Monthly Archives: September 2017

Fatal Faultlines is a lucid account delving into many difficult questions which lie at the heart of interactions between Islam, the West and Pakistan. These range from historical confrontation between Muslim and western civilizations and their impact on the current ‘dialogue’ between Muslim countries and the West.

As Bangladesh approached, and successfully crossed the 40-year milestone of its existence as an independent country, several non-Bangladeshi and expatriate-Bangladeshi authors have written comprehensively about this nation.

Among the many metaphors for Afghanistan, cross roads in the most commonly used. Now it can additionally be described as the junction point of intellectual and academic endeavour: on war and terrorism; on religion and fundamentalism; on conflict zones and instability; on institution building and State construction.

The security discourse of the first decade of the 21st century will be remembered for the enormity ofSeptember 11, 2001 manifest in the catastrophic and unexpected terrorist attack on the twin towers in New York—now enshrined in the US lexicon as 9/11.

The concept of self-determination generally implies that communities—ethnic, linguistic, regional or otherwise—should be left to themselves to choose the form of self-government that suits them best. But the ‘themselves’ are often politically, economically and socially too fragmented to come to a consensus on the best choice.

Nuclear weapons are here to stay in spite of the ‘global Zero’ initiative, enthusiastic support given to the ‘zero’ movement by US President Barack Obama, and the ever-increasing amount of international efforts that are under way to disarm nuclear weapons.

As the material power of India and China is being enhanced due to their economic growth rates in the last two decades, the established global power, the United States has been undertaking several studies and policy options to cope with the emerging actors in the international system.

Much opportunistic literature has been churned out on the emergence of Bangla Desh. Disappointingly, published material of relevance to a combatman or a keen student of military history has been restricted to some broad brushwork by people who were not quite near the scene of action…

The author is a strategic consultant to companies doing international business. He was in the US Foreign Service for some years and has worked in US missions in India and Sri Lanka.

This is the 50th year of the war that China imposed on India in 1962. Was the war itself and the resulting consequences—the effects of which are still with us, not least, in the form of a ‘trust deficit’ in our relations with China—because of Mao’s ‘martial efficacy’ beliefs in contrast to Nehru’s ‘moral efficacy’ beliefs?

A debut novel, Ayesha Salman’s Blue Dust deserves praise for more than one reason. However, what struck me is its portrayal of complex psychological characters in an equally intricately knit narrative. Salman has written a story which is passionate, painful, psychological and surreal. I must confess it left me emotionally drained but perhaps intellectually enriched.

On the evening of November 17,1962, between seven o’clock and eleven o’clock, three senior General Officers sat in the Operations Room of HQ IV Corps at Tezpur, arguing among themselves endlessly whether four Infantry Division should be ordered to withdraw from Sela without offering battle…

Orientalism is thriving in 2012, albeit in a more subtle and refined form. The proverbial ‘white man’s burden’ is no more about a civilizing mission, but instead to fulfill a ‘responsibility to protect’, from the terror of the irrational other.

In the foreword to his novel A Life Incomplete the legendary Punjabi author Nanak Singh narrates the story of the very conception of his novel and interestingly, he calls the foreword ‘More Fact than Foreword’. To me this story is actually a masterstroke of the story teller’s fictional strategy:

While documenting the creative and critical expressions of Malayali dalits from the beginnings of the 20th century to recent times, the volume under review remains sceptical of upper caste consciousness and historiography.

The birth of the Tamil Book, if it indeed can be narrated, it is here and comprehensively done at that, by Venkata-chalapathy. Backed by meticulous research, at times with finer details verging on the fastidious, the writer has done a yeoman service to the world of the Tamil word.

The Moslems are Coming: Encounters with a Desktop Terrorist published by Harper Collins India in 2012 is a revised and updated adaptation of Azad Essa’s first book—Zuma’s Bastard published two years ago in 2010.