This work is an original and pioneering exploration of not only the social history of the subcontinent but also of performance and popular culture. The domain of analysis is entirely novel and opens up a bolder approach of laying a new field of historical enquiry of South Asia. Trawling through an extraordinary set of sources such as colonial and postcolonial records, newspaper reports, unpublished autobiographies, private papers, photographs and oral interviews the author brings out a fascinating account of the transnational landscape of physical cultures, human and animal performers and the circus industry.

This book is a fascinating historical account of the humans, animals and objects in the circus industry in India spanning over the last hundred and fifty years. It explores in detail a wide range of amazing tales from the evolution and blooming of circus acrobatics in the early twentieth century Malabar to the exciting legal battles following the ban of training and performance of wild animals and children from the circus ring in the twenty first century.