Description
This valuable collection of essays by KN Panikkar chronicles contemporary South Asia as it has unfolded in the last three decades. His being a historian of modern India has lent to his analysis of contemporary concerns a unique vantage point not available in most commentaries of contemporary South Asia.
The author focuses on the alliance between the neo-liberal policies and Hindu fundamentalism in India, and the vicissitudes of politics in all of South Asia, particularly the rights of minorities and the linkages between religious fundamentalism and the erosion of democracy. He gives special attention to the historical context of the Hindu right wing cultural project and outlines the agenda for struggle against the corrosive influence of this home grown fascism.
The destruction of the educational system through privatization by all political regimes, and particularly its communalization during the NDA regime are shown as major setbacks to the secular and democratic project in South Asia. The significance of history as a site of struggle and contestations over history is a running thread in these essays.
The essays are written in a style that is accessible, and are a wonderful illustration of how those involved in academics can make a larger public participate in the intellectual debates of our times. This book would be useful for those engaged in academics of course, but students, civil society activists and concerned citizens would also gain from it and enjoy it tremendously.
CONTENTS
- History and Historiography
- National Politics
- Communal Politics
- Education
- Culture.
Cover painting: Rajendra Singh Dhawan (1936-2012), Untitled, oil on canvas, 32×39 in, 2011. Courtesy Tunty Chauhan & Gallery Threshold
KN Panikkar
KN Panikkar is among the foremost historians of modern India. His books include ‘Against Lord and State: Religion and Peasant Uprisings in Malabar’; ‘Culture and Consciousness in Modern India’; ‘Culture, Ideology and Hegemony – Intellectuals and Social Consciousness in Colonial India’ and ‘Before the Night Falls’. He has also edited a number of books including ‘A Concerned Indian’s Guide to Communalism’ and the ICHR volume on ‘Towards Freedom, 1940, A Documentary History of the Freedom Struggle’ (suppressed and withdrawn from press by the former BJP-led regime, now forthcoming). He is currently engaged in preparing a monograph on the intellectual history of colonial India for which he has been awarded Homi Bhabha Senior Fellowship.
Bio
Dr. K.N. Panikkar (b. 1936), Vice- Chancellor, Sree Sankaracharya University, Kalady, has established himself as a historian of international repute, original and authentic in his views on the Medieval and Modern History of India and the World. An outstanding academic luminary, he holds prestigious Visiting Professorships in many Universities in India, Europe and America. As an acknowledged Scholor and Resource Person of History, he has been officiating as the Chairperson of Expert Committees and Councils of establishments and institutions as varied as IGNOU, ICHR, World Book Encyclopaedia, JNU, Gazetteers and the National Archives. He is the Chairman of Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR).
A life-long student and researcher in the historical discipline, he has been very prolific as an author as well. He has published eight highly rated books on the ideological, ethnic, socio-political and economic undercurrents of the Modernist Phase of History. He has edited seven monumental volumes of historical studies with Prefaces and Explanatory Notes for publishers in India and abroad. He has contributed sixteen Articles to various Anthologies of History and has fifteen original Research Papers to his credit.
He has delivered fifteen Memorial and Foundation Lectures in India and abroad and has visited twenty-two countries in the East and in the West as our Cultural Emissary.
