REVIEW OF SHAPING THE DISCOURSE BY RINA MUKHERJI:

Our author, Dr Rani Bang, wins the coveted

Times of India Social Impact Award 2015

PUTTING WOMEN FIRST:

WOMEN AND HEALTH IN A RURAL COMMUNITY

Rani Bang with Sunanda Khorgade and Rupa Chinai

Foreword by Rahul Goswami

8.5”X5.5” hb, 312pp, ISBN 81-85604-96-1 £50

Trained in India and at Johns Hopkins University where Dr Rani Bang and her husband, Dr Ajay Bang, studied public health and research methodologies, the couple returned to India to set up a health clinic in Maharashtra’s neglected Gadchiroli district, about 170 km from Nagpur, where the Gonds are the dominant tribal group. Dr Rani Bang and her husband started the Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health (SEARCH) and to practise medicine that explicitly catered to the tribal and non-tribal poor people who live in the area. Rani Bang’s research found that 92 per cent of women had no access to treatment for gynaecological disorders in the absence of women doctors. In their own way, the Bangs have set in motion a revolution that equips people, communities and administrators with the tools to build an indigenous expression of development.

Rani Bang has run a health clinic in Gadchiroli for over twenty years; Rupa Chinai writes on developmental journalism with a focus on health; Sunanda Khorgade works with the women’s health programme at SEARCH; Rahul Goswami is a policy analyst and writer, based in Goa and Delhi.

TOI Social Impact Awards 2015:

Thank goodness, these men & women make a difference

TNN|Mar 9, 2015, 02.10 AM IST

Lifetime achievement: By taking neo-natal care to the doorstep of the poor, the doctor-couple of Abhay and Rani Bang have managed to control infant mortality in 39 villages of the Naxal affected district of Gadchiroli, where they have worked for nearly 30 years. The Bangs’ model of home-based newborn and child care is now being practised across India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and in African nations such as Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi.

A doctor couple who have revolutionized the delivery of healthcare to tribals in Naxal-hit Gadchiroli district, a civil hospital in Ahmedabad which defies stereotypes about state-run institutions, a government programme to take science to children who live in the forgotten interiors of the country, and a corporate's effort to bring the girl child into the warm, nurturing embrace of education were among the path-breaking initiatives and inspiring human endeavours and that got the nod from the high-powered Jury that met to choose the 2014-15 winners of the Times of India Social Impact Awards. In its third edition, the SIA has become the gold standard for socially empowering work as evidenced by its 1,100 entries.
The Jury, chaired by Naresh Chandra, ex-Cabinet secretary, governor and ambassador to the US, had the unenviable task of choosing the most deserving from among the 40 finalists shortlisted for their consideration, after multiple rounds of elimination. The Jury rose to the occasion, spending the next three hours in intense discussions and even resorting to a vote a couple of times. The eight-member Jury, which bonded over a light vegetarian lunch before starting discussions, looked for impactful, scalable work, especially in remote corners of the country or aimed at vulnerable social groups like the girl child, manual scavengers and leprosy patients.The tone for the afternoon was set by Times Group CEO Raj Jain. Welcoming the distinguished Jury, he said, "We believe the Social Impact Awards is the most significant professional work we do at The Times of India."

Review of Bengal Marxism: Early Discourses and Debates

A review of our title, Bengal Marxism: Early Discourse and Debates, by Anuradha Roy, in 'Pustak Parichay', Anandabazar Patrika, 30 August, 2014, by Sobhanlal Datta Gupta.
"Historian Anuradha Roy's prime subject of investigation is the history of cultural practice and its philosophical discussion. Those who are familiar with her work will recognize from the very title that this is a new and expanded articulation of her own research. Even the readers who are not familiar with her work would unanimously acknowledge that while the importance of the subject under scrutiny is undeniable, the task of philosophically dissecting cultural practice is a genuinely complex one...It can be said, without a doubt, that the volume will be treasured by intelligent readers. It will reveal to enthusiastic researchers of the future the path ahead."
As Sobhanlal Datta Gupta rightly comments, "...Anuradha has written the book after painstaking effort and having consulted many documents...I eagerly await her next work."

Review: Gender and Caste Hierarchy in Colonial Bengal

Review of Deboshruti Roychowdhury's Gender and Caste Hierarchy in Colonial Bengal: Inter-caste Interventions of Ideal Womanhood by Sarmistha Dutta Gupta
 

Stree, 2014
ISBN 978-93-81345-05-4 
demy octavo pb; 256 pp
Rs 600

...The author Deboshruti Roychowdhury shows that the upholding of the caste-Hindu notions of adarsha nari or the ideal woman did not remain a prerogative of the high castes in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Bengal. Linking ideology to materiality, she expounds how the upwardly mobile among the low castes—who found it materially more beneficial in appropriating high-caste gender norms—contributed in no small measure in the making of the ideal woman. The book thus is an attempt to resist the universalization of the construction of such an ideal only in terms of high-caste existence.

Focussing on certain everyday aspects of women’s lives, the book throws light on the way people with social agency amongst the low castes tried to socialize their women according to high-caste norms, thereby gaining status for their castes and at the same time helping preserve the caste hierarchy fundamentally through control of female sexuality. The tracts they wrote, the journals they produced and the caste associations these aspiring groups ran, also reveal how an almost homogenous ideal of womanhood was produced across caste and how such an ideal was instrumental in maintaining both caste and gender inequality....

Read full review in Kindle Magazine (July 2014 Issue) visit: http://kindlemag.in/gender-caste-hierarchy-colonial-bengal-inter-caste-interventions-ideal-womanhood/ 

Review: Shaping the Discourse

Review of Ipsita Chanda and Jayeeta Bagchi (eds.) Shaping the Discourse: Women’s Writings in Bengali Periodicals: 1865-1947 by Epshita Halder

 "Threading together possibilities of an ongoing multi-layered and multi-textured social conversation on women’s issues within a period that spans decades"

Stree, 2013
ISBNs 978-81-906760-5-2;
81-906760-6-9

...[T]he collection neither presumes the absence of the slips between discourse and practice nor a relative autonomy, it does try to conceptualize gender at multiple levels—personal identity, principle of organization of social structures and basis of normative value(s). In their bid to chart out a ‘literary history’ of gender as a category, the editors have tried to show how this category is constructed through belief, reason and emotion, expressed through a particular genre and medium. Threading together possibilities of an ongoing multi-layered and multi-textured social conversation on women’s issues within a period that spans decades, the articles help readers trace the dynamics of change in positions and strategies on women’s education, child marriage, widow remarriage, seclusion, ‘reform’, self-help, patriotism and its practice and so on....

Read full review in Kindle Magazine (July 2014 Issue) visit: http://kindlemag.in/shaping-writings-bengali-periodicals/

For more information visit: http://stree-samyabooks.blogspot.in/2013_12_01_archive.html

LATEST REVIEW OF DR JAYANTI BASU'S 

RECONSTRUCTING THE BENGAL PARTITION: 

NEW RELEASE December 2013 Nonfiction

Shaping the Discourse: Women’s Writings in Bengali Periodicals (1865–1947)

Edited by Ipshita Chanda and Jayeeta Bagchi

8.5”x 5.5” pb, 466 pp, ISBNs 978-81-906760-5-2; 81-906760-6-9 Rs 550; £40.00

Comprising translations of women’s writings of Brahmo, Hindu and Muslim writers of undivided Bengal (involving present-day Bangladesh), which were published in well-known Bengali periodicals (between 1865–1947), such as Bamabodhini Patrika, Prabasi, Antahpur, Bharati, Bangadarshan,Bharatlakshmi, Saogat, Nabanoor, and so on, this volume is the third reader compiled by the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, for the new Masters’ level courses in women’s studies.  

            Focussing on a period, of reform, conflict, change and debate, the reader explores the multi-layered social conversation about women’s issues and maps the changes in the life practices and beliefs of women as reflected in their writings with the progression of time. While there is Taherannesa writing in 1865 in Bamabodhini Patrika, and appealing, ‘O civilized men do not remain neglectful of educating women’, there is Saratkumari Chaudhurani’s article in Bharati, published in 1914, where she upholds the initiative of Swarnakumari Devi’s Sakhi Samiti for spreading education and literacy amidst women, helping widows, aiding orphans, and so on. Hence, the discourse that surfaces also follows the path of a historical narrative.

            This volume traces issues like relations between men and women, and amongst women themselves to more ‘public’ concerns like women’s education and employment; child marriage, seclusion of women and the position of widows. It upholds the dichotomy between the private and the public, and the prachina, the traditional, and the navina, the ‘new’, with the emerging woman proposing an alternate way of life, thereby extending the woman’s question beyond every aspect of women and men’s social existence; putting these writings in a larger context of reform, change and conflict; and projecting the discourse on gender issues as shaped by power relations between classes, castes and communities cohabiting in society.

Ipshita Chanda is Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University;

Jayeeta Bagchi is Assistant Professor in English, National University of Study and Research in Law, Ranchi.

NEW RELEASE December 2013 Nonfiction

Shaping the Discourse: Women’s Writings in Bengali Periodicals (1865–1947)

Edited by Ipshita Chanda and Jayeeta Bagchi

8.5”x 5.5” pb, 466 pp, ISBNs 978-81-906760-5-2; 81-906760-6-9 Rs 550; £40.00

A write-up on Shoi Mela where Urmila Pawar's autobiography 'The Weave of My Life' (Stree Books) was awarded:

Picture by Sayantan Ghosh

Follow Us:        | Tuesday , November 26 , 2013 | Spotlight on women writers SUDESHNA BANERJEE

(From left) Amala Shankar, Mahasveta Devi, Nabaneeta Dev Sen and Soi Samman winners Urmila Pawar and Shashi Deshpande at the inauguration of the book fair at ICCR on Sunday. Picture by Sayantan Ghosh “Soi Mela is a forum for creative women in India. We highlight women’s writing, especially in regional languages, as well as other forms of creativity like photography, painting and sculpture,” said Nabaneeta Dev Sen, president of Soi, before the inauguration on Sunday. At her call, writers flocked from across the country. Mridula Garg, who has liberated Hindi writing from the shackles of romance and introduced irony and wry humour, came from Delhi. From the south came Kannada writer Janaki Srinivasan Murthy who goes by the penname of Vaidehi and poet Mamta Sagar. From neighbouring Odisha came Jnanpith awardee Pratibha Ray, a strident voice against social injustice and corruption. Representing the Northeast were Arupa Patangia Kalita who writes of the downtrodden in Assamese, Thounaojam Chanu Ibemhal writing in Manipuri as Memchoubi and Krairi Mog Choudhury of Tripura, who writes in her mother tongue Mog other than in Bengali and English. In the 13th year of the women writers’ association and at the third Soi Mela, Dev Sen fulfilled what she said was a dream of hers – hand over Soi Samman, carrying a prize value of Rs 1 lakh. “It took us a while to get the money but when we did there was enough to felicitate two.” The inaugural awards went to Shashi Deshpande and Urmila Pawar. Explaining the choice, Dev Sen said that unlike other Indians writing in English with an eye on the West, the Karnataka-born Deshpande wrote in English for Indians. Indeed, the lady would later joke, “I don’t earn in dollars and pounds.” Praising the Soi logo of a woman reading a book, she pointed out that in reading others’ works started the process of writing. “The faint voice of Indian women is becoming distinct over the past few decades. For years we were seen as outsiders,” said the author of That Long Silence. “A society needs to listen to its writers because we have something to say,” she added. Introducing the Marathi author of the poignant autobiography The Weave of My Life, Dev Sen pointed out: “While the rest of us found support in our formative years, Urmila came up from a place where society was trying to put her and her people down.” Pawar’s words, simple yet strident, held the mirror up to what it meant to be a Dalit. “Women of our earlier generations have survived by picking up undigested seeds from cowdung and making rotis of them. One found a human tooth amid the food she collected from the leftover dumped at the streetside. Yet hunger made her carry on eating. My father made my mother promise that she would educate her five children even if he died. She kept her promise by weaving baskets which I sold door to door. She could not fight the insults hurled at her, so she wept to let people know what happened. Her tears were her weapon.” One had to be a Dalit to know of the kind of sexual innuendoes that a woman would have to endure. “I started writing pushed by this compulsion to protest the injustices I have seen and felt.” Hearing her on stage was a grand old lady who has been fighting for a down-trodden tribe herself, “head soi” Mahasveta Devi. “I can’t afford to think only of women. I go to remote areas plagued by poverty and illiteracy. When you see children going without food, your views change,” said the octogenarian. Keeping her company on stage was 95-year-old dancer Amala Shankar. The three-day event features author interactions, play reading, poetry performances and storytelling — all by women. A signature and a girl’s female friend. The dual connotation of the word shoi in Bengali found complete embodiment in and at the Soi Mela. The festival of women’s literature in India brought together friends and colleagues from across the country as well as their writings in the form of a book fair being held at ICCR till Tuesday. “Soi Mela is a forum for creative women in India. We highlight women’s writing, especially in regional languages, as well as other forms of creativity like photography, painting and sculpture,” said Nabaneeta Dev Sen, president of Soi, before the inauguration on Sunday. At her call, writers flocked from across the country. Mridula Garg, who has liberated Hindi writing from the shackles of romance and introduced irony and wry humour, came from Delhi. From the south came Kannada writer Janaki Srinivasan Murthy who goes by the penname of Vaidehi and poet Mamta Sagar. From neighbouring Odisha came Jnanpith awardee Pratibha Ray, a strident voice against social injustice and corruption. Representing the Northeast were Arupa Patangia Kalita who writes of the downtrodden in Assamese, Thounaojam Chanu Ibemhal writing in Manipuri as Memchoubi and Krairi Mog Choudhury of Tripura, who writes in her mother tongue Mog other than in Bengali and English. In the 13th year of the women writers’ association and at the third Soi Mela, Dev Sen fulfilled what she said was a dream of hers – hand over Soi Samman, carrying a prize value of Rs 1 lakh. “It took us a while to get the money but when we did there was enough to felicitate two.” The inaugural awards went to Shashi Deshpande and Urmila Pawar. Explaining the choice, Dev Sen said that unlike other Indians writing in English with an eye on the West, the Karnataka-born Deshpande wrote in English for Indians. Indeed, the lady would later joke, “I don’t earn in dollars and pounds.” Praising the Soi logo of a woman reading a book, she pointed out that in reading others’ works started the process of writing. “The faint voice of Indian women is becoming distinct over the past few decades. For years we were seen as outsiders,” said the author of That Long Silence. “A society needs to listen to its writers because we have something to say,” she added. Introducing the Marathi author of the poignant autobiography The Weave of My Life, Dev Sen pointed out: “While the rest of us found support in our formative years, Urmila came up from a place where society was trying to put her and her people down.” Pawar’s words, simple yet strident, held the mirror up to what it meant to be a Dalit. “Women of our earlier generations have survived by picking up undigested seeds from cowdung and making rotis of them. One found a human tooth amid the food she collected from the leftover dumped at the streetside. Yet hunger made her carry on eating. My father made my mother promise that she would educate her five children even if he died. She kept her promise by weaving baskets which I sold door to door. She could not fight the insults hurled at her, so she wept to let people know what happened. Her tears were her weapon.” One had to be a Dalit to know of the kind of sexual innuendoes that a woman would have to endure. “I started writing pushed by this compulsion to protest the injustices I have seen and felt.” Hearing her on stage was a grand old lady who has been fighting for a down-trodden tribe herself, “head soi” Mahasveta Devi. “I can’t afford to think only of women. I go to remote areas plagued by poverty and illiteracy. When you see children going without food, your views change,” said the octogenarian. Keeping her company on stage was 95-year-old dancer Amala Shankar. The three-day event features author interactions, play reading, poetry performances and storytelling — all by women.

Review of Kancha Ilaiah's  Untouchable God  by THE HINDU :

UNTOUCHABLE GOD; Kancha Ilaiah, Samya, Rs.350

Sowmya Sivakumar:

An uncensored portrayal of the interplay between caste, gender and religion in India.

An unwritten disclaimer to Kancha Ilaiah’s novel Untouchable God could have read: 

The characters in this book may be fictitious but any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely deliberate. Which begs an additional tagline: This novel is not for faint-hearted, humourless Brahmins, especially those with an inability to laugh at themselves.

From a scholar whose books have been loved and despised, depending on which side you are; Ilaiah’s ‘fictionalised’ uncensored portrayal of caste, gender and religion and their nuanced interplay through the lives and manoeuvres of six Brahmins living in an India blistering for freedom from ‘the other’ is refreshingly non-pedagogical, yet steeped in history. It is intensely satirical and plants a giant slap on the faces of those who not only profess caste, but also those who like to believe that it no longer exists.

Ilaiah’s narrative comes alive in the stories of the slimy six — Veda Shastry of Tamil Nadu, Banerjee Babu of Bengal, D.C.Tilak of Maharashtra, Krishnamurty of Karnataka, Namboodri of Kerala and Appa Rao of Andhra Pradesh — culturally diverse zealots connected by the overarching camaraderie of being born Brahmins. As the stories unfold, Ilaiah peels off the layers of hypocrisy and strange schizophrenia that infests the world of upper castes to whom the very physical existence of untouchables is despicable but whose own existence inextricably depends on preserving the untouchables in their shit.

Whether it is D.C Tilak’s declaration (see quote) or Krishnamurthy’s and Appa Rao’s rather unsuccessful attempt to plagiarise a Dalit poet’s fiery works, the book effectively stereotypes just how devious Brahmin/upper caste minds work.

But Untouchable God is not just about an older generation of upper caste male Hindu bigots. Their relationships with, treatment and repression of women is a recurrent theme, whether through Namboodri’s sexual sambandham with a lower-caste Nair woman, the outburst by an unnamed young woman in Veda Shastry’s kitchen, the widows of Benares “who have to give themselves to the ‘priests’, their guests and friends” or the traded freedoms of an apparently poised upper-caste researcher Mala who grapples to shake off her own chains. By corollary, there are powerful characters like Sakku Bai and Saraswati and, later, references to the indispensable role of women in the American civil rights struggle, suggesting the inevitability of women’s liberation for striking at the foundations of caste.

Untouchable God rips apart hypocrisies at various levels. It mocks the dichotomous existence of thebhadralok communists represented by the lives and inner conflicts of junior Banerjee and the play-acting Gayatri Roy, just as it exposes the insidious seepage of caste into other religions in India.

The closing chapter places all these home truths on an international stage, by bringing in an African-American appropriately named Isaiah who travels to India inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Ambedkar to draw parallels with his own struggles with race. Of course, the book does not explain everything. The helplessness of the Dalit Ezhumalai, as he says, “do not do this thing, Isaiah, we will have to pay for it later when you are gone” contrasts with Isaiah’s own account of his family and the courageous black movement in America and questions about Buddhism are left unanswered.

The language is raw, provocative, scathing, dark, honest and firsthand. Through the lens of caste and religion, the story is actually a fine work on human behaviour in a stratified but interdependent society. At a time when Mirchpur and Dharmapuri are today’s realities, the novel is a disturbing reminder of how little has changed, amid how much. It makes us sit up, confront, laugh, question, hope, and hang our heads in shame, all at once.

Extract:…we are men of mind. Where are our hands? I tell you, our hands and instruments must be the Shudras and the lower castes. We must make them beholden to us.

http://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/home-truths/article5335252.ece

Review of Sharmistha Dutta Gupta's "Identities and Histories: Women's Writings and Politics in Bengal" by Professor Aparna Basu in the JNU journal 'Studies in History'

"Sharmistha Dutta Gupta focusses on the writings of middle class Bengali women in six or seven literary and political journals between the 1920s and 1950s - 'Probasi', 'Saogat', 'Jayashree', 'Mandira', 'Ghare-Baire' and 'Swadhinata'. Each of these represented a different political ideology and the author explores how this influenced the policy of the journals and women's writing... the book reveals that women were not politically passive and that these journals contributed in creating political awareness and a space for women to debate and write on these issues which were not purely domestic."

Read the full review here:

Read the full review here:

Sharmistha Dutta Gupta, Identities and Histories: Women's Writings and Politics in Bengal, Stree, Kolkata, 2010, pp.294, Rs.700

                                                               

                                                           DOI: 10.1177/0257643013482407

When I first became interested in women's history in the 1970s, we, in India were still hunting for sources. Now, thirty five years later, scholars have come a long way. Those engaged in research have uncovered autobiographies, ( read the rest from the pages attached below)

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9lSQFPcG22JbG9HNDZUQWozOUk/edit

Review of Jayanti Basu's 'Reconstructing the Bengal Partition' in Ananda Bazar Patrika

Review of Jayanti Basu's ' Reconstructing The Bengal Partition - The Psyhe under a Different Violence'

"Published by Samya the book has tried analyzing the complex feelings of hatred and longingfor the homeland that has contributed to  shaping the personalities of a generation of people who were forced to migrate under the shadow of a fear that they could not fathom, much less comprehend....

Dr. Basu draws on her experiences as a psychoanalyst, and tries to delve deep into the events of the greatest migration in history through the collective memories of her patients...

... book also dwells on the anti-Muslim violence and the ferocity of Hindu anti-socials in Kolkata during the riots, and helplessness and gulit teenagers witness to the killing of innocent Muslims harboured for years. Even as it turns to look back objectively at an event that geographically redrew boundaries, and created divisions where there were none, this captivating document demands that we learn from history. It is also an appeal to recognize our common legacy in the wake of the myriad problems the partition created."

Reviewed by: Rina Mukherjee

Read the full review at: http://www.d-sector.org/article-det.asp?id=1778

Review of 'Sketches of Hootum the Owl' in Frontline

Sketches of Hootum the Owl: A satirist's view of colonial Calcutta
Author: Kaliprasanna Sinha; translated by Chitralekha Basu
Price: Rs.800

Hootum Pyachar Naksha presents a realistic picture of 19th century Calcutta and weaves in thinly disguised references to real-life personalities of the times. By SAYANTAN DASGUPTA

A CITY peopled by quacks who claim to have magical powers, moneylenders who are more resilient than leeches, and absentee landlords who fritter away their wealth by maintaining hordes of sycophants and by organising rooster fights, animal weddings and titillating khyamtadance performances. A colonial capital in the throes of monumental change. A space of intellectual ferment where debates over widow remarriage, English education and Brahmoism evoke strong emotions.

All these aspects of 19th century Calcutta are captured with finesse by Kaliprasanna Sinha in his Hootum Pyachar Naksha, which was first published in Bangla around 1861. The work has remained extremely popular in its Bangla avatar down the ages, perhaps as much for the sarcasm, irreverent humour and bawdiness it embodies as for the way it documents Calcutta of the 1850s and 1860s. It is also a work that has defied being bracketed as any one of the better known genres. Hootum Pyachar Naksha presents a realistic picture of contemporary Calcutta and weaves in thinly disguised references to real-life personalities of the times. It thus straddles both fiction and “non-fiction” and qualifies equally as “sketch”, satire and documentary.

Sinha remains largely unknown outside the circle of Bangla-speaking readers. Perhaps part of the reason for this lies in the fact that Hootum is an immensely challenging text to translate. Chitralekha Basu’s translation is probably only the second complete English translation, the first one having been published as recently as in 2007. No wonder then that acknowledgment of Sinha’s literary contribution has remained largely peripheral, if not entirely non-existent, outside Bengal.

Sinha was born into a well-to-do family in 1840 and was only 30 when he died. Though he was well known for his support for social reform, his chief claim to fame in the field of literature rests on Hootum, a work in which he assumes the persona of an owl keeping vigil on and cataloguing the different aspects of the city, and on the multi-volume Bangla translation of the Mahabharata which he commissioned. Yet his position within the history of Bangla literature may have been different had it not been for the overwhelming influence of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. For Hootum ushered in a new literary register of Bangla. Sinha chose to write in the language of the street as Pyarichand Mitra alias Tekchand Thakur (Alaler Gharer Dulal) had done before him, weaving in onomatopoeic words and even coining new words every now and then as Chitralekha Basu points out in her note on the translation. Everyday language became the language of literature for Sinha. In that way, he signifies the road not taken—Bangla literature, of course, would choose to go the way of Bankim, basking in the comfort of chaste, Sanskritised Bangla. Had other contemporary writers chosen to follow in Sinha’s footsteps, the history of Bangla language and literature would have been very different and Sinha may have got the recognition he deserved for the pioneering role he played.

While no translation is ever finished or is entirely satisfactory to everyone, Chitralekha Basu must be congratulated on the very attempt to translate a text such as this. One may quibble over the efficacy of the attempt to lend some sort of completeness to the staccato sentences of the original through the insertion of parenthetical words and phrases—a strategy the translator employs, and one that does seem to distract the reader sometimes —and over the need for some of the annotations provided, but all in all the translation does manage to capture the flavour of the original and read well, too, and that is no mean achievement when it comes to a text like Hootum Pyachar Naksha.

Sketches by Hootum the Owl is based on the 1868 edition, which combined Part I and Part II (published separately in Bangla). It has 10 chapters in addition to the prefatory comments, introduction and annotations. The first is called “Going Round in Circles” and is based on the Charak festival as it was celebrated in 19th century Calcutta. It depicts the practice of devotees swinging from ropes with iron hooks embedded in their backs as part of the rituals, but describing them is not the only objective of this chapter. Charak only provides Sinha the occasion to explore a larger social context. Thus, this chapter doubles as a trenchant critique of superstition within contemporary Hindu society.

It is also unsparing in its satire aimed at the culture of sycophancy that had developed around the babus of Calcutta. Similarly, the narrator mocks the hypocrisy of some reformist Brahmos who vociferously reject the practices of orthodox Hindu religion and at the same time participate in the rituals because their “forefathers had been doing the same thing since the last seven generations”, and who “celebrated Durga Puja at home and yet visited the Samaj every Wednesday where they would close their eyes and howl like bereaved souls”. These are all themes that recur in many of the chapters that follow.

“The Baroyaari Pujas in Calcutta”, the largest chapter of Hootum, again serves to mock the wasteful expenditure and the vanity that were part and parcel of the babu culture of 19th century Bengal. Incidents of people cleaning their bottoms with rose water, spending a thousand on dogs’ weddings, throwing money at jatra performers and going to bathe in the river in a carriage drawn by four horses to the sound of trumpets are “few and far between”, Hootum remarks in his typical tongue-in-cheek manner. The chapter also catalogues the follies, foibles and failings of various well-known babus of the times and their “reformed” sons. In one particularly telling incident, a college-going son in a state of inebriation beats up his father and then says, “Long live Vidyasagar!... Now I will get you the kind of father with whom you and I could sit together and drink to our health. Let that old fool die. I want a father who is quite reformed!”

The clash of ideas Sinha’s age embodied is well manifested in the baroyaari Durga idol he describes —its frame was decorated with images of Scottish highlanders on horseback; “the idol’s face was that of a European woman”; Brahma, Vishnu and Siva could be seen putting their hands together and praying to her; little English fairies could be spied playing the horn above the idol, carrying the Union Jack!

Contemporary historical events work their way into Hootum’s narrative. Thus, the 1857 “Mutiny”; the “death” and return of Pratapchand, the Maharaja of Burdwan, which evoked immense interest and emotions in Hootum’s Bengal; the sojourn of the Badshah of Lucknow in Calcutta before he was to be exiled to England; the indigo rebellion—all of these find a place in this book. So does the coming of the Railways —and this is documented in one of the most hilarious chapters, where two devout Vaishnavites aiming to visit Benaras are forced to share a carriage with an inebriated Brahmo. But the element of the comic coexists with the tragic; the chapter goes on to paint a poignant portrait of the colossal insensitivity of the British rulers to Indians.

Among other things, the book documents the various forms of popular entertainment in 19th century Bengal; genres such as the jatra, the half-akhrai, the panchali, the khyamta and the kirtan all figure prominently in this text.

The narrator of Hootum is equally critical of the rigidity and orthodoxy of Hinduism and of the hypocrisy that often went hand in hand with reform, of revivalism, and of the blind imitation of the West. In his attempt to articulate this critique, he paints a fascinating picture of 19th century Calcutta, a picture that is as entertaining as it is thought-provoking, and as farcical as it is tragic.

Source: http://www.frontline.in/books/calcutta-of-yore/article4935078.ece

Review of 'Reconstructing the Bengal Partition : The Psyche under a different violence

OTHER SIDES OF MEMORY
THE TELEGRAPH reviews Jayanti Basu's Reconstructing the Bengal Partition

"...In the book, Reconstructing the Bengal Partition, Jayanti Basu has searched the depths of the human psyche to fish out what little of this inexplicable 'something' can be explained through psychoanalysis. although her discussion focuses on one particular historic event, it is actually much more than that- it is the beginning of  quest to understand, or decipher, such layered words as pain, memory, fear, longing, rootlessness and nostalgia. Basu generously explains the methods she has employed to decode the interviews of people displaced by the partition of Bengal and of those who experienced it as a distant event. By analysing a collection of such interviews, she has explored the psychological impact of this unique and complex 'trauma' on the collective as well as the individual psyche..." 
To read the complete review visit the webpage
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130705/jsp/opinion/story_17076369.jsp#.Ud5SZDtczp8

Review of Urmila Pawar's 'The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman's Memoirs' , trans. Maya Pandit, 2008, pp. 348 and Ravikumar's 'Venomous Touch: Notes on Caste, Culture and Politics', trans. R. Azahagarasan, 2009, pp. 298

"The two volumes under review offer important insights into the lived realities of Dalits in contemporary India,   though they each approach the issue from different angles. While Pawar's autobiography is at times unnervingly optimistic in tone, Ravikumar is withering in his criticism and his assessment of the Dalit condition.


