ABSTRACT
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part 13I|24 pages
History and historians
part 37II|83 pages
Objects, metaphors, temporalities
chapter 5|21 pages
The surrender of Jagabandhu Bakshi
part 121III|55 pages
Memory, politics, culture
chapter 9|17 pages
Making of a radio programme
part 177IV|82 pages
Literature, nation, modern