A South Asian Nationalism Reader

Contents: Editor\'s acknowledgements. Acknowledgements. Series editor\'s note. Introduction/Sayantan Dasgupta. I. General: 1. On earnest Renan\'s "What is a Nation"?/Saikat Maitra. 2. What is a nation?/Ernest Renan. 3. On Ernest Gellner\'s Nations and Nationalism/Nilanjana Gupta. 4. What is a nation?/Ernest Gellner. 5. A (G)host of nations/Sreemoyee Banerjee. 6. Cultural roots/Benedict Anderson. 7. The nationalist imagination/Runa Das Chaudhuri. 8. Whose imagined community?/Partha Chatterjee. 9. The life and literary works of Ngugi wa Thiong\'o/Kanchan Kumar. 10. The quest for relevance/Ipshita Chanda. 11. The quest for relevance/Ngugi wa Thiong\'o. 12. How to read Donald Duck: A critique of US American imperialist ideology/Kiran Keshavamurthy. 13. From Noble savage to the third world/Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart. II. Non-fiction: 14. Macaulay and Rammohun/Sibaji Bandyopadhyay. 15. Address to his excellency the right/Rammohun Roy. 16. Minute on Indian education/Thomas Rabington Macaulay. 17. Dadabhai Naoroji and the pros and cons of British Rule/Sayantan Dasgupta. 18. The pros and cons of British Rule/Dadabhai Naoroji. 19. On "Nationalism in India"/Samantak Das. 20. Nationalism in India/Rabindranath Tagore. 21. Constructing the figure of the \'Peasant\': Jawaharlal Nehru\'s "Bharat-Mata" and the politics of nationalism/Nandini Dhar. 22. Bharat Mata/Jawahar Lal Nehru. 23. The question of minorities/Jawahar Lal Nehru. 24. Hind Swaraj: An introduction/Swapan Majumdar. 25. Constructive programme: Its meaning and place/M.K. Gandhi. 26. Muhammad Ali Jinnah: Founder of Pakistan/Ronita Bhattacharya. 27. We have to live together...We have to work together/Muhammad Ali Jinnah. 28. Hindus and Muslims: Two separate nations/Muhammad Ali Jinnah. 29. A vision of Pakistan/Muhammad Ali Jinnah. 30. The naming of Pakistan/Sayantan Dasgupta. 31. Pakistan/Chaudhury Rahmat Ali. 32. Partition testimonies: Rajinder Singh and Durga Rani/Sayantan Dasgupta. 33. Rajinder Singh\'s Testimony/Rajinder Singh. 34. Durga Rani\'s Testimony/Durga Rani. 35. On "Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi?"/Seemantini Gupta. 36. Whatever happened to the Vedic Dasi?: Orientalism, Nationalism and a script for the past/Uma Chakravarty. 37. From bondage to freedom: Nanda Kishore Das and Ramadevi Choudhuri/Sayantan Dasgupta. 38. The Dilemma of a freedom fighter/Nanda Kishore Das. 39. The Salt Satyagraha/Ramadevi Choudhuri. 40. On Amitav Ghosh\'s Countdown/Shatarupa Sinha. 41. From Countdown/Amitav Ghosh. 42. Islamisation of Curricula/A.H. Nayyar. 43. How textbooks teach prejudice/Teesta Setalvad. 44.  On Ponnambalam Arunachalam\'s presidential address/R. Chitrakala. 45. Presidential address at the first session of The Ceylon National Congress, 11 December, 1919/P. Arunachalam. 46. Bangladeshi national identity/Soma Mukhopadhyay. 47. The basis of Bangladeshi Nationalism/Badruddin Omar. 48. Towards a redefinition of identity: East Bengal 1947-71/Anisuzzaman. 49. Contemporary Nepali Nationalism/Suchorita Chattopadhyay. 50. From the underbelly of the beast: "I love my country, but I hate the government"/Kanak Mani Dixit. 51. Nepal\'s People Phenomenon/Kanak Mani Dixit. III. Fiction: 51. Anandamath/Ipshita Chanda. 52. From Anandamath/Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay. 53. Intezar Hussein\'s Basti : A narrative of interiority/Saikat Maitra. 54. From Basti/Intezar Hussein. 55. Riot journal: an epilogue (From the Funny Boy)/Shyam Selvadurai. 56. On Saadat Hasan Manto\'s "Open It!"/Mansoor Nazeer. 57. "Open It!"/Saadat Hasan Manto. 58. "Peshawar Express": Assertion of life-sustaining phenomenon/Anand Prakash. 59. The Peshawar Express/Krishan Chander. 60. "We have arrived in Amritsar": A story of disturbing trends/Anand Prakash. 61. We have arrived in Amritsar/Bhisham Sahni. 62. "Acharya Kriplani Colony": A soft-voiced story of Bengal sliced/Nandita Basu. 63. Acharya Kripalani Colony/Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhya. 64. On Syed Waliullah\'s "The Story of the Tulsi Plant"/Tutun Mukherjee. 65. This story of the Tulsi Plant/Syed Waliullah. 66. \'The Case of Disonchinahamy\': A reflection of modern Sri Lankan Society/Ritika Batabyal. 67. Disonchinahamy/Gunadasa Amerasekera. IV. Poetry: 68. Poetry and nationalism/Aveek Majumdar. 69. Bharata Desam/Subramanya Bharati. 70. India: A pilgrimage/Rabindranath Tagore. 71. My master/Vallathol Narayana Menon. 72. National histories/Sri Sri. 73. O Rebel/Sheikh Aiyaz. 74. Nation\'s independence/Hyder Bux Jatoi. 75. Freedom/Ghulam Ahmed Mahjoor. 76. Telengana/Dasarathi. 77. Let Tamil be liberated!Bharathidasan. 78. Conch Blow/Bharathidasan. 79. It is not freedom then/B.B. Borkar. 80. Squeeze the hills/Cherabandaraju. 81. Remembering the homeland/Arjan Shad. 82. The tree of violence/N.L. Dhasal. 83. The Dawn of Freedom: 15 August 1947/Faiz Ahmad Faiz. 84. On my return from Dhaka/Faiz Ahmad Faiz. 85. Speech number twenty-seven/Kishwar Naheed. 86. Referendum 2002/Kishwar Naheed. 87. Alphabet, my melancholic string of alphabet/Shamsur Rahman. 88. Salutations to you, my beloved/Shahid Qadri. 89. The elder brother\'s response/Shahid Qadri. 90. Give me food, you bastard/Rafiq Azad. 91. Denial/Taslima Nasreen. 92. A country at war/Jean Arasanayagam. 93. Court inquiry of a revolutionary/Parakrama Kodituwakku. 94. Murder/M.A. Nuhman. V. Play: 95. They fought for their language, and freedom lay that way/Dilip K. Basu. 96. Kabar/Munier Choudhury. Bibliography. Translators and contributors. 

"A South Asian Nationalism Reader seeks to explore the culture of nationalism in South Asia. It carries a series of key texts -- non-fiction, fiction, poetry and drama--from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

The reader has texts that celebrate the empowering potential of anti-colonial nationalism as well as texts that interrogate the hegemonic and exclusionary nature of nationalism and that highlight the disillusionment that has often followed political independence. Finally, there are also texts that offer a more philosophical and nuanced reading of nationalism than either of the two.

The texts come with introductions discussing their historical importance and analyzing them in terms of the culture of nationalism in South Asia. The reader aims to highlight the shared history of the region and to make a meaningful contribution to South Asian Cultural Studies." (jacket)