Thali Katori: An Anthology of Scottish and South Asian Poetry, is a feast of many flavours. Featuring poets from Sir Walter Scott’s time to Vikram Seth and others, Thali Katori celebrates the difference and diversity of the Indian sub-continent and Scotland.
Through a rich collection of poetry that explores the unique history of the relationship between India and Scotland and the ways in which it has affected the lives of many since, Scottish and Indian writers are brought together for the first time in this anthology to show how Scots who travelled to India wrote about their experience there, and those who came from the sub-continent to Scotland in a counter journey, have made Scotland their home and compose poetry as the New Scots.
As Asif Khan, the Director of the Scottish Poetry Library says, ‘Thali Katori provides a platform for a multitude of voices… if one is searching for a synergy then it surely must be that of the experience of the Diaspora and the formation of attachments to the Motherland’.
The historical relationship between Scotland and India is a relatively unexplored part of colonial history. Scottish Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: the Continuum of Ideas re-examines the interchange of ideas initiated in the 18th century by the Scottish Enlightenment, and the ways in which these ideas were reformed and shaped to fit the changing social fabric of Scotland and India in the 19th and 20th centuries.
With contributions from key individuals and institutions in both Scotland and India, the range of ideas that were interchanged between the two nations are explored in the contexts of culture studies, history, the social sciences and literature.
Scottish Orientalism is one part of two volumes. Its companion, Confluence of Minds: The Rabindranath Tagore and Patrick Geddes Reader on Education and the Environment, brings together the works and ideas of two key figures in the Bengal Renaissance. Together these complementary volumes provide a cohesive idea of the interface between these visionaries and between the two nations.