Three Essays Collective

20/04/2024

ANNOUNCEMENT! Advance copies of our new release are here!

A Field Guide to Post-Truth India

By Meera Nanda

The book will be available for buyers soon!

CONTENTS:

Introduction

1️⃣ Big Lies and Deep Lies in Post-Truth India

2️⃣ Defending Tradition, Defying Science: Ayurveda in the Time of COVID-19

3️⃣ The Dark Age of the Unicorn: Searching for Indigenous Aryans

4️⃣ India's Long Goodbye to Darwin

5️⃣ Yogic Perception and Hindu Sciences, from Early Beginnings to Our Troubled Times

➕ Appendix - Science Sanskritized: How Modern Science Became a Handmaiden of Hindu Nationalism

22/02/2024

Tanweer Fazal's latest book 'The Practices of the State: Muslims, Law and Violence in India' brings into perspective how the vision of a pluralist India has been turned into monochromatic nationalism over the last 10 years.

18/02/2024

Excerpt from our new release, Tanweer Fazal's Practices of the State (Three Essays Collective, 2024) in The Wire:

"The roots of an archetypal Indian tolerance are then traced to the ancient philosophy and Hindu view of the self and the world."

Tanweer Fazal's latest book 'The Practices of the State: Muslims, Law and Violence in India' brings into perspective how the vision of a pluralist India has been turned into monochromatic nationalism over the last 10 years.

16/02/2024

Not many copies of the first edition remaining with us! Get yours at the IPDA stall at the New Delhi World Book Fair [Hall No 1, Stall V-05] or on Amazon!

Practices of the State: Muslims, Law and Violence in India

By Tanweer Fazal

Link: amzn.eu/d/2XHCGR5

08/02/2024

The copies of Tanweer Fazal's Practices of the State have arrived!

06/02/2024

New book from Three Essays Collective

There is no dearth of hagiographies of the Indian state. Overwhelmed by its assurances of individual liberty and freedom, theorists have tended to see it as a harbinger of passive revolution and a moderniser par excellence. Breaking from this, Practices of the State investigates the behavioural dimension of the state vis a vis the margin, in this case the Indian Muslim. It looks at its quotidian, routine practices, as well as at those marked as exceptional, seeing both as convergent and complementary to each other.

What is offered here is a cumulative and graded idea of marginality. It is re-inforced by a combination of material and symbolic forms of violence, often endorsed by the public at large, whether vociferously or silently. Those at the bottom suffer from all counts, while its upper crust can escape occasionally, not always. The book, therefore, proposes a triadic lens, ‘state-dominant public-margin’ to comprehend this complex relationship of power.

Practices of the State attends to the interface between the state and the ordinary Indian Muslim at multiple sites: the lower caste arzal seeking entitlement as scheduled caste, the Bengali peasant in Assam stigmatized as a foreigner, the Qureshi meat-seller and the Meo cattle-trader brutalized by the gau rakshak and the law alike; or those awaiting justice in the aftermath of targeted violence. In each of these cases, Muslimness is produced – not as much through an inner system of beliefs, or the commonality of cultural practices, for they vary immensely -- but discursively at the cross-section of the triad.

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The book will be available at the New Delhi World Book Fair, Feb. 10–18, at Pragati Maidan (IPD Alternatives, Stall No. V-05, Hall 1), and subsequently in major bookstores and Amazon and other online sites.

06/02/2024

Books from Three Essays Collective and Nibandh will be available at the New Delhi World Book Fair 2024

at

IPD Alternatives

Hall No. 1
Stall No. V-05

February 10-18

05/03/2023

Now that the World Book Fair is over, a huge thanks from Three Essays Collective to all of you who visited, checked out our books and spread the word! It went really well!

05/03/2023

"A strong, fully-formed poetic voice has emerged from the belly of great uncertainty. Amitabh Bachchan’s aesthetic expression is unclouded and unsentimental even though it remains firmly rooted in the landscape of sentiment. It is an emotional and political response to every shade of injustice around us and Hindi literature is doubtless richer for it."

