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Ashes of Immortality
"At last, she arrives at the fatal end of the plank . . . and, with her hands crossed over her chest, falls straight downward, suspended for a moment in the air before being devoured by the burning pit that awaits her. . . ." This grisly 1829 account by Pierre Dubois demonstrates the usual European response to the Hindu custom of satis sacrificing themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands—horror and revulsion. Yet to those of the Hindu faith, not least the satis themselves, this act signals the sati's sacredness and spiritual power. Ashes of Immortality attempts to see the satis through Hindu eyes, providing an extensive experiential and psychoanalytic account of ritual self-sacrifice and self-mutilation in South Asia. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork in northern India, where the state-banned practice of sati reemerged in the 1970s, as well as extensive textual analysis, Weinberger-Thomas constructs a radically new interpretation of satis. She shows that their self-immolation transcends gender, caste and class, region and history, representing for the Hindus a path to immortality.
Royal Mughal Ladies and Their Contributions
The present study deals with the royal Mughal ladies in details and is concerned with their achievements and contributions which till today form a part of rich cultural heritage. It provides a detailed account of the life and contributions of the royal Mughal ladies from the times of Babar to Aurangzeb's, with special emphasis on the most prominent among them.
The Secret Race: Anglo-Indians
Anglo-Indians are the only English speaking, Christian community in India, whose Mother tongue is English and who have a Western lifestyle in the sub-continent of India. Anglo-Indians originated during the Colonial period in India. When British soldiers and traders had affairs or married Indian women their offspring came to be known as Anglo-Indians or Eurasians in history.
'Yogini' in South Asia
In different stages in the history of South Asian religions, the term yoginī has been used in various contexts to designate various things: a female adept of yoga, a female tantric practitioner, a sorceress, a woman dedicated to a deity, or a certain category of female deities. This book brings together recent interdisciplinary perspectives on the medieval South Asian cults of the Yoginis, such as textual-philological, historical, art historical, indological, anthropological, ritual and terminological. The book discusses the medieval yoginī cult, as illustrated in early Śaiva tantric texts, and their representations in South Asian temple iconography. It looks at the roles and hypostases of yoginīs in contemporary religious traditions, as well as the transformations of yoginī-related ritual practices. In addition, this book systematizes the multiple meanings, and proposes definitions of the concept and models for integrating the semantic fields of ‘yoginī.’ Highlighting the importance of research from complementary disciplines for the exploration of complex themes in South Asian studies, this book is of interest to scholars of South Asian Studies and Religious Studies.
Legalizing the Revolution
Theorizes the project of instituting a postcolonial order following decolonization, though an account of the Indian constitution.
Contentious Traditions
Contentious Traditions analyzes the debate on sati, or widow burning, in colonial India. Though the prohibition of widow burning in 1829 was heralded as a key step forward for women's emancipation in modern India, Lata Mani argues that the women who were burned were marginal to the debate and that the controversy was over definitions of Hindu tradition, the place of ritual in religious worship, the civilizing missions of colonialism and evangelism, and the proper role of the colonial state. Mani radically revises colonialist as well as nationalist historiography on the social reform of women's status in the colonial period and clarifies the complex and contradictory character of missionary w...
Renowned Goddess of Desire
The role of women and ideas of gender are fundamental components of all religious traditions. This book examines the representations of women within Tantra using a case study of a selection of Hindu Tantric texts from the 15th through 18th centuries in Northeast India.
Doctoring Traditions
There is considerable interest now in the contemporary lives of the so-called traditional medicines of South Asia and beyond. "Doctoring Traditions, "which examines Ayurveda in British India, particularly Bengal, roughly from the 1860s to the 1930s, is a welcome departure even within the available work in the area. For in it the author subtly interrogates the therapeutic changes that created modern Ayurveda. He does so by exploring how Ayurvedic ideas about the body changed dramatically in the modern period and by breaking with the oft-repeated but scantily examined belief that changes in Ayurvedic understandings of the body were due to the introduction of cadaveric dissections and Western anatomical knowledge. "Doctoring Traditions" argues that the actual motor of change were a number of small technologies that were absorbed into Ayurvedic practice at the time, including thermometers and microscopes. In each of its five core chapters the book details how the adoption of a small technology set in motion a dramatic refiguration of the body. This book will be required reading for historians both of medicine and South Asia.
The Future of Higher Education in India
The book analyses various challenges emanating from privatization, globalization and public financial crunch to understand the future directions of higher education in India. The book presents a careful understanding of structure, finance and governance of higher education and advocates a new way to look at increasing the capability of students to secure their future. Attention has also been drawn to the inequalities prevailing in the system of higher education and pursuing inclusive approach so as to have sufficient employment opportunities for students in the labour market. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 deals with the future in terms of university structure and functions, Pa...
Head and Heart
An extensive study of self-sacrificial images in Indian art, this book examines concepts such as head-offering, human sacrifice, blood, suicide, valour, self-immolation, and self-giving in the context of religion and politics to explore why these images were produced and how they became paradigms of heroism.
