Return from Exile

"This is a collection of three significant works of Ashis Nandy -- Alternative Sciences, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism, and The Savage Freud. These seminal books on culture, politics, psychology and science have had a wide readership and are available here for the first time within a single volume which includes an introduction by Ziauddin Sardar. Alternative Sciences is a provocative book in which Nandy analyses aspects of the lives of two Indian pioneers of science - physicist and plant physiologist J C Bose (1858-1937) and mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) to show how some of the current concerns of the philosophy and sociology of science were anticipated by the alternative orientations to science they offered. The Illegitimacy of Nationalism explores, mainly through an analysis of Rabindranath Tagore's political writings, the ambivalence towards nationalism that had crept into some quarters with the Indian freedom movement by the 1920s, The study offers insights into the working of a political idea which has become universally significant especially in a period of growing international conflicts and ethnic upheavals and violence. The Savage Freud, an illuminating analysis of some of the central concerns of our time, deals with a wide range of human experiences: from alternative readings of plane hijackings and sati, to the hidden role of racism in a war crimes trial; from the vernacular cultures of psychoanalysis and popular cinema to the play of the absurd in criticisms of modern medicine."--Jacket.