Subaltern Studies moves out of history, with essay by literary critics, anthropologists and most importantly, feminists. Some essays are just very good, but those by Jeganathan and Menon are brilliant. You must read this, if you are interested in any kind of post-colonial studies.

This book is extraordinary, the like of which I have not read in the extensive Gandhian literature. Mr. Pandiri, the author of this great book has exhausted the literature to put together this volume. It must have taken many years to complete this work. I have read almost the entire Gandhian literature, and nowhere can I recall anyone who had done such a commendable job. Not only is this book essential for the libraries but I also strongly recommend this book to any student of Gandhi dedicated to researching and unearthing the truths about this elusive figure better known as Mahatma gandhi.

For a British soldier, (Lieutenant) under the services of the Nizam of Hyderabad in the 19th century India, turned writer Philip Meadows Taylor certainly proves his prowess as a writer through this book 'Congessions of a Thug', no wonder the book turned out to be a 'best seller' in 19th century England.

The main character AMEER ALI comes to life at the outset and the story of this 'Thugee' unravels before the reader without much interruption from the author. The story is about plotting,murder and mayhem excuted with precison, conviction, with ease and without remorse for that is the way of the 'Thugee'. Though Ameer Ali and his merry men were social parasites and the very embodiment of evil, Taylor quite successfully managed to bring out the many facets of the man and his men as an impartial observer and master story teller. Lastly, the historical nature of the book can not be overlooked considering the fact that similar group of bandits (called Dacoits) still exists in certain parts of India, Chambal Valley comes to mind.

A fascinating book indeed and worth reading.

The author succiently (204 pages) uses the ongoing Indo-Pakistani conflict as a study to compare and evaluate deterrence theory and non-proliferation theory. Hagerty also adepty explaines the major focal points for this crisis. Perfect for students examining South Asia or aspects of nuclear proliferation.

In this monograph, Pandey seeks to deconstruct the discourse on communalism from a variety of approaches, by examining urban and rural class relations, caste-uplift movements, mobilization in popular movements, and the colonial and nationalist discourses on the subaltern (Pandey 1990, 5). The geographical parameters of "The Construction of Communalism" are the Bhojpuri-speaking region of eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar, while its temporal scope, from the early nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, is delimited by the timeframe in which the phenomenon of communalism came into its own. As the Subalternist tide had shifted to take on as its opponent the Enlightenment, its rationality, the State, and so forth, by the time of its publication, Pandey privileges not the subaltern, but the resistant 'community' viewed as a countervailing force that constituted 'Indian society beyond the confines of the state [and] survived and demanded recognition as a dynamic, deliberative and far from insignificant force in colonial India' (Pandey 1990, 109).

In "The Construction of Communalism," Pandey argues that rather than being the eternal 'pathological condition' of Indian society that communalism was understood as in colonial and nationalist discourse, it is 'another characteristic and paradoxical product of the age of Reason (and of Capital) which also gave us [Indians] colonialism and nationalism' (Pandey 1990, 5). More specifically, he identifies four historical forces that gave rise to the politics of communalism over the course of the nineteenth century: a colonial governmentality (Foucault's term) that sought to classify and fix caste and religious identities onto a relatively diffuse social order; the drive for upward social mobility of lower castes (both Hindu Sanskritization and Muslim Ashrafization) that found recognition in census categories; the simultaneous initiative of religious elites to purify religious life (both ritual and practical); and the economic and demographic dislocations wrought by colonial capitalism (Pandey 1990, 71-93).

While difficult to grasp as a coherent monograph because it does not present a running narrative (this was out of the question by the time it was published), "The Construction of Communalism" presents what is, arguably, the most sophisticated framework of power relations between colonial government and subaltern community in Subalternist historiography. Not only does the number of pistons powering the engine of history multiply, but the number of engines, and thus, histories, proliferates as well: Up to the late nineteenth century, the agency of the community in enacting political movements was delimited by material circumstances and an autonomous consciousness. Virtually independent from this process, colonial discourse, for which political action was a law-and-order problem, interpreted this through an increasingly narrow lens of communalism. This discourse informed the 'colonial sociology' of the census. Meanwhile, communities such as the Julahas (predominantly Muslim weavers) of Mubarakpur resisted, both domination internal to Indian society and downward mobility instigated by the flooding of Indian markets by British textiles, through inventing their own genealogies, and used these in tandem with the niches colonial censusing was opening and fixing (Pandey 1990, 23-157). Thus, in accordance with Foucault and Said, an ever-intrusive Enlightenment power-knowledge permeated the very political pulse of subaltern groups. Power, in this interpretation, is no longer repressive, but productive. What rankles here as a non sequitur, therefore, is the valorization of the community as an (impermeable?) indigenous site of resistance to colonial power-knowledge for Pandey demonstrates the inverse quite effectively.

Pandey's historical construct reveals a nuanced, shifting and interpenetrating complex of agency, structural limitations, and consciousness, all set against the dynamics of capitalist advance and ensuing socio-economic dislocation. It is important to note that attention is devoted to power where it coheres in political action and institutions of the state in what Foucault calls its 'terminal forms', while its dissipated omnipresence is also recognized. And, contrary to the Foucauldian dicta enumerated in "The History of Sexuality", power *is* acquired, held, maintained and exercised in the colonial construction of communalism in North India and subaltern interaction therewith.

Pandey also makes good headway in "The Construction of Communalism" with the problem of sources faced by Subalternist historiography by excavating the jewels of "Waqeat-o-Hadesat" (a historical manuscript penned in Urdu in the 1880s by one Ali Hasan) and a weaver's 'diary'. He interprets them by sifting the biases and juxtaposing them in tabular form against official records to reveal functions of communal and colonial historical memories. Similarly, in his chapter on mobilization, he analyzes changes in patias, or circular letters, between the 1880s and 1910s, used for enlisting the support of the Hindu community in Cow-Protection campaigns.

This is historical scholarship at its finest.

Malmoud has done a brilliant analysis of Hindu rituals based on an an indepth indological reading of sanskrit texts that discuss vedic rituals, and are still performed by Brahmin in India. As Malamoud discusses and illustrates, sacrifice is the ultimate ritual and that gives meaning to all activities in Hindu India. It is what establishes a relation between the divine, social and the natural world. It is the mechanism that founds and situates the socio-cosmic order. Based on several examples such s the marriage and death rites Malmoud argues that rituals are an epistemological statement in action. The idea of debt or rin s it is called in India is the central notion. This idea of paying back to the world: natural and social and divine forms the conceptual model of all exchange relations and social life in village India. In Malmouds, analysis it is not the spoken word, the mantra which is critical ut the performance of rituals which ensures the continuoty oof the social order.

Hence, Malmoud convincingly argues sacrifice is the model for all actions. Everyday life is a constant movement towards attaining this ritualideal.

This very lavish book is an wonderful reference for any student of Indian costume and textiles. Many wonderful color photographs show the interaction of textiles and costume in India. The text has a great deal of information about the historical development of sewn clothing across India. A very useful book!

Also makes a great coffee-table book..beautiful costumes, superb illustrations.

Crane's Morning is more than the sum of its elegant and well-crafted parts. This book explores the experience of the human condition - purity, bitterness, folly, redemption. Underlying everything is a sense of the eternal and intricate order/disorder of life.

A meticulous study of the recent rise of a particular kind of "religious" nationalism in India, having definitive theoretical bearing on the concepts of nation-state, secularism, Western Enlightenment,and political psychology.

An amazing feat, also, to a creative merging of analytical, contemplative writing with concrete and careful quantitative data. The methodology is simply remarkable for the students and authors of socio-cultural and political books.