On Modern Indian Sensibilities: Culture, Politics, History [Hardcover]

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 regionallocal 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.

List of Contributors. Preface. Introduction: Histories and Sensibilities I History and Historians 1. Gautam, Ever My Friend 2. Learning History, Teaching History II Objects, Metaphors, Temporalities 3. Cards and Culture: Cultural Cosmopolitanism in Mughal India 4. Myths, Metaphors, Meanings: Kalapahar in Bengal and Orissa 5. The Surrender of Jagabandhu Bakshi: Kingship, Insubordination, and the Discrepant Histories of the Paik Rebellion in Orissa, 18031825 6. Olden Times: Watches, Watchmaking, and Temporal Culture in Calcutta, c. 17571857 III Memory, Politics, Culture 7. Martyrdom in Revolutionary Nationalism: Mournilƒ@