Monthly Archives: July 2017

On the one hand there is reportage and investigative journalism. On the other, travel writing and adventure story telling.

Based on the innovative work carried out by the author in various schools and non-governmental organizations for the last fifteen years, the book gives the reader an insight into the world of children and how to look at the world through their eyes.

The stone of the grand diamond itself is called knowledge. The light that spills out from it is called culture. The stone has gravity while the light has effulgence.1 Rabindranath Tagore, Sesher Kobita

This is the second edition of a collection of essays, which were first published by T.K. Oommen in 2007.

Sunil Janah’s Photographing India reminded me of Dziga Vertov’s Man With A Movie Camera. The photographer protagonist in the Russian avantgarde filmmaker’s iconic documentary is constantly on the move—shooting on the road; in the mines; at the dam; inside a factory; by the sea; in a park; or in a playground. Cranking his camera, he goes around tirelessly documenting the lives of Russia’s men and women, and the rhythm of its cities. Similarities between the film and Janah’s work just don’t end here.

Malavika Karlekar’s book is a series of snapshots—I use the term deliberately —of not just colonial and post-Independence India, but of the history of photography itself.

This book is an attempt to put together some of Professor Kuldeep Mathur’s research essays that focus on an analysis of India’s public policies in the pre- and post- 91 era.

n the past few years, India has witnessed a renewed interest in the category of criminal acts ranging from corruption to cases of violence against women.

The coming into force of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA) in 2005 is a validation of the enormous struggle of the feminist movement in India.

Man throughout his existence has striven towards an adjustment with the forces of nature. Some problems were easily resolved by his scientific, matter-­of-fact attitude but there were others which were beyond empirical explana­tion. To harmonize with the forces beyond his comprehension, man evolved various assumptions and activities…

Even after 66 years of Independence, it is difficult to imagine an India devoid of rules governing what can or cannot be publicly or creatively expressed, a scenario that could be described, for want of a better descriptive palate, as an agonizingly prevalent and multifaceted ‘culture of censorship’.

This book is the published version of what must have been an immensely diligent PhD thesis prepared for Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. The book bears the marks of a thesis.

The back cover often plays an important role in the reader’s journey from picking up the book from a stack to making it to its last page. It’s so important that many a book and blog have been written for helping writers and publishers write the perfect back page, or ‘creating a killer back cover.’

Niraja Gopal Jayal’s Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History presents what she variously calls a history of ideas, a genealogy, or a biography of citizenship in India. Standing as the proxy for ‘the Indian people’, citizenship is the tragic protagonist of her story. Every story of citizenship is, necessarily, also a story of the state.

There already exist two full-length studies on Satyajit Ray: a biographical study by Marie Seton and Robin Wood’s Apu Trilogy. But Orient Longman’s expensively brought out Our Films, Their Films is a rare book-a noted film-maker’s musings about himself, his craft and about other film makers….

The book under review is part of the ‘India Library’ series not ‘learned treatises on Indology, nor meant to be reference works … ‘ but’ … to give encyclopaedic, compressed information on each subject’. As such, this book is a simple plebian attempt to undergo a journey into Raga—the sound of Indian music…

National Centre for the Performing Arts, Bom­bay deserves all praise for devoting the September 1975 issue of their quarterly journal to Muttuswami Dikshitar, whose 200th birth anniversary was obser­ved with eclat all over the country last year. As rightly pointed out in the Foreword, Dr. Raghavan is eminently suited to be the author of this venture…

This is Raghuvir Sahai’s third volume of poems. His two previous ones: Seedhiyon Par Dhoop Mein (1960) and Atmahatya Ke Viruddha (1967) have al­ready established him as a major Hindi poet of the post-sixties.

Anglo-Indian fiction has generally interested non­-Indians more than Indians, hence it is appropriate that Bhupal Singh’s pioneering work should achieve a new impression under the joint imprint of Curzon Press (London) and Rowman & Littlefield (Totowa N.J.)…

It has long been acknowledged that Browning is one of the poets best served by severe selection. The task of the editor who wishes to present the best of Browning is made easier by the fact that Browning’s work falls naturally into three periods, of which the middle one might be said to contain almost all his best work…