Anuradha Dingwaney Needham

Sheera Talpaz

The Routledge Companion to Cultural Text and the Nation brings together over 30 articles by leading and emerging scholars from around the world who engage fresh critical lenses, from affect studies to the medical humanities, and re-energize established frameworks to examine the interplay between cultural production and conceptualizations of the nation and nationalism. The scholarship in this volume takes as its objects of analysis various forms of aesthetic and cultural production, from film and literature to museums and costume books, enriching the conversation that has often siloed these forms. Geared toward scholars, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduates across the humanities and social sciences, this timely, interdisciplinary collection is issued at a critical juncture in the transformation of the nation and the global resurgence of regressive and populist nationalist movements. Both offering new insights reorienting our understanding of canonical materials and bringing noncanonical works to light, this volume challenges long-held assumptions about the nation while establishing its continued significance and future possibilities.

The Routledge Companion to Cultural Text and the Nation

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

In this timely, nuanced collection, twenty leading cultural theorists assess the contradictory ideals, policies, and practices of secularism in India.

The Crisis of Secularism in India

While secularism has been integral to India’s democracy for more than fifty years, its uses and limits are now being debated anew. Signs of a crisis in the relations between state, society, and religion include the violence directed against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 and the precarious situation of India’s minority religious groups more generally; the existence of personal laws that vary by religious community; the affiliation of political parties with fundamentalist religious organizations; and the rallying of a significant proportion of the diasporic Hindu community behind a resurgent nationalist Hinduism. There is a broad consensus that a crisis of secularism exists, but whether the state can resolve conflicts and ease tensions or is itself part of the problem is a matter of vigorous political and intellectual debate. In this timely, nuanced collection, twenty leading Indian cultural theorists assess the contradictory ideals, policies, and practices of secularism in India. Scholars of history, anthropology, religion, politics, law, philosophy, and media studies take on a broad range of concerns. Some consider the history of secularism in India; others explore theoretical issues such as the relationship between secularism and democracy or the shortcomings of the categories “majority” and “minority.” Contributors examine how the debates about secularism play out in schools, the media, and the popular cinema. And they address two of the most politically charged sites of crisis: personal law and the right to practice and encourage religious conversion. Together the essays inject insightful analysis into the fraught controversy about the shortcomings and uncertain future of secularism in the world today. Contributors. Flavia Agnes, Upendra Baxi, Shyam Benegal, Akeel Bilgrami, Partha Chatterjee, V. Geetha, Sunil Khilnani, Nivedita Menon, Ashis Nandy, Anuradha Dingwaney Needham, Gyanendra Pandey, Gyan Prakash, Arvind Rajagopal, Paula Richman, Sumit Sarkar, Dwaipayan Sen, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Shabnum Tejani, Romila Thapar, Ravi S. Vasudevan, Gauri Viswanathan

Anuradha Dingwaney Needham

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