The main objective of this book is to introduce a student who is familiar with elementary math concepts to select topics in deep learning. It exploits strong connections between deep learning algorithms and the techniques of computational physics to achieve two important goals. First, it uses concepts from computational physics to develop an understanding of deep learning algorithms. Second, it describes several novel deep learning algorithms for solving challenging problems in computation...

Diplomacy is conventionally understood as an authentic European invention which was internationalised during colonialism. For Indians, the moment of colonial liberation was a false dawn because the colonised had internalised a European logic and performed European practices. Implicit in such a reading is the enduring centrality of Europe to understanding Indian diplomacy. This Eurocentric discourse renders two possibilities impossible: that diplomacy may have Indian origins and that they o...

Gandhi (1869-1948) was one of the few men in history to fight simultaneously on moral, religious, political, social, economic, and cultural fronts. During his time as a lawyer in South Africa he developed his strategy of non-violence: the idea of opposing unjust laws by non-violent protest, which he made the basis of his successful struggle against British rule in India. In this Very Short Introduction to Gandhi's life and thought, Bhikhu Parekh outlines both Gandhi's major philosophical i...

First published in 2000, Dipesh Chakrabarty's influential Provincializing Europe addresses the mythical figure of Europe that is often taken to be the original site of modernity in many histories of capitalist transition in non-Western countries. This imaginary Europe, Dipesh Chakrabarty argues, is built into the social sciences. The very idea of historicizing carries with it some peculiarly European assumptions about disenchanted space, secular time, and sovereignty. Measured aga...

This book is an analysis of the Amar Chitra Katha genre, historical comic-books that capture and promote a middle class masculine identity, as culture became the new site for right-wing hegemonic politics in India over the last 4 decades of the 20th century.

A Nobel Laureate offers a dazzling new book about his native countryIndia is a country with many distinct traditions, widely divergent customs, vastly different convictions, and a veritable feast of viewpoints. In The Argumentative Indian, Amartya Sen draws on a lifetime study of his country's history and culture to suggest the ways we must understand India today in the light of its rich, long argumentative tradition.The millenia-old texts and inter...

Decolonizing Anarchism looks at the history of South Asian struggles against colonialism and neocolonialism, highlighting lesser-known dissidents as well as iconic figures. This approach reveals an alternate narrative of decolonization, in which achieving a nation-state is not the objective. Maia Ramnath also studies the anarchist vision of alternate society, which closely echoes the concept of total decolonization on the political, economic, social, cultural, and psychological pl...

Looking back now, I am more than ever aware of the part that [Satyajit] Ray played in shaping the imaginary universe of my childhood and youth. I see this even in such details as my interest in science and science fiction; in ghost stories and the fantastical…When I saw Agantuk [The Stranger], in which the main character is an anthropologist, I began to wonder whether my interest in anthropology too, owed something,perhaps subconsciously, to Ray…, ruminates Amitav Ghosh in this book. Ghosh...

South Asian History has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance over the past thirty years. Its historians are not only producing new ways of thinking about the imperial impact and legacy on South Asia, but also helping to reshape the study of imperial history in general. The essays in this collection address a number of these important developments, delineating not only the complicated interplay between imperial rulers and their subjects in India, but also illuminating the economic, political, e...

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 t...

Jawaharlal Nehru University, or JNU as it is popularly known, is perhaps India's grandest of nationalist institutions. It embodies the spirit of an earlier nationalist quest for autonomous and excellent intellectual life. In the choice of the issues and the confidence with which the disciplinary boundaries were questioned, JNU tried to constitute itself as an ethical alter ego of the nation.JNU: The Making of a University is an examination of how an institution comes to life - from its con...

Guru English is a bold reconceptualization of the scope and meaning of cosmopolitanism, examining the language of South Asian religiosity as it has flourished both inside and outside of its original context for the past two hundred years. The book surveys a specific set of religious vocabularies from South Asia that, Aravamudan argues, launches a different kind of cosmopolitanism into global use.Using "Guru English" as a tagline for the globalizing idiom that has grown up ...