Lakshmi’s Footprints and Paisley Patterns: Perspectives on Scoto-Indian Literary and Cultural Interrelationships is a unique collection of essays that comprehensively discusses the nature of interrelationship of India and Scotland spread over the last two centuries. It covers areas such as nature writing with an emphasis on Alexander Hamilton and Patrick Geddes, role of the formative history of Scottish Churches College, Disruption Movement in Scotland and Calcutta, rise of surveillance literature, dichotomy of Homeland and Hostland, Vidyasagar and Scottish transactions, Scottish missionary movement in Kalimpong, Scottish war literature, and interface of Scottish and Indian legal systems. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan or Bhutan)

Transnational movements are more intricate than diasporic conflicts of 'home and away'. They operate not only as international connections but also transect and disturb national formations. What are the spaces (both physical and temporal) in and around which transnational exchanges occur? Much discussion of the transnational focuses on international movements of law, politics and economics as they relate to Europe and the Americas. This book extends the focus to dynamics across the humanities and social sciences and concentrates on the historical and now growing interactions between India and Australia. Studies come from scholars in both countries, who combine academic depth for students and researchers and writing that is clear and engaging for the general reader.

This collection of essays takes an interdisciplinary approach to the ecological, social, economic and, in particular, the cultural dimensions of the Australia-India relationship. The essays provide many levels of focus on environment, place and culture. Some evoke appreciation of particular "places," either in India or Australia. Many explore how literature has treated "landscape," while some are comparative studies of cultural, historical and political development.The essays arise from a particular gathering of scholars: The East India chapter of the Indian Association for the Study of Australia (IASA) held its inaugural international conference in Kolkata on 22-23 January 2009. Much of the work is comparative, exploring common Indian and Australian themes of colonial and postcolonial experience, implications of migration and diaspora, and shared language and literature. The work also explores shared environmental crisis, manifest in landscapes such as the Mouths of the Ganges and Australia's Murray Darling Basin. Such comparisons indicate our shared experience of the "crisis" of ecological, social, economic and cultural sustainability.As human future is colonized through environmental degradation, and determined by human migration and shared culture and values, our relationship to "place" is revitalized and reassessed. We seek simultaneously a reconciliation between humans and a realignment of the human-nature relationship. This is the most basic meaning of social and ecological sustainability.