Articles by Dipankar Gupta

Feminification of Theory Dipankar Gupta The feminification of theory draws attention to the fact that the postmodern insistence on reading everything as text finds its fullest efflorescence in the domain of feminist studies. Regardless of gender, the postmodern credo encourages a partisanship towards contemporary feminist scholarship and a concomitant downgrading of both theory and conceptual and disciplinary rigour THE postmodernist denigration of theory and of disciplinary grids as

Writing about Hindu-Muslim Riots in India Today Gyanendra Pandey The dominant nationalist historiography that insists on the totalising standpoint of a seamless nationalism needs to be challenged not only because of its interested use of categories such as 'national' and 'secular' but also because of its privileging of the so-called 'general' over the particular, the larger over the smaller, the 'mainstream' over the 'marginal

Punjab: Communalised beyond Politics It is now becoming apparent to many Hindus in Punjab that the Sikhs in general have no common cause with the terrorists. The Sikhs too have made it apparent, through their response to Operation Black Thunder, that the extremists do not speak for them. If New Delhi is seriously interested in bringing to an end the sufferings of the people of Punjab then the present popular mood in the state offers it yet another opportunity.

Programmes, Structure, and Process Dipankar Gupta The Integrated Tribal Development Programme was formally launched in 1974 with the Fifth Five Year Plan, This paper, based on the findings of a field study, enquires into the functioning of the ITDP in Birbhum District in West Bengal The author discusses the incongruities in the ITDP administrative structure, the lack of control over resources, the complete absence of popular initiative, the non-involvement of popular bodies, and the complete failure of its monitoring system. The findings of the study also underscore the fact that developmental programmes which skirt around political issues have limited potentialities.

Dipankar Gupta While empirical studies have disproved the traditional Indological-cum-sociological view of a strict and irrecon- ciliable dichotomy between caste and modern social institutions or practices, the conceptual framework within which castes in India have been understood has received no major reformulation. It is for this reason probably that studies which demonstrate the malleability of the caste structure and beliefs remain at the level of case studies and have not been able to provide an alternative conspectus on the issue of castes at a general level. The purpose of this paper is to suggest an alternative conceptual formulation on castes which can fully integrate many of the empirical findings.