This book explores religion in various spatial constellations in South Asian cities, including religious centres such as Varanasi, Madurai and Nanded, and cities not readily associated with religion, such as Mumbai and Delhi. Contributors from different disciplines discuss a large variety of urban spaces: physical and imagined, institutional and residential, built and landscaped, virtual and mediatised, historical and contemporary. In doing so, the book addresses a wide range of issues concerning the role of religion in the dynamic interplay of factors which characterise complex urban social spaces. Chapters incorporate varying degrees and forms of the religious/spiritual, ranging from invisible and incorporeal to material and explicit, embedded in and expressed as spatial politics, works of fiction, mission, pilgrimage, festivals and everyday life. Topics examined include conflictual situations involving places of worship in Delhi, inclusive religious practices in Kanpur, American Protestant mission in Madurai, the celebration of the Prophet's birthday in Lahore, gardens as imaginative spaces, the politics of religion in Varanasi and many others. Illustrating and analysing ways and forms in which religion persists in South Asian urban contexts, this book will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of cultural studies, the study of religions, urban studies and South Asian studies.

This book delivers an admirably comprehensive and rigorous analysis of African oral literatures and performance. Gathering insights from distinguished scholars in the field, the book provides a range of contemporary interdisciplinary perspectives in the study of oral literature and its transformations in everyday life, fiction, poetry, popular culture, and postcolonial politics. Topics discussed include folklore and folklife; oral performance and masculinities; intermediated orality, modern transformations, and globalisation; orality and mass media; spoken word and imaginative writing. The book also addresses research methodologies and the thematic and theoretical trajectories of scholars of African oral literatures, looking back to the trailblazing legacies of Ruth Finnegan, Harold Scheub, and Isidore Okpewho. Ambitious in scope and incisive in its analysis, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of African literatures and oral performance as well as to general readers interested in the dynamics of cultural production.

Early Records of British India (1972) is an important collection of source material deriving from official documents which now form part of the India Office Records. It throws light upon the beginnings of British power through the rise of the East India Company and the corresponding decline of the Mughal Empire. The extracts are illustrated, or held together, by an explanatory narrative which enables the work to be read continuously as a coherent whole whilst an ample index provides ready identification of particular circumstances.

Buddhism, Imperialism and War (1979) is a lively, provocative and informative study of two of the most important Buddhist countries of South East Asia – Burma and Thailand. Buddhism gives, in theory, a high place to the maintenance of peace, both between individuals and between social groups. In practice however, Buddhist nations are no strangers to the battlefield. This book explores the complexity surrounding the issue, and reveals much for the first time that has been obscure and misunderstood.

Where the Waves Fall (1984) centres the stories of the Pacific Islanders and how they were affected by European explorers and colonisers in this unique account of human settlement and cultural interchange in the Pacific islands. It follows the fortunes of the seafarers who discovered island after island in the world’s largest ocean, traces the development of their civilisations and examines in depth the interaction between them and the newcomers – European explorers, traders, beachcombers, missionaries, merchants – who from the sixteenth century came in an increasing series of waves. The book’s framework enables the author to throw new light on hitherto isolated events. Novel suggestions are advanced as to why some islands became ‘kingdoms’ in the earlier years of European contact and why others did not, and of how and why missionaries were accepted on some islands but not on others. Nor does Professor Howe shrink from provocative and at times controversial arguments concerning the ambitions and strategies of island leaders and indeed the overall nature and extent of the initiatives taken by the islanders.

Parliament as an Export (1966) deals with the adoption of overseas countries and particularly the Commonwealth countries of the British Parliamentary system. These countries examined are the original British colonies, the Dominions, the Indian sub-continent and the newer colonial territories.

Britain’s Army in India (1978) tells how a joint stock company, the Honourable East India Company, came to organise a private army and lay the foundations for the establishment of the British Empire in India. From its origins as warehouse guards, through its struggles against the Dutch and the Portuguese, and its rivalry with the French, the decay of the Moghul Empire, this book examines the Company and its army up to the battle of Buxar in 1764, which established the force as the leading military power in India.

Capitalism and Colonial Production (1982) examines the ways in which capitalism has transformed the societies it came to dominate, and the link between colonialism and capitalism. These essays confront the complex of issues, using as material the various countries in Asia. They advance the debate by reconsidering the problems involved by identifying pre-colonial modes of production and by analysing the precise details of the changes wrought by colonial domination. They argue that capitalism does not in these countries co-exist side-by-side with feudalism, but that colonialism has created distinctive forms of capitalism depending for their character on pre-colonial modes of production.

