Critiquing Contemporary Indian Culture

Girish Karnad, one of the best living Indian playwrights, is a flexible virtuoso. His ascent as an unmistakable dramatist in the 1960s denoted the happening time of Modern Indian Playwriting in Kannada. Throughout the previous four decades, Girish Karnad has been creating plays, frequently utilizing history and folklore to handle contemporary issues. In this book, I have tried to justify my title, “Girish Karnad: A Chronicler” As I am especially keen on the plays of Girish Karnad, I endeavored to gather all the basic translations of his plays to comprehend him insightfully. I have picked major works of him translated into English incorporating his plays in which he almost goes to an elusive land of history and legend. This book presented in six parts. My endeavour is to examine the utilization of legend in the plays of Girish Karnad. Girish Karnad has appropriately seen that our fantasies oversee the awareness of Indians, and even their fundamental demeanours towards regular daily existence are affected by the considerable stories; The Ramayana, The Mahabharatha, The Bhagavata, the Puranas, and story cycles like the Jataka Tales, Panchatantra, Kathasaritsagara, Vikramadityacharita, and others, which are loaded with the legends of our nation. In this way, Karnad found that utilizing fantasies to manage contemporary issues was a certain method to catch the creative energy of the groups of onlookers and attract their thoughtfulness regarding crucial issues of present-day times.

Breaks from the argument that, for Indians, the moment of colonial liberation was a false one as the colonized had internalized European practices

What would it mean to conceive of the sacred as a source of knowledge that is as vital as the secular? What insights does a contemplative approach yield in analysing neoliberal globalisation or Hindu fundamentalism? Is a dew drop sacred, or is it secular? In today’s charged atmosphere many believe that the sacred is best kept firmly apart from the realm of the secular. SacredSecular: Contemplative Cultural Critique offers a contrasting view. It argues that the two are indivisible and can productively interweave in illuminating key contemporary issues. Essays investigate the quotidian (trash, cut flowers), the philosophical (advaita, karma), the economic (work, globalisation) and the political (war, violence). Mani invites us to rethink the prevailing view that secularism is the only progressive response to religious authoritarianism. SacredSecular proposes a conceptual approach in which body, mind, heart, nature, matter and spirit are not merely equals, but equally crucial to crafting an inclusive vision and practice. This book addresses several audiences: scholars of contemporary Indian society and culture, spiritual practitioners striving to integrate their practice with their politics, and all those interested in contemplating the present and what it portends for our collective future.

During recent decades, research on India has gone through a number of changes in focus and perspective. To name but a few examples, there has been a change in emphasis from the past to the present, from the worldview of the lites to that of the subalterns, from philosophy to everyday life, from hierarchy to the critiques of hierarchy and the sources of equality in Indian culture. However, more dramatic than the changes in the focus of research have been the changes in Indian society itself. Urbanization, the liberalization and globalization...

This book of tightly woven dialogues engages prominent thinkers in a discussion about the role of culture-broadly construed-in contemporary society and politics. Faced with the conceptual inflation of the notion of 'culture,' which now imposes itself as an indispensable issue in contemporary moral and political debates, these dynamic exchanges seek to rethink culture and critique beyond the schematic models that have often predominated, such as the opposition between "mainstream multiculturalism" and the "clash of civilizations." Prefaced by an introduction relating current cultural debates to the critical theory tradition, this book examines the politics of culture and the spirit of critique from three different vantage points. To begin, Gabriel Rockhill and Alfredo Gomez-Muller provide a stage-setting dialogue, followed by discussions with two major representatives of contemporary critical theory: Seyla Benhabib and Nancy Fraser. Working at the horizons of this tradition, Judith Butler, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Cornel West then provide important critical perspectives on cultural politics. The book's concluding section engages with Michael Sandel and Will Kymlicka, who work out of the Rawlsian tradition yet are uniquely concerned with the issue of culture, broadly understood. The epilogue, an interview with Axel Honneth, returns to the core issue of critical theory in cultural politics. Ranging from recent developments and progressive interventions in critical theory to dialogues that incorporate its insights into larger discussions of social and political philosophy, this book sharpens old critical tools while developing new strategies for rethinking the role of 'culture' in contemporary society.

This unique ethnographic investigation examines the role that fashion plays in the production of the contemporary Indian luxury aesthetic. Tracking luxury Indian fashion from its production in village craft workshops via upmarket design studios to fashion soirées, Kuldova investigates the Indian luxury fashion market's dependence on the production of thousands of artisans all over India, revealing a complex system of hierarchies and exploitation. In recent years, contemporary Indian design has dismissed the influence of the West and has focused on the opulent heritage luxury of the maharajas, Gulf monarchies and the Mughal Empire. Luxury Indian Fashion argues that the desire for a luxury aesthetic has become a significant force in the attempt to define contemporary Indian society. From the cultivation of erotic capital in businesswomen's dress to a discussion of masculinity and muscular neo-royals to staged designer funerals, Luxury Indian Fashion analyzes the production, consumption and aesthetics of luxury and power in India. Luxury Indian Fashion is essential reading for students of fashion history and theory, anthropology and visual culture.

Research on Indian culture and society has been conducted from a dizzying range of perspectives. However, in recent decades it has been particularly characterized by a change in focus from the past to the present; from the worldview of the élites to that of the subalterns; from philosophy to everyday life; and from hierarchy to the critiques of hierarchy and the sources of equality in Indian culture. More dramatic than the changes in the focus of research are the changes in Indian society itself. Urbanization, the liberalization and globalization of the economy, the IT revolution, the success of the global Indian diaspora, the affirmation of religious identities and reaffirmation of ancient world views, reinterpretations of history, new medias and transnational megagurus, and new political landscapes denote some of these processes. This new title from Routledge makes sense of these changes by bringing together the very best scholarly work on India's contemporary transformation. As the world's largest democracy emerges as an economic and cultural superpower, there is a pressing need for a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of Indian culture and society. This four-volume collection answers that need and will be welcomed as a vital one-stop research resource

It is a stealthy silence that is challenged in an inspiring volume on sexuality in contemporary Indian culture. This anthology is a timely intervention that not only attempts to locate sex as a tangible truth in an Indian context but also inspires a hundred questions regarding hidden contours.

Does philosophical critique have a future? What are its possibilities, limits and presuppositions? This collection by outstanding scholars from various traditions, responds to these questions by examining the forms of philosophical critique that have shaped continental thought from Spinoza and Kant to Marx, Foucault, Derrida and Rancière.

This book is a detailed study of the Indian graphic novel as a significant category of South Asian literature. It focuses on the genre’s engagement with history, memory and cultural identity and its critique of the nation in the form of dissident histories and satire. Deploying a nuanced theoretical framework, the volume closely examines major texts such as The Harappa Files, Delhi Calm, Kari, Bhimayana, Gardener in the Wasteland, Pao Anthology, and authors and illustrators including Sarnath Banerjee, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Durgabai Vyam, Amrutha Patil, Srividya Natarajan and others. It also explores — using key illustrations from the texts — critical themes like contested and alternate histories, urban realities, social exclusion, contemporary politics, and identity politics. A major intervention in Indian writing in English, this volume will be of great importance to scholars and researchers of South Asian literature, cultural studies, art and visual culture, and sociology.