Category: New Release

India’s founding fathers and neo-liberalisers alike expected economic development to dissolve ‘archaic’ forms of exchange, but the modern Indian economy remains embedded in caste relations. At the base of the caste hierarchy are formerly untouchable and tribal workers. But a growing minority of dalits and adivasis have been incorporated into the Indian economy not as workers but as owners of firms.

The Atlas shows the striking and consistent regional and sectoral differences in the way dalits and adivasis have been incorporated into 14 occupational sectors of the business economy at both state and district levels of resolution over the period 1990 – 2005. Explaining these differences and some adverse trends during the era of globalisation is a task that the three essays accompanying the Atlas attempt to begin.

This valuable collection of essays by KN Panikkar chronicles contemporary South Asia as it has unfolded in the last three decades. His being a historian of modern India has lent to his analysis of contemporary concerns a unique vantage point not available in most commentaries of contemporary South Asia.

The author focuses on the alliance between the neo-liberal policies and Hindu fundamentalism in India, and the vicissitudes of politics in all of South Asia, particularly the rights of minorities and the linkages between religious fundamentalism and the erosion of democracy. He gives special attention to the historical context of the Hindu right wing cultural project and outlines the agenda for struggle against the corrosive influence of this home grown fascism.

This collection of essays contains the first-ever English translation of Arthur Rosenberg’s fascinating analysis of the emergence of fascism in Europe, as well as a short introduction to the essay that explains its significance, and then four contributions that extend the framework to India – dealing in turn with Savarkar and the politics of the Hindu Mahasabha (Srinivasan), communalism as the Indian version of fascism and its roots in the majoritarian ideologies of the nation-state (Simeon), and the fascism of the Sangh Parivar as this had emerged by the early ’90s when concerted communal mobilisations unleashed a spate of violence, foreshadowing the even more horrific events of 2002 (Sumit Sarkar).

Unlike most left-wing theories of fascism, Rosenberg’s work made the mass base of fascism central to its political success. But what does it mean for fascism to have a “mass base”? And how does it construct one? The concluding chapter explores the notion of “passive complicity”, using ideas developed by Jean-Paul Sartre in his major work Critique of Dialectical Reason, and then turns to a characterisation of the Extreme Right in India by looking at the strategies at work in the subversion of Indian democracy.

We are pleased to announce the release of Daya Varma’s Reason and Medicine, Art and science of healing from antiquity to modern times.

This book is brilliant and wise, full of unexpected insights, and a delight to read! It is the kind of rare book that only a practising scientist with a deep awareness of medicine, therapeutics, politics and societies can write. A materialist framework is critical for understanding the history of any science, and this book is the most astute of any book I have read on the history of medicine. The science of physiology and the art of healing are merged in medicine, and the author truly grasps the significance of both.

— Professor Mriganka Sur, FRS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology