Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

This is a timely book on an important issue that is centre-stage since the 2001 census, namely the disappearance of baby girls. The female male ratio (FMR) in the world —that is the number of females per thousand males—is 9901 . Western Europe has a figure of 1,064 females per thousand males and Africa, 1,015.

Once in a rare while, an academic reviewer gets to write about a book that is exciting, analytically sound, densely researched, thoroughly useful, wideranging, and yet focused. Meera Kosambi’s Crossing Thresholds: Feminist Essays in Social History is just such a book.

Images of the World is a useful and engaging collection of public addresses and writings produced over a period of roughly twenty years. The earliest of these goes back to 1987 and the most recent, produced in 2005. Altogether there are thirteen pieces put together for this volume which represent a continuing exploration of the significance of culture, religion, ethnicity and secularism by one of India’s foremost sociologists.

The book under review deals with a rare subject in Indian history—that of African slaves in India. These African slaves were a part of the slave trade of the Indian Ocean rim and have been regularly coming into India ever since the 12th century, when Qutab-ud-din Aibak founded the slave dynasty around Delhi.

The history of Punjab over the last century and a half has attracted the attention of both scholars and political activists. The heavy military recruitment from the Punjab, the role of state investment in irrigation, the rural-urban divide in politics during the first half of the twentieth century, the Punjab tradition of administration have been the subject of several scholarly studies.

Capitalism was born with the mark of Cain on its brow. From the voyages of Prince Henry the Navigator in Portugal to the piratical enterprises of Francis Drake and Jack Hawkins (in which the Virgin Queen of England held a share) to the burning of whole islands of the Indonesian archipelago by Jan Coen,

Recent decades have seen a vigorous re-investigation of the nature of the Maurya and Gupta empires, but the historical processes of the period in between remain less understood. This is in spite of a wealth of detail about specific aspects, such as the histories of dynasties, religious cults and trade.