This is a translation of a historically important Bengali novel. Published in 1882, Chatterji's Anandamath helped create the atmosphere and the symbolism for the nationalist movement leading to Indian independence in 1947. It contains the famous hymn Vande Mataram ("I revere the Mother"), which has become India's official National Song. Set in Bengal at the time of the famine of 1770, the novel reflects tensions and oppositions within Indian culture between Hindus and Muslims, ruler and ruled, indigenous people and foreign overlords, jungle and town, Aryan and non-Aryan, celibacy and sexuality. It is both a political and a religious work. By recreating the past of Bengal, Chatterji hoped to create a new present that involved a new interpretation of the past. Julius Lipner not only provides the first complete and satisfactory English translation of this important work, but supplies an extensive Introduction contextualizing the novel and its cultural and political history. Also included are notes offering the Bengali or Sanskrit terms for certain words, as well as explanatory notes for the specialized lay reader or scholar.

Winner of the A.K. Ramanujan Prize for Annotated Translation This is a translation of a historically important Bengali novel. Published in 1882, Chatterji's Anandamath helped create the atmosphere and the symbolism for the nationalist movement leading to Indian independence in 1947. It contains the famous hymn Vande Mataram ("I revere the Mother"), which has become India's official National Song. Set in Bengal at the time of the famine of 1770, the novel reflects tensions and oppositions within Indian culture between Hindus and Muslims, ruler and ruled, indigenous people and foreign overlords, jungle and town, Aryan and non-Aryan, celibacy and sexuality. It is both a political and a religious work. By recreating the past of Bengal, Chatterji hoped to create a new present that involved a new interpretation of the past. Julius Lipner not only provides the first complete and satisfactory English translation of this important work, but supplies an extensive Introduction contextualizing the novel and its cultural and political history. Also included are notes offering the Bengali or Sanskrit terms for certain words, as well as explanatory notes for the specialized lay reader or scholar.

It was hot at Padachina even for a summer day. In this village were many houses, but not a soul could be seen anywhere. The bazaar was full of shops and the lanes were lined with houses built either of brick or of mud. Every house was quiet. The shops were closed, and no one knew where the shopkeepers had gone. Even the street beggars were absent. The weavers wove no more. The merchants had no business. Philanthropic persons had nothing to give. Teachers closed their schools. Things had come to such a pass that children were even afraid to cry. The streets were empty. There were no bathers in the river. There were no human beings about the houses, no birds in the trees, no cattle in the pastures. Jackals and dogs morosely prowled in the graveyards and in the cremation grounds. One great house stood in this village. Its colossal pillars could be seen from a distance. But its doors were closed so tight that it was almost impossible for even a breath of air to enter. Within the house a man and his wife sat deeply absorbed in thought. Mahendra Singh and his wife were face to face with famine. The year before the harvests had been below normal. So rice was expensive this year and people began to suffer. Then during the rainy season it rained plentifully. The villagers at first looked upon this as a special mercy of God. Cowherds sang in joy, and the wives of the peasants began to pester their husbands for silver ornaments. All of a sudden, God frowned again. Not a drop of rain fell during the remaining months of the season. The rice fields dried into heaps of straw. Here and there a few fields yielded poor crops, but government agents bought these up for the army. So people began to starve again. At first they lived on one meal a day. Soon, even that became scarce, and they began to go without any food at all. The crop was too scanty, but the government revenue collector sought to advance his personal prestige by increasing the land revenue by ten per cent. And in dire misery Bengal shed bitter tears. Beggars increased in such numbers that charity soon became the most difficult thing to practise. Then disease began to spread. Farmers sold their cattle and their ploughs and ate up the seed grain. Then they sold their homes and farms. For lack of food they soon took to eating leaves of trees, then grass and when the grass was gone they ate weeds. People of certain castes began to eat cats, dogs and rats.

This book traces the evolution of a process of interaction between Brahmanism and the indigenous social groups of Bengal during the early medieval period. Following the logic of cultural negotiation implicit in the Puranas composed composed in Bengal, the book unravels a pattern that governed this relationship of recirpocity, contestation and domination. Two significant methodoligical issues have been addressed--the manner in which didactic Sanskritic texts can be read for the reconstruction of early Indian history and the application of anthropological models, such as great and little traditions, to such texts for a more comprehensive understanding of the Indian culture continuum. The book focuses on Bengal, but cultural negotiations refers to a fundamental civilizational pocess common to most regions in India, and as such has wider relevance.

This book consists of incisive and imaginative readings of culture, politics, and history – and their intersections – in eastern India from the 16th to the 20th century. Focusing especially on Assam, Odisha, Bengal, and their margins, the volume explores Indo-Islamic cultures of rule as located on the cusp of Mughal-cosmopolitan and regional–local formations. Tracking sensibilities of time and history, senses of events and persons, and productions of the past and the present, the volume unravels intimate expressions of aesthetics and scandals, heroism and martyrdom, and voice and gender. It examines key questions of the interchanges between literary cultures and contending nationalisms, culture and cosmopolitanism, temporality and mythology, literature and literacy, history and modernity, and print culture and popular media. The book offers grounded and connected accounts of a large, important region, usually studied in isolation. It will be of interest to scholars and students of history, literature, politics, sociology, cultural studies, and South Asian studies.

The 38th World Congress of IIS addressed some of the most fundamental issues of sociological inquiry in light of global processes and the development of different fields of knowledge: What does it mean to be human? What is the nature of social as opposed to natural processes? How do efforts to map the social and political world interact with that world and with traditional sociological practices? What can we say about relationships between scientific, political and religious beliefs? This volume sets the stage for a sustained look at what social science can say about the twenty-first century and to address the theme of the congress in 2008: Sociology Looks at the 21st Century. From Local Universalism to Global Contextualism. Contributors are: Gustaf Arrhenius, Rajeev Bhargava, Craig Calhoun, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Yehuda Elkana, Raghavendra Gadagkar, Peter Hedström, Hans Joas, Hannes Klöpper, Ivan Krastev, Steven Lukes, Vinh-Kim Nguyen, Helga Nowotny, Shalini Randeria, Alan Ryan, Jyotirmaya Sharma, Christina Torén, Michel Wieviorka, Björn Wittrock, Petri Ylikoski.