In 1940s India, revolutionary and nationalistic feeling surged against colonial subjecthood and imperial war. Two-and-a-half million men from undivided India served the British during the Second World War, while 3 million civilians were killed by the war-induced Bengal Famine, and Indian National Army soldiers fought against the British for Indian independence. This captivating new history shines a spotlight on emotions as a way of unearthing these troubled and contested experiences, exposing the personal as political. Diya Gupta draws upon photographs, letters, memoirs, novels, poetry and philosophical essays, in both English and Bengali languages, to weave a compelling tapestry of emotions felt by Indians in service and at home during the war. She brings to life an unknown sepoy in the Middle East yearning for home, and anti-fascist activist Tara Ali Baig; a disillusioned doctor on the Burma frontline, and Sukanta Bhattacharya’s modernist poetry of hunger; Mulk Raj Anand’s revolutionary home front, and Rabindranath Tagore’s critique of civilisation. This vivid book recovers a truly global history of the Second World War, revealing the crucial importance of cultural approaches in challenging a traditional focus on the wartime experiences of European populations. Seen through Indian eyes, this conflict is no longer the ‘good’ war.

What is a poem? What ideas about the poem as such shape how readers and audiences encounter individual poems? To explore these questions, the first section of this Companion addresses key conceptual issues, from singularity and genre to the poem's historical exchanges with the song and the novel. The second section turns to issues of form, focusing on voice, rhythm, image, sound, diction, and style. The third section considers the poem's social and cultural lives. It examines the poem in the archive and in the digital sphere, as well as in relation to decolonization and global capitalism. The chapters in this volume range across both canonical and non-canonical poems, poems from the past and the present, and poems by a diverse set of poets. This book will be a key resource for students and scholars studying the poem.

A new kind of Indian writing in English was in the air in the early 1990s. Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, I. Allan Sealy and Upamanyu Chatterjee had written their early books. The new current was promising, and Dharma Kumar, historian and editor of the famous Indian Economic and Social History Review, decided to publish a journal, along the lines of Granta and The New Yorker, dedicated to ferreting out the best literary talent. The journal, Civil Lines: New Writing from India, first appeared in 1994 and quickly attracted attention by publishing literary pieces that were a cut above, developing a cult following among readers of Indian writing in English. Till 2001, five issues had been published—totaling sixty-one individual contributions by thirty-eight contributors. Some of the contributors were then far from well known, and Civil Lines could be said to have given them a leg-up towards subsequent fame. Sheila Dhar, Susan Visvanathan, Raj Kamal Jha, Ruchir Joshi, Siddhartha Deb, Suketu Mehta, Amitava Kumar and Manjula Padmanabhan went on to become established writers after Civil Lines had published their smaller pieces. Ramachandra Guha’s first brilliant essay—a five-finger exercise in literary anthropology which seems with hindsight to presage his later work on Verrier Elwin—appeared in the inaugural issue. A little-known aspect of Amitav Ghosh is his interest in the short story. Ghosh contributed two pieces to the journal—a reflective essay on the Indian practice of the short story and a wonderfully fluent translation of one of Tagore’s most famous tales, ‘Kshudhita Pâshân’ (The Hunger of Stones). The present anthology comprises a selection of the finest essays, stories and poems that were published in the first five issues of Civil Lines. The original issues of the journal are difficult to come by. This anthology is a must for all those interested in the best practitioners of desi English.

The rise of Maoism as one of the organized political movement in India is the outcome of a historical situation. Both colonialism and the failure of the Indian state to implement land reforms more stringently in the aftermath of independence resulted in terrible sufferings of the marginalized, land- dependent, sections of society. Through historical analysis, this book assesses the ideological articulation of the contemporary ultra-left movement in India, including Maoism which is expanding gradually in India. The author provides answers to the following issues: Is Maoism reflective of the growing disenchantment of the people in the affected areas with the state? Is it a comment on ‘the distorted development planning’ pursued by the Indian state? Is this an outcome of the processes of ‘deepening of democracy’ in India? Using Orissa as a case study, the book raises questions on India’s development strategy. The author argues that Maoism provides critical inputs for an alternative paradigm for development, relevant for ‘transitional societies’ and that it is a still a powerful ideology for the poorer parts of the world although its ideological appeal has declined internationally.

