This volume forms a part of the Critical Discourses in South Asia series which deals with schools, movements and discursive practices in major South Asian languages. It offers crucial insights into the making of the Punjabi language and literature, and its critical tradition across a century. The book brings together English translation of major writings of influential figures dealing with literary criticism and theory, aesthetic and performative traditions and re-interpretations of primary concepts and categories in Punjabi. It presents 30 key texts in literary and cultural studies from Punjab from the beginning of development of Punjabi language to its present form, with most of them translated for the first time into English. These seminal essays cover interconnections with socio-historical events in the medieval, colonial and post-independence period in Punjab. They discuss themes such as spiritual and aesthetic visions, poetic and literary forms, modernism, progressivism, feminism, Dalit literature, power structures and social struggles, ideological values, cultural renovations, and humanism. Comprehensive and authoritative, this volume offers an overview of the history of critical thought in Punjabi literature in South Asia. It will be essential for scholars and researchers of Punjabi language and literature, literary criticism, literary theory, comparative literature, Indian literature, cultural studies, art and aesthetics, performance studies, history, sociology, regional studies and South Asian studies. It will also interest the Punjabi-speaking diaspora and those working on the intellectual history of Punjab and conservation of languages and culture.

This volume forms part of the Critical Discourses in South Asia series, which deals with schools, movements, and discursive practices in major South Asian languages. It offers crucial insights into the making of Gujarati literature and its critical tradition across a century / several centuries. The book presents one of a kind historiography of Gujarati literature and of its critical discourse. It brings together English translations of major writings of influential figures dealing with literary criticism and theory, aesthetic and performative traditions, and re-interpretations of primary concepts and categories in Gujarati. It initiates an exploration into Gujarati critical discourse from the heather to neglected pre-colonial centuries and presents key texts in literary and cultural studies, some of which are being made available for the first time into English. These seminal essays explore complex interconnections understand the dynamics of critical discursive situations in Gujarati literature and to carefully construct a mobile post of observation that matches those dynamics. They offer a radical departure from the widespread historiographical practice in Indian writings of disregarding pre-colonial literary critical discourse. The book also offers a new and indigenous periodization of Gujarati literature and its critical discourse, derived from a fresh perception of Gujarati and Indian literary culture. Comprehensive and authoritative, this volume offers an overview of the history of critical thought in Gujrati literature in South Asia. It will be essential for scholars and researchers of Gujarati language and literature, literary criticism, literary theory, comparative literature, Indian literature, cultural studies, art and aesthetics, performance studies, history, sociology, regional studies, and South Asian studies. It will also interest the Gujarati-speaking diaspora and those working on the intellectual history of Gujarat and Western India and conservation of the language and their culture.

Bhagat Singh, 1907-1931, Indian revolutionary and freedom fighter.

This Handbook provides a state-of-the-art account of research in language policy and planning (LPP). Through a critical examination of LPP, the Handbook offers new direction for a field in theoretical and methodological turmoil as a result of the socio-economic, institutional, and discursive processes of change taking place under the conditions of Late Modernity. Late Modernity refers to the widespread processes of late capitalism leading to the selective privatization of services (including education), the information revolution associated with rapidly changing statuses and functions of languages, the weakening of the institutions of nation-states (along with the strengthening of non-state actors), and the fragmentation of overlapping and competing identities associated with new complexities of language-identity relations and new forms of multilingual language use. As an academic discipline in the social sciences, LPP is fraught with tensions between these processes of change and the still-powerful ideological framework of modern nationalism. It is an exciting and energizing time for LPP research. This Handbook propels the field forward, offering a dialogue between the two major historical trends in LPP associated with the processes of Modernity and Late Modernity: the focus on continuity behind the institutional policies of the modern nation-state, and the attention to local processes of uncertainty and instability across different settings resulting from processes of change. The Handbook takes great strides toward overcoming the long-standing division between "top-down" and "bottom-up" analysis in LPP research, setting the stage for theoretical and methodological innovation. Part I defines alternative theoretical and conceptual frameworks in LPP, emphasizing developments since the ethnographic turn, including: ethnography in LPP; historical-discursive approaches; ethics, normative theorizing, and transdisciplinary methods; and the renewed focus on socio-economic class. Part II examines LPP against the background of influential ideas about language shaped by the institutions of the nation-state, with close attention to the social position of minority languages and specific communities facing profound language policy challenges. Part III investigates the turmoil and tensions that currently characterize LPP research under conditions of Late Modernity. Finally, Part IV presents an integrative summary and directions for future LPP research.

This volume discusses the development of cultural studies in India. It shows how inter-disciplinarity and cultural pluralism form the basis of this emerging field. It deals with contemporary debates and interpretations of post-colonial theory, subaltern studies, Marxism and post-Marxism, nationalism and post-nationalism. Drawing upon literature, linguistics, history, political science, media and theatre studies, and cultural anthropology, it explores themes such as caste, indigenous peoples, vernacular languages and folklore and their role in the making of historical consciousness. A significant intervention in the area, this book will be useful to scholars and students of cultural studies and theory, literature, history, cultural anthropology, sociology, and media and mass communication, as well as the general reader.

This book moves away from originary myths of region and identity that have dominated academic and mediatized representations of Punjab, a land-locked region divided between India and Pakistan after the Partition of 1947, and instead focuses on the role of the imagination in producing Punjab. It deconstructs Punjab as an ethno-spatial, ethno-linguistic and ethno-cultural construct produced by the communities who dwell there, those who have left it and those formed by new narratives of the region.By isolating imaginings of Punjab that are not centred on exclusivist regional, linguistic, sectarian or caste perspectives, contributions to this book propose the concept of free-flowing cartographies in relation to Punjab, which facilitate its imaginings as a geographical region, a social construct and a state of consciousness. The region is simultaneously imagined as a small place, a neighbourhood, a city, and a village, but also as a performative practice and a certain ways of doing things. Through focusing on a number of Punjabi spaces and communities and engaging with Punjab as a geographical region, social construct and state of consciousness, the papers in the book hope to contribute to broader debates on transnationalism, postnationalism, micronationalism, and new identity narratives emerging in the twenty first century. This book was originally published as a special issue of South Asian Diaspora.

This anthology is a collective endeavor of scholars from India and Pakistan devoted to Sufi mystics, literature and shrines with a detailed introduction. The essays explore the methods adopted by the Punjab Sufis to popularize the mystic ideology and praxis in the medieval socio-cultural milieu. These writings also delve into the different genres of Sufi literature, both in the elite and vernacular languages, intending to appreciate the nuances of Punjab Sufism. Apart from the architectural features of the Sufi shrines, the anthology attempts to illumine the organic linkages between these institutions and the Punjabis and, thus, underscore the Sufi non-communitarian devotion as a primary ingredient of the Punjabi cultural fusion. This title is co-published with Aakar Books. Print editions not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

Winner of the NASSS Outstanding Book Award Hockey and multiculturalism are often noted as defining features of Canadian culture; yet, rarely are we forced to question the relationship and tensions between these two social constructs. This book examines the growing significance of hockey in Canada’s South Asian communities. The Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi broadcast serves as an entry point for a broader consideration of South Asian experiences in hockey culture based on field work and interviews conducted with hockey players, parents, and coaches in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. This book seeks to inject more “color” into hockey’s historically white dominated narratives and representations by returning hockey culture to its multicultural roots. It encourages alternative and multiple narratives about hockey and cultural citizenship by asking which citizens are able to contribute to the webs of meaning that form the nation’s cultural fabric.