Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

I do not think of society as being bad, or as capable of being bettered. I con¬sider it absurd.-Garine in Les ConquerantsWe know that we have not chosen to be born, that we will not choose to die. That we can do nothing against time…

Dr. Mahadevan’s translation and selection is a most useful reference work and reading the excerpts from the Minor Upanisads is fascinating. He has given short explanations with certain passages from nearly all the 108 Upanisads but, though the front-cover blurb claims these are ‘easy-to-read translations’, it is difficult to agree…

Though not a particularly scholarly work, John Pemble’s book explores new arenas in the fashionable subject of the 1857 uprising. The first part of the book, entitled the ‘City’, is an eminently read­able depiction of the Court life of Lucknow, with interesting observations on the emergence and themes of Urdu poetry that flourished in the Court of Oudh.

The Second World War is a great divide in the history of 20th century Britain. It marks the transition of Britain as a world power to a period of post-­imperial identity crisis. The 30 years since the war were difficult years of adjust­ment. A major protagonist was reduced to the role of a participant in the Greek chorus of nations.

The voyage of the Komagata Maru has its roots in the present as well as in the past. It had its links with the Ghadr party, the most powerful terrorist organization outside India engaged in the anti-imperia­list struggle. But its relevance is no less to the immediate question of the Indian im­migrants everywhere and their prospects and problems.

Dr Baker deserves credit for remedying the neglect of the Central Provinces and Berar. It should be appreciated that it is not an easy task to write a monograph on political changes in a province where information about the social and economic history of the region is still rudimentary.

Thomas Metcalf’s scholarly work des­cribes the process by which the taluqdars of Oudh were transformed from rulers of men into modern rentier landlords. He has a small chapter on the origin of the Rajput clans—how they were super­imposed on the local cultivating commu­nity through conquest and inter-clan rivalry.

Professor Hugh Tinker has written a fine, and also a very timely biography. Andrews died in April 1940 in Calcutta. Nine years later, Allen and Unwin pub­lished his first and still the most defi­nitive biography written by two devoted friends and admirers, Banarsidas Chatur­vedi and Marjorie Sykes.

The Second World War is a great divide in the history…

One of the indicators given importance in assessing the status of women in a nation is the presence of women in the political arena. Percentages are given against total membership in representative councils or politburos or political parties and the higher the percentage the more the marks given to the country for having moved women up the ladder.

These two books part of a series brought out by the Publications Divi­sion in honour of the International Year of the Child. The first one is the story of the adventures of Pushpak, an Indian craft, which goes into space to make contact with Trivikrama (so chris­tened by Indian scientists), sent by ‘su­per-intelligent beings…

Stories from the Panchatantra seem to be dominating recent publications for children. They are aimed at different age groups. There are four books in the Red and Colour series by Thomson Press, The Monkey and the Crocodile for the very young by Vikas and The Foolish Princes and the Panchatantra, published by Orient Longman…

In their own small way, publishers of children’s books have contributed to the International Year of the Child by publishing various kinds of books for children. Not to be outdone, and creditably, the Publications Division, a public sector organization, has made its own con­tribution in the form of these six books in Hindi…

Since the child is the adult of tomor­row, we have to make necessary invest­ments in building up this human capital. If steel mills, dams, factories, roads, bridges, nuclear and electronic devices are necessary prerequisites for progress and development, then the human mat­erial which builds…

No one comprehends better then child­ren do…

Surat was perhaps ~he most active and prosperous port in seventeenth­ century India…

Village studies as they have been traditionally understood…

The introductory chapter of this book starts with a comparison—no other intelligence organization has been subject­ed to such tumultous criticism as RAW in such a short span of its existence.

Reading Islands in the Stream in translation almost thirty years after it was originally published in Hindi, it is difficult to visualize how it could have stirred up such controversy or earned so much disapproval.

Newly-married women being tor­tured to death for the sake of dowry has become such a common event these days that it has almost ceased to shock. And here, in the routine appearance of small in.