M. K. Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj: A Critical Edition

ISBN: 978 81 250 3918 1; Binding: Hardback Pages: 208; Price: Rs.425; Rights: World

Hind Swaraj, Gandhi’s seminal text in Gujarati, was written between 13 and 22 November 1909 aboard the Kildonan Castle bound for South Africa. It is a dialogue on modern civilisation, composed at a moment in modern history when the pre-modern in the world beyond Europe could still be touched and spoken of, not as mere memory or longing but as a living form. As a mode of exposition and argument, Hind Swaraj stems from a cognitive universe that abides beyond the ambit of modernity. It is perhaps the only critique of the modern order that seeks an understanding of its salient facts. Its referents are tradition and modernity, the ancient and modern, ethical-moral and instrumental-efficient. Hind Swaraj is a plea for non-violence as a mode of self-affirmation and resistance against oppression and injustice. For anyone engaged with the life and thought of Gandhi and with the question of the meaning of life within the modern order of things, Hind Swaraj remains a critical text.

This critical centenary edition is intended as a renewal of a deeper engagement with the text and the discourse around it. It reinstates the 1910 edition of the English rendering and the original in Gujarati as the first textual referent in conversation with the 1921 edition and the authorised second edition of 1939. It is presented along three axes: margin-notes (alternative readings/translations of the Gujarati original), footnotes (notations for categories-concepts) and Hindi translation (to mute the current placement of English as the exclusive mediation between languages). This is also the first edition of Hind Swaraj in two languages.

Suresh Sharma is a historian and anthropologist. He is Senior Fellow and Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. Currently, he is working on a commentary on Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj and a comparative reading of St Augustine’s Confessions and Gandhi’s My Experiments with Truth.

Tridip Suhrud is a political scientist and cultural historian, working on the Gandhian intellectual tradition and the social history of Gujarat of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Currently, he is Professor at the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat. At present, he is working on the English translation of Govardhanram Tripathi’s four-part novel Sarasvatichandra.

Hundred Tamil Folk and Tribal Tales

ISBN: 978-81-250-3920-4; Binding: Paperback; Pages: 324 Price: Rs.295;
Rights: World

There is a rich variety of tales and an amalgamation of many threads of a major stream of South India’s oral tradition in the book Hundred Tamil Folk and Tribal Tales. The tales, crafted together in Sujatha Vijayaraghavan’s lucid English translation, beacon a serious engagement in Indic studies.

Vijayaraghavan’s volume provides an easy access to the cultural registers and linguistic mores of a tribal/folk population at a crucial juncture of colonial modernity.

Furthermore, she translates not merely the tales as she finds them in the Tamil original, naatupura kathai kalanjiyam, but distinguishes and recognises the tribal tale, otherwise unnoticed in the proverbial ocean of Indian folktales. As a distinct and stimulating vein of wisdom and wit in Dravidian lives and popular traditions, the tribal-tale receives the first-ever straight look in the pages.

Sujatha Vijayaraghavan is Professor of English at Pondicherry University, Puducherry. Her teaching and research interests include Indian Writing in English, Postcolonial Studies, Translation Studies and Folklore Studies and Oral Literatures. An avid translator she has translated contemporary Tamil fiction and classical Tamil Poetry.

The Writings of M T Vasudevan Nair

ISBN: 978 81 250 3865 8; Binding: Hardback; Pages: 252 Price: Rs.595; Rights: World

This hardback omnibus edition collects three of M. T. Vasudevan Nair’s previously published works—Mist and The Soul of Darkness, Kaalam and Kuttiedathi and Other Stories. The volume features an introduction to M. T. Vasudevan Nair’s work by P. P. Raveendran, an eminent academic and a scholar of Malayalam literature.

Mist and The Soul of Darkness are translations of M. T. Vasudevan Nair’s highly-acclaimed novellas, Manhu and Irutinde Atmavu. Set in a hill station, the Mist narrates the story of Vimala, a school teacher who continues to wait for her beloved Sudhir, with whom she once shared a passionate affair filled with promises. The Soul of Darkness, on the other hand speaks of Velayudhan, a young man regarded by his family as ‘not normal’ and is thus treated abominably, tortured and beaten. Though his cousin Ammakutty really cares for him, she is helpless and cannot do much to save him. In both stories, Nair voices through mists of memories and emotions, some lost hopes and evocative experiences. The narratives are deeply touching, dramatic and realistic.

Set against the backdrop of a crumbling matrilineal tarawad system of the Nairs in Kerala with its manifold conflicts and problems, Kaalam is the story of Sethumadhavan Nair who starts out as an ambitious and confident adolescent—but in his journey towards adulthood, where material and social success go hand in hand, he is faced with an overwhelming sense of disillusionment. In its revelations, the story is beautifully adorned with the emotional experiences of the protagonist, which is also reflective of Nair’s own childhood in many ways.