— Annie Zaidi
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"Samastipur aur Anya Kavitaen"

By Amitabh

Available on Amazon! ⬇️

🛒: amzn.eu/d/a9fV0Ai

27/02/2023

Three Essays Collective books available at the World Book Fair, details below:

24/02/2023

Three Essays Collective at the World Book Fair in Delhi from tomorrow onwards!

19/02/2023

THREE ESSAYS COLLECTIVE at New Delhi World Book Fair,
February 25 – March 5, 2023
11 am -- 8pm

Hall No 5, Stall No 461 (IPD ALTERNATIVES)

* * *
Support independent publishing.
Buy at least two books. :)

05/02/2023

An important book we at Three Essays Collective have published

Freedom, Civility, Commerce: Contemporary Media and the Public

By Sukumar Muralidharan

🛒: https://amzn.eu/d/cHCsGYp
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This is among the most comprehensive studies on the media published in recent times. It traverses a vast domain, from the philosophical foundations of free speech, to theories of media functioning and the practice of journalism, and from the early years of print media to television, the internet and social media.

It is situated in a wider political context, particularly in the manner it addresses nationalism, global politics and the rise of corporate power in media.

Judicial precedent and social conventions on the limits of free speech are examined over a large geographical canvas and an extended historical frame. Though the focus is on India and the impact of recent decades of neoliberalism, the narrative is inspired by a wider, global view.

Seminal debates since the Enlightenment are dealt with and their trajectories mapped to contemporary times.

This book creates the potential for multiple dialogues. It would be an invaluable resource for those who would wish to learn about the media in terms of its historical development and contemporary functioning.

It would be useful for instructors in media studies and for practicing journalists, not to mention engaged citizens of a time of highly “mediatised” perceptions.

This book is the distillate of years of experience in journalism and rigorous academic research.

This book explores a variety of currently debated themes:

the right to free speech;
the media as an industry;
its regulation as a public utility;
the ethics of journalism, and
its future as part of the democratic discourse.

Free speech is a right claimed by many but a privilege granted very few. The media builds its identity as the institutional embodiment of free speech, but often fails to live up to that billing.

New modes of information sharing are causing a decline in the media industry’s commercial fortunes. Fragmentation and a faltering social consensus are driving an erosion in public trust.

Nation, state and civil society have shaped the new media and adapted in their own distinct ways, not all mutually compatible.

Freedom as a construct is often qualified in its practical application. Commerce is portrayed on occasion as a pursuit promoting freedom. Elsewhere, there is an insistence on civility as the essential virtue that makes freedom possible.

Where does this leave the craft of journalism? Once a part of citizenship in evolving democracies, journalism later was cast as a distinct profession within a structure of commerce.

Even if journalism as a commitment of democratic citizenship never fully receded, defending that status is no longer a social or political priority. This poses a larger category of problems.
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Sukumar Muralidharan

Sukumar Muralidharan teaches at the school of journalism, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat. Over a career spanning three decades in the print media, he has worked on areas of science and technology, business, politics and international affairs.

He has been a visiting professor in contemporary studies at the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi. As South Asia programme manager for the International Federation of Journalists, he has carried out campaign and advocacy work, and training programmes for journalists over much of the sub-continent.

He has been an invited expert at international conferences on the challenges to the media in the current global security scenario. In 2016, he completed a two-year fellowship with the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, where he worked on modes of theorising technological change as part of economic development models.

24/01/2023

An important book we at Three Essays Collective have published.

Working with Muslims: Beyond Burqa and Triple Talaq: Stories of development and everyday citizenship in India

By Farah Naqvi, with Sadbhavna Trust

🛒: amzn.eu/d/doN1hZV

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Tags: Development work, Identity, Minority, Muslims, Non-government organizations

Working with Muslims goes down to the ground in eight major states of India and investigates the reality of non-government organizations and their development work, with the largest marginalized minority in the world’s largest democracy.

