Sita's Daughters vividly recounts the dramatic changes in role and status experienced by Rajput caste women in the Indian village Khalapur between 1955 and 1975. In the 20 years between her now-classic original field study and her follow-up with the same families, Leigh Minturn witnessed a significant decline in the women's observance of a complex system of customs collectively called purdah, which includes the wearing of veils, silence in the presence of senior men and women, the adoption of subservient postures when speaking to men, and the separation of husbands and wives. Her interviews with mothers- and daughters-in-law reveal how changes in purdah customs and religious traditions have allowed them increased access to education and health facilities, control of finances, and autonomy inside and mobility outside of their husbands' households. This work is unprecedented in its depth, scope, and exposition of the intimate details of the lives of Indian women. Minturn's return to her original subjects allowed her to observe firsthand the changes that had transpired during the interim, resulting in the only Indian village field study to span two generations. Having won the trust and confidence of her subjects, the author poignantly conveys their individuality, along with their stories of heroism, loyalty, infidelity, rape, incest, theft, and even murder. With even-handedness and detailed scholarship, Minturn makes use of methods such as systematic sampling and structured interviewing that are effective in capturing the richness of Indian village life, though they are uncommon in anthropological studies. The wide range of issues addressed here will be of interest to students and researchers in women's studies, South Asian studies, anthropology, and cross-cultural psychology, as well as to interested laypersons.

An incisive investigation of domestic violence in South Asian communities, and the resilience of women in the face of adversity In the early 2010s a spate of domestic violence-related murders in the Victorian Indian community compelled psychiatrist Manjula Datta O'Connor to investigate the causes of patriarchal abuse in South Asian families. As a practitioner with many decades experience in the field, Datta O'Connor questioned whether a better understanding of history and culture could help these communities implement measures to prevent family violence. But the most powerful lessons came from those she met through her practice - survivors of transnational abuse and of sexual and dowry exploitation. These women taught Datta O'Connor about human resilience and strength and the myriad ways women find the inner power to survive. These are the daughters of the goddess Durga, wielding the tools of history to produce meaningful change.

“Present can create remarkable past For the other persons and unforgettable future for generations, Who are ready to travel with the thought of creating something new to be in the past” ~ JOHNSON DAVID

Book 2 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta. Translating individual experience into the universal, Mehta recounts the story of his mother's arranged marriage to a British-trained doctor and, by extension, of an ancient Indian family's struggle to find its place in a modern, rapidly changing world.

Exploring the folk religion of India and the role of girls and women within it, author June McDaniel focuses on the brata (vrata) ritual in which moral lessons are taught and goddesses are revealed. Bratas are performed to gain such goals as a healthy family, a good husband, and a happy life. They are also performed so that the performers (bratinis) develop such virtues as devotion, humility, and compassion.This book presents data from fieldwork, along with brata stories, songs, poems, and ritual activities. It discusses Bengali folk religion, offers an example of ritual worship in folk Hinduism, and surveys a variety of bratas. The author analyzes the similarities and differences among these rituals in low-caste village life and in high-caste Hindu tradition, and notes that the development of these rituals involves a form of continuing divine revelation with women as the primary transmitters. Bratas act to maintain traditional Hindu values, but also emphasize the power of women, whose virtues can save their husbands from hell worlds and their families from disasters.

In the popular imagination, Calcutta is a packed and pestilential sprawl, made notorious by the Black Hole and the works of Mother Teresa. Kipling called it a City of Dreadful Night, and a century later V.S. Naipaul, Gunter Grass and Louis Malle revived its hellish image. This is the place where the West first truly encountered the East. Founded in the 1690s by East India Company merchants beside the Hugli River, Calcutta grew into India's capital during the Raj and the second city of the British Empire. Named the City of Palaces for its neoclassical mansions, Calcutta was the city of Clive, Hastings, Macaulay and Curzon. It was also home to extraordinary Bengalis such as Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian Nobel laureate, and Satyajit Ray, among the geniuses of world cinema. Above all, Calcutta (renamed Kolkata in 2001) is a city of extremes, where exquisite refinement rubs shoulders with coarse commercialism and political violence. Krishna Dutta explores these multiple paradoxes, giving personal insight into Calcutta's unique history and modern identity as reflected in its architecture, literature, cinema and music. CITY OF ARTISTS: Modern India's cultural capital; home city of

Hindu Goddesses is a valuable sourcebook and reference work for students and scholars of Hindu goddesses and of Hinduism in general. Each goddess is dealt with as an independent deity with a coherent mythology, theology and, in some cases, cult of her own. Within the complex, diverse, and rich goddess traditions of Hinduism, one can find suggestions of nearly every important theme in the Hindu religion. In many ways, this book is as much a study of the Hindu tradition itself as it is a study of one aspect of that tradition. No other living religious tradition has displayed such an ancient, continuous, and diverse history of goddess worship.

The Scientific Sufi is the most definitive English language biography of Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose, the father of modern science in India. In his time, he came close to, and many believe was robbed of, his due to winning at least two Nobel Prizes, if not one, for his work on wireless communication and the discovery of nervous system in plants. This biography carefully reconstructs his life, times, work, legacy, childhood, early years, influences and paint an intimate portrait of the father of modern science in India.

The Refugee Woman examines the Partition of 1947 by engaging with the cultural imagination of the ‘refugee woman’ in West Bengal, particularly in three significant texts of the Partition of Bengal—Ritwik Ghatak’s film Meghe Dhaka Tara; and two novels, Jyotirmoyee Devi’s Epar Ganga, Opar Ganga and Sabitri Roy’s Swaralipi. It shows that the figure of the refugee woman, animated by the history of the political left and refugee movements, and shaped by powerful cultural narratives, can contest and reconstitute the very political imagination of ‘woman’ that emerged through the long history of dominant cultural nationalisms. The reading it offers elucidates some of the complexities of nationalist, communal, and communist gender-politics of a key period in post-independence Bengal.

Set in the late 20 th century and early 21 st century in a small pilgrimage town of Vishnupur, this is a tale of a middle-class family trying to move up the social ladder, striving for a good life which just turned them into selfish, superficial and materialistic men and women. The characters in the novella form the plot. It’s a story of lives not lived, stories of humanity not always at its best. In the end, it’s a story of karma settling its accounts. About the author: Mala Singh is a retired school teacher. Vishnupur saga is her first book. She is an avid reader with a passion for writing and traveling. Mala teaches underprivileged children and is trying to set up micro libraries in rural areas. All proceeds from the sale of this book will be used in setting up tiny libraries in villages of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand.