48-50: Three non-fiction books
Jan. 2nd, 2010 04:46 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
wordsofastory.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
50books_poc48. B. B. Lal, The Sarasvati Flows On: The Continuity of Indian Culture
A short, easy-to-read (except for one chapter which seems to come from another book entirely) pop non-fiction summary of the Indus or Harappan Civilization, a Bronze Age culture located in the modern countries of India and Pakistan, which had its own writing system, cities, and art, and traded with cultures as far away as Mesopotamia. This is a very nice introduction to the topic, which covers most of the main points and has lots of nice photographs. It's shorter and probably a better book for the non-academic audience than most other summaries of the Indus I know of; on the other hand, Lal is seriously influenced by his personal politics in choosing what and how to discuss. But for someone who is new to the topic, this would be a great book.
49. Lisa Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi's Nation: Homespun and Modern India
A really fascinating investigation of one aspect of the Indian Independence movement. Gandhi was highly in favor of khadi- homemade thread and cloth- and thought that everyone who wanted to see India out from under British rule should not only use and wear khadi exclusively, but should spend half an hour a day making it. He thought that this would restore dignity to the working class, as well as provide a way for India's economy to escape the influence of the British factory system. Needless to say, not everyone actually wanted to spend that much time spinning thread, and the debates around the topic resemble the modern arguments over buying local/fair-trade/organic/etc. Trivedi provides a great account of these debates, the way they changed over time, and how khadi continues to function in the Indian political sphere; she even includes political cartoons about it! This is a non-fiction academic book, but very accessible; highly recommended.
50. Kajri Jain, Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art
Calendar art (aka bazaar art aka chromolithographs aka poster art) is a particular style of vividly colored, mass-produced art popular in India, particularly in calendars and advertisements, usually depicting religious images. Jain's book takes this often-ignored art seriously, investigating multiple realms of the topic: who produces calendar art? who buys it? how has it changed over time? what do artists say about it? how does it circulate? Despite the subtitle, she really doesn't address the economy of it, but instead focuses on meanings and interpretations. This book is another non-fiction academic title, and one a bit harder to get into than Clothing Gandhi's Nation. But it does have lots of pretty pictures!
A short, easy-to-read (except for one chapter which seems to come from another book entirely) pop non-fiction summary of the Indus or Harappan Civilization, a Bronze Age culture located in the modern countries of India and Pakistan, which had its own writing system, cities, and art, and traded with cultures as far away as Mesopotamia. This is a very nice introduction to the topic, which covers most of the main points and has lots of nice photographs. It's shorter and probably a better book for the non-academic audience than most other summaries of the Indus I know of; on the other hand, Lal is seriously influenced by his personal politics in choosing what and how to discuss. But for someone who is new to the topic, this would be a great book.
49. Lisa Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi's Nation: Homespun and Modern India
A really fascinating investigation of one aspect of the Indian Independence movement. Gandhi was highly in favor of khadi- homemade thread and cloth- and thought that everyone who wanted to see India out from under British rule should not only use and wear khadi exclusively, but should spend half an hour a day making it. He thought that this would restore dignity to the working class, as well as provide a way for India's economy to escape the influence of the British factory system. Needless to say, not everyone actually wanted to spend that much time spinning thread, and the debates around the topic resemble the modern arguments over buying local/fair-trade/organic/etc. Trivedi provides a great account of these debates, the way they changed over time, and how khadi continues to function in the Indian political sphere; she even includes political cartoons about it! This is a non-fiction academic book, but very accessible; highly recommended.
50. Kajri Jain, Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art
Calendar art (aka bazaar art aka chromolithographs aka poster art) is a particular style of vividly colored, mass-produced art popular in India, particularly in calendars and advertisements, usually depicting religious images. Jain's book takes this often-ignored art seriously, investigating multiple realms of the topic: who produces calendar art? who buys it? how has it changed over time? what do artists say about it? how does it circulate? Despite the subtitle, she really doesn't address the economy of it, but instead focuses on meanings and interpretations. This book is another non-fiction academic title, and one a bit harder to get into than Clothing Gandhi's Nation. But it does have lots of pretty pictures!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 10:52 pm (UTC)I think it's actually VERY valid to be upset that so many history books penned about India are penned by very privileged non-Indian people and upset that more people don't realize that it's a huge problem and has huge cultural, intellectual, and political ramifications for the people who's history is being discussed.
It's something that should be discussed and brought up far more often, if not on this comm then in other places where Indian history or history in general is discussed.
Thank you for reminding me of that.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 10:54 pm (UTC)Also, you mentioned there is a bias in the first book about what topics are and are not discussed. For my own edification, what are those biases? I like to be aware if there are any issues like that when I go into a book, especially if it's a topic that I am so woefully unfamiliar with.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 10:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 11:05 pm (UTC)And yeah, while I have a great deal of respect for the research and scholarship of non-Indian academic Indologists, I remain wary of their texts being the starting points for someone unfamiliar with the culture.
Thanks for your supportive comment!
no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 11:13 pm (UTC)The Indus is a subject which I study myself, so I could go on forever about the problems with the first book; I just wasn't sure if other people would care. :) Basically, there's currently a right-wing political movement in India known as Hindutva; in a extremely simplistic explanation, you could think of them sort of like Fundamentalist Christians in the US. One aspect of this movement is an emphasis on India as a inherently Hindu nation (some individuals involved with the movement therefore discriminate against other long-standing religious groups in India, like Muslims, Christians, etc; other individuals argue that these groups are culturally Hindu even if they're not religiously Hindu). This manifests within archaeology in efforts to 1) prove that the Indus people believed in Hinduism, because that would show that India has been Hindu since the beginning of recorded history and 2) the Indus culture was totally just like modern Indian culture, since Hindutva members tend to emphasize conservatism over change. You can see this even in the title of Lal's book: "The Continuity of Indian Culture". Now, the Indus culture may or may not have had a religion which modern people would recognize as Hinduism; I can't say. But it's not really adequate archaeological interpretation to say, "Look! The Indus people drew a picture of someone with crossed legs! Clearly this is totally evidence for the beginning of yoga, and it had the exact same cultural meaning to them that it does to us, never mind the 5000 years in between!" Which is pretty much what Lal does at some points.
I don't know enough about Lal to know how involved he personally is with the Hindutva movement, but I do know he was involved in the Ayodhya debate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayodhya_Debate), and if you read that wikipedia page, you'll get an extreme example of how the Hindutva movement gets involved in archaeology.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-03 12:01 am (UTC)Heh.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-03 05:49 am (UTC)I'm not sure, but if I had to guess, I would say most Hindutva supporters have no problem with them. It's more about Hindu as a culture/religion and not as much about it as a language (since Hindi, at least as it exists today, is a very recent development). I do know Hindutva has been gaining popularity in South Indian Dravidian regions lately, and one would think there would be a bigger difference there than to Bengali.
Anyway, it's a bit complicated.
Yeah, that's to say the least! The whole issue is enormously complicated (particularly when you get into areas like "what does secularism even mean in a multi-religious, non-Western context?"), and I am definitely no sort of expert in modern Indian political/cultural movements. But it is important, and I wish I knew more.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-03 11:30 pm (UTC)