Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

He clarified the distinction sharply: ‘We grew, but we didn’t have structural transformation.’ Turning to governance, Subramanian addressed debates on decentralization and federalism. While acknowledging the normative appeal of decentralization, he warned against treating it as a cure-all. He argued that performance often deteriorates as authority moves downward, citing weaknesses in State Finance Commissions

This the author seeks to achieve by expanding the archive to include real residents––the natives––in local histories and heritage descriptions. By referencing her work to Mullingar Hill, and not the Landour Cantonment, the author immediately succeeds in shifting focus away from the colonial. Mullingar, perhaps the second oldest bungalow in this hill station and the erstwhile home of Frederick Young,

The anticipated positive externalities of the railway soon outweighed scepticism. Although the system was designed to serve colonial interests, facilitating troop movement and promoting commercial crops, often at the expense of local needs, it nonetheless contributed to a profound shift in social perception, introducing a velocity of movement far beyond the pace of bullock carts and reconfiguring notions of space and time.

Her general serenity makes the explosions all the more fierce: ‘In a country run by politicians who are almost all thugs of different shades, the poor know that governments are of the rich, for the rich, by the rich.’ In the chapter on ecological devastation poignantly titled ‘The Wounded Mountain’, she asks, ‘Isn’t it convenient for governments like ours to have climate change to blame?’

It situates Dalit activism within broader discourses of universal human rights, anti-caste ethics, and transnational solidarities, thereby demonstrating how Dalit claims-making resonates with, and contributes to, wider cosmopolitan frameworks of justice. The chapter underscores the ways in which Dalit aspirations for dignity, equality, and emancipation are no longer confined to the territorial boundaries of the nation-state but are increasingly embedded within global normative and institutional arenas.

The manifesto-like list prepared by the DMK included land reforms with ceiling on land holdings, limiting the Union Government’s power to tax the States, nationalization of industries, health care benefits for the working class, a casteless and classless society, promotion of the Tamil language and renaming the State as Tamil Nadu. Though the Kamaraj Congress won a decisive victory in the 1957 elections, the DMK’s fight for linguistic reorganization of States and its alliance with the CPI worked to its advantage. The DMK won 50 out of 142 seats it contested to the Legislative Assembly.

Alagirisamy shows how Tamil reform organizations drew on existing traditions of Tamil devotionalism to articulate a caste-transcendent, progressive Tamil identity, distinct from the politicization of caste in Tamil Nadu. Despite upper-caste resistance to Periyar’s visit, he found support among working-class and lower-caste migrants. However, the claim that Tamil identity politics produced a distinct Malayan national consciousness among Tamils remains underdeveloped. The political emergence of pan-Malayan identity appears abrupt and largely driven by Periyar’s exhortations to adopt Malayan citizenship.

The idea underestimates the inflexibility of its stranglehold on everyone who is subject to it, including the ‘upper’ castes. I wish to affirm that there are at least three major differences between caste discrimination and racial discrimination (in the American context) which need to be kept in mind while making this comparison. Firstly, the logic of racial discrimination is the colour bar, i.e.,

Having renounced his Brahminical heritage, he founded the Navratan Committee, an anti-caste rainbow coalition, aimed at challenging entrenched caste hierarchies. While he wrote two books on Buddhism, his book Mool Bharatvasi aur Arya (1930) is his most significant work, where he reiterated the argument about the indigenous inhabitants having been dispossessed by the Aryan invaders—a thesis already advanced by Phule and Acchutanand.

Historical Antecedents and Contemporary Trends’ describe the history of election studies and voting behaviour analysis in India post 1990. They claim that the ‘coming together of a plethora of Hindu castes and communities under the political banner of BJP forces us to rethink existing theories of caste-class cleavages’ used to explain Indian electoral politics (p. 235).

Second, it offers a nuanced account of federalism by examining the dynamic interplay between central authority and regional autonomy. While acknowledging the rise of centralizing tendencies in recent years, the contributors demonstrate that States continue to remain critical arenas shaping political discourse and governance practices. The volume also shows how regional parties have challenged the dominance of national formations, reshaping the competitive landscape of State politics.

Surendran underscores the importance of Dharmapala to this project of universalizing Buddhism by decoupling him from the nation-state frame. Dharmapala is even today popularly remembered as a Sinhala nationalist. However, Surendran argues that we ought to understand his role in making Buddhism the first non-semitic religion to be named and placed in the category of a ‘world religion’.

My memory of the word goes back to the year 2008, when I was seven years old. The Valley erupted in a major agitation against the land transfer of 40 hectares of forest land to Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB). The Valley reverberated with loud chants of the word. The lyrical, catchy slogans were registered in my young and impressionable mind. Back then mostly for the rhythm.

‘The Serpent in the Melting Pot: Kuṇḍalinī in North American Counterculture’ examining the concept of ‘experience’ is perhaps the most theoretically sophisticated and engaging. Drawing on thinkers such as William James, Michel Foucault, and Talal Asad, the section contends that religious experiences are not raw, unmediated phenomena. Instead, they are always articulated within particular discursive frameworks. Kuṇḍalinī, therefore, becomes a case study in the historicity of interiority itself.

who enjoyed the support of influential figures within the imperial harem. Despite the shift, the Jesuits continued to carry out their duties and were able to translate further portions of the Gospel into Persian. By 1582, however, the debates at the Ibadat Khana had been suspended. In the same year, hostilities between the Mughal and Portuguese further complicated the situation, leading the Jesuits Provincial in Goa to consider recalling the missionaries

In turn, the political economy of education comes to mean the field concerned with political decisions about educational governance and their consequences for human development. While this may be a dominant approach in the academic settings where the authors are based, it is clearly a limited one. Here the political, the economic, and the educational appear as relatively discrete domains that interact externally. Education possesses its own technical foundations, politics has its own logic of power and administration, and economics names the domain of welfare, allocation, and productivity.

The politicization of cricket had far-reaching implications for the representation of the Blacks—the Africans, Indians and coloured contingent of the populous on the cricket pitch. As a measure of undertaking affirmative action, the quota system came into existence for selection of players in the national cricket team. It projected a link between national identity and equality of opportunity in South African cricket. Moreover, the sporting success of players such as Hashim Amla, Makhaya Ntini, Vernon Philander, JP Duminy and Kagiso Rabada in international cricket made a strong case to revisit the existing stereotypes pertaining to the incompetency of the non-white cricketers.

Could this beautiful child truly possess such a horrid affliction?
As if in response, Swami Haridas marched over to yank the tape from her mouth; he sprang back nervously. For several moments, nothing happened. Anamika stared into the faces of the gaping men; their eyes, glinting, devoid of mercy, awakened only memories of imprisonment: of suffering, of crushing loneliness.

‘And just as the pemkatha combined elements from Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, and other Indic literary traditions but was more than the sum of its parts, so too the manuscript codices fashioned to contain the pemkatha drew from multiple book-making and aesthetic traditions, combining them to produce a material text artefact with its own distinct character’ (p. 28).

The fact that many stories situate such violence during the time of pujo, a time of celebration, only underlines the extent of deprivation the labourers are subjected to. Of course, many of the stories—such as ‘Saluk Flowers Have Bloomed’—also suggest the gendered nature of the violence and sexual exploitation women labourers were subjected to by the British who employed them in these tea estates.