Telling Lives In India

by Arnold, David; Blackburn, Stuart

• ISBN13: 9780253217271
• ISBN10: 025321727X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-01-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

"This book serves as a window into the rich and revealing lives and self-representations of the particular individuals who have produced the life histories. In so doing, it makes very important broader points about the use of life histories in social science research in general and in the study of South Asian social-cultural life in particular." -- Sarah LambLife histories have a wide, if not universal, appeal. But what does it mean to narrate the story of a life, whether one's own or someone else's, orally or in writing? Which lives are worth telling, and who is authorized to tell them? The essays in this volume consider these questions through close examination of a wide range of biographies, autobiographies, diaries, and oral stories from India. Their subjects range from literary authors to housewives, politicians to folk heroes, and include young and old, women and men, the illiterate and the learned.Contributors are David Arnold, Stuart Blackburn, Sudipta Kaviraj, Barbara D. Metcalf, Kirin Narayan, Francesca Orsini, Jonathan P. Parry, Jean-Luc Racine, Josiane Racine, David Shulman, and Sylvia Vatuk.

Author Biography

David Arnold is Professor of South Asian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

Stuart Blackburn is Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Notes on Contributors	viii
Introduction: Life Histories in India	1	(28)
David Arnold
Stuart Blackburn
Part I: Confronting Modernity
The Self and the Cell: Indian Prison Narratives as Life Histories	29	(25)
David Arnold
The Reticent Autobiographer: Mahadevi Varma's Writings	54	(29)
Francesca Orsini
The Invention of Private Life: A Reading of Sibnath Sastri's Autobiography	83	(33)
Sudipta Kaviraj
Part II: Translating Tradition
The Past in the Present: Instruction, Pleasure, and Blessing in Maulana Muhammad Zakariyya's Aap Biitii	116	(28)
Barbara D. Metcalf
Hamara Daur-i Hayat: An Indian Muslim Woman Writes Her Life	144	(31)
Sylvia Vatuk
Cowherd or King? The Sanskrit Biography of Ananda Ranga Pillai	175	(28)
David Shulman
Life Histories as Narrative Strategy: Prophecy, Song, and Truth-Telling in Tamil Tales and Legends	203	(24)
Stuart Blackburn
Part III: Spoken Lives
``Honor is Honor, After All:'' Silence and Speech in the Life Stories of Women in Kangra, North-West India	227	(25)
Kirin Narayan
Beyond Silence: A Dalit Life History in South India	252	(29)
Josiane Racine
Jean-Luc Racine
The Marital History of ``A Thumb-Impression Man''	281	(38)
Jonathan P. Parry
Index	319