From Ritual to Republic : Death as a Democratic Discourse

This book is about mourning. It is about mourning for a death which has been conceived as a murder but in a distinct fashion as ritualistic, as a sacrifice and as a martyrdom initiating a specific genre of democratic representation marking the birth of the Indian Republic. The person thus mourned was a school teacher and an activist of the Communist Party of India among many other things. He was killed on the first Republic day of India 26th January 1950 in a clash with the police. He had been leading a demonstration called Rally for the Rights of the Citizens pauravakasajaatha purportedly against the highhandedness of the police in the name of maintaining law and order in Nattika Firka in the erstwhile district of Malabar in the presidency of Madras.

Autorentext

K.V.Cybil is a Junior Fellow at the Teenmurti Library, New Delhi. His published works include 'Haunting and the Republic:Spectrology of a Custodial Death', Journal of Polity and Society and 'Revolution : Social or Political? The Perspectives of Satyashodak Marxism and Naxalism', Indian Journal of Political Science.