2018
In 2006, AC Grayling, a well known and respected British philosopher stirred up a lot of discussion with his book Among the Dead Cities: Was the Allied Bombing of Civilians in World War Two a Necessity or a Crime? The book delved into the aerial bombing of German cities by the British and the Americans. Grayling termed the bombing as a crime against humanity as he saw it as causing disproportionate harm to civilians, being militarily ineffective in defeating the Axis Powers.
Most books written on the history of philosophy tend to remain confined to a consideration of the more prominent and iconic philosophers, looking upon them as isolated islands that loom out in a vast sea that itself remains unexplored. In a history of Islamic philosophy, the familiar big names are the Mutazalites, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, Al-Ghazali, Ibn Arabi, Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Khaldun, to name just a few.
Years ago I was told by a friend that if only Jyotibabu had become Jyotida, the Left would not have declined (and nearly disappeared) in West Bengal. In other words, had prominent bhadralok (babu) leaders—Jyoti Basu, for example—of the Left cared a little less about preservation of their self-image and more about ‘connection’ with people things would, perhaps, be different today. Readers, of course, will know that there is much more to the story of the end of Left rule in the State.
Sandwiched between Sahyadri (Western Ghats) and the Arabian Sea, Kerala had always attracted migrants from different parts of India and from outside India. The peace and tranquility in the region, tolerance and hospitality towards aliens and, above all, its location in the midst of major international trading routes encouraged the movement of peoples and the emergence of a pluralistic society.
The Bengali word ‘Adda’ when translated as ‘gossip’ slips from a middle class ‘baithak khaana’ and enters into a parlour, club or salon. In the ‘baithak khaana’, ‘adda’ comprises passionate exchanges (the topics may include anything from political, cultural, linguistic to gastronomical), and is, first and foremost, a social speech-act that requires a performance of words-orally. ‘Adda’ relies on a communal appreciation of arguments as spoken words, often deploys sarcasm and laughter, and is solely dependent on the ‘delivery’ of an orator.
If we are to see and analyse the agency of an untouchable in its struggles against British imperialism and against Brahmanism, a lot more needs to be done towards documenting the same and in exposing this ‘twin enemy’ of the people in general and of Dalits in particular. Over the years, there has been spate of some very serious scholarly work that documents Dalit struggles against Brahmanism and the political assertion of their movement as a whole.
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge…. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance…. Tryst With Destiny, J. Nehru.
The Meaning of Civilization: Essays on Culture, Religion and Politics is a compilation of opinion pieces by Naguib Mahfouz, first published between 1974 and 1981. Written originally as a concise commentary on current affairs for the daily Al Ahram, bearing the title wijhat or ‘point of view’, they cover a range of subjects contiguous to the nature, culture and politics of religion, education, nationalism, popular culture and the bureaucracy in Egypt.
Victor Mallet is the latest in a string of visitors over the centuries who have evocatively recorded their fascination for the Ganges: from Xuanzang, in the 7th century, who was in raptures of its waters, ‘dark blue in colour with great waves rising’; J.A. Hodgson, the first outsider to reach the Gaumukh glacier, who saluted with a bugle march the first appearance of the great river…
“Scores of studies exist on caste groups,” Mushirul Hasan wrote recently, “but not on the Muslims.” For reasons beyond this review, over the past half century, social sciences in India have sported a blind spot that may be called the Case of the Missing Muslim.
A serious enquiry into the psychology of communal violence, this anthology brings together essays, editorials, surveys, articles, opinions, documents and reports. The book transcends its stated goal of providing the future generations with a great deal of information and its usefulness to policy makers to question the contentious issues of ‘secularism’, ‘nation’, ‘identity,’ and ‘community’ through a polyphony of voices.
Religion is not about love and compassion only. It is also about exclusion, hatred and violence. Being a total narrative, religion gives meaning to existential and societal concerns of the believers.
Paul Brass stands next only to the late Myron Weiner and the Rudolphs (Lloyd and Susan) in the pantheon of American political scientists who have made it their lifelong business to understand Indian democracy.
Those of us who regularly pursue the contents of Religion may recall the sparkling essay that appeared roughly two years back from the author of this monograph on broadly the same theme.
The history of the book, or book history, as it is beginning to be called now, has for long been the preserve of bibliographers and antiquarians. This has been especially so in India. Looking at books from a narrow and often bibliophilic, if not bibliomaniac, perspective they were more often than not most concerned with debates no more exciting than who printed the first book, which press came first, the role of Christian missionaries, who contributed more to such-and-such language printing, etc.
The British established their Indian Raj by various means including the sword but undoubtedly they secured it with modern means of communication. Ruling India from distant London was a difficult and complex affair in which the press came to play a critical role specially from the mid-nineteenth century.
Himanshu Prabha Ray’s The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia makes a convincing case for the need to abandon an insular view of ancient India. Viewing the subcontinent within the larger world of the Indian Ocean, it replaces the usual episodic view of trade by a nuanced long-term narrative that stretches from the third millennium BC to the fifth century AD.
Thank God for Michael Gottlob, who has put together a book we have felt the lack of for many years, and done nothing about. Here is two hundred years (1786-1993) of ‘the development of historical consciousness in South Asia’—from William Jones to Ramachandra Guha. This is the translation of what was part of an 8-volume series, in German, on “historical thinking in intercultural comparison”.
For the best part of the decades after World War II, the social sciences and the humanities have been marked by debates that can be best described as mediations on the ‘encounter’ between the West and the non-West, the First and Third Worlds, of which Franz Fanon’s 1960’s writings were but the beginning. Since then the writings of Edward Said, and the refractions through poststructuralism and postcolonialism have produced a large body of writing in the academia. There are scholars from the West who have complicated this discourse.
As the fifth generation of the Nehru-Gandhis prepares to test his (and the family’s) popularity in the marketplace of the great Indian elections, attention will turn, once again, to the legacy of the dynasty and, more specifically, its most famous representative, Jawaharlal Nehru.