Monthly Archives: August 2017

The concept of deterrence is as old as the history of conflict. The earliest caveman raised his club menacingly to deter his attacker. The medieval knight clad in full armour, bearing an array of personal weapons also served as a deterrent force…

The Foreword to the volume by George Anderson, President of the Forum of Federations, informs us that at the end of the Second World War there were only four functioning federations, namely, the United States, Canada, Australia and Switzerland; today, the world has about thirty, and many more are on the path of becoming so…

Over a decade ago, political theorist Partha Chatterjee embarked on what was a novel journey in the history of political thought in India and, perhaps in the postcolonial, non-western world. Bringing together the results of decades of his own intellectual engagement with Indian politics and the question of subalternity…

Thomas Bernhard was one of the most significant voices in twentieth century Austro-German literature, and one of the most striking writers in the modernist tradition. Yet he remains little known to the outside world, partly because his long, allusive, fevered sentences are tough to translate…

Thomas Trautamnn, in his pioneering work, Languages and Nations: The Dravidian Proof in Colonial Madras (2006) demonstrated that the astounding ling-uistic discovery of familial relations between languages-the formulation of the Indo-Euro-pean and Dravidian families of languages -was an outcome of the interaction between western orientalists and indigenous Indian scholarship…

This is a fascinating memoir and it is indeed commendable that Sikata Banerjee has chosen to translate this text which, until now, was only available to the Bengali reading public.Saraladebi Chaudhu-rani, the niece of Rabindranath Tagore,…

ANITA Desai’s latest novel Fire on the Mountain is a distinct let-down. It has many of the qualities that marked her first book, Cry, the Peacock; spare­ness, toughness and fine descriptive writing. But while Cry, the Peacock came off, Fire on the Mountain does not; perhaps because, trying the same trick once too often, Anita Desai achieves sensationalism instead of shock…

The latest offering from the indefatigable Joep Bor and his learned colleagues, this modestly titled volume should really have been called Companion to Hindustani Music. There are 25 essays cove-ring eight centuries from the thirteenth to the twentieth…

In 1988, I had just been appointed the Chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, and had finished chairing the first meeting of my Governing Council, when I was approached by a frail figure, grey-haired and bearded, clad, if I remember correctly, in saffron…

The recent exhibitions in Delhi and Mumbai of the works of painters Amrit and Rabindra, popularly known as the Singh Twins, drew in many accolades especially for ‘taking Indian miniatures to a completely new level’ because of their ‘reflec-tions on contemporary life…

The stories included in this Anthology of Modem Bengali Short Stories, sel­ected and translated by Enakshi Chatter­jee, range from ‘The Music Room’ by Tara Shankar Banerjee, published in 1934, to Kabita Sinha’s ‘The Strange Island’ and Baren Gangopadhyay’s ‘The Hand’, both published in 1966…

This is a provocative and refreshing book on the condition of the working class under globalization with special reference to India. If there is one thing that comes to mind after reading this book it is the last few words of the Communist Manifesto: ‘Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains’…

As the world struggles to emerge from the economic crisis, the links between business and government are increa-singly relevant. Political analysts from the United States and Britain to India and China are increasingly focusing on the ways that corporate interests influence, even control, public policy…

The book written by Kaushik Roy offers an interesting take on the development of the Armed Forces as an institution, its nature and purposes and the formulation of theories as regards its functions. Not much has been written about India’s military post-Independence despite…

We have seen Bengalis assembled on various occasions of danger, distress and sorrow, such as that of the Partition – Mohun Bagan has infused a new life intro the lifeless and cheerless Bengali – By your victory sport has been turned into a unifying force -(Basumati, 5 August 1911)…

The eminent historian Irfan Habib’s The National Movement: Studies in Ideology and History, seeks to grapple again with the classic question of the rela-tionship of socialist thought and nationalism. The first two of the five essays in the volume are centred on Gandhi…

North East India is mostly written about in connection with the politics of space and identity. Here is another one dealing with the same subject. But Sanghamitra Misra’s work is a book with a difference. The difference is mostly due to its treatment of the subject and also the space in which the study is located…

Two young men barely fifteen are seated on upholstered chairs, one resting his arm over an ornate, marbled topped table, while the other has his arm over the chair handle. The one seated next to the table has worn a long coat; all buttoned up, dhoti, a cap, while his friend…

A visitor from Mars in the sixteenth century, Marshall Hodgson used to say, might well have identified the wide network of ‘Islamicate’ societies as the most dynamic and dominant, politically and cul-turally, of all the civilizations on Planet Earth…

The slimness of this book is its first surprise, seeming almost at odds with the weighty title. As Judith Brown states in the Introduction, the aim was to reach a wide audience ‘at university level and even among school students’, as also readers ‘who may know little about India but wish to know more about such a significant and intriguing figure’ as Gandhi…