The World of Ideas in Modern Marathi

About the Book
The World of Ideas in Modern Marathi: Phule, Vinoba, Savarkar shows us the riches we can hope to unearth if only we start listening to the vernacular. He discusses the ideas of three influential – and vastly different – thinkers in Marathi: the radical ideologue of shudratisudra emancipation, Jotirao Phule; the Hindutva ideologue V D Savarkar; and the ideologue of Vedanta supremacy, Vinoba Bhave. This unusual grouping itself helps us break out of conventional ways of looking at intellectual history, but the author goes further. By analyzing the writings of these thinkers in conjunction with writings on them in Marathi, he underlines that the reception of their ideas in that language is as important as the ideas themselves. He thus points to a method of reading that will be useful to those interested in the history of ideas in any Indian language. In making a series of rigorous arguments in an entertaining and polemical style, this book is an original and feisty addition to the historiography of modern India.

About the Author
G. P. Deshpande taught Chinese Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, for 35 years. Apart from academic writing on China and international politics, he ran a regular column in the Economic and Political Weekly for about three decades. He is a prolific writer in Marathi, having published ten plays, two volumes of social and literary criticism, and one collection of poems. He has received the Maharashtra State Government award for play writing on three occasions, and is also a recipient of the Sangeet Natak Akademi award. His publications in English include Talking the Political Culturally and Other Essays (2009), Dialectics of Defeat: Problems of Culture in Post-Colonial India (2006) and Political Plays (1998). He is the editor of The Selected Writings of Jotirao Phule (2002).