Oxford India Paperbacks – serie

The rise of terrorism and fundamentalism in recent times has brought about phenomenal changes in global politics. These call for a new, bold, and imaginative statecraft from world leaders. Underlining the need to transcend age old peace mechanisms and to reconstruct our language of discourse, this book propounds the concept of Bahudha - an eternal reality or continuum, a dialogue of harmony, and peaceful living. Bahudha recognises the distinction between plural societies and pluralism. Bahudha facilitates exchange of views, and promotes understanding of the collective good. The rise of terrorism and fundamentalism in recent times has brought about phenomenal changes in global politics. These call for new, bold, and imaginative statecraft from world leaders. Underlining the need to transcendage-old peace mechanisms and to reconstruct our language of discourse, this book propounds the concept of Bahudha-an eternal reality or continuum, a dialogue of harmony, and peaceful living. Bahudha recognizes the distinction between plural societies and pluralism. It facilitates an exchange of views and promotes understanding of the collective good.The book discusses the major events witnessed by the world during the years 1989-2001-the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the transfer of Hong Kong to China, and the terrorist attack on the USA on 11 September 2001, and events thereafter-as well as their implications for various nations, cultures, and global peace. The book also discusses India's civilizational experiences in handling the pluralistic challenge by citing examples from the Vedas and Puranas and analysing policies followed by Ashoka, Kabir, Guru Nanak, Akbar, and Mahatma Gandhi.The author underlines the importance of Bahudha as an instrument of public policy for harmony and also discusses the global imperatives of following such an approach. It highlights the central role of education and religion in the building of a harmonious society and advocates the strengthening of the United Nations to become an effective global conflict resolution mechanism.

This book is intended for anyone interested in Indian and Commonwealth history and politics.

Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797-1869), noble, poet, and wit of Mughal Delhi in the twilight years before the crushing of the revolt of 1857 finally extinguished Mughal power, has long been possibly the most famous and the most popular of the poets of Urdu and Persian that the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent has produced. His frankness, his humorous good nature, and his cheerfully avowed unorthodoxy with regard to the more irksome formalities of his Muslim religion, made him something of a legend even in his own lifetime. Collections of his numerous letters to his friends were published just before his death, and not many years later his friend and younger contemporary Hali wrote his Memoir of Ghalib, itself one of the classics of Urdu literature. Hitherto very little of Ghalib has appeared in English, and that little has circulated almost entirely within India and Pakistan. The present volume consists in the main of translations from Hali's Memoir, Ghalib's Persian and Urdu letters, his diary of the revolt of 1857, and other materials. These materials are arranged, with the minimum of connective narrative, to tell the story of his life.

Religion, civil society and the state form the three dimensions of this semiological study of Sikhism. It explains the underlying medievalism in both Hindu and Muslim cultures, and examines the collaboration between Sikhism and Gandhism (1920-5), viewed after the Islamic revolution in Iran.

Premchand's novella "Nirmala", first published in 1928, is reformist in agenda, taking as its theme a young adolescent yoked to an elderly husband. Nirmala's tragedy is a social one, dictated by the ills of the dowry system.

Policymaking in India evokes an image of rational decision-making and technical optimality. However, the arena of policymaking is characterized by conflict and contestation resolved through processes of negotiations and compromises. A significant amount of research in India focuses on policy goals and consequences, and less on policy processes. Breaking away from that approach, Public Policy and Politics in India directly addresses policy processes and discusses the role of institutions in policymaking in India. The wide-ranging essays cover issues such as environment, education, Parliament, liberalization, and governance. They highlight failures of implementation resulting from deep-rooted flaws in overall policy design. The volume aims not only to provoke a debate but also to encourage more systematic studies in the area. 'This significant volume provides an excellent understanding of policy studies in India since independence' - Sudha Pai, Professor, Center for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India'Professor Mathur, a leading observer of Indian politics and policy, explores the political and administrative intricacies of the governmental system, with particular emphasis on institutional practices.' - Frank Fischer, Professor of Politics and Global Affairs, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA 'Through his wonderfully engaging essays, Kuldeep Mathur provides us with a rich understanding of the messiness within which Indias public policies are made and unmade.' - Bishnu N. Mohapatra, Professor, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, India

