CULTURE AND THE MAKING OF IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA Edited by Kamala Ganesh and Usha Thakkar, Sage, Rs 580

Culture has always been a contested terrain, more so in a once-colonized country like India, where the contest is more intricate and multifaceted. It is na?ve, even erroneous, to interpret post-colonial Indian culture as a function of the ?loss and recovery of self? under colonial rule. Rather, as per Lacan?s approach to psychoanalysis, which looks upon ?the other? as an embedded part of ?the self?, we should view contemporary Indian culture as one which seeks to discover itself in its colonial past.

The articles here refute the construction of an echt Indian culture. They challenge the very notion of ?authenticity? which permeates the nationalist discourse on Indian culture. In their emphasis on cultural pluralism, they reveal certain intertwined strands of the concept of authenticity, which, like culture, is an embattled notion too.

The sixteen articles distributed under four parts delve into the politics of cultural identity-formation in post-colonial India. Ashok Ranade surveys the tradition of fusion in Indian music while Tapati Guha-Thakurta examines how the nationalist project informs the process of modernization of Indian art. Dilip Chitre and U.R. Ananthamurthy deal with the possible methods of neutralizing the alienating sense of otherness implicated in translation projects involving Indian languages and English. Vimla Bahuguna delineates her activities in mobilizing the hill women of Uttarakhand. Usha Thakkar highlights the Gandhian life-style of some leading women activists, while Vidyut Bhagwat demonstrates how the women saint-poets of the Varkari movement strove to de-hegemonize society. Devaki Jain studies ?feminism? in the present Indian context and pleads strongly for cross-cultural and cross-ideological programmes. The articles by Claude Alvares and Gita Chadha are unique in the way they critique Western ?scientism? manipulating the ayurvedic tradition.

The volume illustrates what Stephen Greenblatt calls an ?anecdotist? view of history which stitches together disparate patches of historical time without going for a grand narrative.