Body on the Barricades: Life, Art and Resistance in Contemporary India

by Brahma Prakash

‘This set of essays is a series of meditations on hatred, tenderness, grief, mourning, labour, resistance, social justice and the possibilities of meaning and solidarity, all viewed through the lens of some traumatic events that have convulsed India in recent years. It is an insightful, unusual guidebook that illuminates the path that we as a country and as a people took, to arrive at the dangerous place in which we are now.’ – ARUNDHATI ROY, Author of The God of Small Things

‘Powerful. Be prepared to get enraged.’ – SANTOSH DASS, Co-author and co-editor, Ambedkar in London

‘A book for the time which feels like an aberration but when “business as usual” revealed itself to our collective naked eyes its grotesque, revolting, suffocating truth.’ – GHAZALA JAMIL, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University

‘Lyrical, searing and powerful’. – NIVEDITA MENON, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University

‘An extraordinary examination of the politicking, grieving, protesting body.’ – ANNIE ZAIDI, Author of Prelude to a Riot

‘A searing cultural critique of the contemporary nation body.’ – K. SATYANARAYANA, Professor, English and Foreign Languages University

BRAHMA PRAKASH
Brahma Prakash teaches at the School of Arts and Aesthetics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is the author of Cultural Labour: Conceptualizing the ‘Folk Performance’ in India (2019).

210 pages, Paperback

Published January 7, 2023

Reviews

[Annie Zaidi]

Brahma Prakash's book emerges from academic training, but is not necessarily an academic book in the sense that it is of broad interest and not targeted only at scholars or academics. I really liked it, not merely because of its critiques of social and political power but also for its honest and lyrical writing. I had also offered a short blurb for the book before it was published and I am copying it below:

This book is an extraordinary examination of the politicking, grieving, protesting body. From choked breath to the taken 'knee' and flogged back, and from the curtailed tongues of poets to plastic extracted from the bellies of cows, it sweeps a broad arc across contemporary politics, all the while rooting for the flesh and blood and tears of human bodies.

[Radhika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Powerful.
From starting on a Toni Morrison’s quote to ending on one.
A fantastic text on motherhood,Grief and mourning to the joining of farmer's protest.
The real breathlessness, in democracy now.
The death of the author as Perumal Murugan suggested. To Kabir's words and twisting them. The need for riots. The actual condition of immigrants. A refreshing read.

[Krishanu · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful and passionate writing. Some chapters are really well done.