On Modern Indian Sensibilities: Culture, Politics, History

by Ishita Banerjee-Dube (Editor)

This book consists of incisive and imaginative readings of culture, politics, and history – and their intersections – in eastern India from the 16th to the 20th century. Focusing especially on Assam, Odisha, Bengal, and their margins, the volume explores Indo-Islamic cultures of rule as located on the cusp of Mughal-cosmopolitan and regional–local formations. Tracking sensibilities of time and history, senses of events and persons, and productions of the past and the present, the volume unravels intimate expressions of aesthetics and scandals, heroism and martyrdom, and voice and gender. It examines key questions of the interchanges between literary cultures and contending nationalisms, culture and cosmopolitanism, temporality and mythology, literature and literacy, history and modernity, and print culture and popular media. The book offers grounded and connected accounts of a large, important region, usually studied in isolation. It will be of interest to scholars and students of history, literature, politics, sociology, cultural studies, and South Asian studies.

Kindle Edition

Published December 14, 2017

About the author

Ishita Banerjee-Dube is Professor of History at the Centre for Asian and African Studies, El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico City, and a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI), Mexico, where she holds the highest rank. Her authored books include Divine Affairs (2001), Religion, Law, and Power (2007) and, in Spanish, Fronteras del Hinduismo (2007). Among her eight edited volumes are Unbecoming Modern (2005), Caste in History (2008) and Ancient to Modern (2009).