It asks the simple questions (Who is working with Muslims? On which issues?), and the complex ones (What lens is deployed? How does this work navigate the minefield of identity?). With intellectual precision, it dissects the voluntary sector, interrogates identity, engages with many faces of ‘development’; and tells stories of ordinary women and men, of clarity amid obfuscation, of fear mixed with immense hope.
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Farah Naqvi

An alumnus of Columbia University, Farah Naqvi is a feminist, activist and writer. Her work for nearly three decades – from villages to public policy spaces – has focused on justice, development and freedom from violence, for India’s perpetual un-equals: Women, Muslims, and Dalits.

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08/01/2023

ANNOUNCEMENT from Three Essays Collective:

Reprints of Aijaz Ahmad's "On Communalism and Globalization: Offensives of the Far Right" are out!

Link: amzn.eu/d/anDrPCW

07/01/2023

A beautiful cover ♥️

Available at:

https://amzn.eu/d/d45sqE7

06/01/2023

"If Wall Street does not end its greed, we will end it for them."

- Bernie Sanders

We released the Indian edition of Bernie's autobiography on this day 7 years ago, almost a month before the first primaries in 2016. Some huge upsets went on to happen!

Outsider In The White House: Bernie Sanders With Huck Gutman

Get your copy in India here:

https://amzn.eu/d/9gs1j9V

17/12/2022

Fresh off the press from Three Essays Collective - a reprint!

Rajan Gurukkal(ed): ISSUES IN SECULARISM AND DEMOCRACY - Essays in Honour of KN Panikkar

Essays by:
- Romila Thapar
- Irfan Habib
- Prabhat Patnaik
- Rajeev Bhargava

At ₹308 right now!

🛒: amzn.eu/d/g49AuqX

27/11/2022

ANNOUNCEMENT from Three Essays Collective!

We've re-released, in Kindle edition globally & print editions in major foreign markets (via Amazon):

Breaking the Spell of Dharma and other essays: A Case for Indian Enlightenment

By Meera Nanda

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https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0B5F777R8?ref_=cm_sw_r_apann_ts_QGSKY9E6NKDT0KQ26CX9

Tags: Atomic Energy, Fascism, Hindutva, Neo-liberalism, Science, Secularism

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In four celebrated and controversial essays Meera Nanda connects religious fundamentalism with fascism and talks about the responsibility of intellectuals.

She examines the link between Hindutva and reactionary modernism, argues for linking rationalism and science for the cause of social justice and provides a detailed critique of anti-rationalist and anti-secularist currents dominant in several academic and research circles in India.

This little book is a timely reminder to all those who believe in the necessity of intellectual and moral intervention in the present affairs of society and culture.

Whereas the Hindu right is busy claiming the products of modern science and technology as a part of its own heritage, the postmodernist and postcolonial intellectuals have sought to insulate non-Western cultures from modern science, which they see as alien and oppressive.

The essays in the book simultaneously defend the enterprise of modern science and secularism and call for deploying scientific knowledge as a cultural weapon against the neo-traditionalist as well as reactionary modernist understanding of the world.

At a juncture when India is seeing an intensification of neo-liberal globalization and the rise of Hindu nationalism, this book serves as a timely warning.

First published in 2002, this book has gone on to become a classic.
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CONTENTS

Preface to the Second Edition

Introduction

1️⃣DHARMA AND THE BOMB

2️⃣A ‘BROKEN’ PEOPLE DEFEND SCIENCE: Dewey meets the Buddha of India’s Dalits

3️⃣BREAKING THE SPELL OF DHARMA: A Case for Indian Enlightenment

4️⃣HOW MODERN ARE WE? Cultural Contradictions of India’s Modernity
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Cover: Outskirts, 1969 by Philip Guston (The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy McKee Gallery, New York, and with special thanks to Musa Mayer).

