<p>This book is an analytical study of the Sikh Gurus’ perception of women and their societal roles with an emphasis on their impact of the religious ideology on gender dynamics. Sikhism stands apart because of the respectful position granted towards women. This book explores how these religious perspectives shaped social relation and evolution of the Sikh community (Sikh Panth) and whether there existed major differences in the view and ideologies of Sikh Gurus contemporary Bhakti saints and Guru Nanak himself. The book also seeks to examine the influence of Sikh Gurus’ on patriarchal ideology and whether there existed a gap between the normative beliefs and operative realities. The book attempts to connect with the past and comprehend the nuanced message of the Sikh Gurus who advocated for a more gender sensitive society. This work will help us connect with our past and enlighten the readers with the faultlines that have occurred over the centuries and have led us where we are today. About the Author Pratibha Chawla began her teaching career with S.G.N.D. College in Delhi in 1998 and was appointed as a permanent faculty in 1999 at S.G.T.B. Khalsa College University of Delhi. She has contributed extensively to journals of national and inter¬national repute. Her research focuses on gender issues and the larger social processes at work. She understand the nuanced intricacies of issues of social concerns like gender traversing through medieval to modern times and yet not being anachronistic. Previously she had also been a Fellow of the prestigious UGC’s Research Award Fellowship.</p>

<p>The book delves into the status of three regions: Kashmir Sikkim and the province of Assam in 1947. In Kashmir Sheikh Abdullah had emerged as a charismatic leader before it was raided by Pakistan. It also explores how Sikkim was accorded the status of an India protectorate state in 1950. The Naga National Council led by Z.A. Phizo resorted to armed uprisings in 1950’s in Naga Hills followed by M.N.F. and Laldenga thereafter. The book sheds light on the dynamics of collaboration and rebellion involving leaders like Sheikh Abdullah and last King of Sikkim P.T. Namgyal with the Indian establishment and why and how did they rebel against them. Additionally it discusses consequences of these tribal leaders’ armed resurrection and their role in the formation of Nagaland and Mizoram as Indian states. This book which offers a unique perspective on the historical evolution of these regions will be invaluable for Indian policymakers to view the Indian Union from the perspectives of the Frontier leadership. About the Author Awadhesh Coomar Sinha an anthropologist and sociologist by training started his teaching and research career at Gujarat Vidyapeeth Ahmedabad from where he moved on to the IIT Kanpur and then to IIT Delhi before finally joining North Eastern Hill University Shillong where he taught sociology for about three decades and was Dean of the School of Social Sciences. He had been a visiting professor in various Indian and foreign uni¬versities and is one of the pioneers in the field of Eastern Himalayan research. He is also the author of several research articles. Among his highly acclaimed books on the region include Nepalese in Globalized Era (2016) Dawn of Democracy in the Eastern Himalayan Kingdoms (2019) and Federation of the Himalayan Kingdoms and a Greater Nepal (2023).</p>

<p>The present work explores the historical origins and early development of Cananore and North Kerala region till they were annexed by the British in 1792 when the said place became part of Madras Presidency under the British administration. It traces back its journey from the ancient Sangam age independent Kingdom of Nannan to the rule of the Mushika dynasty during the medieval period and it ends with the emergence of the Kolatiri dynasty that succeeded the Mushikas. This book places a particular emphasis on the Arakkal family a branch that originated from the Kolatiris. The Arakkals controlled the large tracts of land including the Laccadive Islands. As Dutch expended its influence in Malabar at the expense of the Portuguese the Arakkals successfully asserted their independence in Malabar. The arrival of the Mysore Sultans helped the Arakkals to shake off the domination of the Kolatiris. However the defeat of Tipu Sultan at the hands of the English East India Company in 1792 sealed the fate of the Arakkals as well as the Kolatiris. The author has put to good use her knowledge of Malayalam French and English sources to reconstitute the history of Kannur and north Malabar until 1792. About the Author Leena More obtained her doctorate in History from the University of Calicut Kerala under Late Prof. Dr Sreekumaran Nair. Her Ph.D. was later published into a book titled English East India Company and the Local Rulers in Kerala: A Case Study of Attingal and Travancore. She was formerly a lecturer in Chinmaya Mission College Kannur. She has published several articles in historical journals and is proficient in several languages including French and Malayalam. Currently she lives in Paris.</p>

