ASAA Publications: South Asia Publications Series

The South Asia Publication Series of the Asian Studies Association of Australia has been publishing books in the areas of politics, history, anthropology, gender studies, and economics since 1986. The series is published for the ASAA by Sterling Publishers Pty Ltd, L-10 Green Park Extension, New Delhi 110 016, India.

Residents of Australia and New Zealand can buy books directly from:

Cheques should be payable to "Asian Studies Association of Australia Inc"

The editors of the South Asia Publication Series are:

At present at:

Prospective authors are invited to contact either of the editors with proposals for books that might be published in the series.

Books published in the South Asia Publications Series

Education in the Punjab

Tim Allender

Allender explores the impulses for, and the constraints on, the introduction of western-style education in the newly annexed province of Punjab from the 1850s to the 1880s. The study examines the efforts to coopt local school systems into a British-controlled program of education. It unravels the struggles among British officials and explains the failure, in spite of proclaimed intentions, to take the education system into the countryside. forthcoming (2005)

Indian Daughters Abroad. Growing up in Australia

Vijaya Joshi

Vijaya Joshi is one of Australia?s most promising young scholars. Born in India and raised in Australia from an early age, she brings to cross-cultural studies impressive skills and insights. Though her book is a scholarly study based on intensive interviews, it is also informed by her own experience. It is one of those rare works that engages with theory and entertains as well.
2000 232 pp.+ xv. Index ISBN 81 207 2287 6 RRP $35

Return to Empire: Punjab under the Sikhs and British in the mid-Nineteenth Century

Andrew Major

Major's book traces the imposition of British rule on the Punjab region of northwestern India between 1839 and 1857. Until 1839, Punjab had been governed as a great kingdom under the Sikh ruler, Maharaja Ranjit Singh. After his death, the bitter rivalries for succession led to British conquest and rule, achieved through various forms of accommodation between the British and the chiefly classes of old Punjab. Major lays out the story of how the British came to rule what became the great granary and barracks of their Indian empire.
1995 248pp ISBN 81 207 1806 2 hardcover $30.00

Sri Lankan Fishermen

Paul Alexander

Dr Alexander demonstrates that inequalities in the income of Sri Lankan fishermen are the product of the impact of capitalist relations of production on a semi-subsistence economy. Until the 1940s, local resources were shared equitably. Economic and political entrepreneurs have, however, gained control of local resources, impoverishing the fishermen and creating conflicts.
1995 (revised edition of the 1982 publication in the Monographs on South Asia series) 306pp ISBN 81 207 1807 0 hardcover $30.00

Commerce, English Company Raj and Maritime Society in Southeastern India, 1715-1800

S. Arasaratnum

This is a study of the impact of English expansion on the maritime society and commerce along the Coromandel coast, south India, in the second half of the eighteenth century. English efforts to dominate the weaving industry and commerce in textiles are a central theme.
1996 326pp ISBN 81 207 1814 3 hardcover $30.00

"Rearguard Action": Selected Essays on Politics in late Colonial India

D. A. Low

This volume brings together a number of D.A. Low's distinguished essays written over the last twenty-five years on Colonial India.
1995 223pp ISBN 81 207 1812 7 hardcover $30.00

Bangladesh: Peasant and Migration and the World Capitalist Economy

Aminul Faraizi

Dr Faraizi's book skilfully links the experience of three groups of migrant labourers in Bangladesh with the expansion of a world capitalist economy. This study examines the causes and consequences of peasant worker migration in Bangladesh from the historical perspective and argues that instead of becoming free labourers they became captives of the world economic system.
1993 187pp ISBN 81 207 1498 9 hardback $30.00

India: Rebellion to Republic. Selected Writings, 1857-1990

This book provides a uniquely economical way of discovering some of the most important debates about the modern subcontinent. Starting with the "rebellion" of 1857 the book presents readers with a selection of articles covering the next 130 years, ranging from the dilemmas of poverty to the festivals of Tilak's Maharashtra and the motor-scooter showrooms of middle-class India in the 1980s.
1990 510pp ISBN 81 207 1107 6 paperback/hardcover NOT IN PRINT

The Indian Nationalist Movement 1912-22: Leadership, Organization and Philosophy. The Writings of Hugh Owen

H. F. Owen

The years between 1912 and 1922 were momentous ones for the Indian nationalist movement. This book takes up the most important events and themes of the period including the Home Rule Leagues, the Lucknow Pact, the Rowlatt Satyagraha and the Non-cooperation Movement, as well as important regional studies from western and southern India.
1990 262pp ISBN 81 207 1209 9 hardcover $25.00

Women in India and Nepal

Michael Allen and S. N. Mukherjee (editors)

This collection of essays, written by anthropologists and historians, contributes to our understanding of some of the seeming paradoxes in the social life of women in India and Nepal. They include comparative studies covering a wide spectrum of both caste and tribal communities, observances concerned with menstruation and menarche, immolation of widows in Bengal, and human sacrifices.
rev edition 1990 328pp ISBN 81 207 1216 1 paperback $25.00/hardcover $40.00

Grassroots Education in India: A Challenge for Policy-Makers

R. S. Newman

This vivid picture of grassroots education presents the reality of schools and the problems of teachers and local administrators in three different institutions in Lucknow District, Uttar Pradesh ? a village primary school, a village maktab (Muslim primary school) and an English-language, Catholic-run, urban school for the upper middle class.
1989 178pp ISBN 81 207 0951 9 hardcover $25.00

Capitalism and Class in Colonial India: The Case of Ahmedabad

Salim Lakha

A study of long-term social change in Gujarat, this book examines the transition of Ahmedabad from a pre-capitalist and pre-colonial mercantile city to a colonial, industrial centre. The account highlights the nature of capitalist development and its ramifications for capital-labour relations, and analyses class relations in the development of the city's cotton textile industry.
1988 l99pp ISBN 81 207 0842 3 hardcover $25.00

Struggling and Ruling: The Indian National Congress, 1885-1985

Jim Masselos (editor)

The essays in the book assess the importance of the Indian National Congress in the history of India and explain its changing role over time from its foundation in 1885 through the innovative leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and his successors.
1987 224pp ISBN 81 207 0691 9 hardcover $25.00

Holding India to the Empire: The British Conservative Party and the 1935 Constitution

Carl Bridge

The Government of India Act, 1935 ? Congress called it a "charter of slavery"; the British government claimed it was a blueprint for dominionhood; Churchill denounced it as a "monstrous monument of sham built by pygmies". This study in "high politics" uncovers the motives and tactics of the British Conservatives who framed the Act and of the Act's friends and enemies in both countries.
1986 220pp ISBN 81 207 0151 8 hardcover $25.00

Published by the International Centre of Excellence in Asia-Pacific Studies, the Australian National University.