इक लुफ़्त-ए-ख़ास दिल को तेरी आरज़ू से है
अल्लाह जाने कितनी कशिश लखनऊ में है
Munawwar Rana
The
outcome of a research project headed by social anthropologist Professor Nadeem Hasnain,“The Other Lucknow: An
Ethnographic Portrait of a City of Undying Memories and Nostalgia”, brings the
story of Lucknow in its fullness up to the present times.
"One is not surprised to
read, as quoted by Nadeem Hasnain to begin his introduction, what William
Russel, correspondent of The Times, London wrote in 1858 about Lucknow:'Not
Rome, not Athens, nor Constantinople, not any city I have ever seen appears to
me so striking and so beautiful as this,” quoted from the review by Eminent
scholar and Senior Literary critic Kuldeep Kumar in The Hindu.
To read the complete review, click on the link below:
About The Book
Nadeem Hasnain
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There
are few cities in the world that evoke the same nostalgia among its
inhabitants, visitors and historians as Lucknow. Perhaps, Delhi and Calcutta
are the only two cities in South Asia on which more has been written. In the
case of Lucknow, most of the published scholarship focused on 1857, historical
monuments and the Nawabi palace life and culture. This fascination with the
Nawabi era is largely responsible for the neglect of various other aspects of
Lucknow such as its social fabric (castes, sects, occupational groups and
communities), the subaltern and the marginalised sections of the society,
problems and plight of the artisans, Sunni-Shia violence, local landmarks,
vanishin/dying skills, its Bollywood connection, people from outside the state
of Uttar Pradesh who have made Lucknow their home and have enriched it, several
other issues and the virtual metamorphosis of Lucknow. This study is an attempt
to grapple with the present but not severing ties with the past because the
wholesale loss of memory makes a city characterless. The present study
maintains that the nostalgia and the undying memories must be there in the face
of modernization. In the process of transformation, Lucknow should not be
allowed to become a ‘city of amnesia’. There has to be a closer association
between the ‘tradition’ and the ‘modernity’. In a way, this study may also be
seen as an ‘ethnographic portrait’ of Lucknow in the tone and tenor of ‘auto
ethnography’.
Nadeem Hasnain
Nadeem
Hasnain is a social scientist with a broad range of interests. Formerly, a
Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Lucknow, India, he has
been a Fulbright ‘Scholar in Residence’ and taught and lectured at several
universities in the USA. Among his important works are Bonded For Ever, Tribal
India and Indian Society and Culture: Continuity and Change. He is also the
editor of two research journals- The Eastern Anthropologist and Islam and
Muslim Societies: A Social Science Journal. A teacher, researcher, and social
activist, he is currently a Senior Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science
Research.
Come,
read it and share what you feel about Lucknow and
“The Other Lucknow”
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