<p>Based on papers written for seminar on ‘decolonization’ and ‘contem­por­ary history’ of the Punjab organized by the Institute of Punjab Studies which aims at promoting interdisciplinary study of the political economic social and cultural life of the peoples of the northwest of India this book should be of great interest to administrators politicians and journalists as well as to social scientists and general readers. It gives useful insights into administration politics violence demographic change and the condition of the relatively unprivileged ‘fragments’ of the society in the region – women dalits labourers and village communities. About the Author J.S. Grewal Formerly Professor and ViceChancellor Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar and Director and later Chairman Indian Institute of Advanced Study Shimla has published extensively on the historiography of medieval India and the Sikh and Punjab history. Some of his books by Manohar are Sikh Ideology Polity and Social Order (2007) Recent Debates in Sikh Studies: An Assessment (2011) Historical Writings on the Sikhs: Western Enterprise and Indian Response (2012) and Guru Nanak: A New Path and a New Panth (forthcoming). His other recent publications include Master Tara Singh in Indian History (OUP 2017) and Guru Gobind Singh: Master of the White Hawk (OUP 2019). Indu Banga Professor Emerita in History Panjab University Chandigarh and formerly Professor of History Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar has authored/edited nearly 20 books on agrarian urban institutional social and cultural history of medieval and modern India and the Punjab. Her publications by Manohar include Five Punjabi Centuries (2000) The City in Indian History (2005) Ports and their Hinterlands 17001950 (2019) and Agrarian System of the Sikhs: Late EighteenthEarly Nineteenth Century (2019). Her other recent publications are The Ghadar Movement (conjoint Pbi University 2013) and A Political Biography of Maharaja Ripudaman Singh of Nabha 18831942 (conjoint OUP 2018).</p>

<p>Traffic in light benefits donor and recipient without the ambiguities that always cling to the traffic in goods. It can link all mankind into a family and can enable the people of any country today to become the inheritors of the legacy left by the peoples of any epoch of any land. There is a great tradition of Arabic learning in this country. But not all Indians have equally benefited from that heritage. The language barrier is admittedly formidable. But it is equally formidable in the case of Greek. Nevertheless there is a not inadequate awareness of ancient Greek literature in India and the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides have been presented on the Indian stage. Our links with the Arabic heritage are closer and yet the general awareness remains sadly inadequate. This book may help towards remedying this unhappy situation. For the layman original material will continue to remain inaccessible. But the corpus of translated material is large enough. However some stimulus to explore it is necessary and this book seeks in all humility to provide it. Though it does not want to claim to be anything more than an outline it seeks to provide a fairly complete frame. It covers poetry religious thought philosoph­ical currents and mystical tradition the great contribution made by Arab histori­ography and the various categories of prose literature. About the Author Described by national periodicals as ‘one of the most original and stimulating minds writing in the subcontinent today’ and as ‘our nearest approximation to the Renaissance man versatile in interests and depth of learning’ Krishna Chaitanya is the author of over thirty books whose multidisciplinary range got him the ‘Critic of Ideas’ award of the Institute of International Education New York. The major categories are: a five volume philosophy of freedom for which he got a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship and which has been compared by critics to the work of Thomas Aquinas the French Encyclopedists Herbert Spencer Bergson Whitehead and Teilhard de Chardin several books on Indian Culture including a fourvolume history of Indian painting Sanskrit classics retold for children one of which got the Federation of Indian Publishers’ award for the best children’s book. The present work belongs to another major project of his: a ten volume history of world literature in English and several Indian languages. It got a special award from the Kerala Sahitya Academy and was hailed by the press as ‘a landmark in publishing history’. The series has covered ancient Mesopota­mia Egypt Greece Rome Judea and Latin Christendom besides including histories of Sanskrit literature Malayalam literature and a major work on Sanskrit poetics.</p>

<p>The sense of cultural continuity which serves as the moorings of a society involves both conjunctions and disruptions in tradition. These can become a shared legacy only when there is a process of historical recognition. However a complex set of processes – which include the idea of what constitutes a literary canon the dominance of a particular kind of discourse and gender bias push certain writings towards oblivion. Based on archival research this fascinating book brings together many of the neglected writings of Odia women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sachidananda Mohanty focuses on a period when women’s writings dealt not only with questions of gender and identity but also with cultural political and ideological issues of their times. Utilizing different forms – short stories poems essays travel writings novels and letters – these women writers responded honestly both to the world that was in turmoil around them and to the demands of their own inner selves. By articulating and advancing the personal in the public and by imbuing the personal with the social and the political these literary women transcended their limitations and became the precursors of a tradition that critically examined both traditional values and modern contingencies yet sought to bring them together to fruition. Through the works of these writers Professor Mohanty explores various questions that include: • What are the special features of this body of writing? • What was the influence of factors like history politics gender and culture on the origin and dissemination of this literature? • How can we view the issues of art politics and feminist historical writings in Orissa in the context of a globalized world? Besides according these ‘early feminists’ their rightful place in the literary world this book provides valuable insights into the condition of Odia women at the time when the region was witnessing various movements and campaigns for women's education widow remarriage abolition of untouchability and freedom from British rule. This absorbing book will be of great value to the general reader as well as to scholars teachers and students of regional and comparative literature cultural studies gender studies and English literature. About the Author Dr Sachidananda Mohanty is a former Professor and Head of the Department of English University of Hyderabad. Winner of many national and international awards including Katha British Council Fulbright Charles Wallace and the Salzburg he has published extensively in the field of British American Gender Translation and Postcolonial Studies. He is the former ViceChancellor of the Central University of Odisha and the Senior Academic Associate at the American Studies Research Centre Hyderabad. He served as an honorary member of the India’s Commission on Education to the UNESCO and was a member of the Governing Board of the Auroville Foundation.</p>

