Home and the World: South Asia in Transition

Home and the World: South Asia in Transition appears at a crucial, pivotal time for South Asia as it interacts on the global plane. For in this new millennium, South Asia is rising even as it roils with internal contradictions and reacts to external pressures. India, as the most economically developed country, enjoys a soaring economy, while partisan politics and the old demons of poverty and caste continue to erode and stymie internally. Pakistan, twenty years after the fall of the dictator Zia-ul-Haq, has come of age and is beginning its cultural renaissance, and yet fundamentalist factions continue to retard advances for women and full participation in the global economy. South Asians live in virtually every nation on the earth, and 'new world' ideas about national selfhood and identity shuttle between regressive, nostalgic impulses and progressive cause investment as immigrant money fuels both conservative insurrection and 21st century development. Gathering together essays by significant scholars, writers, diplomats, artists, curators, and activists, this volume addresses varied and divergent perspectives on nationalism, gender, diaspora and translation, art and untouchability. Provocative and au courant, Home and the World: South Asia in Transition is an accessible, lively, and essential reference volume for scholars of interdisciplinary humanities, political science and diplomacy as well as an informed general readership seeking to understand the global phenomenon of South Asia.