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Meera Nanda is an independent scholar based in the United States. Her education has been in both science and philosophy, and her research interests include the history of science, Hindu nationalism and the subversion of scientific temper, postmodernism and right wing environmentalism, apart from the philosophy of science.

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20/11/2022

ANNOUNCEMENT🧵 from Three Essays Collective!

We've re-released, in Kindle edition globally & print editions in major foreign markets (via Amazon):

The Everyday Life of Hindu Nationalism: An Ethnographic Account

By Shubh Mathur
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Tags: Culture, Fascism, Gujarat, Hinduism, Hindutva, Islam, Justice, Muslims, Nationalism

https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0B2L7MQ28?ref_=cm_sw_r_mwn_ts_RQTG7HQXEPMCE67ZFCX7

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This is an ethnographic account of the rise of Hindu nationalism in the north Indian state of Rajasthan during the period 1990-94.

It looks at the transformation of cultural meanings in everyday life that make possible the political success and the anti-minority violence of the Hindu right.

Media and academic accounts of the Hindu right that present images of religious frenzy and fanaticism are misleading because they draw attention away from the world of the everyday and the ordinary, from the homes, workplaces, schools and communities where the realities of Hindu nationalism are created and maintained.

This book takes seriously the claims of RSS activists that theirs is a cultural organization, and that its main task is ‘character- building’, in order to answer the central question: How does one comprehend the selves that are capable of the extraordinary violence witnessed in India at the turn of the millennium?

The patterns of anti-minority violence that accompanies the rise of Hindu nationalism show that it follows not a political or economic logic, but a cultural one.

The geographic and demographic distribution of violence maps and confirms cultural beliefs about the nation and its enemies.

Finally, this book argues that media and academic discourses on Hindu nationalism function to produce what has been called ‘cultural anesthesia’, diffusing and deflecting questions about agency and accountability while silencing the experience of the victims and excluding the cultural idioms which provide them means of comprehension and healing.
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CONTENTS

Preface and Acknowledgements

I - Introduction: The Everyday Life of Hindu Nationalism

-Two stories
-Culture and violence: In the light of Gujarat
-The ordering of difference
-Writing an ethnography of fascism
-Hindutva as symbolic capital

II - Mapping the Enemy

-“The significant past”
-Culture and difference in the nineteenth century
-Conquest and conversion
-Tolerance, Hindu and Muslim
-“Muslim separatism”

III - Administrative and Discursive Hindus

-A brief history of Hindu nationalism
-Street-fighters and patriots
-“A well-disciplined counter-revolutionary elite”
-“National thrust to ancient customs”

IV - Communities and Power

-The Scream of Reich
-Banswara
-Beawar
-Seva Bharati: “Giving culture” to the urban poor
-Mohalla Khatikan
-RSS women
-Postscript from Gujarat

V - Violence as Ritual

-Stories
-Suspect community
-The judicial inquiry
-Invisible violence
-The other point of view

Appendices

Election results
Population by religion
Maps
VHP-RSS materials

Bibliography
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Shubh Mathur is an anthropologist whose work focuses on minorities, violence, human rights, gender and immigration. She received her doctorate from the New School for Social Research, New York. She is at present Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Franklin Pierce University.
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13/11/2022

ANNOUNCEMENT from Three Essays Collective!

We've re-released, in Kindle edition globally & print editions in major foreign markets (via Amazon):

On Their Watch: Mass Violence and State Apathy in India, Examining the Record

Edited by Surabhi Chopra & Prita Jha

https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0B2JVQJVY?ref_=cm_sw_r_apann_ts_TC0HJHRCCYMRRXCE1GSD

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Tags: Communal violence, Democracy, Justice, Politics, Right Wing Politics, Rights

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In 2005, India passed a law giving individuals the right to information on the State’s acts and decisions. Using this law, the authors in this edited volume applied for official records about four of the worst episodes of mass violence in independent India.

