The details of the comprehensive course, where the best professionals from the publishing industry teach, are available at this link, from where two PDFs can be downloaded: one providing the course details; another being the application form.

Last date for sending applications: 10 June 2010.

Course dates and timing: 5 July to 31 July 2010.
9.30 a.m to 5 p.m, Monday to Saturday.

Venue: Conference Room, NBT
5, Institutional Area, Vasant Kunj, Phase II
New Delhi – 110070
http://www.nbtindia.org.in

Candidates must apply directly to NBT as instructed on the NBT website (and in the attached PDF on course information). There is no entrance test; any graduate may apply. There is no age limit.

Navayana shall play no role in the selection of the candidates. Candidates who happen to be Dalit/ Adivasi and are selected by NBT may then apply to Navayana for financial support (avarna@navayana.org andanand@navayana.org). Navayana shall pay the course fee (Rs 5,000) for up to five Dalit/ Adivasi candidates. NBT this year is also arranging accommodation for outstation candidates at Rs 3,000 for four weeks. Navayana shall also subsidize this amount. The total value of the Avarna Fellowship will be Rs 8,000.

NBT also has an internship program for promising students from which the selected Avarna fellows could benefit.

Publishing as a Career

Publishing in India is rarely seen as a career option by young people. The publishing industry in India, with an annual output of 85,000 titles in more than 30 languages, has an estimated value of USD 1.2 billion. After the UK and the US, India is the publisher of the largest number of titles in English language (40,000). There’s an array of multinationals and independent, niche publishers who offer exciting,  intellectually stimulating and financially rewarding careers in the world of books. Unfortunately in India there are few professional publishing courses that offer an insight into the world of publishing. The NBT short-term course is one of the few. Alumni from the NBT course have achieved great success in the publishing industry. For instance, the current editorial head of HarperCollins India is a product of this course.

Like other private sectors in India, publishing too has been the preserve of the social elite. Dalits and Adivasis hence go almost unrepresented in this field. For many Dalits/ Adivasis, publishing does not even seem to be a career option. Navayana, with the Avarna fellowship, seeks to address this anomaly.

Navayana therefore encourages Dalit and Adivasi graduates to proactively apply for he NBT course, and on selection, subsequently for the Navayana-Avarna fellowship. For any further queries, write toavarna@navayana.org.

Here are a few articles and useful links available on the internet with respect to the publishing scene in India:

http://www.thehindu.com/lr/2009/01/04/stories/2009010450040100.htm

http://www.frankfurt-book-fair.com/en/company/press_pr/newsletter/2009/01141/index.html

http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/2009/03/18/overview-of-the-indian-publishing-industry/

http://www.publishers.org.uk/download.cfm?docid=DDBA0A81-8996-41E2-870AF146B713C373 (a 134-page PDF booklet by Rob Francis for UK’s Publishers Association that offers a comprehensive “Publishing Market Profile for India, 2008″)

Based on experiences in the life of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Navayana will soon launch a graphic book that will feature the work of Pardhan Gond artists Durgabai Vyam and Subhash Vyam. The artwork and the non-sequential non-realist mode of representation promises to be a landmark in the history of modern graphic books. Watch this space for bi-weekly updates that will offer a peep into what’s to hit bookstores by mid-August.

“While paintings of the contemporary Gond art movement are now internationally celebrated, its three-dimensional expressions remain surprisingly neglected. Thus this solo exhibit — the first to focus on a Gond sculptor — is long overdue. Sukhnandi’s engaging, bold and earthy sculptures will astonish and captivate many Indian art devotees.”
– John H. Bowles, art critic and author of Painted Songs & Stories: The Hybrid Flowerings of Contemporary Pardhan Gond Art

Navayana, in association with W+K Exp, presents “Dog Father, Fox Mother, Their Daughter & Other Stories” by Sukhnandi Vyam, the first ever exhibition of sculptures by a Pardhan Gond artist. The exhibition, inaugurated on 24 March will be open to public  till 17 May 2010. Read The Hindu review; the Caravan review; the Business Standard review.

Dog Father, Fox Mother, Their Daughter & other stories is the first solo exhibition by Sukhnandi Vyam, a 27-year old Pardhan Gond artist from Madhya Pradesh.

Artist, 1

Sukhnandi Vyam is unique in continuing to practice Pardhan wood sculpture at a time when many in his illustrious family have moved towards canvas. Belonging to a tradition of contemporary Pardhan Gond art inaugurated by the pioneering Jangarh Singh Shyam, Vyam moved from his village in Sonpuri to Bhopal at the age of 8 and apprenticed with his uncle Subhash Vyam, the celebrated painter and sculptor. Sukhnandi has worked in many media – clay, canvas, metal and wood – but it is his wood sculptures that have won him most acclaim. In 2002, he won the Madhya Pradesh State Government award for his sculpture depicting the elaborate Mangrohi wedding ritual. His work is featured extensively in Udayan Vajpeyi’s book on Pardhan Gond art, Jangarh Kalam.

Sukhnandi Vyam’s work gives visual expression to the bana tradition among the Pardhan Gonds of eastern Madhya Pradesh; transforming oral storytelling to formal sculpture, the work loses none of the power to stimulate the imagination that words set to music on the bana contain. At a moment when we need urgently to be reminded of the critical connection between humans and the earth, Vyam’s magical realism reminds us that these connections are not pastoral fantasies of simplicity and a ‘return to nature’ but that the human relationship to the land and its gods has long been powerful, complex and strange. Of equal importance is the assertion the work, and its lineage, represents—that the creative voice, and its expression, is held within the self.  His stories are crafted using simple tools wielded by a powerful imagination.

Sukhnandi Vyam

Sukhnandi Vyam was born in 1983 in the eastern Madhya Pradesh village of Sonpuri, and now works as a sculptor within the Bhopal-based contemporary Pardhan Gond art movement inaugurated by the pioneering artist Jangarh Singh Shyam (1960–2001). Both Sukhnandi and Jangarh belong to the Pardhan Gond tribal community, which serves as the traditional keepers of their people’s cultural heritage and lineages – remembering family genealogies, and transmitting legends, sacred myths and oral histories through songs and storytelling. Pardhan Gond bards are still patronized by the larger Gond community, yet – with customary tribal patronage dwindling over the past century – their traditional livelihood and performance narratives have been made increasingly obsolete.

The Bana Mask

Fortunately, in the early-1980s, Jagdish Swaminathan (1928–1994) – then director of Bhopal’s newly founded cultural centre Bharat Bhavan – sent talent scouts into rural Madhya Pradesh, where one of them spotted the artistic talents of Jangarh Singh Shyam in the remote village of Patangarh. Swaminathan recognised Jangarh’s genius, encouraging him to become an artist; since then many other Pardhan Gonds have followed in Jangarh’s footsteps. Thus Pardhan songs and oral traditions, which had for centuries been recited to accompany performances on the bana (a sacred fiddle), also began to be depicted on paper and canvas, as well as in prominent mural commissions – such as on the facade of Madhya Pradesh’s legislative assembly building, and the domes of Bharat Bhavan. Jangarh’s art works have traveled from Patangarh via Bhopal to Delhi, Kolkata, Japan and the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and are now being exhibited in the United States. At the Bharat Bhavan itself, Swaminathan ensured that the art works by Pardhan Gonds occupied pride of place alongside the best creations of non-tribal, professional urban artists.

In 2001, Jangarh tragically committed suicide while working as an artist-in-residence at a museum in Niigata, rural Japan. By then he had already brought to Bhopal’s Professors Colony a wide array of Gond artists, among whom was the married couple Durgabai Vyam and Subhash Vyam. They in turn encouraged other Gonds from their village and urban communities to seek a livelihood as professional visual artists, and have continued to generously offer guidance and informal instruction from their modest home and workplace in Bhopal. Sukhnandi Vyam is one of Subhash’s nephews and former apprentices. As an eight-year old, Sukhnandi attended a 1991 workshop on art and craft conducted by Bhopal’s Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya. His terracotta sculptures created at that workshop were impressive. In 1997, Sukhnandi permanently settled in Bhopal and, after apprenticing as a sculptor for a few years under Subhash, charted his own path.

Sukhnandi has worked in many media – including clay, canvas, metal and wood – but it is his wood sculptures that have brought him the highest acclaim. In 2002, he won the Madhya Pradesh State Government award for an unusually elaborate wood-carved ritual mangrohi wedding totem, and his wooden sculptures were extensively featured in Udayan Vajpeyi’s authoritative book Jangarh Kalam (produced by Vanya Prakashan of the Madhya Pradesh Tribal Welfare Department). Notable in this age of industrially manufactured art, Sukhnandi has wrought his magic using the most basic of tools, under a blue tarpaulin-sheet studio outside a two-room home shared with his extended family.

Mother, Daughter, Grandma

This exhibition by Sukhnandi happens at a time when few Pardhan Gonds continue to work in wood. His teacher and mentor Subhash Vyam gave up sculpting many years ago; seeing his wife Durgabai’s career soar – from the success of her paintings on paper and canvas, and her illustrations for children’s books – Subhash also moved into painting on canvas. The problems Pardhan Gond sculptors cite are: the reluctance many visiting clients and patrons have for buying more cumbersome, heavy three-dimensional art works; the ever-increasing material cost of wood; the larger studio space required for both carving and storing their works; and the relative difficulty of transporting finished sculptures.  “We can roll canvases and take them on a train. Sculptures pose many problems,” says Sukhnandi. The resistance that sculptures inherently pose to mechanical reproduction – compared to canvases – is perhaps an equally crucial impediment.

