the cult of the feminine in the Sindh region, Rumi takes a kaleidoscopic view of the deep-set cultural mores that tie India and Pakistan together. Goin...