These traumatic events had not previously been scrutinised using the recently-minted law on this scale. The authors filed over 800 applications for information; the results of their unusual endeavour led to this book.

Sifting through hundreds of government documents on criminal justice, administrative discipline, commissions of inquiry, emergency relief and monetary compensation, the authors examine the State’s response to sectarian violence in Nellie in 1983, Delhi in 1984, Bhagalpur in 1989 and Gujarat in 2002.

Hundreds of people, most of them religious minorities, were killed, injured, displaced from their homes, and stripped of their livelihoods in these episodes of mass violence. In each instance, violence was encouraged by the politically powerful and tolerated by the police.

This book examines official records and shows how State apathy in the wake of violence thwarted attempts to rehabilitate survivors and punish perpetrators. These failures are not simply an unfortunate coincidence.

The State’s own records reveal that national and state governments have been negligent in recurring, systematic ways. By detailing how State processes have failed, this disquieting book demonstrates that the State could have pursued justice and reparation for victims of mass violence in the past, and could, in substantial measure, still do so.
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Surabhi Chopra is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, Chinese University of Hong Kong. She researches transitional justice, national security and the rights of the poor.

Prita Jha is a legal activist and researcher based in Ahmedabad. She works on justice for survivors of mass violence and violence against women.

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12/11/2022

ANNOUNCEMENT from Three Essays Collective!

We will be reprinting three of our titles due to popular demand & them being sold out:

1️⃣Issues in Secularism and Democracy: Essays in Honour of KN Panikkar

By Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, Prabhat Patnaik & Rajeev Bhargava. Edited by Rajan Gurukkal

2️⃣Opium City: The Making of Early Victorian Bombay

By Amar Farooqui

3️⃣The Present in Delhi’s Pasts: Five Essays

By Sunil Kumar
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Each of these should be available in the next two weeks. We'll make an announcement when they're out!

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Support independent publishing by purchasing our books and/or by amplifying this!

08/11/2022

Two excellent book reviews of "Splintered Justice: Living the Horror of Mass Communal Violence in Bhagalpur and Gujarat" by Warisha Farasat & Prita Jha - published by us at Three Essays Collective:
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Book review in The Wire by Prof Mohammad Sajjad:

https://m.thewire.in/article/books/splintered-justice-communalism/amp
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Book review by Kuldeep Kumar in The Hindu:

https://www.thehindu.com/society/Probing-the-unhealed-wounds/article17181676.ece
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Get the book here:

https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0B2KHBJ9Z?ref_=cm_sw_r_apann_ts_QJC7XWS2AZZP1Z5SXNN6
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Support independent publishing by purchasing the book and/or by amplifying this!

06/11/2022

ANNOUNCEMENT from Three Essays Collective!

We've re-released, in Kindle edition globally & print editions in major foreign markets (via Amazon):

Splintered Justice: Living the Horror of Mass Communal Violence in Bhagalpur and Gujarat

by Warisha Farasat & Prita Jha
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The Kindle edition is at just Rs 150 in India!

Tags: Caste, Communal violence, Faith, Freedom, Gender, Independence, Minority

https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0B2KHBJ9Z?ref_=cm_sw_r_apann_ts_QJC7XWS2AZZP1Z5SXNN6
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India, both during its struggle for independence and in the decades of freedom has been rocked by periodic episodes of communal violence, mostly taking the form of state-enabled violence, even massacres, of religious minorities.

These episodes have been characterised by impunity, or the assurance that those who plan and execute these targeted communal attacks are protected from legal punishment.

Scholars in the Centre for Equity Studies mapped through official records the ways in which impunity is accomplished in their book On Their Watch: Mass Violence and State Apathy in India.

In this second work, Warisha Farasat and Prita Jha drill deeper into two major communal massacres, of Bhagalpur in 1989 and Gujarat in 2002.

Relying not just on official papers but also on in-depth testimonies of many survivors, they systematically chart the troubling failures of India’s criminal justice system to secure justice for survivors of hate violence.

