Suchergebnisse

There is no dearth of literature on the politics of LGBTQ social movements across the globe. The book under review focuses on the United States of America, dealing with the prolonged and dramatic s...

The present article deals with the ecology and social aspects of famine of 1896–1897 in north Bengal. Ecological issues were no less important to convert the drought or scarcities into famines, even though the human agencies played a crucial role towards the intensification of the famines in colonial India. Famines had provided a major blow to the social ecology of dependency and survival, which were critically manifested through the transformation of existing social norms and cultural values, especially for the women. The responses of women towards the emerging social crises and to the government relief operations were mixed with hesitancy and desperateness, which was further influenced by changing norms of feminine 'modesty' and 'values'. Thus the gendering of famine is deeply rooted in the cultural response of women to the natural disasters, and north Bengal remained as a principal site of gendered response where the women attitude towards the 1896–1897 famine can be best understood.

This article seeks to investigate the mutual relationship between embankment and ecology and colonial policy in the changing dynamics of rivers and land in northern Bengal during the colonial period. Rainfall, floods and economy seem to be the most essential components in the history and politics of embankments in the area, a peripheral region intersected by numerous rivers originating in the Himalayas. The article sets colonial hydrology in North Bengal against the ecological vulnerabilities created by shifts in courses of rivers and by floods as well as embankments.

North Bengal is an area of heavy rainfall through which rivers flowing down from the Himalayas have been frequently overflowing and changing their beds in the soft alluvial soil. Floods have, therefore, been a recurring phenomenon, caused by snow-melting and heavy rainfall. The present article is an intensive study of the floods that ravaged north Bengal in a period of over 50 years (1871–1922) during which the ground surface changed with the building of embanked railway lines, other embankments and dams thereby blocking the natural drainage lines of the past. The article also chronicles how the local populations suffered from the constant recurrence and increasing virulence of floods. It thus aims to bring together the information we have on the environmental and the human history of the region for a period of about 50 years of colonial rule.

This book examines instances of transformative dissent, turning points or shifts in popular mobilisation patterns in contemporary India, while adopting a historical approach and analysing past events. Exploring the different continuities and discontinuities in mobilising patterns and dissident agency in India, the authors present a heterogeneous insurrectional pattern that pivoted around issues of caste, class, religion, land reform, labour, taxation and territorial control, with anti-colonialism movements becoming prominent in the first half of the twentieth century. The authors move beyond this to explore more recent templates of mobilisation which surfaced towards the end of the twentieth century, during Indias liberalisation period. With growing marketisation and technological advancement, unprecedented changes in social relations, growing economic opportunities and cultural transfusion taking place, the country became a New India - one which aspired to be a global player in the wider technological public sphere. Tracing the historical trajectories of social movements in India, this book examines recent trends in digitised dissidence and explores new frontiers of protests, providing fresh insights for those researching the history of social movements, South Asian and Indian history and postcolonial studies. Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha is Professor in the Department of English and Coordinator in the Centre for Critical Social Inquiry at Kazi Nazrul University in India. Previously, he was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in the USA. He works on postcolonial violence and literary cultural responses. He co-edits Kairos, the journal of the Postcolonial Studies Association of the Global South. Manas Dutta is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Aliah University in India, and his current area of research covers issues related to war and conflict in South Asia, with a special focus on civil-military relations in the Global South. In 2018, Manas was a Fellow in the Institute of Critical Social Inquiry at the New School for Social Research, USA. Tirthankar Ghosh is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Kazi Nazrul University in India. His areas of specialisation are the social history of disaster, the ecological and environmental history of India, the economic history of India and social and political movements in colonial and post-colonial India.