Transgressions, Demosprudence, and Justice / Upendra Baxi -- From Without to Within: Indian International Law as Modernizer / Leïla Choukroune -- The Political Economy of Being "Modern" in 21st Century India / Jayati Ghosh -- Political Innovation in the Working of Indian Democracy: A Study of the Group of Ministers Device (1999-2014) / Balveer Arora and K. K. Kailash -- Three Languages of the Discourse of Modernity in India / Savita Singh -- Makings of Modern Marriage: Choice, Family, and the Matchmakers / Parul Bhandari -- Modern Bombay: The Making of an Art Territory from 1850s to 1950s / Christine Ithurbide -- Modern Mixes: The Hybrid and the Authentic in Indian Cuisine / Ishita Banerjee-Dube -- Ritual at the Cutting Edge: Everyday Animal Slaughter as Practice and Symbol / Rita Brara -- Religion and Hospitality in the Modern: Thinking with Abdul Bismillah / Simona Sawhney -- Modernity's Nightmares: Narrating Sexuality in Kerala / Navaneetha Mokkil -- Exploring Modernism as Reflected in Post-partition Hindi/Urdu Fiction / Sukrita Paul Kumar -- Latin American Travellers in Modern India / Minni Sawhney -- Chinese and Indian Attitudes Towards the Past: A Paradoxical Appropriation / Nicolas Idier -- From "Savages" to "Saviours": Genealogy of Santal Portrayal in Colonial Modernity / Anshul Avijit.
Summary:
This book is an ambitious attempt to bring together the diverse interpretations of the modern that have shaped the realities of Indian society. It undertakes not one, but multiple conceptual frameworks to explain the journey of the making and experiencing of the modern. It also points to the loopholes of the modern project and describes the innovations and adaptations and the intended and unintended makings of the modern. This volume takes on a multidisciplinary perspective and fosters an expansive focus as it brings together works from political science, international law and jurisprudence, sociology, anthropology, history, economics, visual studies, history of art, social geography, and the specific lens these fields use to unveil and analyse the 'modern' in Indian society. Divided into three parts: Imagining the modern, Experiencing the modern, and Narrating the modern, this book showcases the multiple ways of being modern, without necessarily expressing the modern as a rational, egalitarian and neat category. Instead, it highlights the ideas of progress and gain and also of nostalgia and loss that mark the practices of modern in India. Most importantly, it explains that there is not one imagining, practice, or vision of the modern for India, but that the modern is constantly constructed, practised, and lived in changing and contested spheres. Bringing together original papers from renowned as well as upcoming scholars, this book crosses the boundaries of the Indian subcontinent to support the development of a new social sciences scholarship both globalized in its vision and outreach and localized in its approach.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.