An accessible contribution to the ongoing discussion about the quality and politics of social science textbooks in India.   More than ever before, the school history textbook in India has become an embattled object and the subject of many contestations from both above and below. It is vulnerable not only to the political vagaries of governments but also to the exclusive claims of myriad communities and groups to their sense of the past. What is the future of India’s textbook, arguably the most important repository of the country’s national past? Is a single teachable past even possible any longer?   In this essay, Janaki Nair uses the Indian predicament to discuss the possibility of building up a “historical temper� in the Indian classroom. Sharing examples from her unique position as a professional historian with sustained experience in the field of pedagogy, Nair invites reflections on the prospect of cultivating a historical temper that can help the teacher equip students to grapple with history.

Mysore Modern reconceptualizes modernity in India using the history of the Princely State of Mysore. In this forcefully argued work, Janaki Nair critiques earlier notions of the native states of India as spaces that were either defined entirely by the dominant narratives of colonial/national modernity or were relatively untouched by them. Grounded in political history, and deriving insights from a wide range of visual, social, and legal texts and issues, Mysore Modern reperiodizes the modern by connecting these apparently discrepant registers to build up a case for a specifically regional, "monarchical modern" moment in Indian history. Nair examines mural and portraiture traditions, as well as forms of memorialization and nationalization of art and architectural practices. The volume also considers bureaucratic efforts centered on the use of law and development as instruments of modernity. As Nair demonstrates, the resolution of struggles about the significance of the past in the present, the control of women's sexuality and labor, and the role of the bureaucracy in Mysore reveal the imperatives of taking the region as the inaugural site for writing a history of Indian modernity.

Has there been a 'conspiracy of silence' regarding sexuality in India, be it within social movements or as a focus of scholarship? A Question of Silence? interrogates this assumption in order to thematise a crucial field. Prefaced by a detailed introductory overview, the essays use diverse perspectives to develop an understanding of the institutions, practices and forms of representation of sexual relations and their boundaries of legitimacy. From unravelling the Kamasutra (the text) to investigating KamaSutra (the condom) the volume includes essays on how sexuality has been framed by the law, within social movements, or has been the site for patrolled caste, ethnic or gender identities. Other essays analyse cinematic, televisual and literary representations of sexuality. Taken as a whole, this book makes room for more wide-ranging approaches for tackling the sexual economies of desire and violence among men and women in modern India.