Indiaclub.com Description

Gandhi’s Tiger and Sita’s Smile presents a collection of compelling essays which interrogate a variety of Indian texts and contexts along intersecting axes of gender, nation, and desire. The primary theme that weaves these varied essays together, written at different points of time with varying focal points of interest, is intertextuality. Vanita examines the way in which medieval texts speak to each other and draw on earlier canonical works, rewriting and transforming narrative in a spirit of respectful conversation.

She also looks at modern texts, such as nineteenth-century poetry and twentieth-century fiction and cinema, as they converse with each other and with older texts. In doing so, she tries to explore how such pre-modern and modern texts and received in later periods or by other cultures in the same period. These captivating and intensely thought –provoking writings demonstrate the author’s superb ability to turn the norm, whether Right-wing or Left-wing on its head, and find a fresh way to appreciate diversity ad change, and the valuable dialogue they give rise to.


REVIEWS

Vanita has an astonishing ability to make texts speak to each other. Her intimacy with medieval devotional literature, Urdu poetry as well as modern forms of popular culture result in essays that are sparkling with wit and humor and will make us reexamine what it is to become man, to become woman, or to become animal.
-Veena Das
Krieger-Eisenhower Professor and Department Chair, department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University

Ruth Vanita’s scholarship is staggering. She scours the intellectual landscape, from the Upanishads to writers of our times, form the tale of Oedipus to that of Ashtavakra, from Sappho to the story of lesbian love in the Bengal version of the Padma Purana. And, through it all, she builds up a case for a more humane society and for the tolerance of diversity, deftly demonstrating how the celebration of diversity has roots in ancient India.
-Kaushik Basu
Professor of Economics and C Marks Professor of International Studies at Comell University