Taking a cue from the story of Trishanku—the mythological king who aspired to reach heaven while still alive—Deepak Kumar builds a compelling narrative on the state of contemporary India. Much like Trishanku, who only succeeded in being stuck in limbo between heaven and earth, India appears to be oscillating at the crossroads of modernity and tradition; development and corruption; and diversity and communalism. The Trishanku Nation presents a provocative account of a country marked by its contradictions and seamlessly combines everyday social history with academic insights. All through its civilizational progress India has defied simple categorizations. This suppleness has been its greatest strength and, to a large extent, also responsible for its myriad problems. This volume dwells on this predicament of post-Independence India. Based on memory, both historical and personal, it begins with the depiction of life in a moffusil town and moves on to examine closely issues of caste, religion, communalism, governance, corruption, education, science, culture, and so forth, as seen in the last five decades. Presented with rare verve and wit, and by using the lens of personal experiences, these ‘rumblings’ help unfurl layers of life in the Indian subcontinent.

This book is a collection of some of the published papers of the author, published mostly abroad, and unravels some significant yet hitherto neglected aspects of history, culture and religion of Bihar and Bengal: two areas that were connected through an intricate network of rivers. Themes looked into are: early historic urbanisation in the Mithilā plains of North Bihar; the social history of Brahmanical religious institutions (temples and Mathas) in early medieval Bihar and Bengal; the social history of Buddhist monasticism in early medieval Bihar and Bengal; the integration of a local goddess into the institutional fabric of Mahayana Buddhism; the survival of Buddhism in the thirteenth and fourteenth century AD; pilgrimage from Central India and Deccan to a Hindu pil grimage centre of Bihar in the medieval period; and the debate on the Islamisation of medieval eastern Bengal. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.