The Shadows of Modernity

New Delhi, December : WHAT IS the big deal about modernity in India? In everyday conceptions, modernity is considered as the condition of being modern that originated in the West and then transferred to the ‘ rest’. We become modern in simple terms as the West remains a nagging, essential presence in our post- colonial predicaments.

The question of being modern can be answered as simply and seductively we can imagine.

But living as we do in such different ways, is it that simple? There are innumerable conditions, insurmountable limitations and unforeseen possibilities of modernity.

The idea of modern remains at once simple, yet elusive.

Saurabh Dube’s Modern Makeovers meanders into the abyss of modernity in South Asia. Not a conventional book that seeks to question modernity, this work recognises modernity as a concept and entity, and maps the divergent spaces where modernity enacts its uncanny dark script and powers.

The volume’s main intent is to establish that there’s no monolithic condition of being modern, and that the contradictory histories of modernity lie at the cusp of the universal claims of discourses of modernity.

The grand saga of its progress is frequently interrupted by its social subjects through textures of beliefs, structures of sentiments and the multilayered experience.

In an intriguing introduction, Dube goes down many rabbit holes to arrive at various articulations of modernity. With a diverse range of interesting, exciting essays, Modern Makeovers unfolds the multiple ways modernity follows a contested and contradictory trajectory in modern times.

The contributors cover a galaxy of themes, probing an interplay of the individual and collective, the popular and political, the global and particular, the public and private, the impersonal and personal.

Mrinalini Sinha works around the non- linear histories of anti- colonial nationalism and imperial subjecthood.

Bodhisattva Kar evocatively unravels the complex interface of empire and nation through a focus on the province of Assam and its claims to a national identity. Rohan Deb Roy probes the crooked paths by which the imperial order, medicine and malaria intertwined to shape colonial modernity. Atig Ghosh’s essay goes beyond the idea of ‘ colonial modern’ in his sensitive unfolding of ‘ Kangal’ Hatinath Majumdar’s life.

A set of interesting articles focus on political modernity. Anupama Rao engages with the figure of the Dalit and the political predicament Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar in liberal politics. Ajay Skaria explores M. K. Gandhi’s religion. For Gandhi, says Skaria imaginatively, faith not opposed to reason.

F aisal Devji reads the Satanic Verses ( 1989) and the Jyllands- Posten ( 2005) affairs to underscore the limits of liberal democracy in the context of globalisation of Islam.

Ian Bedford discusses how a rigid, conservative Pakistani state identity was put in place under General Zia.

In the section on ‘ Critical Cultures’, Anand Pandian draws on historical and ethnographic materials from the Cumbum Val- ley and examines the issue of ‘ maturation’ in relation to Tamil pakkuvam or ‘ ripening’ in the agrarian and environmental contexts of his fieldwork. Veronique Benei enters the worlds of citizens and subjects, education and nation, and the school and state in western India. 

   

Kalpana Ram’s lively engagement with ‘ activist modernity’, via the woman’s body, explores the coercion of the state through oppressive policies of family planning. Townsend Middleton delves behind the rhetoric of affirmative action to reveal the complicated status of a ‘ Scheduled Tribe’ and the centrality of ethnological knowledge in the modern world.

Lastly, Dube takes us to the farrago of art and culture. Arvind Rajagopal looks at the development of advertising in the 20th century. The last two pieces are bold and irreverent. Jaideep Chatterjee moves from the scientifically rational world of design to jugaad and its expressions. Sanjukta Sunderason recreates an imaginative narrative of the modern and modernism in Indian art, especially in the works of Somnath Hore and Tyeb Mehta.

In the afterword, Prathama Banerjee raises provocative questions, and considers the volume as post- national in its intent. In her flights of creative imagination, Banerjee implicitly asks: What’s the big deal about modernity? This is a volume that excites you but leaves you asking for more. A surfeit of Foucault. Time to look inwards? Acritical collection.

To wrest different histories away from their encasement within national narratives. 

A chapter on sexuality would have been welcome. The last word to Ian Bedford: “ Modernity is easier to pursue than define.” Is that the big deal? — The writer teaches History at Miranda House, University of Delhi.

Take By: Siasat News :  http://www.siasat.com/english/news/shadows-modernity