A collection of historical and contemporary studies on India, which deal with diverse themes from religion to the environment, cultural studies to feminism.

Preface; Ravinder Kumar; Kalidasa in the Nineteenth Century in Europe and in India; Is Buddhism the Answer to Brahminical Patriarchy?; The Story of Draupadi's Disrobing: Meaning for Our Times; Tracing Akbar: Hagiographies, Popular Narrative Tradition and the Subject of Conversion; The Homogeneity of Fundamentalism: Christianity, British Colonialism and India in the Nineteenth Century; Colonial Construction of a 'Criminal Tribe': The Itinerant Trading Communities in Madras Presidency; Houses by the Sea: State Experimentation on the Southwest Coast of India 1760-1800; Competitive Advantage through Contestation: The Indian Shop-floor at the turn of the Century; Less-than-Total Unities: Patel and the National Movement; Foreshadowing 'Quit India': The Congress in Uttar Pradesh 1939-1941; Some Reflections on the Partition of India 1947; Fifty Years On: Decolonization in Asia and Africa; Sovereign Subject: Ray's Apu; Education and Society in Post-Independence India: Looking towards the Future; The Body in the Mirror: Women and Representation in Contemporary India; Beyond State and Market: THe Indian Environmental Debate; Vocabularies of Resistance, Vocabularies of Rights; The Efficacy and Ethics of the International Political Terrorist Act or Event; Contributors; Index