Revolving around India(s) : alternative images, emerging perspectives

This book highlights a variety of approaches to the study of contemporary India and offers a transnational, gender and social research perspective on the concepts of Indian tradition, the representation of the Indian diaspora and the emergent political activisms in India. The contributions suggest questions and answers about the various temporal and spatial loci inherent to India and its gender and ethnic differences. The volume analyses different cultural texts, and explores how they refer to equality and interculturality or promote discourses of fear and racism. The multiple viewpoints and analyses found in this volume will broaden and stimulate both upcoming outcomes and studies on the future of India. Table of Contents 6 Introduction: Multiple Indias: Retelling Traditions, Distances and Differences • Juan Ignacio Oliva, Antonia Navarro-Tejero, and Jorge Diego Sánchez 10 I. REVOLVING AROUND TRADITION(S) 18 1 Religious Pluralism in Bengal: A Historical Perspective • Abdul Momin Chowdhury 19 2 The History and Political Governance of the Reservation Policy in India • Jayshree Singh 30 3 Christianity in Early Northwest India: A Multicultural Story Often Left Untold • Simi Malhotra 37 4 Subjugated Knowledges, Emergent Voices: Rereading Indian Epics Ramayana and Mahabharata in Contemporary India • Meenakshi Malhotra 44 5 Retelling Experiences: Myths from the Mahabharata • S. Asha 58 6 The Cultural Assimilation of Shakespeare: Intertextuality in Kalyan Ray’s Postcolonial Novel Eastwords • Manfred Draudt 69 7 Bollywoodizing Brontë: Tamasha’s Wuthering Heights • Laura Viñas Valle and Blanca M. Lara González 80 II. REVOLVING AROUND DISTANCE(S) 96 8 Forty-Five years of Diasporic Life and Writings • Uma Parameswaran 97 9 Other Indias as a Third Space in Canada’s Aging Anxiety and Bodily Corruption in Rohinton Mistry’s Work • María Jesús Llarena Ascanio 116 10 Other Indias: Sujata Bhatt Reinvents the Stinking Rose • Lucía García Magaldi 130 11 “Other Indians, Other Clothes”: Subversive Dress in Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia • Noemí Pereira-Ares 142 12 Divided Nation: Dislocation and Relocation • Bandana Chakrabarty 157 13 Perspectives of Traveling Cultures and Traveling Technologies in The Hungry Tide • Urmil Talwar 167 14 Mapping Indianness in Mauritius • Felicity Hand 178 III. REVOLVING AROUND DIFFERENCE(S) 204 15 “Cultural Schizophrenia” in Some Diasporic Indian Women Writers, and Their Quest for Unity • Luz González Rodríguez and Juan Ignacio Oliva 205 16 Re-Articulating Desire, Re-Claiming Identity: Mahesh Dattani’s Representation of the Third Gender • Asha Kuthari Chaudhuri 233 17 Abjection and Decoding Sexism, Nationalism and Homophobia in Three Anglo-Indian Texts • Antonia Navarro-Tejero 247 18 Contesting Terror through Poetry: Agha Shahid Ali’s The Country Without a Post Office • Rosalía Martínez de Miguel 253 19 Indian Muslims in British Cinema: Identification and Denial • Elena Oliete-Aldea 265 20 Deepa Mehta’s Earth: The Figure of the Indian Muslim as the Ambiguous and Threatening ‘Other’ • Dolores Herrero 281 21 Resilience and The Possibility for Change in Meena Kandasamy’s The Gypsy Goddess • Jorge Diego Sánchez 293 Appendix 308 Contributors 311