... Venomous Touch is filled with blood curdling, stomach turning examples of the humiliations and travesties to which Dalits are subjected, as in this description of a brutal attack on a group of dalits who had dared to contest (and win) a local panchayat (village council) election...Worse was the seemingly nonchalant response of the Indian justice system, and the people at large, to such a massacre, and Ravikumar rails against this with a mix of despair and righteous indignation.

Pawar's memoir recounts her journey from a small hamlet on the West Indian coast to Mumbai where she has become renowned as a Dalit and women's activist and as a Marathi writer. The story is replete with instances of everyday violence.

... Pawar's tenacious resourcefulness makes her account the perfect complement to Ravikumar's observations, for it leaves readers with the scope to imagine a better future. It is, of course, up to readers to take up the cause. Both books need to be widely read."

Review by: Manu Bhagavan
Hunter College and the Graduate Center
The City University of New York

Read the full review at:
The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 49, 4 (2012): 591-612

Review: 'Women Contesting Culture: Changing Frames of Gender Politics in India'. Edited by Kavita Panjabi and Paromita Chakravarti. Stree, Kolkata, 2012, pp. 381, Rs. 500.00

"...the finest scholarship has come out of the convergence of the women’s movement and women’s/gender studies research..." 

"A few pioneering WS departments have also developed curricula and teaching-learning resources in different languages and for different levels of students. But there have been a few comprehensive publication projects. One such is that of the School of Women’s Studies (SWS), Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Women Contesting Culture: Changing Frames of Gender Politics in India is the second of a series of four Readers2 being published for SWS by the independent feminist publisher Stree, Kolkata. Samita Sen, Director of SWS and Series Editor, says the ‘enormous expansion in teaching’ WS in Bachelors’ and Masters’ courses, and even as a subject in the National Eligibility Test, ‘demanded a response from us’. As everyone engaged in the field knows, the finest scholarship has come out of the convergence of the women’s movement and women’s/gender studies research. As the editors of Women Contesting Culture Kavita Panjabi and Paromita Chakravarti remark, this is a matter of pride and celebration. The Reader reflects this celebration, even as it replays the fraught cultural politics of gender, marked by contestations, resistance and transformations over the last 25 years."

Review by: Sumi Krishna
The Book Review Literary Trust
VOLUME XXXVII NUMBER 2-3 February/March 2013

Read full review at http://www.thebookreviewindia.org/articles/archives-1185/2013/februarymarch/2-3/documenting-research-and-action.html

Review of 'Joothan- A Dalit's Life' in Written Opinion

Joothan literally means: food left on an eater's plate. This left over food meant more than this. This Joothan was a lifeline to author's family and community during rainy season and sweet for savouring during happy moments.

Omprakash Valmiki's life woven in these words and sentences, speaks truth and nothing more than this. The words pierce forcefully in heart and mind of readers, jolts readers conscience and asks does humanity exist? What equality means? Author's account of his Dalit community through his life is heart-rending and put our heads under shame and demands self-introspection from us.

Read full review at http://apnaharf.blogspot.in/2011/02/joothan-dalits-life-by-omprakash.html

Review of 'Joothan- A Dalit's Life' at Shunya

It’s possible that I first reflected on the idea of untouchability only in college, through art house cinema. Even so, upper caste Indian liberals made these films and it was their viewpoint I saw. It is hardly a stretch to say that the way even the most sensitive white liberals in the US knew and described the black experience of America is partly why one had to read Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and other black authors. A similar parallel holds for Native Americans, immigrants, and women, as well as the ‘untouchables,’ now called Dalits (‘the oppressed’), numbering one out of six Indians. In recent years, they have begun to tell their own stories, bearing witness to their slice of life in India. Theirs is not only a powerful new currentof Indian literature, it is also a major site of resistance and revolt. Joothan by Omprakash Valmiki is one such work of Dalit literature, first published in Hindi in 1997 and translated into English by Arun Prabha Mukherjee in 2003. It is a memoir of growing up ‘untouchable’ starting in the 1950s outside a typical village in Uttar Pradesh. Told as a series of piercing vignettes, Joothan is also a remarkable record of a rare Indian journey, one that took a boy from extremely wretched socioeconomic conditions to prominence as an author and social critic.

Read full review at http://www.shunya.net/Text/Blog/Joothan.htm