Government in West Africa (1968) examines the practical working of modern government and the constitutional history of West Africa. It looks at various political thinkers and their application to the issues of civil government in West Africa; modern constitutional struggles on the continent; and problems associated with different political systems in the region.

The Colonial Office (1956) examines the organisation and work of the Office as it stood in the mid-1950s. The role of the Colonial Office had changed following the Second World War, and this book looks at the reasons for the change and its new role. It is an important examination of the administration of colonialism, and the workings of the central power in the governing of colonies.

British India's Relations with the Kingdom of Nepal (1970) uses original documents and confidential papers never before available to examine the relations between Nepal and British India from 1857 to 1947. Though relations between the two countries were generally friendly, they occasionally clashed when Nepal felt that its independence and indigenous way of life was threatened. Although Nepal customarily followed policies which appeared to be harmonious with those of Great Britain, Professor Husain shows that its policies were usually based on self-interest and, contrary to traditional thinking, Nepal was a nation largely independent of British control.

Clive, Proconsul of India (1976) examines the life of the man held by many to be one of the main originators of European imperialism in Asia in the eighteenth century. Dupleix of France and Clive of England set the drive to imperialism in motion – and while Dupleix saw the opportunities, Clive seized them. This book looks at what sort of man Clive was, what he had to contend with, and what were his aims.

British Imperialism and Australia (1939) looks at the early economic history of Australia, which towards the end of the period under review became an important field of British Imperial development. The establishment of a peasant economy in New South Wales was attempted half a world away from the imperial architects, but war with revolutionary France interrupted the transportation of convicts and poor freemen, and in doing so gave the scheme a character quite unlike that originally envisaged by Pitt and Sydney.

Colonialism and Underdevelopment in Ghana (1978) examines Ghana’s integration into the world economic system, and the effects which such integration had on its development. The time period covered coincides both with the institution of formal political control in Ghana, and with the use of that control to promote Ghana’s development as a peripheral capitalist nation, as a supplier of primary agricultural and mineral products and as a buyer of manufactured goods. 1939 is taken as the cut-off for this book as it ends the classical colonial period.

Imperialism and Social Reform (1960) examines British social-imperialism and the development of social-imperial thought: the promotion of a ‘people’s imperialism’, or the support of the working classes for the imperialist system. It looks at the social and economic background and analyses the various forms of social-imperial thought, including the vigorous strand of imperial-socialists, who asserted that the welfare of the working classes depended upon imperial strength.

James Smith (1989) is study of this hitherto-neglected maker of colonial culture, and traces the rise and decline of the transplanted ideas and values that Smith and many of his fellow immigrants to Australia upheld. It reveals the remarkable vigour with which Smith set about making a new society out of the legacy of the old, and which saw the transformation of Melbourne from gold-rush town to Australia’s largest and most influential city in the new Federation.

This book expands the scope of understanding of the vast, albeit uneven, experience of the 1947 Partition of India by including localities and life stories from and beyond the regions of Punjab and Bengal. Building on existing research on Partition, the chapters present and analyse the consequences of Partition displacement and the resilience of communities in different parts of the nation. Regions discussed include the Chitmahals, Assam, Tripura, Mizoram, Hyderabad, Andaman Islands, and Jammu and Kashmir. The contributors show that the heterogeneity of people’s experiences reside in spaces of the family, home, neighbourhoods, villages, towns and cities refugee settlements, letters, memoirs, biographies, films, fiction, oral histories, and testimonies. The book examines the Partition’s complex effects in regions, localities and contexts and its material and psychological ramifications. This book is a unique and comprehensive contribution in enabling a more complex understanding of how Partition played out and continues to do so for groups and generations across India. It will be of interest to a multidisciplinary audience, including history, literature, comparative literature, colonial and postcolonial studies, modern Asian studies, studies of South Asia, and studies of memory and trauma.

Comprehensive and accessible, this book will be an indispensable resource for anyone studying premodern Asia. The volume’s first of six sections provide historical and environmental contexts, discusses data sources, and the nature of knowledge production. The next three sections examine the anthropogenic landscapes of Angkor (agrarian, urban, and hydraulic), the state institutions that shaped the Angkorian state, and the economic foundations on which Angkor operated. Part V explores Angkorian ideologies and realities, from religion and nation to identity. The volume’s last part reviews political and aesthetic Angkorian legacies in an effort to explain why the idea of Angkor remains central to its Cambodian descendants. Maps, graphics and photographs guide readers through the content of each chapter. Chapters in this volume synthesize more than a century of work at Angkor and in the regions it influenced. The Angkorian World will satisfy students, researchers, academics, and the knowledgeable layperson who seeks to understand how this great Angkorian Empire arose and functioned in the premodern world.