Kuttiedathi and other stories is a collection of the finest stories of M. T. Vasudevan Nair that encompasses the ordinary middle class lives and sufferings of people in northern Kerala. Nair’s engaging style of storytelling is touching throughout. If the lead story Kuttiedathi mixes tragic memory and domestic martyrdom, When the Doors of Heaven Open plays out another life upon which centre a group of lives, all selfish, caring and indifferent by turns. In Insight however, strange and unfathomable bonds of passion emerge as the main theme. These are little tragedies of the soul told with a finesse characteristic of Nair’s profound, yet minimalist sense of expression.

Born in 1933 in the small village of Koodallur, Kerala, Madath Thekkepat Vasudevan Nair is the best known among his generation of storywriters in Malayalam. With a publishing career spanning a little more than fifty years, he is renowned as a chronicler of life in the matriarchal joint family of Kerala, a milieu he describes with intimacy in novels such as Nalukettu (1959) and Kaalam (1969). He won the State and Kendriya Sahitya Akademi awards respectively for these two novels. He is also among Kerala’s most popular script writers and directors of mainstream cinema. He has won four National Awards for his screenplays. The very first film he wrote, produced and directed, Nirmaalyam (The Floral Offering) won the President’s Gold Medal in 1973 and Kadavu (The Ferry) won the Japanese Grand Prix. He was also awarded the Jnanpith in 1996.

Apart from short fiction in which he has excelled, Nair has published novels and novellas, travelogues, literary criticism, books for children and a sizeable number of miscellaneous notes, reviews and memoirs. Nair’s stories have been translated into major languages in India and abroad. He was associated with the editorship of Matrubhumi for well over four decades. The Government of India honoured him with the Padmabhushan in 2005.

Gita Krishnankutty has a doctorate in English from Mysore University. She has a number of translations from Malayalam to English to her credit, including Cast Me Out If You Will, a collection of short stories and memoirs by Lalithambika Anterjanam (Stree, 1998), several short stories by M.T. Vasudevan Nair and his novel, Nalukettu. She is the author of A Life of Healing: a Biography of P. S.Varier. She won the Sahitya Akademi Award for her translation of N. P. Mohammed’s The Eye of God, the Crossword Award for M. Mukundan’s On the Banks of the Mayyazhi and for Anand’s Govardhan’s Travels. She lives in Chennai.

A seasoned and sensitive translator, V. Abdulla (1921—2003) knew M.T. Vasudevan nair since his youth. His earlier work included translations of Malayalam writers like S. K. Pottekat, Vaikom Mohammad Basheer and Malayatoor Ramakrishnan. V Abdulla won the Yatra Award (1995) and the Sevarathna Award (1996) for translation. He retired as Divisional Director of Orient Longman in 1981.

The translations in this volume were completed before his death in 2003. He is survived by his wife, two daughters and a son.

Women in Malayalam Cinema: Naturalising Gender Hierarchies

ISBN: 978 81 250 3865 8; Binding: Hardback; Pages: 252; Price: Rs.595; Rights: World

Drawing on contemporary critical theories and academic debates, Women in Malayalam Cinema: Naturalising Gender Hierarchies analyses Malayalam cinema and the question of women from different perspectives. In its focus on woman-cinema interface, as depicted in a century of Malayalam cinema, this book addresses a wide range of themes crucial for a nuanced understanding of Malayalam film culture—gender stereotyping, marriage and family, the aftermaths of matriliny, caste and gender relations, hegemonic patriarchy, female friendships and soft porn.

These diverse concerns are held together by a key focal point: the paradox of regressive modernisation in Kerala’s cultural politics. While the widely discussed and extolled ‘Kerala Model’ has yielded much grist to the statistical mills of Left-liberal developmental sociologists, questions concerning more precise connections between the impressive developmental indices and the cultural politics that shape the lives and subjectivities of women within this ‘model state’ have remained relatively unexplored. Deconstructing patriarchal dominance in Malayalam cinema, mainstream and avant garde, this collection elucidates how films offer stereotypical images of women conforming to subordination. Be it Vigathakumaran (1928), or Sthree (1950), or a more recent one Achanarangathaveedu (2005)—there is a constant failure across films to look beyond the portrayal of woman as someone ‘who loves to cook and clean, wash and scrub, shine and polish for her man’.

This volume, a first of its kind on Malayalam cinema, has diverse contributions from litterateurs, film critics and screenwriters, and will be of interest to scholars of film, media and gender studies.

Meena T. Pillai is Reader at the Institute of English and Director, Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Kerala, Trivandrum. She was a Fulbright Fellow to the Ohio State University, a Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute Fellow to the Concordia University, Montreal and a Commonwealth Fellow at the University of Sussex, UK.

The Last Musha’irah of Delhi

Mirza Farhatullah Baig and Akhtar Qamber
ISBN 978 81 250 3967 9; Binding: Paperback; Pages: 192 ; Price: Rs.295; Rights: World

The twilight Delhi of the later Mughals, decadent in statesmanship, devastated by marauders, declining in history, still managed to leave behind something more durable than marble and sandstone: a magnificent body of Urdu poetry and prose.

