Exploring Indian Modernities

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

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2. Understanding the Modern in India

   • Leïla Choukroune, Parul Bhandari

   Pages 1-17

3. Imagining the Modern: Ideas, Institutions, and Challenges

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

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   2. Transgressions, Demosprudence, and Justice

      • Upendra Baxi

      Pages 21-36

   3. From Without to Within: Indian International Law as Modernizer

      • Leïla Choukroune

      Pages 37-57

   4. The Political Economy of Being ‘Modern’ in 21st Century India

      • Jayati Ghosh

      Pages 59-79

   5. Political Innovation in the Working of Indian Democracy: A Study of the Group of Ministers Device (1999–2014)

      • Balveer Arora, K. K. Kailash

      Pages 81-106

   6. Three Languages of the Discourse of Modernity in India

      • Savita Singh

      Pages 107-127

4. Experiencing the Modern: Makings and Practices

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 129-129

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   2. Makings of Modern Marriage: Choice, Family, and the Matchmakers

      • Parul Bhandari

      Pages 131-149

   3. Modern Bombay: The Making of an Art Territory from 1850s to 1950s

      • Christine Ithurbide

      Pages 151-167

   4. Modern Mixes: The Hybrid and the Authentic in Indian Cuisine

      • Ishita Banerjee-Dube

      Pages 169-187

   5. Ritual at the Cutting Edge: Everyday Animal Slaughter as Practice and Symbol

      • Rita Brara

      Pages 189-208

5. Narrating the Modern: Texts and Travels

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 209-209

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   2. Religion and Hospitality in the Modern: Thinking with Abdul Bismillah

      • Simona Sawhney

      Pages 211-230

   3. Modernity’s Nightmares: Narrating Sexuality in Kerala

      • Navaneetha Mokkil

      Pages 231-251

   4. Exploring Modernism as Reflected in Post-partition Hindi/Urdu Fiction

      • Sukrita Paul Kumar

      Pages 253-265

   5. Latin American Travellers in Modern India

      • Minni Sawhney

      Pages 267-284

   6. Chinese and Indian Attitudes Towards the Past: A Paradoxical Appropriation

      • Nicolas Idier

      Pages 285-302

   7. From ‘Savages’ to ‘Saviours’: Genealogy of Santal Portrayal in Colonial Modernity

      • Anshul Avijit

      Pages 303-334

This book analyses how multiple and hybrid ‘modernities’ have been shaped in colonial and postcolonial India from the lens of sociology and anthropology, literature, media and cultural studies, law and political economy. It discusses the ideas that shaped these modernities as well as the lived experience and practice of these modernities. The two broad foci in this book are: (a) The dynamism of modern institutions in India, delineating the specific ways in which ideas of modernity have come to define these institutions and how institutional innovations have shaped modernities; and (b) perspectives on everyday practices of modernities and the cultural constituents of being modern. This book provides an enriching read by bringing together original papers from diverse disciplines and from renowned as well as upcoming scholars.

• Indian democracy
• Indian legal responses to modernization
• economic modernity
• science and modernity in India
• secular ethics in education
• modernism in Indian art
• museums and modernity
• terrorism and pluralized modernity
• languages in discourse on modernity
• modern Indian family
• matchmaking in India
• gender and sexuality in modern India
• hospitality industry in modern India
• colonial and modern Indian cuisine
• rituals of animal slaughter
• tribal portraits in early modern India
• modernism in Indian fiction
• multiculturalism in colonial urban India
• development policy

• Professor of International Law, Director of the Thematic Initiative in Democratic Citizenship, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

  Leïla Choukroune

• Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), New Delhi, India and , St. Edmund's College, University of Cambridge , Cambridge, United Kingdom

  Parul Bhandari

Prof. Leïla Choukroune is Director of the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), New Delhi India, the French National Research Centre (CNRS) Unit on South Asia. She is a visiting Professor at the World Trade Institute (Bern), the University Paris II Panthéon-Assas, the Trade Policy Training Centre in Africa (Arusha, Tanzania), the China-EU School of Law (Beijing), and the University of Geneva. When associate Professor of international economic law with the Faculty of Law of the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, she was Deputy Director of the Institute for Globalization and International Regulation (IGIR) and Director of the Advanced Master in international economic law. Her research focuses on the interactions between trade, investment and human rights and is applied to emerging countries, China and India in particular. She has published numerous scientific articles and authored several books including (with Sangeeta Khorana) Global Health and the Emerging World: An Integrated International Trade Approach, (Springer, forthcoming 2015). She is the Editor of the Springer book series International Law and the Global South and member of the Editorial Board of China Perspectives. Leïla Choukroune is regularly solicited as an independent expert on international economic law and business and human rights issues. She is an independent adviser to the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and a Member of the French National Books Commission (CNL). Before taking the responsibility of the CSH directorship, she was Associate Professor with the Law Faculty of Maastricht University, Assistant Professor with HEC Paris, Consultant with the OECD, Lecturer with Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and Researcher with the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC) in Hong Kong. She holds a Doctorate in international law (Summa cum laude – highest honor) from the University Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne and is a qualified lawyer to the Paris Bar. She is fluent in French, English and Spanish, speaks Chinese and German and learns Hindi.

Parul Bhandari is currently a Visiting Scholar at St. Edmund’s College and the Centre for South Asian Studies (CSAS), University of Cambridge.  She is also an affiliated to the Centre of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), the South Asia research unit for the French National Centre for Research (CNRS), where she previously was a Post Doctoral Fellow (2014-2016). She has held Guest Faculty positions at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, and the Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT, Delhi). Dr. Bhandari completed her PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge in 2014. Her PhD was supported by the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust. Her main research interests lie in the field of social class, gender, marriage, and family. Her doctoral thesis explained the makings of middle class identities through the processes of spouse-selection. For her post-doctoral research she has shifted attention to the study of elites, particularly the rich housewives of Delhi, focusing on their relationship with money and exploring the themes of honour and humiliation in their everyday lives. 
Dr. Bhandari has written widely on gender, family and marriages including book chapters, journal articles, and articles in newspapers and magazines. She also has two forthcoming book monographs.

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