Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

In doing so, it weaves the spatiotemporal coordinates of interbeing where body, soul and universe are mutually entwined. The wife’s (Ira’s) deep connect with the luminous world of nature is manifest in her tender attachment to her brio-filled mulberry tree that fructifies, provides pleasant shade, attracts chirping birds, and vibrates with lively monkeys. Ira’s empathy with the refulgent tree annoys Sudhiranjan, her pragmatic botanist husband, and makes him so jealous that he poisons it secretly.

In ‘Lucozade’, a childhood incident reveals caste prejudice within the diaspora. His mother confronts a ‘cleaner-caste Sikh’ shopkeeper; the moment exposes how ‘tamarind agony’ hardened into ‘values rigid as pumped biceps’. Migration did not dissolve inherited hierarchies; it hitchhiked to the newfound geography.
Nagra repeatedly foregrounds writing as physical labour. He speaks of composing with a ‘Bic biro’, calling it the ‘comeback tool of the underclass’. This is a refreshing take on the everyday object.

His humorous answers to questions put to him by the King illustrate his presence of mind and ability to extricate himself from tricky situations effortlessly. There are innumerable stories of Tenali Raman’s cleverness. This story is also one such. Once the King asks him to tell him the measurement of the length and breadth of the universe as also the number of stars in the sky.

In this sense, Brighu resembles the figure of the flâneur described by Charles Baudelaire, an urban observer who maps the city through meanderings, curiosity, and detached reflection. Banerjee’s storytelling in Absolute Jafar can similarly be understood as a metaphorical act of walking, whereby urban spaces are represented not as mere locations but as lived environments that are experienced and remembered by their inhabitants. The illustrations and panels of Absolute Jafar seem attuned to the narrative’s preoccupation with memory.

She comes to India not as a tourist but as one coming home to the Bhansi Estate, where her great-grandfather had built a magnificent colonial bungalow, the Nandan Van. Anjula finds the landscape unattractive in comparison to the English countryside (p. 5). But the first five months make her adjust to the family home of paddy fields, eucalyptus and sal trees, tomato plantations and fruit orchards,

The illustrations complement the story very well.
The Red Bus; Laal Bus by Harjeet Ahluwalia, illustrated by Saurabh Pandey, winner of a prize in the category Concept Books in the Competition for Writers of Children’s Books organized by the Children’s Book Trust, is a fun read aloud picture book for the very young. Join the little red bus on its journey from the bus station to its shed, carrying the rabbit, brown bear with baby bear, a dog with long ears, a cat with big whiskers,

He clarified the distinction sharply: ‘We grew, but we didn’t have structural transformation.’ Turning to governance, Subramanian addressed debates on decentralization and federalism. While acknowledging the normative appeal of decentralization, he warned against treating it as a cure-all. He argued that performance often deteriorates as authority moves downward, citing weaknesses in State Finance Commissions

This the author seeks to achieve by expanding the archive to include real residents––the natives––in local histories and heritage descriptions. By referencing her work to Mullingar Hill, and not the Landour Cantonment, the author immediately succeeds in shifting focus away from the colonial. Mullingar, perhaps the second oldest bungalow in this hill station and the erstwhile home of Frederick Young,

The anticipated positive externalities of the railway soon outweighed scepticism. Although the system was designed to serve colonial interests, facilitating troop movement and promoting commercial crops, often at the expense of local needs, it nonetheless contributed to a profound shift in social perception, introducing a velocity of movement far beyond the pace of bullock carts and reconfiguring notions of space and time.

Her general serenity makes the explosions all the more fierce: ‘In a country run by politicians who are almost all thugs of different shades, the poor know that governments are of the rich, for the rich, by the rich.’ In the chapter on ecological devastation poignantly titled ‘The Wounded Mountain’, she asks, ‘Isn’t it convenient for governments like ours to have climate change to blame?’

It situates Dalit activism within broader discourses of universal human rights, anti-caste ethics, and transnational solidarities, thereby demonstrating how Dalit claims-making resonates with, and contributes to, wider cosmopolitan frameworks of justice. The chapter underscores the ways in which Dalit aspirations for dignity, equality, and emancipation are no longer confined to the territorial boundaries of the nation-state but are increasingly embedded within global normative and institutional arenas.

The manifesto-like list prepared by the DMK included land reforms with ceiling on land holdings, limiting the Union Government’s power to tax the States, nationalization of industries, health care benefits for the working class, a casteless and classless society, promotion of the Tamil language and renaming the State as Tamil Nadu. Though the Kamaraj Congress won a decisive victory in the 1957 elections, the DMK’s fight for linguistic reorganization of States and its alliance with the CPI worked to its advantage. The DMK won 50 out of 142 seats it contested to the Legislative Assembly.

Alagirisamy shows how Tamil reform organizations drew on existing traditions of Tamil devotionalism to articulate a caste-transcendent, progressive Tamil identity, distinct from the politicization of caste in Tamil Nadu. Despite upper-caste resistance to Periyar’s visit, he found support among working-class and lower-caste migrants. However, the claim that Tamil identity politics produced a distinct Malayan national consciousness among Tamils remains underdeveloped. The political emergence of pan-Malayan identity appears abrupt and largely driven by Periyar’s exhortations to adopt Malayan citizenship.

The idea underestimates the inflexibility of its stranglehold on everyone who is subject to it, including the ‘upper’ castes. I wish to affirm that there are at least three major differences between caste discrimination and racial discrimination (in the American context) which need to be kept in mind while making this comparison. Firstly, the logic of racial discrimination is the colour bar, i.e.,

Having renounced his Brahminical heritage, he founded the Navratan Committee, an anti-caste rainbow coalition, aimed at challenging entrenched caste hierarchies. While he wrote two books on Buddhism, his book Mool Bharatvasi aur Arya (1930) is his most significant work, where he reiterated the argument about the indigenous inhabitants having been dispossessed by the Aryan invaders—a thesis already advanced by Phule and Acchutanand.

Historical Antecedents and Contemporary Trends’ describe the history of election studies and voting behaviour analysis in India post 1990. They claim that the ‘coming together of a plethora of Hindu castes and communities under the political banner of BJP forces us to rethink existing theories of caste-class cleavages’ used to explain Indian electoral politics (p. 235).

Second, it offers a nuanced account of federalism by examining the dynamic interplay between central authority and regional autonomy. While acknowledging the rise of centralizing tendencies in recent years, the contributors demonstrate that States continue to remain critical arenas shaping political discourse and governance practices. The volume also shows how regional parties have challenged the dominance of national formations, reshaping the competitive landscape of State politics.

Surendran underscores the importance of Dharmapala to this project of universalizing Buddhism by decoupling him from the nation-state frame. Dharmapala is even today popularly remembered as a Sinhala nationalist. However, Surendran argues that we ought to understand his role in making Buddhism the first non-semitic religion to be named and placed in the category of a ‘world religion’.

My memory of the word goes back to the year 2008, when I was seven years old. The Valley erupted in a major agitation against the land transfer of 40 hectares of forest land to Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB). The Valley reverberated with loud chants of the word. The lyrical, catchy slogans were registered in my young and impressionable mind. Back then mostly for the rhythm.

‘The Serpent in the Melting Pot: Kuṇḍalinī in North American Counterculture’ examining the concept of ‘experience’ is perhaps the most theoretically sophisticated and engaging. Drawing on thinkers such as William James, Michel Foucault, and Talal Asad, the section contends that religious experiences are not raw, unmediated phenomena. Instead, they are always articulated within particular discursive frameworks. Kuṇḍalinī, therefore, becomes a case study in the historicity of interiority itself.