There are many holy cities in India, but Mumbai is not usually considered one of them. More popular images of the city capture the world’s collective imagination—as a Bollywood fantasia or a slumland dystopia. Yet for many, if not most, people who live in the city, the neighborhood streets are indeed shared with local gods and guardian spirits. In The Neighborhood of Gods, William Elison examines the link between territory and divinity in India’s most self-consciously modern city....

A Bollywood blockbuster when it was released in 1977, Amar Akbar Anthony has become a classic of Hindi cinema and a touchstone of Indian popular culture. Delighting audiences with its songs and madcap adventures, the film follows the heroics of three Bombay brothers separated in childhood from their parents and one another. Beyond the freewheeling comedy and camp, however, is a potent vision of social harmony, as the three protagonists, each raised in a different religion, discove...

This book introduces contemporary Buddhists from across Asia and from various walks of life. Eschewing traditional hagiographies, the editors have collected sixty-six profiles of individuals who would be excluded from most Buddhist histories and ethnographies. In addition to monks and nuns, readers will encounter artists, psychologists, social workers, part-time priests, healers, and librarians as well as charlatans, hucksters, profiteers, and rabble-rousers—all whose lives reflect changes...

A Bollywood blockbuster when it was released in 1977, Amar Akbar Anthony has become a classic of Hindi cinema and a touchstone of Indian popular culture. Delighting audiences with its songs and madcap adventures, the film follows the heroics of three Bombay brothers separated in childhood from their parents and one another. Beyond the freewheeling comedy and camp, however, is a potent vision of social harmony, as the three protagonists, each raised in a different religion, discove...

Unlock the more straightforward side of Midnight’s Children with this concise and insightful summary and analysis!This engaging summary presents an analysis of Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, a powerful portrait of the diversity and richness of Indian culture as embodied by the eponymous “midnight children”, all of whom were born at the moment India became independent and who therefore possess magical talents and an innate connection to the...

One of the world's most ancient cultures, India can be understood and explained in as many ways as humans can possibly devise. To make sense of this astonishing turmoil of ideas, Sunil Khilnani has created a remarkably simple and attractive solution. In this book (which accompanies a major Radio 4 series which he is narrating) he takes the lives of 50 Indians, starting with the Buddha, some very famous, some more obscure, from the earliest records to the present day, and in a series of sho...

Now updated: An "eminently readable, highly engaging" anthology about the lives of ordinary citizens in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka (Margaret Mills, Ohio State University).For the second edition of this popular textbook, readings have been updated and new essays added. The result is a timely collection that explores key themes in understanding the region, including gender, caste, class, religion, globalization, economic liberalization, national...

Sound and the faculty of hearing is probably the most critical of human links to the web of life. It is through the messages carried in sound waves that we can respond to the world around us and connect to higher consciousness."Sound Waves" is a collection of Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri's aphorisms and maxims that help us to reflect and discover the intricate connection between self and soul.ABOUT SHAYKH FADHLALLA HAERIAcknowledged as a ...

While we have become familiar with the idea of "Bollywood" here in the West, we know little about the industry's films beyond a certain celebration of kitsch. Bollywood, the latest in Wallflower Press's Short Cuts introductory series, surveys this style of filmmaking from its origins in colonial times to the present, tracing its impact on both the Indian and global imagination. Chapters explore the history and workings of the industry, the narratives and aesthetics of its films, v...

Queering India is the first book to provide an understanding of same-sex love and eroticism in Indian culture and society. The essays focus on pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial gay and lesbian life in India to provide a comprehensive look at a much neglected topic. The topics are wide-ranging, considering film, literature, popular culture, historical and religious texts, law and other aspects of life in India. Specifically, the essays cover such issues as Deepa Mehta's rec...

Shohini Ghosh: Shohini Ghosh is Professor at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, a university in New Delhi. Tales of the Night Fairies, her documentary on the sex workers rights movement, made a strong intervention in debates on sex work. She writes on contemporary media practices and sexuality.

For over five hundred years, Muslim dynasties ruled parts of northern and central India, starting with the Ghurids in the 1190s through the fracturing of the Mughal Empire in the early eighteenth century. Scholars have long drawn upon works written in Persian and Arabic about this epoch, yet they have neglected the many histories that India’s learned elite wrote about Indo-Muslim rule in Sanskrit. These works span the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire and discuss Muslim-led kingdoms in the...