Permanent Black

Arvind K. Mehrotra is characteristically acerbic and thought-provoking in an interview in the Times of India today where he discusses his essays in Partial Recall and his original, brilliant translations of Kabir's poetry . Read the interview here.

Monika Mehta Censorship and Sexuality  in Bombay Cinema India produces an impressive number of films each year in a variety of languages. Here, Monika Mehta breaks new ground by analyzing Hindi films and exploring the censorship of gender and heterosexuality in Bombay cinema. She studies how film censorship on various levels makes the female body and female sexuality pivotal in constructing national identity, not just through the films themselves but also through the heated debates that occur in newspapers and other periodicals. The standard claim is that the state dictates censorship and various prohibitions, but Mehta explores how relationships among the state, the film industry, and the public illuminate censorship’s role in identity formation, while also examining how desire, profits, and corruption are generated through the act of censoring. Committed to extending a feminist critique of mass culture in the global south, Mehta situates the story of censorship...

A.R. Venkatachalapathy The Province of the Book Scholars, Scribes, and Scribblers in Colonial Tamil n adu A.R. Venkatachalapathy, though still a young scholar by Indian standards, has been hailed as a savant of sorts for his knowledge of the culture, politics, and history of Tamilnadu. Of his wide and varied reading there is no lack of evidence within his new monograph just published by Permanent Black. This work, which focuses on the history and culture of books, book publishing, and book reading in Tamilnadu from the time of parchment to the time of Pagemaker, is interesting from the word go: it starts with four satirical epigraphs, three of which run as follows: In this age, when printing machines have become legion and the business in paper has expanded, novels have started to proliferate like termites.— review in Lakshmi (1924) Brother, listen to me. Take up some other occupation: never pursue this wretched profession of writing. Show me one person [in Tami...