Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Between Govind Kelkar’s visit to China in April-May 1978 and mine in May-June 1979 there was a year full of rapid policy changes. She travelled in China when the Chinese leadership was inclined to retain the overall orientation of the Cultural Revolution and integrate it with a programme of four modernizations while denouncing the extremism of the Gang of Four.

Nobody ever thinks of writing a book on ‘America After Carter’ or ‘Britain After Margaret Thatcher’. But books ·and articles on ‘Post-Nehru India’, and ‘China After Mao’ abound. Why? Is it that America and Britain are crisis-free societies? Obviously not; they have been visibly moving from crisis to crisis.

The quickies are upon us again. The post-election deluge (post-1977 election, that is, when the profitable and chic pub­lishing fashion really started) is now being followed up with a pre-election deluge (pre-1980 election, that is). This is the second set in what will, in true Ladies’ Singles fashion, hopefully be a best of three sets match.

The book is not a mere addition to the much discussed topic of Britain’s responsibility towards India and India’s response to it as well as her reaction. Nor is it a mere narration of the emergence and growth of a political party. Indian Na­tional Congress Versus British presents a factual analysis of how an all powerful alien government and a national political party fought their elaborate battle over six decades.

Arya Dharma by Kenneth Jones was the first serious historical study of the Arya Samaj movement. Now Jordens complements Jones’s work by providing a comprehensive historical account of the life and ideas of Dayanand Saraswati.

The undivided Bengal with its Muslim majority had a Muslim problem which was not exactly the same as the Muslim problem of another Muslim majority province of the pre-Partition days, the Punjab; in fact, the Punjab’s was more a problem of the sense of insecurity felt by its Hindus.

In the twenties and thirties, and up to 1942, the South, and for a time the Cent­ral Assembly under British rule, rever­berated with the voice of Satyamurti, patriot, orator, parliamentarian par ex­cellence.

A mother-daughter relationship has always been a complex one to decode given its subjectivity. But Vrinda Nabar’s Family Fables & Hidden Heresies: A Memoir of Mothers and More manages to strike that right balance between myopic proximity and clinical objectivity…

I must admit, I received my copy of this book on the same day as the Guwahati molestation case, and I was riling with anger towards men as sexual predators and women as victims of abuse at the hands of men who can’t control their sexual urges and also society. The act of sex that day at least wore a pall of oppression…

The popular adage ‘appearances are deceptive’ applies aptly to these first two volumes of the proposed ten volumes of the off-beat autobiographical writings of Ashk, the Hindi novelist, playwright, cri­tic, poet and publisher.

The book opens up a gamut of emotions that rules human psychology. The inner pages carry cartoons of how people are attracted to each other through various mental mappings. Vikram Doctor’s foreword and the editors’ introduction entice the mind leading to such sexual urges…

Contemporary criticism of Indo­-English poetry continues to harp on its favourite themes: the alien idiom and Indian sensibility, self consciousness of the poet, lack of a sense of humour, lack of an integrity of experience and social consciousness and so on.

When I was asked to review Bishwa-nath Ghosh’s Tamarind City: Where Modern India Began, I figured my eligibility had to do with the novel I had written set in the Madras (as it was back then) of the 1970s. I hope I’m right because, if on the other hand…

The marketing function has been fully exploited in mulch of the developed western world. In the less developed coun­tries the role of marketing is yet to be adequately appreciated. This is a natural consequence of the fact that in less deve­loped countries the main problem is to create surpluses over…

Bunny Suraiya’s debut novel Calcutta Exile is an impressive and bitter-sweet epilogue to the Anglo-Indian community during its heyday in what was once the ‘second city of the British Empire’. A novel centered around the Ryan family of Sharif Lane in central Cal-cutta…

The usual practice is to turn a book or a story into a movie. What if you could turn a movie inside your head into a novel? Reading through Kiran Nagarkar’s novel, The Extras, that is exactly the feeling you get. The characters, the thrill, the twists and turns…

In Marathi theatre Mahesh Elkunchwar spearheaded a modernism through his plays. They challenged the unequal power relationships between the genders. Opening the win-dows to let out the stagnant air of discrimination was the running leitmotif of the plays…

The directors who shaped the contours of modern Indian theatre were born in the 1920s. Ibrahim Alkazi (b. 1923), Habib Tanvir (1923-2009), B.V. Karanth (1928-2002) and Utpal Dutt (1929-1993) are, arguably, our most important post-Independence directors…

The book under review edited by Udayan Vajpeyi attempts ‘to initiate new areas of interdisciplinary debate and focus critical attention to the interface between theory and practice of modern Indian theatre’, accord-ing to Ashok Vajpeyi, the editor of this series.

‘Dance is a dynamic and expressive performing art… Dance reflects and shapes contemporary local and glo-balized cultures, communicating ideas through the related practices of performing and choreographing. As a lifelong activity for individuals and groups…