This revised and updated new edition of the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India concentrates on India as it emerged after the economic reforms and the new economic policy of the 1980s and 1990s and as it develops in the twenty-first century. It presents new developments and advancements in the research literature and includes discussions of the major political change in India since the Hindu nationalist party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014.
This Handbook contains chapters by the field’s foremost scholars dealing with fundamental issues in India’s current cultural and social transformation. This new edition also contains six new chapters on topics not covered by the first edition, such as changes caused by the Hindu majoritarian political ideology, the Hinduization process in the northeast of India and contemporary Dalit and Adivasi literatures. Following an introduction by the editor, the book is divided into five parts:
Part I: Foundation
Part II: India and the world
Part III: Society, class, caste and gender
Part IV: Religion and diversity
Part V: Cultural change and innovations
Exploring the cultural changes and innovations relating a number of contexts in contemporary India, this Handbook is essential reading for students and scholars interested in Indian and South Asian culture, politics and society.
Chapter 1. Contemporary India: Foundation, relations, diversity, religions and change; Knut A. Jacobsen Part I: Foundation Chapter 2. Partitioning India: Dreams, Memories and Legacies; Pippa Virdee; Chapter 3. Symbiosis and Resilience: The Dynamics of Social Change and Transition to Democracy in India; Subrata Kumar Mitra; Chapter 4. Foundations for a Sustainable Growth: India’s Constitution and its Supreme Court; Ananth Padmanabhan and Abhishek Chakravarty; Chapter 5. Economic Foundation of India; Kunal Sen; Chapter 6. Equity, Quantity and Quality: The Precarious Balancing act in India’s Schools; Vimala Ramachandran; Chapter 7. Agriculture and the Development Burden; Rajeswari S. Raina; Chapter 8. From Composite Nationalism to Hindu Majoritarianism: India’s Transition; Manjari Katju Part II India and the World Chapter 9. Politics, Security and Foreign Policy; Rajat Ganguly; Chapter 10. Is India a South Asian or an Asian Power? Manjeet Pardesi; Chapter 11. India's Role as a Global Development Partner; Emma Mawdsley; Chapter 12. Dispersals, Migrations, the Notion of an Indian Diaspora and the Diversity of Communities; Brij V. Lal and Knut A. Jacobsen; Chapter 13. Matters That Matter: Material Religion in Contemporary Hinduism; Vasudha Narayanan; Chapter 14. International networks supporting Hindutva; Rohit Chopra; Chapter 15. Yoga and Physical Culture: Transnational History and Blurred Discursive Contexts; Mark Singleton Part III Society, Class, Caste and Gender Chapter 16. The Politics of Economic Reforms in India; Diego Maiorano; Chapter 17. Divided We Stand: The Indian City after Economic Liberalisation; Nandini Gooptu; Chapter 18. India’s Middle Classes in Contemporary India; Leela Fernandes; Chapter 19. Caste: Why Does It Still Matter? Surinder S. Jodhka; Chapter 20. Hindutva and hygiene: Swachh Bharat Mission as an urban spatial purification project; Aman Luthra; Chapter 21. Corruption and Anti-Corruption in Modern India: History. Patronage, and the Moral Politics of Anti-colonialism; William Gould; Chapter 22. Regional Perspective: Gujarat and the Contradictory Co-existence of Economic Enterprise and Political Illiberalism; Harald Tambs-Lyche and Nikita Sud; Chapter 23. Intimate Spaces of Struggle: Rethinking Family and Marriage in Contemporary India; Mallarika Sinha Roy; Chapter 24. Adivasis and Contemporary India: Engagements with the state, non-state actors and the capitalist economy; Uday Chandra Part IV Religion and Diversity Chapter 25. Myth as History and History as Myth: The Instructive Case of India; Gerald James Larson; Chapter 26. Hindu Pilgrimage Sites and Travel: Infrastructure, Economy, Identity and Conflicts; Knut A. Jacobsen; Chapter 27. Death of the Sacred: Cow, Caste and Hindu Nationalism; Shivani Kapoor; Chapter 28. Hindutva Becoming in the Northeast of India; Arkotong Longkumer; Chapter 29. Ambedkar's Life and His Navayana Buddhism; Eleanor Zelliot; Chapter 30. Religion, Identity and Empowerment: The Making of Ravidassia Dharm (Dalit Religion) in Contemporary Punjab; Ronki Ram; Chapter 31. Muslims in Contemporary India: Socio-religious Diversity and the Questions of Citizenship; R. Santhosh; Chapter 32. India’s Muslim Minority: Religious Violence and Why India’s Crime Statistics Cannot be Trusted; Marika Vicziany; Chapter 33. Christians in India: Living on the Margins with a Diverse and Controversial Past; John C. B. Webster Part V Cultural Change and Innovations Chapter 34. ‘We Too Have the Sun’: Literatures from the Adivasi and Dalit communities of East India; Sipra Mukherjee; Chapter 35. Combative Constructions of Femininity in the Late Twentieth Century Narratives of India; Nandita Ghosh; Chapter 36. Masculinity and Muscularity in a Changing India: Socioeconomic Mobility among New (‘Lower’) Middle Class Men; Michiel Baas; Chapter 37. Changing Food Habits in Contemporary India: Discourses and practices among the middle classes; Michaël Bruckert and Mathieu Ferry; Chapter 38. Coping with the Diseases of Modernity: The use of siddha medical knowledge and practices to treat patients with diabetes; Brigitte Sébastia; Index
Biography
Knut A. Jacobsen is a Professor of Religion at the University of Bergen, Norway. His most recent book published by Routledge is Yoga in Modern Hinduism (2018) and the co-edited book Religion and Technology in India (2018), and he is the editor of the Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions (2020).