Written with both rigorous scholarly insight and engaged compassion, this book is essential reading for all who care about upholding that most sacred pledge of India’s Constitution, of ensuring the equal treatment of all people, regardless of their faith, caste, gender or wealth, before the law of the land.
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Warisha Farasat and Prita Jha, long time human rights activists and legal experts on issues of communal genocides and rehabilitation of survivors, have given us an uncompromising book that details the aftermath of the Gujarat and Bhagalpur massacres of Muslims in independent India, and of the erosion of secularism and minority rights within the ruling establishment and in society.

The book tells it like it is… in the words and through the clearly and honestly articulated experiences of the victims and survivors, transformed into a valuable sociological and legal document through their [the authors] ability to focus on the essential contours of what constitutes a just ‘closure’ and actual justice.

The book, justifiably, indicts the State and its organs, and the mainstream political leadership in the country, that has been complicit in the denial of justice. In the process, it exposes the wide gap between the equalities promised in the Constitution and the stark reality of India.
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01/11/2022

Forgot to mention that Aneesh Pradhan was awarded a silver medal by for his book "Hindustani Music in Colonial Bombay", published by us at Three Essays Collective!


The book just got re-released in Kindle edition & global print!

🛒: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0B25R4HDS/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_ZKQFK2GT05PMKDX2ZGQP
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29/10/2022

ANNOUNCEMENT from Three Essays Collective!

We've re-released, in Kindle edition globally & print editions in major foreign markets (via Amazon):

The Wrongs of the Religious Right: Reflections on Science, Secularism and Hindutva

By Meera Nanda

https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0B919J8P7/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_7HJRK3RS7AP3YC5GBVY9
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The Kindle edition in India is available at just ₹150 for this landmark book!

Tags: Environmentalism, Hinduism, Hindutva, Science, Secularism
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Meera Nanda’s book is an impassioned plea for secularization of mentalities. She compares the secular polities of India and America to argue that, faced with the current right wing assault, secular constitutions alone cannot guarantee secularism.

She examines how India’s major ecological movements have been reframed by Brahminical Hinduism with some unintended but crucial help from those within these movements.

Her work shows the interconnections between the Hindutva scientism and national chauvinism, a factor crucial for its middle class support and its ‘reactionary modernism’.
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CONTENTS

1️⃣Secularism without Secularization: Reflections on the Religious Right in America and India

2️⃣Hindu Ecology in the Age of Hindutva: The Dangers of Religious Environmentalism

3️⃣Making Science Sacred: How Postmodernism Aids Vedic Science.

Cover: Kanak Chanpa Chakma, Vibrations of Bell, Oil on canvas, 1998
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Meera Nanda

Meera Nanda is an independent scholar based in the US. Her education has been in both science & philosophy. Her research interests include history of science, Hindu nationalism & subversion of scientific temper, postmodernism & RW environmentalism, and philosophy of science.

She has been a John Templeton Foundation Fellow in Religion and Science (2005-2007), and was Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali. Her essays in various academic and popular journals have been widely read and discussed.

Her other books published by us:

1️⃣Breaking the Spell of Dharma and Other Essays: A Case for Indian Enlightenment

2️⃣Science in Saffron: Skeptical Essays on History of Science

She is the author of Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodernism, Science and Hindu Nationalism; Postmodernism and Religious Fundamentalism: A Scientific Rebuttal to Hindu Science; The God Market; Science in Saffron; and Breaking The Spell of Dharma.
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26/10/2022

Book review in The Hindu of Aneesh Pradhan's book "Hindustani Music in Colonial Bombay", published by us at Three Essays Collective.

🔗: https://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/hindi-belt-music-down-memory-lane/article6771806.ece

Link to purchase book: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0B25R4HDS/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_ZKQFK2GT05PMKDX2ZGQP

24/10/2022

ANNOUNCEMENT from Three Essays Collective!