The water question in India has several contentious dimensions, be they inter-state river disputes, groundwater extraction by private corporations, farmer agitations for irrigation water, or urban anxieties over meeting water needs. Rohan D'Souza argues that the British project of flood control in the Orissa Delta was principally political in intent, aimed at anchoring their presence in the area. In Drowned and Dammed he comprehensively reconsiders the debate on the colonial environmental watershed and its hydraulic legacy in India.Colonial capitalism sought to dominate the Orissa Delta's many rivers by bringing about an unprecedented ecological rupture. Through the rubric of flood control, British rule instituted capitalist private property in land and re- shaped the region's hydrology with physical infrastructures such as embankments, canal networks, and dams. The Orissa delta was thus dramatically transformed from a flood-dependent agrarian regime into a flood-vulnerable landscape.

Is the caste system disappearing? Are traditional hierarchies being replaced by competing equalities? Do globalization and liberalization automatically result in diminishing disparities? Are modern labour markets intrinsically meritocratic and efficient? Challenging the dominant discourse and demolishing various myths, this book provides answers to these and other critical questions on caste in its contemporary avatar. Linking the economics of caste with its politics, sociology, and history, this innovative book provides a stimulating assessment of continuities and changes in caste disparities over the last two decades. Deshpande uses rich empirical data to uncover how contemporary, formal, urban sector labour markets reflect a deep awareness of caste, religious, gender, and class cleavages. She convincingly argues that discrimination is neither a relic of the past nor is it confined to rural areas, but is very much a modern, formal sector phenomenon. This insightful book, with a new introduction to the paperback edition, is an important step towards a multidisciplinary dialogue for understanding (and mitigating) inequalities based on birth and descent.

Anyone who has seen a wedding procession in northern India would have heard and seen the band of professional musicians accompanying the procession. Surrounded by bright lamps and dressed in uniforms reminiscent of military finery, these are the men who herald the arrival of the groom. In spite of the singing, dancing, and the ornately clad gathering of family and friends in the procession, it is the band that is often its most noticeable element. This book is a detailed and colourful study of India's wedding bands. It argues that while music performed by the wedding bands helps generate emotions of ecstasy and joy, the bandsmen who play it are in the fringes of the social events they herald. Musically and socially, and by birth and profession, bandsmen at weddings are ascribed low social status.Booth's analysis of bands and bandsmen is rich in symbolism and facts surrounding South Asia's complex and diverse musical history. He explains the band trade as a syncretic component of popular culture constructed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in both colonial and independent India. This book tells stories of change witnessed in Indian wedding processions and bands over time. The relationship of musical traditions to the colonial past and India's culture, as also the metaphorical association between musical and cultural changes are also explored.

This book chronicles how the concept of organizing people to serve economic ends emerged in early modern and colonial India. It examines rules of cooperation, why people decided to join forces, how disputes were settled, and how cooperative communities became increasingly unstable in more modern times. It focuses on five dimensions: actor, agent, time, purpose, and region. The leading actors are peasants, labourers, artisans, merchants/bankers, and the states. The rules of cooperation that formed inside communities of merchants and others were respected by the states. However, these rules would eventually become unstable due to the integration of India within a global-industrial economy and the introduction of a new rule of law in the old guise of 'custom'. As a result, the endogamous guild, a kind of collective that used marriage rules to secure cooperative ties, became weaker, to be supplanted by other forms of organization. Collectives controlled property, managed resources, supplied training, and conducted negotiations. The regional angle is important because regions differed on the composition of enterprise, and globalization and colonialism unfolded unevenly across space. The book presents an economic history of institutional change in South Asia.