<p>This book is a revised master’s thesis submitted to Concordia Uni­versity which is a reprint of the 1984 edition. Divided into six chapters this book addresses the issue of Sarvodaya raised by a prominent Indian freedom fighter educator activist and the successor of Mahatma Gandhi Vinoba Bhave. This publication reminds me of Bhave as a successful reformer. This book offers a critical study of Bhave’s effort to bring about revolutionary changes in traditional property polity and family relations and thereby establish economic equality and social justice in modern India. For this purpose it is argued here that Vinoba made extensive use of the familiar Hindu myths and metaphors. The present study therefore also evaluates his relative success as a mythmaker and a transmitter of his cherished ideals and concepts through the medium of myths to his intended audiences. About the Author Shrinivas Tilak studied master’s degree at the Department of Religion Concordia University Montreal and specialized in the study of Acharya Vinoba Bhave’s movement for Satyagraha. He completed his PhD degree from McGill University. Presently he is an independent research scholar interested in Indology and Hindu Studies. He has published several books such as Religion and Aging in the Indian Tradition Under­standing Karma: In Light of Paul Ricoeur’s Philosophical Anthropology and Hermeneutics and Reawakening to a Secular Hindu Nation.</p>

<p>In a country as vast and varied as India and that too with an extraordinary long and continuous history spanning over several millennia historical processes of its development just cannot be unilinear. Since such diversified processes are being presented in this monograph in a broad material background it becomes imperative that the simultaneous presence of varied production processes in different parts of the subcontinent is recognised and underlined. In fact modes of production and productive forces as factors behind historical transformations through the centuries have been stressed in most of the contributions here. Be it the issue of social formations and their dynamism or of the analysis of the socalled 'feminist' writings comprehending the ground realities of the lowest orders of the social fabric or of providing fresh insights for delineating the developmental stages of Indian arts construction of the apparatus of knowledge systems in early India or of establishing the true identity of common Indian human being the central focus has always been on the ordinary toiling people of the country. Even archaeologists have been exhorted to make them the real subjects of enquiry and data retrieval in their diggings and excavation reports. Long tradition of questioning going back to the ?gveda social bases of knowledge systems construction of ‘heritage’ and its sustenance in the face of challenges of ‘development’ ideological confrontations with neocolonialist strains and incessant concern about communalisation of writings on Indian history and archaeology are other themes that have been highlighted here. Sixteen essays of this anthology cover almost the whole gamut of five millennia of Indian history. About the Author Krishna Mohan Shrimali (b.1947) retired as Professor of History University of Delhi after serving it for more than four decades (19682012). He has authored ten and edited four substantive monographs. Some of these include History of Pañchala (two volumes) The Agrarian Structure in Central India and the Northern Deccan The Iron Age and the Religious Revolution c.700c.350 bc and The Religious Enterprise: Studies in Early Indian Religions (2 vols.). He has presided over several Regional History Congress in India as well as the Indian History Congress. His forthcoming monographs are Land Agriculture and Money in Central India and Beyond and Learning History from Historians.</p>

<p>This slim volume is the study of Persian grammar for the intermediate level. It is a step-by-step methodology of studying Persian grammar and also serves as a teach-yourself book. It is highly recommended for students linguists and enthusiasts interested in Persian culture and language and is useful for translation and advanced studies in Persian language and literature.</p>

<p>This book is an interesting study of the concept and philosophy of mantras which were used by the Hindus Buddhists and Jains alike for their daily meditation and ritualistic purposes. It explains from a nonEurocentric perspective but and from an Indic perspective though written by a European since Westerners considered mantras as ‘obscure’ ‘meaningless’ and ‘quite superstitious’ and grotesque in nature. This book is a collection of essays compiled on Mantra Sastra which is part of Tantra Sastra. It contains chapters on the doctrines of sabda philosophy and mantras like Om and Gayatri Mantra which are the most important mantras for Hindu ascetics and layman alike in their pursuit of the Almighty. Some of the chapters in this book were published in journals associated with oriental studies such as Vedanta Kesari and East and West. This book is recommended for those interested in the study of Hindu soteriology and the assessment of shruti worship and other traditions. About the Author Sir John Woodroffe (18651936) also known by his nom de plume Arthur Avalon was a British Orientalist and a jurist. He was educated at Oxford University and served as a lawyer at Calcutta High Court. Later he became the Reader of Indian Law at the University of Oxford and a recipient of the Court of Arms. He wrote extensively on Tantra Shakti and Yoga. His selected works include Introduction to the Tantra Sastra Shakti and Shâkta Hymns to the Goddess Bharati Shakti: Essays and Addresses on Indian Culture India: Culture and Society Is India Civilized? Essays on Indian Culture etc.</p>