Given Australia's status as an (unfinished) colonial project of the British Empire, the basic institutions that were installed in its so-called 'empty' landscape derive from a value-laden framework borne out of industrialization, colonialism, the consolidation of the national statist system and democracy - all entities imbued with British Enlightenment principles and thinking. Modernity in Australia has thus been constituted by the importation, assumption and triumph of the Western mind - materially, psychologically, culturally, socio-legally and cartographically. 'Inside Australian Culture: Legacies of Enlightenment Values' offers a critical intervention into the continuing effects of colonization in Australia and the structures it brought, which still inform and dominate its public culture. Through a careful analysis of three disparate but significant moments in Australian history, the authors investigate the way the British Enlightenment continues to dominate contemporary Australian thinking and values. Employing the lens of Indian cultural theorist Ashis Nandy, the authors argue for an Australian public culture that is profoundly conscious of its assumptions, history and limitations.

The destruction of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in December 1992 was a watershed in the politics of independent India. It was also an apocalyptic turning-point for community life at Ayodhya, and for the highly interdependent cultural lives of Hindus and Muslims living there. This book narrates how Ayodhya's inhabitants experienced the events that led up to and followed the destruction of the mosque.

What is the nation? What is the idea of India? Whose India is it, anyway? This inaugural volume in the series titled Rethinking India aims to kickstart a national dialogue on the key questions of our times. It brings together India's foremost intellectuals, academics, activists, technocrats, professionals and policymakers to offer an in-depth exploration of these issues, deriving from their long-standing work, experience and unflinching commitment to the collective idea of India, of who we can and ought to be. Vision for a Nation: Paths and Perspectives champions a plural, inclusive, just, equitable and prosperous India, committed to individual dignity as the foundation of the unity and vibrancy of the nation. In order to further disseminate these ideas-the vision for the nation as aspirationally reflected in the Constitution-this book provides a positive counter-narrative to reclaim the centrality of a progressive, deeply plural and forward-looking and inclusive India. It serves as a fresh reminder of our shared and shareable overlapping values and principles, and collective heritage and resources. The essays in the book are meaningful to anyone with an interest in contemporary Indian politics, South Asian studies, modern Indian history, law, sociology, media and journalism.

Breakfast with Evil and Other Risky Ventures is a pre-emptive attempt to bring together the scattered writings of Ashis Nandy over his entire span of writing career and scan those scattered lectures, interviews, and writings including essays and columns for newspapers and journals for an in-depth analytical study. As the author himself explains, these are not his musings on static, time-bound issues, rather they capture how he confronts and negotiates the living past in the political, social, and cultural landscape of South Asia-starting from the manmade famine of 1943 to the Partition and freedom of India and the birth of Pakistan in 1947, the Bangladesh War in 1971, and the protracted civil war in Sri Lanka (1983-2009). The essays, often written as forewords to other scholars' works, straddle languages, systems of knowledge, and forms of voice and silence. Nandy attempts to identify a critical and intellectual strategy for survival in the Third World. He establishes that though a traumatic ambience-marred by aggressive development, instant nationalisms, or the brutalizing spectacles of modern nation-states-numbs one's imagination, it can also lead to new worldviews and multiple creative forms of resistance.

This book deals with an important and too-often ignored area of cultural studies. To examine the enormous industry of Indian popular cinema is to study Indian modernity at its very rawest. The questions and perspectives this book presents provoke a thinking of cinema that is political in the widest sense - from cinemas importance in ideas of nation and national cultural formation to psycho-social perspectives on identity, class and gender.
The contributors deal with a range of themes from the metaphor of the slum as a defining cultural phenomenon to personal reflections on the political meanings and strategies of South Asian film, from Tamil blockbusters to the intrinsic ineffectivity of TV as a propagator of state ideology. Whilst the book is essential reading for students and academics of film, media and of South Asian studies. It will also fascinate anyone with an interest in the genuinely global phenomenon of South Asian cinema.

The word barbarian is derived from the Greek term 'barbaroi' - or one who cannot speak Greek. As the Greeks believed that language was the tool of reason, non-Greek speakers, therefore, were considered devoid of the facility to reason or to act according to logic. This concept of barbarism in turn shaped the early anthropological observations of Columbus and the first European visitors to the Americas. Barbaric Others examines the convenient myopia which through the ages has allowed - and continues to allow - the West to see other peoples as 'barbarians', infidels, even savages'. In the book, the authors present a succinct history of racism, xenophobia and the concept of 'otherness' from ancient Greece to the present day. Topics covered include the representation of the other' in mythology, the mediaeval fascination with demons and the idea of the wild man, a critical overview of Columbus and 15th century exploration and the 'other' as colonial subject.