More people live with electoral democracy in India than in Europe and the US combined. If we are to understand democracy as a form of government, with its successes and failures, its ability to create peace and development or its ability to falter, create division and give rise to majoritarianism, authoritarian leaders or identitarian movements, we need to understand democracy in India. This intellectually engaging collection of articles is a valued contribution to this endeavour because it challenges us to investigate democracy as an ongoing process, its final goal never defined. The collection has profound lessons not just for understanding India’s democracy but for democracy, political legitimacy and societal capacity world-wide. Arild Engelsen Ruud University of Oslo Contents Preface and acknowledgments List of Tables List of Figures Notes on Contributors Harihar Bhattacharyya: Introduction: Democracy, More Questions, Few Answers Chapter 1 Subrata K Mitra: Citizenship in India: the puzzling resilience of an imported concept Chapter 2 Sudipta Kaviraj: Two Concepts of Democracy and the Left in West Bengal Chapter 3 Sobhanlal Datta Gupta: Revisioning the Left in today's India : Towards an alternative understanding Chapter 4 Surajit Ch. Mukhopadhyay: The Right and the Left: Contemporary India and the crises in Indian Democracy Chapter 5 Kaushik Bhattacharya: Independent Candidates in Lok Sabha Elections Chapter 6 Sumantra Bhattacharya: Political Marketing in India: How Political Parties in India Make Use of the Marketing Tools Chapter 7 Sukanta Bhattacharyya: Limits of Positive Discrimination in India’s Localities: Does it signal a failure of India’s Democracy? Chapter 8 Bibhas Bagchi: For a Radical Democracy: Understanding and Contesting Hierarchies in India Chapter 9 Syeda Layla Khaled: Muslim Women in India: Between Democratic Citizenship and Muslim Identity Chapter 10 Abhisek Karmakar: The Making of India’s Democracy Discourse: Contributions of Dwarakanath Vidyabhusan Chapter 11 Sahon Bhattacharyya:Reappraising the value of the traditional: Indian social ontology beyond the Western episteme Chapter 12 Joyjit Ghosh: Symptomatic Politics, Asymptomatic Media in India Chapter 13 Harihar Bhattacharyya: Indian Democracy’s Civil and Political Society: A critique of Partha Chatterjee Appendices 1. Jyotirmay Bhattacharya: A short Biography of late Kalyan K Bhattacharya 2. Kalyani Bhattacharyya: Kalyan Bhattacharya: A Reminiscence 3. Writings of Kalyan Bhattacharyya: (re-reprinted) a. Sociology of Inequalities: Bankim Chandra’s Essay on Samya (1992) (pp. 85-107) Journal of Socio-Political Studies, Vol 1, 1992. b. Bhudev and Modernity: Nationalism and Beyond (2007) (pp. 30-45) Index Learn More

বইটির প্রথম সংস্করণে (২০২০) ছয়টি বক্তৃতার মাধ্যমে পশ্চিমী মার্কসবাদের স্বরূপ, গ্রামশি, লুকাচ, কর্শ, ফ্রাংকফুর্ট স্কুল এবং হাবেরমাসের তত্ত্বগুলি নির্বাচিত গ্রন্থতালিকা সহ পরিবেশিত হয়েছিল । দ্বিতীয় সংস্করণে (২০২২) পশ্চিমী মার্কসবাদের স্বরূপ, গ্রামশি এবং ফ্রাংকফুর্ট স্কুল বিষয়ক বক্তৃতাগুলির আমূল পরিমার্জন ও পরিবর্ধন করা হয়েছে I প্রয়োজনীয় পরিমার্জন করা হয়েছে অন্য বক্তৃতাগুলির ক্ষেত্রেও I নির্বাচিত গ্রন্থতালিকাতে বেশ কিছু নতুন বই-এর অন্তর্ভুক্তি ঘটেছে । Learn More

Arun Ghosh, founder librarian of Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta ( Kolkata), has been engaged in painstaking research for several years on the Partition of Bengal in 1947 and its aftermath. In the present volume, he offers a contemporary record of the event in the form of a selection of news items, editorial articles and comments, letters to the editor, etc, that appeared in the Amrita Bazar Patrika, the foremost “ nationalist” daily of the time, in the nineteen months from immediately before the Partition to after, till November 1948. The selections offer insights into the positions taken by political parties and leaders as well as the reactions of the people directly affected by the Partition, leading to the massive displacement of people and their plight, a fragment of history rarely studied at such close quarters. Accessed from fast decaying material stored mostly in poorly maintained archives, the documents gathered here should serve as invaluable resources for fresh studies of the Partition. Learn More