Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

The thesis this book presents is based on Jaques’s speech in As You Like it, ‘All the world’s a stage’, which postulates the view that human beings in a social context are like actors in a play per­forming their parts, filling out their roles. ‘Otherwise put, reality is a drama, life is theatre, and the social world is in­herently dramatic’…

Rahul Ramagundam teaches at the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. His book, Including the Socially Excluded: India’s Experience with Caste, Gender and Poverty explores the politics around the issues of Poverty and Exclusion. Some chapters are updated versions of articles published in various journals and publications, while others are based on studies conducted in the field by the author mostly in the Gaya region of Bihar, said to be among the poorest districts in the country.

The international trade in arms has reached alarming proportions. Some $5 billion worth of military equipment has been transferred to Third World coun­tries each year during this decade. The trade is unlikely to reduce, since the fervent desire of the arms-producing countries to sell is matched by the eager­ness…

This edited anthology is a timely intervention that aims to contribute to the body of scholarship on formations of desire and intimacy framed by the asymmetries of global contact and interpenetration. In order to establish the continuing potential of queer theory as a transformative body of knowledge this anthology brings together an impressive range of scholars from differing locations who analyse the links between law, culture and queer politics.

Hiren Mukerjee is a queer bird. I am tempted to use the phrase, with its P.G. Wodehouse flavour, because he might well have used it to describe himself. It suits his evocative, metaphorical, often devastatingly penetrating, if some­what dated, literary style. It also fits a personality who for 25 years…

This fat book is really a rag-bag. It consists of the papers presented to a series of seminars held over two years, from 1972 to 1974, by the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London. The theme was leadership, but the word was interpreted so widely as to mean almost anything…

Ideology and Utopia in the United States in 1956-1976 represents the writ­ings of Irving Louis Horowitz over a period of twenty years. Consequently, topics discussed in the book range from the Politics of Assassination to the Revo­lution of Falling Expectations. It is true that the author has tried to give a sem­blance of organization…

Indian judges continue to believe that normative changes in law on their own can bring about social reform. In an unprecedented move a two judge bench of Justice Dave and Justice Goel in Prakash v. Phulwati (2015) suo moto ordered registration of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) to examine the constitutionality of discriminatory provisions of Muslim Personal Law (MPL).

This is a book by a professional as opposed to an armchair planner. The title of the book is suggestive, as is the beginning. ‘Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less travelled by’, (Frost), raising expectations that fresh insights would be provided regarding the future course of regional as also urban planning in India…

The book’s contemporariness is obvious in the context of the resurgence of autonomist politics accompanied by street violence/strike in the Darjeeling hills after a brief lull. For any observer of hill politics, it is obvious that the ground reality in the insurgent region has remained largely the same even after the change in the political regime, local organizational leadership and a new player BJP gaining traction in the region.

An old ballad sung by Joan Baez many years back went something like this: Show me the prison/Show me the jail/Show me the hobo/who sleeps down by the rail/ And I’ll show you a young man/With so many reasons why/There but for fortune, go you and I.

While Indian society has been secular for centuries, the Indian state has adopted secular and democratic ideas only in the post-Independence phase—that is, since the 1950s. Sadly, both secularism and democracy have come under attack in India in recent times, according to one of the foremost historians of our age, Romila Thapar.

The book under review is another addition to the People’s History of India
Series; concise and lucidly written, this series is marked by the principled allegiance to historical evidence and a secular, scientific approach to Indian history. Written for scholars and students, they provide a succinct survey of the latest historical trends, and provide directions for further research in Indian history.

The book is the fifth volume in the Penguin series on ‘The Story of Indian Business’ edited by Gurcharan Das. This book has been authored by Arshia Sattar and is a collection of short stories and carefully selected extracts from well-known Sanskrit works.

I have rarely been so impressed by a piece of writing on hard, practical, eco­nomic problems written in the language (as Mr. Jha puts it) of laymen, as by this little book, especially because there are some major items over which I disagree with the author. Mr. Jha has been in the centre of things for well over two de­cades now…

‘The emphasis in choosing the read­ings in this volume has been on articles using the tools of analytical economics to deal with problems which have policy implications and articles which deal directly with the appraisal of economic policies adopted by the Government of India during the years of planned economic development…

Writing Self Writing Empire intro-duces the reader to the cultural world of the Mughal Empire and
the pluralistic ways of the Mughal imperial court through the works of Chandar Bhan Brahman, a munshi or a state secretary of the empire.

When, oh! when, will Indian publishers approach textbook production with both the intelligence and sensitivity that it demands and the sincerity and dignity that it deserves? It is especially dis­couraging to see a slipshod, erratic text from a prestigious publishing house like Orient Longman.

The Goddess and the Nation provides a timely, if somewhat troubling re-minder of one strand within the
nationalist movement, tracing its development primarily through a study of visual representations of Bharat Mata, a deified mother India, and her children, especially her sons. Lavishly illustrated and annotated, it carries the reader through over a century of colonial and postcolonial history.

Dr. Nagaraja Rao is well-known to the reading public in Indian philosophy by his numerous learned as well as popular articles, reviews, books and lectures. The present work offers a consolidated presentation of the pano­rama of Indian philosophy starting from the Upanishads and culminating…