Search results for ""Author Vinay Lal""

Insurgency and the Artist explores not merely how Indian printmakers and artists responded to the freedom struggle but also how the art they fashioned invoked their own conception of the nation, their sense of the past, and the contours of the movement for India’s emancipation from the yoke of colonial oppression. Recent scholarly work has been almost entirely riveted on nationalist prints, and much of it has focused on the idea of Bharat Mata, but this book seeks to furnish a more rounded account of the artwork — including etchings, paintings, woodblocks prints, and cartoons — contemporary to the freedom struggle and also highlights the work of neglected artists such as Babuji Shilpi, S.L. Parasher, Zainul Abedin, and M.V. Dhurandhar, among others. The author considers how the Indian past was rendered as one of martial resistance to ‘foreign’ rule, the manner in which artists worked with mythic material, and, of course, the treatment of the larger-than-life figures of Gandhi, Bhagat Singh, Subhas Bose, and other patriots in nationalist art. This gloriously illustrated work simultaneously offers a narrative history of the freedom struggle and the rich interplay of text and images is designed to offer insights that neither conventional histories nor images can offer in isolation. Insurgency and the Artist is also an inquiry into how ideas travel across borders, the porousness of culture, and the relationship of art to politics.

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Why do Hindus revere the cow?Must Hindus be vegetarian? Hinduism is the world's oldest religion, yet the word 'Hindu' was never used before the 18th century by Hindus to describe themselves. it is defined as polytheistic, but Gandhi declared that a Hindu needn't believe in any god. it is a religion as much of myth as of history - it has no founder, no single authoritative book, even few central doctrines.Introducing Hinduism offers a guide to the key philosophical, literary, mythological and cultural traditions of the extraordinarily diverse faith. It untangles the complexities of Hinduism's gods and goddesses, its caste system and its views on sex, everyday life and asceticism. Vinay Lal and Borin Van Loon's hugely enjoyable tour through Hinduism also explores its links with and differences from Buddhism, Jainism and other religions, the resurgence of Hindu extremism, the phenomenon of Bollywood and the overseas Hindu diaspora.

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Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay was a remarkable woman a gifted writer and an activist central to the making of the modern Indian nation. India's representative to the Global South for many years after independence, Kamaladevi figured prominently in discussions of and studies on Indian women and independence. But in more mainstream histories she remains relatively unknown. A Passionate Life brings together for the first time a collection of Kamaladevi's writings on the subjects closest to her heart. These essays include a close look at the lives of tribal peoples in India, the sustaining of handicrafts and handicraft workers, and issues of history. In doing so, the volume questions not only our methods of writing and recovering history which leave out lives as important as hers but also shows how the surfacing of histories like Kamaladevi's can enrich, expand, and add nuance to our understanding of the making of modern India. Crucial new essays and commentary by the editors accompany Kamaladevi's writings.

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