This book identifies certain moments in the history of contemporary India. These events concern Partition, sati, minority rights, the Bhopal industrial disaster, the nature of the Indian state, and various sociological issues. Veena Das redescribes these events and their implications within the framework of anthropological knowledge. She shows the various social transformations that have resulted in new configurations of relations between the local and the global within India. This work will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and political scientists.