India was enormous. Eventually, it was another significant contribution to the ultimate partition of India. It is that which makes the Commission’s Report of abiding interest to students of Indian constitutional history.
The Simon Commission was a premature baby and still born. Even so, its potential for disruption of the unity and integrity of India was enormous. Eventually, it was another significant contribution to the ultimate partition of India. It is that which makes the Commission’s Report of abiding interest to students of Indian constitutional history.
‘I’m craze for foreign. Just craze for foreign’, said a character (Mrs Mahindra) to V.S. Naipaul, which he recorded in 1964 in An Area of Darkness. This irra¬tional admi-ration for anything from the West in post-colonial India is only the crudest manifest-tation of one side of a behaviour pattern that had started in different parts of this sub-continent with the onset of the British rule, and the emergence of an English educated elite.
1988
The nicest thing about Boulababa is the title. ‘Boulababa’ conjures up lovely visions of a lisping toddler or an ancient ascetic with a sense of fun. Of course, it’s neither of these as you may have already guessed.
Once, not so very long ago, a land not so far away gained freedom. Its people were righteous, and so its rulers, harking back to legends of forest dwelling sages and their paths of peace, laid claim to the spiritual leadership of the world. Being peaceful, they had no armies and fought no wars.
To the generation that was born around the time of India’s independence, Jawaharlal Nehru was an enchanted figure, an embodiment of the idealism that had gone into the struggle for free¬dom. Clearly etched on childhood’s memory is the unstinting affection and trust that India’s masses gave to their leader. So is the intense sense of urgency Panditji radiated to pull India out of the mire of poverty, ignorance and backward¬ness and launch her as a shining new star into the world firmament.
The Peace Trap is ‘dedicated to the memory of all Indians and Sri Lankans—both Tamils and Sinhalese—who lost their lives in the tragic sequence of events that have taken place in Sri Lanka since 1983’. This brings out the author’s deep sensitivity to the tragedy that has over¬taken both Sri Lanka and India in the wake of the Sinhala-Tamil ethnic strife in our neighbouring southern state and more particularly after the Indo-Sri Lanka accord of July 29, 1987 (which saw a larger number of persons being killed on both sides since the outbreak of the ethnic conflict).
‘Today’s children want everything about everything—and right away too. Keeping this in mind, Pustak Mahal of Delhi has brought out the Children’s Knowledge Bank in six volumes…. The question and answer format with an illustration is one of the best ways, to give young children basic information on various subjects and thus develop a healthy interest in books and reading’—Pioneer, Lucknow.
1988
Small, insignificant provincial towns enjoy brief moments of prominence when they are catapulted on to the centre-stage of the country’s attention. The reason is a combination of people and events which culminates in outbreaks of violence in previously peaceful environs.
It has been well and truly said: Bhagwan Rajneesh is his worst enemy. He is the agent provocateur of the first order. It is not that he is out to provoke people for the sake of provoking them, though, one suspects that he does, too, for effect. Plainly, the man believes in what he says. And there lies the difficulty of all those who want to take him seriously. He seems to say: ‘Don’t take me too seriously. I am enjoying myself watching your discomfiture’.
1988
It is intriguing as to why Penguins chose this book for inclusion for the first lot of six books with which they started their operations in this part of the globe last year. First, this book was originally published by Vanguard Press Inc., in New York five years ago. This particular publisher is one of the many book-publishing (packaging) racketeers in New York. This outfit for purely mercenary considerations lends its NY.
1988
A handy paperback version of the original collection published in 1973 by the Uni-versity of California in 1973, this collec¬tion remains neither modern nor truly representative of the short story trend in Modern Hindi. Perhaps the ‘modern’ in the title could have been defined in a subtitle indicating the years which this collection represents.
1988
We have from the author of Circle of Reason (1986) a square, a cube, a tantalizingly misarranged Rubik Cube of Emotion. Action and reaction in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines do not follow or justify each other. They are caused by and influence events that are widely dis¬tanced in space and time. Relationships are established and broken by acts, feel¬ings and thoughts that belong to other arenas, other theatres, other times.
It is sixteen years ago that I’ had the opportunity to be introduced to George Sioris’ interest in the comparative study of Japanese and Greek Mythology, when he presented his paper, ‘Two Char¬acteristic Similarities in Japanese and Greek Mythology, Amaterasu and the Cave, Persepone and the Underworld—Demeter’ at the International Conference on Japanese Studies held in Kyoto, Japan in November 1972.
Of late, studies on socio-economic history of the peninsular India, especially of the regions that were under the Colas and later under the Vijayanagara rulers have received a great fillip with the adoption of new conceptual frameworks that were not employed by scholars till recently. Attempts made by K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, Appadorai, B.A. Saletore, T.V. Mahalingam, Kenneth R. Hall and a few others to throw light on the socio-economic aspects of peninsular India during the medieval period have been re-examined by foreign scholars like Burton Stein and Naboru Karashima.
The November 1987 Kathmandu Summit ‘ of the leaders of the SAARC countries seems to have accepted the principle that efforts of these countries to operationalize ‘regional cooperation can only be helped – by including the economic dimensions of regional cooperation at some future date in the official SAARC action plan.
Many serious writings in Chinese journals during the last two years have started characterizing the emerging poli¬tical economy in China as ‘Market Socialism’. This new formulation refers to a system where there is planned econo¬mic development but it is at the same time responsive to the market; the princi¬ple of distribution is ‘each according to his work’, but interpreted as adequately giving material incentives for higher labour productivity; and while public ownership remains predominant, diverse forms including cooperative, individual and joint forms of ownership would be promoted.
Earlier, texts were illustrated by pictures; today photographs are more often supple-mented by texts. This book is a collection of very beautiful photographs of the better-known monuments of Delhi, by a well-known photographer. It is not a guide-book, for it lacks the professional¬ism of one—no map, no index, no chronological chart (which is necessary in a book written entirely in terms of the various rules of Delhi), no bibliography.
The importance of the education of the handicapped is now universally recognized. All over the world special education is increasingly demanding and getting attention. In the developed countries interest in special education is certainly not new, issues involved in special education have been discussed, debated and acted upon since the last century.
Any publication in the value of the socio¬economic dimensions of education in India is a welcome addition as study in the field is much needed and writings are few and far between. This rather compre¬hensive collection of readings embraces a number of vital issues presented for dis¬cussion at a conference held at the McGill University in Montreal in June 1985.