Journal of South Asia Women Studies

A slightly misleading title for a book, originally published in Bangalore in 2007, on Indian women in colonial India. Part A consists of brief research papers and part B of documents. The book is imbalanced since Part A is 494 page long, while Part B, including contemporary documents, covers 53 pages only. Documents are extracts (in translation) from the original writings of Rammohan Roy, Kailashbasini Devi, Tarabai Shinde, M. G. Ranade, Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain.

An original, agile research book written by the Kokusai Bunka Kaikan (Tokyo, Japan), the Kokusai Kōryū Kikin and the seven fellows of the Asia Leadership Fellow Program 2004, coming from seven countries: Bhutan, China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines. It addresses problems of identity and multiculturalism in East Asian countries. Very interesting is the last paper of the book, “The Way We Love (To Hate) the U.S.: The Loci of America in Japan Today”, by a Japanese intellectual, Yasushi Watanabe, who analyzes the words in books, articles, and in popular talks coined to depict Japanese attitudes towards the U.S. before and after 9/11.

In 1994, at the age of 57, Shankar was granted a Flinders University doctoral fellowship to undertake his reasearch on the Tamil Muslim Diaspora. Between 1994 and 1996 he undertook extensive field research in Malaysia and Singapore; on November 1, 1996 he passed away. The book is the result of this field research and is clear and well documented. It consists the dissertation ourline, the primary data, research sources and notes, and a rich bibliography.