[Reader-list] 100 Years, 100 Voices Book Release

[Shekhar Krishnan]

Dear Friends:

Announcing the release of the book One Hundred Years, One Hundred 
Voices: The Millworkers of Mumbai: A Vanishing History, by Meena Menon 
and Neera Adarkar, with an introductory essay by Dr Rajnarayan 
Chandavarkar.

The book will be launched on THURSDAY 26 AUGUST 2004 at 6.30 P.M. at 
the Oxford Bookstore in Churchgate, Mumbai. It will be released by 
activist Datta Ishwalkar of the Girni Kamgar Sangharsh Samiti and 
Girangaon Rozgar Hakk Samiti. Chief guest will be writer Kiran 
Nagarkar, who will read selections from the book with film-maker and 
writer Paromita Vohra. The discussion will be led by journalists Darryl 
D'Monte and Smriti Koppikar. The book will be available at a discounted 
rate at this event (see below for more information).


ABOUT THE BOOK:

‘There is a history here which is in danger of being rewritten and 
forgotten in the rapid progress of what goes by the name of development 
. . . this means the loss of jobs and the future of their children. It 
also means a world that is growing around them, in which they no longer 
have a part to play.’

The history of central Bombay’s textile area is one of the most 
important, least known, stories of modern India. Covering a dense 
network of textile mills, public housing estates, markets and cultural 
centres, this area covers about a thousand acres in the heart of 
India’s commercial and financial capital. With the advent of 
globalization, the survival of these 1.3 million people, their culture 
and history, has been up for grabs. The new economic policies of the 
Indian Government have sought to style this moribund industrial 
metropolis into a centre for global business and finance. The middle 
classes and business elite are anxious to turn it into offices and 
entertainment centres. The working-class residents face displacement 
after over a century of constant habitation, and the social rhythms and 
cultural economy of this area face an impending destruction.

This book comprises about a hundred testimonies by the inhabitants of 
these districts, which are a window into the history, culture and 
political economy of a former colonial port city now recasting itself 
as a global metropolis. While following the major threads of national 
and international events, it tries to render the history of central 
Bombay through the narratives and perceptions of the people, in the 
process casting new light on the processes of history as they were 
experienced by the working classes—the contesting ideas of what a free 
India would be; the growth of industry and labour movements; the World 
Wars and their impact; the complex politics of regional and linguistic 
identities in Bombay and Maharashtra; the eclipse of the organized Left 
and the rise of extremist sectarian politics.


DATE:
Thursday 26 August 2004

TIME:
6.30 P.M.

PLACE:
Oxford Bookstore
Apeejay House
3, Dinsha Vachha Road
Churchgate, Mumbai 400 020
Phone +91.22.5636.4477


ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

MEENA MENON has been a political and trade union activist for the past 
thirty years. She has been active in the textile workers movement for 
eleven years. She is Vice President of the Girni Kamgar Sangharsh 
Samiti (Mill Workers Action Committee), and one of its founders. She is 
also a Senior Associate with Focus on the Global South, a global policy 
research organisation. She is based in Mumbai.

NEERA ADARKAR has been active in the women's movement for twenty years. 
She is a practising architect and urban researcher, and visiting 
faculty at the Academy of Architecture, Mumbai. She is one of the 
founding members of Majlis, a legal and cultural centre, and is one of 
the convenors of the Girangaon Bachao Andolan (Save Girangaon 
Movement). She is based in Mumbai.

Dr RAJNARAYAN CHANDAVARKAR is Reader in the History and Politics of 
South Asia and the Director of the Centre of South Asian Studies, at 
Cambridge University, and is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, 
U.K. His publications include The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in 
India: Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900-1940 
(Cambridge, 1994) and Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, 
Resistance and the State in India, 1850-1950 (Cambridge, 1998).


ABOUT THE PUBLISHERS:

Seagull Books, ISBN 81 7046 212 6, Rs 695, Hardback, 450 pages
http://www.seagullindia.com


To order the book directly online, please go to 
http://www.seagullindia.com/index-books/frame3.html and for more 
information about the book or to contact the authors, please write to 
girni at crit.org.in


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