Being Bengali : at home and in the world : some speculations

Inquiries into identity have assumed an overwhelming place of scholarship in the contemporary university as well as found popular voice in the larger public domain. Not listed in Raymond William’s Keywords in 1976, ‘identity’ in the last three decades has come to occupy a paramount place in the understandings of human collectivities like community, country and culture. Ranged around a cluster of entry points that include, but are not limited to, nation, diaspora, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, ability and, in the recent past, predominantly religion, contemporary debates on identity have had to take into account the unprecedented movement of peoples across global spheres and the conflict of affiliations that results when hitherto known nodes of power shift, refashioning people’s sense of place in a fast-transforming world. This collection of essays is an attempt, and an exercise, in excavating the reasons why identity assumes such a vital place in the contemporary human imagination