In commissioning this exhibition, W+K Exp spurred Sukhnandi to work on new sculptures. Whereas Pardhan Gond paintings have traveled widely across the world, this is the first solo exhibit of a Pardhan Gond sculptor. Hopefully, it will provide further impetus to, and revive interest in, this resurgent mode of Gond visual expression.

S. Anand, Navayana Publishing

w+k exp
b-10 triveni complex
sheikh sarai phase I
new delhi, india 110017
+91-11-4600 9530

Savi Savarkar's Mariamma

It is from such a context of hidden apartheid that Dalit literature emerges. The opening panel in the Dalit focus, Outcaste: The Search for Public Conscience, befittingly derives its title from Ambedkar’s anxiety over the lack of a public conscience in India when it comes to the issue of discrimination against and oppression of Dalits.

In four sessions spread over five days, Dalit writers from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Delhi and Maharashtra will share platforms with nondalits who have worked on the caste question to debate issues related to identity, literature and representation. P. Sivakami, Om Prakash Valmiki, Kancha Ilaiah, Ajay Navaria, Desraj Kali, Iqbal Udasi and Laxman Gaikwad shall be the key speakers/ performers. Christophe Jaffrelot, Nirupama Dutt, S.S. Nirupam and S. Anand shall play the role of interlocutors during these sessions.

The Dalit Focus at JLF is being coordinated by S. Anand of Navayana Publishing and Namita Gokhale, founder-director of Jaipur Literature Festival. For interviews with the writers related to the Dalit sessions and further information on the Dalit focus at JLF 2010, please contact anand@navayana.org.22 Jan 2010. 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Durbar Hall.

22 Jan 2010. 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Durbar Hall
Outcaste: The Search for Public Conscience
Om Prakash Valmiki, Kancha Ilaiah, P. Sivakami and S. Anand
In a speech in 1952, Ambedkar says: “Public conscience means conscience that becomes agitated at every wrong, no matter who is the sufferer, and it means that everybody, whether he suffers that particular wrong or not, is prepared to join him in order to get him relieved… [In India] there is South Africa everywhere in the villages and yet I have very seldom found anybody belonging to the upper castes taking up the cause of the Scheduled Castes and fighting. Why? Because there is no public conscience.” This agenda-setting panel seeks to use Ambedkar’s words as a starting point to examine the “absence of public conscience”, especially among the Hindus.

23 Jan 2010. 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. Baithak.
Ab Aur Nahin: An End to Suffering
Ajay Navaria and Om Prakash Valmiki in conversation with S.S. Nirupam
Introduction by Christophe Jaffrelot
This session will have readings in Hindi by Omprakash Valmiki and Ajay Navaria, with English translations. Introduced by Christophe Jaffrelot. Moderated by S.S. Nirupam.

24 Jan 2010. 2.30pm - 3.30pm. Baithak.
The Grip of Change
P. Sivakami, Laxman Gaikwad and S. Anand on caste, patriarchy and literary liberation.
When part of a literary movement that seeks to assert the humanity of the marginalized, what does it mean to be a woman, to be a ‘criminal tribe’-to be on the peripheries of the margin? Sivakami whose first novel (The Grip of Change) offers an indictment of dalit patriarchy, and Gaikwad who lays bare the anguish of being despised by the despised (Uchalya) explore the issue. Anand, anchoring the discussion, shall speak on marginality and oppression in brahmanical writings.

25 Jan 2010. 2.30 p.m. to 3.30 p.m. Baithak.
A Million Suns: A Celebration of Punjabi Dalit Literature
Desraj Kali, Iqbal Udasi, Nirupama Dutt
This session is presented by Nirupama Dutt, who will also read from the works of Lal Singh Dil. Iqbal Udasi will sing the songs of her late father, revolutionary Punjabi poet, Sant Ram Udasi. Des Raj Kali will read from his work and discuss the provocation for his art.

For further details also visit the Jaipur Literature Festival website. For biographical sketches of the speakers at these sessions, click here.

At the Safai Karamchair Andolan office on 4 January 2010

In his Sarai lecture, on 4 Jan 2010, Slavoj Žižek called Gandhi a ’soft fascist’ and said he was more in line with Ambedkar’s radical approach to the question of caste. In this interview to the Sunday Times of India (10 Jan 2010), he elaborates on these questions. Excerpts with links to full text.

Q: You have also been accused of glorifying political violence. Do you support violence as a means of political change?

A: Here I must be frank. For me, the 20th century communism is the biggest ethical-political catastrophe in the history of humanity, greater catastrophe than fascism. In fascism, you had bad people who said we will do bad things and they took power and they did bad things. That’s why in fascism you don’t have dissidents. But in the first years of the October Revolution, in spite of the so-called Red Terror, there was sexual liberation, literary explosion and then it turned into the nightmare. I don’t accept the right-wing critique that says it was evil from the very beginning.

