Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Some readers may question the utility of reviewing a book that has hardly been seen in this country even three years after publication. If such readers will grant that the primary purpose of a book-review is to make known the existence of that book, then at least that purpose will be served here. Students of Anglo-Indian fiction are by no means snowed under with critical material, and any addition to this sparse field needs to be taken note of as soon as possible.

When I first opened the book and read through some of Bakshi’s verses, I felt that there was a familiar ring about them of Fitzgerald’s rendering of Omar Khayyam’s verse. As I proceeded further, I came across references to Khayyam also. The structure of the verses too, though not identical, appeared to be a variation of the same basic structure.

Uanhenga Xitu insists on using his Angolan village name, rather than Agostinho Mendes Carvalho, his Portu¬guese name. Already we see the import¬ant and subversive possibilities of the use of language, within reach of an activist writer.

The editors and contributors to this volume have attempted to get scholars, who love various forms of popular western music like Pop, Punk and Heavy Metal, to articulate their understanding and appreciation in a serious manner so that it achieves its rightful place in the academic world. The book is divided into two parts.

In November 1987 academics gathered at the Dyal Singh College, Karnal to discuss the various aspects and facets of the communal problem in India. The volume under review is a collection of the papers presented at the seminar.

Any attempt to find a parallel between Rajgopal’s works on crime and criminals in India and the novels of Charles Dickens would, on the face of it, look odd and far-fetched. Yet the frightening para¬meters of the rapidly worsening crime situation in this country, progressive erosion of human sympathy and compas¬sion in our society and the all-pervasive phenomenon of criminalization of politics portrayed by him bring immediately to mind the London scenario of 1820’s and 30’s.

Indo-Japanese trade has been important since pre-second world war period. How¬ever, while Japan still reaps advantage of such bilateral trade, India has not bene¬fited substantially. On the contrary, when Japanese foreign trade registered rapid expansion, India’s share in Japanese trade declined.

In 1984 the Indian National Trust (INTACH) was set up with a munificent donation from an Englishman, Wallace. In 1784 the Asiatic Society of Bengal had been instituted, to which the Indian rulers of Awadh and Tanjore and others made generous grants. Both are examples of the continuous Indo-British collaboration in the great task of discovery and cata¬loguing the wonder that is India.

The movement toward regional cooperation in South Asia can take credit not only for the hundreds of annual official and unofficial meetings, seminars and workshops, but also for modest achievements in terms of evolving various activities and institutional mechanisms which can help ensure more concrete forms of cooperation for the benefit of the common South Asian citizen in the future.

John Lall has written two books and had them bound together in one volume. Of the six long chapters the last one of about sixty pages stands by itself. It is a clear account of relations between free India and People’s China from the start till the large-scale aggression of China in 1962, written by one who, first as dewan of Sikkim and then as a senior official in the defence ministry, had an insider’s view.