Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay Paperback - 2001

First line

The sense of living as a historical being, to be the rightful inheritor of the deeds of the past, is crucial to the making of national identity.

From the rear cover

"This book is valuable and important: it contains large amounts of original data, intelligently analyzed and interpreted. Thomas Hansen probably has a better understanding of modern, plebian Mumbai and the Shiv Sena than any other scholar. And he writes vividly."--Chris Fuller, London School of Economics

"This is a superb and original piece of scholarship, and its argument about the political nature of urban modernity is an important one. It is also a significant contribution to the field of anthropology, and the best account I have read on the Shiv Sena and the transformation that the Bal Thakre-led party has brought about in Bombay and Maharastra. I can think of no other work in the South Asian field that tells it with the theoretical sophistication and empirical richness that The Wages of Violence does."--Gyan Prakash, Princeton University

"Readers of Hansen's The Saffron Wave and his numerous articles on Hindu fundamentalism, the Shiva Sena, and on Mumbai's Muslims, have been waiting for his 'Bombay' book for some time, with great eagerness. They will not be disappointed. The Wages of Violence is original, provocative, even innovative in its effort to analyze the changing contours of a major city as a lived social imaginary, framing the story of an unusual and disturbing political party."--Arjun Appadurai, University of Chicago

Media reviews

Citations

• Choice, 09/01/2002, Page 162