It is this facet of the city that Mirza Farhatullah Baig Dehalvi captures in this unique literary work. Drawing upon living memory, manuscripts and other documents, he wrote Dehli ki Akhri Shama’, a fictional account of what purports to be the last great musha’irah held in Delhi under the patronage of Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’, the last Mughal emperor. The narrative recreates for the reader the various stages of organizing such an occasion, introduces one to unforgettable people and now-forgotten places, and builds up to the climax—the musha’irah itself—at which all the important Urdu poets of the time are present.

The present volume is the first-ever English translation of Farhatullah Baig’s classic, accompanied by a long introduction, textual and other annotations, and extensive glossary. Much more than a work of translation, the book is a labour of love and scholarship.
Mirza Farhatullah Baig was born of Mughal stock in Delhi. Educated at the Dehli Madrassah, Hindu College and St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, he was Director of Education in the State of Hyderabad. Later, he became the Registrar of the high court of Hyderabad. A distinguished writer and humourist, Baig’s essays are marked by their richness of imagination and informality of style. His pen-portraits are lively and sharp in characterisation. His language represents one of the best of Urdu as spoken in Delhi.

Akhtar Qamber obtained graduate degrees in English literature from the universities of Lucknow and Columbia. She taught at Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow, and at Miranda House, Delhi, and visited the International Christian University at Tokyo and Western College for Women at Oxford, Ohio, on teaching assignments. After retiring from the academic life, Qamber devoted her time to translating from Urdu and Persian into English. Her earlier publications include a collection of poems written originally in English, and a book on the relationship between the work of W. B. Yeats and the Noh drama of Japan.

Subjugated Nomads:The Lambadas under the Rule of the Nizams

Bhangya Bhukya
ISBN 978 81 250 3961 7; Binding: Hardback; Pages: 320; Price: Rs.700; Rights: World

Subjugated Nomads traces the historical transition of the Lambada community of Hyderabad State under the Nizams during colonial rule. The study spans nearly two centuries—from the early eighteenth to about the middle of the twentieth century. The author shows how this community, originally caravan traders, confronted the colonial or modern state power which had adversely transformed their lives.

The market economy and growth of transport hampered the Lambadas’ caravan trade. The state discouraged their nomadic ways, inducing them to become peasants on wastelands and in forest tracts. From the middle of the nineteenth century, they had to depend on cattle-raising and agriculture, often becoming agricultural labourers. The state came to view their extension of agriculture as a threat to forest conservation, subjecting them to harassment and eviction. They began losing their plots of land through usurious money-lending and extortion. Zamindars claimed rights over wastelands, and extracted taxes. Exploitation by various agencies reduced the Lambadas to labour on farms. During famines and the off-season, some resorted to dacoity. This led the state to brand them as a criminal community and relocate them as ‘criminal tribes’ under surveillance. Protracted suffering and victimisation compelled the Lambadas to revolt, which was transformed into the Telangana armed struggle at the end of the Nizams’ rule.

The Lambadas had tried to respond to the challenges faced through a programme of self-reform. From the 1820s, leaders emerged from within the community, who rearticulated Lambada history, spiritual beliefs and culture. These find expression in the oral tradition which was crucial in shaping their community identity, now a significant element in democratic politics.

Bhangya Bhukya has a PhD from University of Warwick, U.K., and now teaches history at Osmania University in Hyderabad. He is a British Academy Visiting Fellow at the School of Oriental and Africal Studies, University of London and has published influential works on the history of marginalised communities in India. His research interests are community histories, the effects of power/knowledge, governmentality and dominance over subaltern communities, particularly adivasis (original inhabitants); the state and nationalism, and identity movements by forest and hill peoples in the nineteenth and twentieth century.

Panchlight and Other Stories

Phanishwar Nath Renu
Translated from the Hindi by Rakhshanda Jalil
ISBN 978-81-250-3841-2; Binding: Paperback; Price: Rs.275/-; Pages: 152; Rights: World
Set in Bihar, that vast hinterland of India, the diversity of the stories in this collection represents the work of Phanishwar Nath Renu (1921–77), one of Hindi's foremost writers.
Renu's world is rural Bihar—a world of poverty, ignorance, helplessness, superstition and exploitation. The characters in his stories are the landless, the disenfranchised and the marginalised. He writes of passions spent, hurts unresolved, dreams unfulfilled, in the context of a changing world and a crumbling social order. But his work is anything but bleak. Its universality and the energy come from Renu's ability to rise above the human condition and look deep within into the human heart.
Rakhshanda Jalil's translation brings to the reader a writer and storyteller in supreme control of his craft.

Phanishwar Nath Renu (1921–77) was born in the village of Aurahi Hingua in the Purnea district of Bihar. His novel, Maila Anchal (1954) hailed him as a stalwart in the Nayi Kahani (New Story) movement. His short story, Maare Gaye Gulfam was made into a major Hindi feature film. Renu's work speaks to the reader of all that is enduring in the human heart.

Rakhshanda Jalil has edited two collections of short stories and published six works of translations. Her recent works include Invisible City: The Hidden Monuments of Delhi and Naked Voices and other Stories, a translation of stories and sketches by Manto. She works as Media and Cultural Coordinator at Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi and has also taught English in the universities of Delhi and Aligarh. She runs an organisation named Hindustani Awaaz to popularise Hindi and Urdu literature.