Permanent Black

REBELS, WIVES, SAINTS Designing Selves and Nations in Colonial Times by TANIKA SARKAR Tanika Sarkar’s writings on women, religion, and nationhood in the context of colonial Bengal have been pathbreaking. In this book, she again deploys to great effect her trademark focus on the small, the specific, and the emotive defining moment in history to arrive at larger, compelling pictures which show us how people actually felt and experienced life in that period. The colonial universe outlined in this book centres around woman as both defiled and deified (woman as widow, woman as goddess); the nation as woman-goddess within a country comprising plural traditions; male reformers battling Hindu conservatives; a Hindu novelist idealizing nationalism as the demolition of Muslim symbols; male-dominant social norms threatening principles of softness and femininity; theatre and censorship; and the sometimes contrasting worldviews of Bankim and Rabindranath. This accessible and enthralling book will c...

Subhas Chandra Bose IN BURMESE PRISONS: Correspondence May 1923 - July 1926 edited by Sisir K. Bose Subhas Chandra Bose’s exile in Burmese prisons from 1924 to 1927 witnessed the transformation of a lieutenant into a leader. During the non-cooperation movement and its aftermath he had wholeheartedly accepted Deshbandhu Chitta Ranjan Das as his political mentor. The apprenticeship was cut short by Deshbandhu’s death in June 1925. When Subhas received this terrible news as a prisoner in Mandalay, he felt “desolate with a sense of bereavement”, as he wrote to his friend Dilip Kumar Roy. Netaji’s letters cover a very wide array of topics—art, music, literature, nature, education, folk culture, civic affairs, criminology, spirituality, and, of course, politics. He bore the rigours of prison life with a combination of stoicism and humour. This volume is indispensable to an understanding of India’s greatest revolutionary leader and will interest all historians of modern India. ISBN 81-7824-25...

PERMANENT BLACK and THE INDIA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE, NEW DELHI are delighted to invite you to an illustrated talk on THE LIONS OF INDIA by Dr Divyabhanusinh. The talk will take place at the India International Centre, 40 Max Mueller Marg, New Delhi, on Thursday, the 11th of September 2008, at 6.30 pm. It will be chaired by Dr Mahesh Rangarajan. THE LIONS OF INDIA is published by Permanent Black and Black Kite, in hardback, at Rs 395.