A History of the Georgian People (1971) begins with an account of the early history and ethnographic background of Georgia, and goes on to cover the country’s political history from 1000 to 1800 and Russian conquest. There are chapters on the social history of the country, with much interesting information on the feudal system, religion, justice and the slave trade. The final, illustrated section, discusses the art and literature of the Georgians.

Colonial Sequence 1930-1949 (1967) presents a valuable body of evidence for the enquiry into Britain’s colonial actions, written at a time when Britain was retreating from empire. In these collected articles we see Britain’s colonial service in action, snapshots from the time and place, revealing colonialism with all its limitations and mistakes, achievements and ideals.

East Africa (1971) examines the century from 1870 that saw the emergence of East Africa from an ancient isolation into the modern world. This survey pays attention to the social and economic as well as the political history of this transition, and takes pains to understand the ideas and motives of the various groups who make up the population of East Africa. It closely examines the African peoples’ struggle for economic as well as political independence from their colonisers.

Political Islam and Democracy in Central Asia is a study of moderation of political Islam in Central Asia. It analyses the only Islamic political party that was ever allowed to participate in elections in Central Asia and contributes to the debate on the radicalization or moderation of Islamic political parties. The book examines the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), which has been the only legal Islamic party in post-Soviet Central Asia until 2015 and has been recognizing by many observers as moderate. Studying the ideological change of the party, which happened after its inclusion into political process, the book identifies their moderation as either tactical or ideological. The author examines and describes the main factors that led the IRPT toward moderation, with a focus on the inclusion-moderation hypothesis, which concludes that inclusion can lead to moderation. Based on extensive analytical data, the author provides reasons for the moderation of the Tajik Islamists. It also challenges the ideological moderation of the Tajik Islamists by examining their attitudes towards the conventions of the modern democratic political system. A detailed analysis of moderate Islamism and its controversial challenges for the modern world, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Political Science, electoral politics, Islamic studies and Area Studies, with particular reference to Central Asia.

1) This book offers a comprehensive understanding of Amrita Pritam's work. 2) It includes representative selections from her creative writings; her life and times in English translations; her nonfictional writings and also demonstrate her editing acumen as editor for over thirty years. 3) This book will be of interest to departments of South Asian Literature and Cultural studies across UK.

The communists of East Central Europe came to power promising to bring about genuine equality, paying special attention to achieving gender equality, to build up industry and create prosperous societies, and to use music, art, and literature to promote socialist ideals. Instead, they never succeeded in filling more than a third of their legislatures with women and were unable to make significant headway against entrenched patriarchal views; they considered it necessary (with the sole exception of Albania) to rely heavily on credits to build up their economies, eventually driving them into bankruptcy; and the effort to instrumentalize the arts ran aground in most of the region already by 1956, and, in Yugoslavia, by 1949. Communism was all about planning, control, and politicization. Except for Yugoslavia after 1949, the communists sought to plan and control not only politics and the economy, but also the media and information, religious organizations, culture, and the promotion of women, which they understood in the first place as involving putting women to work. Inspired by the groundbreaking work of Robert K. Merton on functionalist theory, this book shows how communist policies were repeatedly undermined by unintended consequences and outright dysfunctions.

This book juxtaposes national anthems of thirteen countries from central Europe, with the aim of initiating a dialogue among the peoples of East-Central Europe. We tend to perceive a national anthem as a particular mirror, involuntarily reflecting an image of nation and homeland; but how does it represent the community for whom it sounds? To answer this question, the book deploys a comparative approach - anthems are presented in the light of those of neighbouring countries, with the conviction that one of the key features of true Europeanness is good relations between neighbours. The development trajectory of the modern nation is the context in which the book examines the history of such national symbols, alongside the symbolic content of poetry, images of the homeland and nation depicted in the anthems, as well as the sometimes longer processes which led to the adoption and legal codification of current state symbols. The Anthems of East-Central Europe will be a great resource for researchers, journalists, college and university students, politicians trying to impact emigrees from this region and emigrees themselves.