'Elegant, lucid and funny, this book will appeal to as many readers as there are desires.'--Shohini Ghosh 'The history of desire in India, ' writes Madhavi Menon in this splendid book, 'reveals not purity but impurity as a way of life. Not one answer, but many. Not a single history, but multiple tales cutting across laws and boundaries.' In Bhakti poetry, Radha and Krishna disregard marital fidelity, age, time and gender for erotic love. In Sufi dargahs, pirs (spiritual guides) who were married to women are buried alongside their male disciples, as lovers are. Vatsyayana, author of the world's most famous manual of sex, insists that he did not compose it 'for the sake of passion', and remained celibate through the writing of it. Long hair is widely seen as a symbol of sexuality; and yet, shaved off in a temple, it is a sacred offering. Even as the country has a draconian law to punish homosexuality, heterosexual men share the same bed without comment. Hijras are increasingly marginalized; yet gender has historically been understood as fluid rather than fixed. Menon navigates centuries, geographies, personal and public histories, schools of philosophy, literary and cinematic works, as she examines the many--and often surprising--faces of desire in the Indian subcontinent. Her study ranges from the erotic sculptures of Khajuraho to the shrine of the celibate god Ayyappan; from army barracks to public parks; from Empress Nur Jahan's paan to home-made kohl; from cross-dressing mystics to androgynous gods. It shows us the connections between grammar and sex, between hair and war, between abstinence and pleasure, between love and death. Gloriously subversive, full of extraordinary analyses and insights, this is a book you will read to be enlightened and entertained for years.

The book presents a decade-long perspective on contemporary visual practices in India, with stunning visuals and insightful essays by leading intellectuals in the field. Engaging with a diversity of art practices and creative conditions, the publication (and exhibition) questions cultural structures that segregate visual practices, making a case for a polycentric aesthetic. In this argument for an inclusive and non-hierarchical consideration of visual culture, Edge of Desire presents a new contribution from the sub-continent to the debate on the nature and purpose of art practices and art histories. At the same time, it offers a visually exciting and intellectually stimulating array of new art from India generated through an intermingling of influences and traditions.

The product of many years of research, this unique book presents fascinating perspectives on contemporary lesbian life in India and unravels some of the history of lesbian desire from centuries past. Through detailed examination of mythology, cosmology, ancient art and artefacts and her exegesis of ancient Sanskrit texts, Thadani constructs a tapestry of feminine kinship, genealogy and sexual or erotic bonding between women (sakhiyani) in ancient India. The author offers an historical perspective on the effect of colonization upon lesbian identities in India, showing how women were viewed by Western imperialists either as soft victims or as sexually dangerous, possessing an overgrown clitoris and in need of heterosexual domestication. The second half of the book focuses on contemporary lesbian realities and issues, including lesbian marriages, suicide pacts, forging lesbian space, lesbian human rights, lesbophobia, sexual exile and the different construction of gender, family and possible kinship alliances.

Draws upon multi-disciplinary frameworks of analysis to provide an account of the making of sexual cultures in modern India.

Inquiries into marital patterns can serve as an effective lens to analyze social structures and material cultures not only on the question of sexuality, but also on the nature of a private citizen’s engagement with state and law. Through ethnographic research in courtrooms, community,and kinship spaces, the author outlines the transformations in material culture and political economy that have led to renewed negotiations on the institution of marriage in North India, especially in legal spaces. Tracing organically evolving notions of sexual consent and legal subjectivity, Courting Desire underlines how non-normative decisions regarding marriage become possible in a region otherwise known for high instances of honor killings and rigid kinship structures. Aspirations for consensual relationships have led to a tentative attempt to forge relationships that are non-normative but grudgingly approved after state intervention. The book traces this nascent and under-explored trend in the North Indian landscape.

This book critically examines the cultural desire for anglicisation of the Indian middle class in the context of postcolonial India. It looks at the history of anglicised self-fashioning as one of the major responses of the Indian middle class to British colonialism. The book explores the rich variety of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writings that document the attempts by the Indian middle class to innovatively interpret their personal histories, their putative racial histories, and the history of India to appropriate the English language and lay claim to an “English” identity. It discusses this unique quest for “Englishness” by reading the works of authors like Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Rabindranath Tagore, Cornelia Sorabji, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Dom Moraes, and Salman Rushdie. An important intervention, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of postcolonial studies, Indian English literature, South Asian studies, cultural studies, and English literature in general.

This book advances an original interpretation of the orthodox Indian theories of motivation in light of the Indian prohibition on desire and evaluates its consequences for Indian ethics and soteriology.

A riveting account of love and desireIndia is the only civilization to elevate kama-desire and pleasure-to a goal of life. Kama is both cosmic and human energy, which animates life and holds it in place. Gurcharan Das weaves a compelling narrative soaked in philosophical, historical and literary ideas in the third volume of his trilogy on life's goals: India Unbound was the first, on artha, 'material well-being'; and The Difficulty of Being Good was the second, on dharma, 'moral well-being'. Here, in his magnificent prose, he examines how to cherish desire in order to live a rich, flourishing life, arguing that if dharma is a duty to another, kama is a duty to oneself. It sheds new light on love, marriage, family, adultery and jealousy as it wrestles with questions such as these: How to nurture desire without harming others or oneself? Are the erotic and the ascetic two aspects of our same human nature? What is the relationship between romantic love and bhakti, the love of god