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"Hindi literature 20th century History and criticism."
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Hindi Dalit Literature and the Politics of Representation
This study explores how Dalits in north India have used literature as a means of protest against caste oppression. Including fresh ethnographic research and interviews, it traces the trajectory of modern Dalit writing in Hindi and its pivotal role in the creation, rise and reinforcement of a distinctive Dalit identity.
The book challenges the existing impression of Hindi Dalit literature as stemming from the Dalit political assertion of the 1980s and as being chiefly imitative of the Marathi Dalit literature model. Arguing that Hindi Dalit literature has a much longer history in north India, it examines two differing strands that have taken root in Dalit expression - the early 'popular' production of smaller literary pamphlets and journals at the beginning of the 20th century and more contemporary modes such as autobiographies, short stories and literary criticism.
The author highlights the ways in which such various forms of literary works have supported the proliferation of an all-encompassing identity for the so-called 'untouchable' castes. She also underscores how these have contributed to their evolving political consciousness and consolidation of newer heterogeneous identities, making a departure from their long-perceived image. The work will be important for those in Dalit studies, subaltern history, Hindi literature, postcolonial studies, political science and sociology as well as the informed general reader.
eBook
Kāma's Flowers
Kama's Flowers documents the transformation of Hindi poetry during the crucial period of 1885-1925. As Hindi was becoming a national language and Indian nationalism was emerging, Hindi authors articulated a North Indian version of modernity by reenvisioning nature. While their writing has previously been seen as an imitation of European Romanticism, Valerie Ritter shows its unique and particular function in North India. Description of the natural world recalled traditional poetics, particularly erotic and devotional poetics, but was now used to address sociopolitical concerns, as authors created literature to advocate for a \"national character\" and to address a growing audience of female readers.
Examining Hindi classics, translations from English poetry, literary criticism, and little-known popular works, Ritter combines translations with fresh literary analysis to show the pivotal role of nature in how modernity was understood. Bringing a new body of literature to English-language readers, Kama's Flowers also reveals the origins of an influential visual culture that resonates today in Bollywood cinema.
eBook
Everyday Reading
During the two difficult decades immediately following the 1947
Indian Independence, a new, commercially successful print culture
emerged that articulated alternatives to dominant national
narratives. Through what Aakriti Mandhwani defines as middlebrow
magazines-like Delhi Press's Saritā -and the first
paperbacks in Hindi-Hind Pocket Books-North Indian middle classes
cultivated new reading practices that allowed them to reimagine
what it meant to be a citizen. Rather than focusing on individual
sacrifices and contributions to national growth, this new print
culture promoted personal pleasure and other narratives that
enabled readers to carve roles outside of official prescriptions of
nationalism, austerity, and religion. Utilizing a wealth of
previously unexamined print culture materials, as well as paying
careful attention to the production of commercial publishing
companies and the reception of ordinary reading
practices-particularly those of women- Everyday Reading
offers fresh perspectives into book history, South Asian literary
studies, and South Asian gender studies.
eBook
Between Love and Freedom
Between Love and Freedom interprets the figure of the revolutionary in the Hindi novel by establishing its lineage in representative Bengali novels, as well as in the contending moralities of Mahatma Gandhi and Bhagat Singh on the idea of violence. It reveals how conventional social realism and emergent modernist modes were brought together in the novelistic tradition by extending the political ideal of anti-colonial revolution into domains of sexual desire and subjective expression, especially in the works of Agyeya, Jainendra, and Yashpal. This work will deeply interest scholars and students of literature, modern Indian history, Hindi, and political science.
eBook
English heart, Hindi Heartland
English Heart, Hindi Heartland examines Delhi's postcolonial literary world—its institutions, prizes, publishers, writers, and translators, and the cultural geographies of key neighborhoods—in light of colonial histories and the globalization of English. Rashmi Sadana places internationally recognized authors such as Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Vikram Seth, and Aravind Adiga in the context of debates within India about the politics of language and alongside other writers, including K. Satchidanandan, Shashi Deshpande, and Geetanjali Shree. Sadana undertakes an ethnographic study of literary culture that probes the connections between place, language, and text in order to show what language comes to stand for in people's lives. In so doing, she unmasks a social discourse rife with questions of authenticity and cultural politics of inclusion and exclusion. English Heart, Hindi Heartland illustrates how the notion of what is considered to be culturally and linguistically authentic not only obscures larger questions relating to caste, religious, and gender identities, but that the authenticity discourse itself is continually in flux. In order to mediate and extract cultural capital from India's complex linguistic hierarchies, literary practitioners strategically deploy a fluid set of cultural and political distinctions that Sadana calls \"literary nationality.\" Sadana argues that English, and the way it is positioned among the other Indian languages, does not represent a fixed pole, but rather serves to change political and literary alliances among classes and castes, often in surprising ways.
eBook
Flesh and fish blood
In Flesh and Fish Blood Subramanian Shankar breaks new ground in postcolonial studies by exploring the rich potential of vernacular literary expressions. Shankar pushes beyond the postcolonial Anglophone canon and works with Indian literature and film in English, Tamil, and Hindi to present one of the first extended explorations of representations of caste, including a critical consideration of Tamil Dalit (so-called untouchable) literature. Shankar shows how these vernacular materials are often unexpectedly politically progressive and feminist, and provides insight on these oft-overlooked—but nonetheless sophisticated—South Asian cultural spaces. With its calls for renewed attention to translation issues and comparative methods in uncovering disregarded aspects of postcolonial societies, and provocative remarks on humanism and cosmopolitanism, Flesh and Fish Blood opens up new horizons of theoretical possibility for postcolonial studies and cultural analysis.
eBook
Bollywood Baddies
Bollywood Baddies is the first-of-its-kind book-length narrative of villainy in Hindi films. It discusses villains, vamps, and henchmen of Bollywood cinema, and also the actors who essayed such characters over the decades. The author discusses not just villains but also the evaluation of villainous characters vis-à-vis sociopolitical conditions in the country. The narrative begins with Ashok Kumar's negative role in Kismet as early as 1943, and goes up to the Agneepath remake (2012), where Sanjay Dutt plays Kancha Cheena, earlier essayed by Danny Denzongpa in the original. In between, it discusses all major villains, from Lala Sukhiram (Mother India) to Gabbar (Sholay) to \"Lion\" Ajit (Kalicharan) to Mogambo (Mr. India), and many others. While keeping villains in the focus, it also discusses popular henchmen and vamps, like M B Shetty, Sharat Saxena, Nadira, Bindu, Helen, among others, to understand the dimension of the villains' empire. After all, it's our villains who make our protagonist the hero we all admire. An engrossing read, this book is for every film buff.
eBook