The journal Civil Lines was conceived in the 1990s to publish the best new Indian writing in English. The first issue (1994) soon garnered a cult readership with works by writers like Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ramachandra Guha and I. Allan Sealy. Claiming the magazine?s irregularity itself as a guarantee of quality, Civil Lines continued issues erratically. It encouraged a new wave of Indian English writers and laid the ground for, among others, Ruchir Joshi, Siddhartha Deb, Suketu Mehta, Amitava Kumar, and Manjula Padmanabhan, who went on to become established writers Ramachandra Guha?s first brilliant essay, a five-finger exercise in literary anthropology which appeared in the inaugural issue, and Amitav Ghosh?s reflective essay on the Indian practice of the short story as well as a wonderfully fluent translation of one of Tagore?s most famous tales, Kshudhita Pashan (The Hunger of Stones). This volume, edited by Rukun Advani (one of the four original editors), brings together the finest essays, stories, and poems in the first five issues of Civil Lines, all of which are now out of print and hard to come by. For anyone interested in the finest recent Indian writing in English, this is the book to possess.

How the 1967 uprising at Naxalbari inspired a generation of resistance across India and the South Asian subcontinent Although the 1967 revolutionary armed peasant uprising in Naxalbari, at the foot of the Indian Himalayas, was brutally crushed, the insurgency gained new life elsewhere in India. In fact, this revolt has turned out to be the world’s longest-running “people’s war,” and Naxalbari has come to stand for the road to revolution in India. What has gone into the making of this protracted Maoist resistance? Bernard D’Mello’s fascinating narrative answers this question by tracing the circumstances that gave rise to India’s “1968”decade of revolutionary humanism and those that led to the triumph of the “1989” era of appallingly unequal growth condoned by Hindutva-nationalism, the Indian variant of Nazism. Will what remain of India’s continuing “1968” bring twenty-first-century “New Democracy” to the collective agenda? Or will the ongoing regression of “1989” lead the way to full-blown semi-fascism and sub-imperialism? India after Naxalbari is far more than a simple history of the ongoing Naxalite/Maoist resistance; it is a deeply passionate and informed work that not only captures the essence of modern Indian history but also tries to comprehend the present in the context of that history – so that the oppressed can exercise their power to influence its shape and outcome.

Left radicalism in India was rooted in the nationalist movement and was set in motion in the 1920s with the formation of the communist party. The communist movement manifested itself differently in each phase of India’s political history and Communism continues to remain a meaningful alternative ideological discourse in India. This book examines left politics in India focusing on its rise, consolidation and relative decline in the present century. Left radicalism in India is a distinct ideological phenomenon which is articulated in two complementary ways: while the parliamentary left remains social democratic in character, its bête noire, the left wing extremists, continue to uphold the classical Marxist, Leninist and Maoist notion of violent revolution. By concentrating on the nature and also activities of these two versions of left radicalism, this book is a thorough study of the phenomenon. The author analyses the states of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura and presents a variety of case studies of communist movements. He argues that the political power of the left parties depends on the degree to which they have built organizational strength, political hegemony and a broad social base through legal and extra-parliamentary struggles. An in-depth study of socio-economic circumstances that remain critical in conceptualizing radical extremism, Left Radicalism in India will be of interest to those studying Indian Politics, South Asian History, Development Studies and Global Politics.

The 2019 congress of the International Comparative Literature Association attracted many hundreds of scholars from all around the world to Macau. This volume contains a modest selection of papers to discuss the four hottest fields of the discipline: the future of comparison, the position of national and diaspora literature in the context of globalization, the importance of translation, and the concepts of world literature. The contributions cover huge geographical and cultural areas, but pay special attention to the connections between Western (both American and European) and Asian (especially Indian and East-Asian) literatures. The literatures of the world might be different but they are also connected.