Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
post
page
product
Want to stay in the loop with latest bookish news and views? Subscribe to HarperBroadcast!

Mistaken Modernity : India Between Worlds

By Dipankar Gupta

 499.00 inclusive of all taxes

  • Amazon

  • Warning: Undefined variable $productid in /var/www/html/harper_staging/wp-content/themes/harpercollins/woocommerce/content-single-product.php on line 399

    Warning: Undefined variable $productid in /var/www/html/harper_staging/wp-content/themes/harpercollins/woocommerce/content-single-product.php on line 407
  • Or from your local bookseller.
We will notify you when the book is released!
Please allow notification and avoid private mode for this feature to work.

About the book

From Hindu notions of dirt, South Asia’s preference for women leaders to patronage in democratic politics, Dipankar Gupta resolves many of the paradoxes of contemporary India in this book. In the process, he issues a damning indictment of thewestoxicated” elitist Indian middle class, and shows how unmodern the people of this class are in the very areas in which they are considered to be modern. Modernity, argues the author, is not about technology and consumption, as is mistakenly believed in India, but has to do with attitudes, especially those that come into play in our social relations. It is here that the Indian middle class is found severely wanting. Family connections, privileges of caste and status, as well as the willingness to break every law in the book characterize our social relations very deeply. The past clings tenaciously to our present – traditional India thrives in contemporary locales. A brilliant and chilling treatise on the hypocrisy and vanity of the Indian middle class, and its pathetic attempts to cloak its traditional ways in superficial modernity.”

Pages: 235

Available in: Paperback

Language: English

Dipankar Gupta

Dipankar Gupta is a professor of sociology at the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and has also taught abroad. He writes regularly on sociopolitical issues in national newspapers. His other books are: Nativism in a Metropolis – The Shiv Sena in Bombay (1982); Context of Ethnicity – Sikh Identity in a Comparative Perspective (1996); Political Sociology in India (1996); Rivalry and Brotherhood – Politics in the Life of Farmers in Northern India (1997); Interrogating Caste – Understanding Hierarchy and Difference in India (2000); and Culture, Space and the Nation-State – From Sentiment to Structure.

Read More

Books by Dipankar Gupta

Recommended for You