The Hunger of the Republic - Our Present in Retrospect

The Hunger of the Republic: Our Present in Retrospect is the first of a series of volumes that turn back to India’s recent history to produce a retrospective account of how our present got shaped. A return to the last three decades, and to the mutations caused by globalization to concepts such as democracy, welfare, and justice, indeed the very idea of the people as citizen-subjects, produce a new staging ground for the apparently unprecedented nature of the contemporary moment. Key essays on politics, economics, cultural studies, and aesthetics appear alongside works of art, documentary film, photography, maps, letters, and legal documents.

Ashish Rajadhyaksha is a film historian and an occasional art curator. He has authored several books such as Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency (2009) and the Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (with Paul Willemen) (1994). Among his curatorial projects are (with Geeta Kapur) Bombay-Mumbai 1992-2001 (Century City, Tate Modern, 2001) and Tah-Satah: A Very Deep Surface (Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur, 2017).