We've re-released, in Kindle edition globally & print editions in major foreign markets (via Amazon):

Hindustani Music in Colonial Bombay

By Aneesh Pradhan

https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0B25R4HDS/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_ZKQFK2GT05PMKDX2ZGQP
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Tags: Bombay, Cinema, Colonialism, History, Music, Theatre

This book focuses on Bombay’s role in modernising the world of Hindustani music in the colonial era and in moulding the ethos surrounding this musical tradition. Changing patterns of patronage, performance and pedagogy, are elaborated upon, and adaptive strategies employed by musicians to cope with the new colonial urban environment are examined. The author discusses the interface between Hindustani musicians and theatre and cinema, and the impact of gramophone recordings and broadcasting on Hindustani music, in the context of Bombay.

Based on primary and secondary source material, and oral histories, this book will be of academic interest to scholars working in the fields of colonial history, music history, urban studies, and musicology, and, of course, to all lovers of Indian classical music.
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CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

1. The City Beckons
2. Private Patronage
3. Music Clubs
4. Music Schools
5. Music Conferences
6. Music Circles
7. Adaptive Strategies: Pedagogy
8. Adaptive Strategies: Performance
9. Unconventional Performance Explorations

Epilogue
Appendices: Interviews
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
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Aneesh Pradhan

Aneesh Pradhan is a scholar, teacher, composer and an acclaimed practitioner of Hindustani music. He has been recorded extensively by national and international music labels, and is recipient of prestigious awards. He writes frequently for newspapers, journals and other publications in India and abroad, and has authored Tabla: A Performer’s Perspective. and a children’s book on tabla, Baajaa Gaajaa: Musical Instruments of India I. He is adjunct senior lecturer in the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, Monash University, Australia.
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17/10/2022

ANNOUNCEMENT from Three Essays Collective!

We've re-released, in Kindle edition globally & print editions in major foreign markets (via Amazon):

Science in Saffron: Skeptical Essays on History of Science

By Meera Nanda

https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0B2JMQ84Y/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_55WM9CNTBQH4EQNCBECY
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Tags: Genetics, Hinduism, History, Mathematics, Medicine, Nationalism, Plastic Surgery, Science, Yoga
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There is much talk of the glories of ancient Hindu sciences in India today. Landmark discoveries in every field of science, from mathematics to medicine, are being credited to ancient scientists-sages of India.

This book places such priority claims in a comparative global history of science. While fully acknowledging the substantial contributions of Indian geometers, mathematicians, physicians, artisans and craftsmen, it challenges their glorification for nationalistic purposes.

It also questions the neo-Hindu scientization of yoga and Vedanta pioneered by Swami Vivekananda. Backed by the best available scholarship on history of science, this book offers a reading of history of Indian science without the hype that has come to surround it.
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CONTENTS:

Introduction

1️⃣Who Discovered the Pythagorean Theorem?

2️⃣Nothing That Is: Zero’s Fleeting Footsteps

3️⃣Genetics, Plastic Surgery and Other Wonders of Ancient Indian Medicine

4️⃣Yoga Scientized: How Swami Vivekananda rewrote Patanjali’s Yoga Sūtra

References and Index

On the cover: The Welcome Ayurvedic Anatomical Man, circa 1700
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Meera Nanda

Meera Nanda is an independent scholar based in the United States. Her education has been in both science and philosophy, and her research interests include the history of science, Hindu nationalism and the subversion of scientific temper, postmodernism and right wing environmentalism, apart from the philosophy of science.

She has been a John Templeton Foundation Fellow in Religion and Science (2005-2007), and was Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali. Her essays in various academic and popular journals have been widely read and discussed.

She is the author of Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodernism, Science and Hindu Nationalism; Postmodernism and Religious Fundamentalism: A Scientific Rebuttal to Hindu Science; The God Market; The Wrongs of the Religious Right, and; Breaking The Spell of Dharma.

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