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Gandhi's Body - Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R1,696
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Gandhi's Body - Sex, Diet, and the Politics of Nationalism (Hardcover)
Series: Critical Histories
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""Gandhi's Body" introduces Gandhi in a fresh way. . . . This book
respects and at the same time revises our understandings of Indian
culture, and it connects politics and culture with health,
bio-discipline, and governmentality in a manner that is accessible
and useful."--David Ludden, editor of "Contesting the Nation"
"Interesting, provocative, and highly recommended."--"Choice" "This
brilliant and infuriating book is the latest intriguing offering
from one of the most original anthropologists working. . . . It
offers us unpredictable and illuminating interpretations of
classical material."--"Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute" No single person is more directly associated with India
and India's struggle for independence than Mahatma Gandhi. His name
has equally become synonymous with the highest principles of global
equality, human dignity, and freedom. Joseph Alter argues, however,
that Gandhi has not been completely understood by biographers and
political scholars, and in "Gandhi's Body" he undertakes a
reevaluation of the Mahatma's life and thought. In his revisionist
and iconoclastic approach, Alter moves away from the usual focus on
nonviolence, peace, and social reform and takes seriously what most
scholars who have studied Gandhi tend to ignore: Gandhi's
preoccupation with sex, his obsession with diet reform, and his
vehement advocacy for naturopathy. Alter concludes that a
distinction cannot be made between Gandhi's concern with health,
faith in nonviolence, and his sociopolitical agenda. In this
original and provocative study, Joseph Alter demonstrates that
these seemingly idiosyncratic aspects of Gandhi's personal life are
of central importance to understanding his politics--and not only
Gandhi's politics but Indian nationalism in general. Using the
Mahatma's own writings, Alter places Gandhi's bodily practices in
the context of his philosophy; for example, he explores the
relationship between Gandhi's fasting and his ideas about the
metaphysics of emptiness and that between his celibacy and his
beliefs about nonviolence. Alter also places Gandhi's ideas and
practices in their national and transnational contexts. He
discusses how and why nature cure became extremely popular in India
during the early part of the twentieth century, tracing the
influence of two German naturopaths on Gandhi's thinking and on the
practice of yoga in India. More important, he argues that the
reconstruction of yoga in terms of European naturopathy was brought
about deliberately by a number of activists in India--of whom
Gandhi was only the most visible--interested in creating a
"scientific" health regimen, distinct from Western precedents, that
would make the Indian people fit for self-rule. Gandhi's Body
counters established arguments that Indian nationalism was either a
completely indigenous Hindu-based movement or simply a derivative
of Western ideals. Joseph S. Alter teaches anthropology at the
University of Pittsburgh and is the author of "Knowing Dil Das:
Stories of a Himalayan Hunter," also available from the University
of Pennsylvania Press.
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