Q: What’s your point?

My point is what people perceive as violence is the direct subjective violence. It’s crucial to see violence which has to be done repeatedly to keep the things the way they are. I am not just talking about structural violence, symbolic violence, violence in language, etc. In that sense Gandhi was more violent than Hitler. Hitler killed millions of people. It was more reactive killing. Hitler was active all the time not to change things but to prevent change.

Q: A lot of people will find it ridiculous to even imagine that Gandhi was more violent than Hitler? Are you serious when you say that…

A: Yes he was, although Gandhi didn’t support killing. With his actions — boycott and all that — he helped the British imperialists to stay in India longer. This is something Hitler never wanted. Gandhi didn’t do anything to stop the functioning of the British empire or the way it functioned here. You have to think why was India called the jewel of the empire? That for me is a problem. Let us locate violence properly.

Q: I guess you have no respect for Gandhi who is a tall figure in this country…

A: I respect him. I don’t respect him for his peaceful ways, vegetarianism etc. I don’t care about that. But Gandhi somehow succeeded in carrying on his principled attitude with pragmatic spirit. It’s very difficult to maintain this balance. But again I feel Ambedkar was much better than Gandhi. My favourite oneliner from Ambedkar is when he said that “there is no caste without outcastes”. Ambedkar saw that the Gandhian solution for untouchables was wrong. This attitude doesn’t work. I am for Ambedkar’s radical approach.

The full text of the interview can be viewed on Times of India staffer Shobhan Saxena’s blog. The print version can be viewed here. The TimeOut and Hindustan Times interview can be found here.

To order Žižek’s latest book First as Tragedy, Then as Farce and The Sublime Object of Ideology, or Thus Spoke Ambedkar, Volume 1, and any other Navayana title online in any part of South Asia, visit Scholars Without Borders. Visit Navayana’s office and avail 25%  discount on all titles.

Slavoj Žižek on
“Capitalism and Particular Life-Worlds: In Defense of Universalism”

7 Jan 2010. 11 a.m.
Room 1, New Academic Building, EFLU Campus

Interlocutor: Madhava Prasad

Come early to ensure seats. Žižek books and other latest Navayana titles will be available for sale at the venue.

To order Žižek’s latest book First as Tragedy, Then as Farce and The Sublime Object of Ideology, or any other Navayana title online in any part of South Asia, visit Scholars Without Borders.

Thus Spoke Ambedkar, Volume 1
A Stake in the Nation

Edited and Selected by Bhagwan Das
With annotations

Navayanan Ambedkar Library 1

7.5″ x 7.5″
Hardback with dust jacket, 228 pages
ISBN 9788189059187
Rs 395

The first ever annotated edition of Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s speehces.

The twenty speeches in the first of volume of Thus Spoke Ambedkar showcase the wide range of issues that Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar engaged with as one of the founders of modern India. Delivered between 1930 and 1956, they unravel a story otherwise jettisoned by mainstream ‘nationalist’ narratives that valorise a rather Hinduised ‘idea of India’. The uncanny prescience of the ideas contained here will help us seek answers to many of our persistent problems.

Speaking at times like a swordsman who strikes to defend but not to wound, and at others like a surgeon focused on eliminating the one rotten organ - caste - that endangers the entire body, Ambedkar grapples with questions of inequality, democracy, labour, minority rights, communalism, brahminism, constitution-making and foreign policy in speeches that address various publics: dalit workers in Nashik, British lawmakers in London, parliamentarians in Delhi and college students in Jalandhar. The prose spans different registers of reason and affect-lyrical and polemic, combative and poignant.

This volume, the first in the Navayana Ambedkar Library series, is essential reading for all those keen on understanding India.

To order this or any other Navayana title online, visit Scholars Without Borders.

This evening see how Slavoj Žižek, in a talk ostensibly on 11 Sept 2001 and the crisis in capitalism (the Tragedy and the Farce), manages to speak on Ambedkar, caste, Gandhi, shit, manual scavenging and the Laws of Manu…

Prof Nivedita Menon will critically engage with  Žižek’s book, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, and his talk.

Come early to ensure seats.

The rest of the schedule of his India tour is as follows:

7 Jan 2010. 11 a.m. Lecture
“Capitalism and Particular Life-Worlds: In Defense of Universalism”
Interlocutor: Madhava Prasad
ICSSR Auditorium, English & Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad

9 Jan 2010. 5 p.m. Lecture and Panel Discussion
“Whither Left?”
Panelists: Usha Zacharias, Ravikumar, Sashi Kumar (Chair)
Town Hall, Kochi, Kochi Life 2010