Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

This book is definitely a much-needed contribution to the study of the political philosophy of Allama Iqbal the poet. Iqbal Singh Sevea expends significant intellectual energy on the analysis of Iqbal’s well-known antipathy to the ideology of nationalism and the nation-state.

This book makes a major contribution to the literature on Indian nationalism in the 1920s and 1930s.

None of the ideas/ideologies of the modern age have aroused so much passion and emotion as has ‘nation-statism’. Despite the fact that it has caused unprecedented human tragedy in the form of genocide, displacement, dispossession, destructions and devastations; and despite the claims of its demise in the face of globalization, the nation-state continues to remain a dominant socio-political frame within which human beings organize themselves.

Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age is an inward look into how the traditionally educated scholars or the ‘ulama have frequently invoked the idea and necessity of reform within their faith.

The growing historical literature on the national movement in India is as yet comparatively poor in good biographical works. Two recent publications—S. Gopal’s Nehru and now B.R. Nanda’s Gokhale—will go a long way in filling this gap. Here is an authoritative, ex­tensively researched, scrupulously fair and extremely…

Ethnography is an art not very different from writing a novel. It is holistic. The anthropologist submerges his own special professional interest to study the whole society. But the person­ality of this author remains distinct and accounts for part of the uniqueness of the monograph…

T.K. Mahadevan, whose thoughts and writings have for many, many years revolved round Gandhiji, has now attempted an altogether ‘new kind of book’, which he calls an exercise in philosophical biography.

I must admit to having agreed to review this book with a high degree of trepidation. How could a single volume hope to cover in 658 pages, so vast an area with all its dimensions, conflict and, most of all the variety and the depth of its impact on civilizations across the world? And yet, by this singular work Lapidus, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California at Berkeley, has, in a book more compact, placed himself in the recording of Islamic history on a pedestal equivalent to Gibbon’s for that of Rome.

So much has been written about Mumbai’s Dharavi—the ‘slum’, the ‘city’, the ‘urban settlement’. Books, articles, feature films, documentaries—an idea of Dharavi has emerged through multiple sources.

If there is any one specific condition that belies the hype of the success of the new economy in India, then it is that of the state of food security.

In the spring and early summer of last year, British newspapers and tele­vision repeatedly covered the subject of the recruitment of mercenaries in the United Kingdom; but even if you were a regular reader or viewer, you could not always be certain of just what slant was being given to the subject.

India’s tentative economic miracle faces many hurdles, but one of the chief difficulties is sustaining the political impetus for reform.

This book contains a number of papers, mostly in the field of public fin­ance, written by Professor Nanjundappa during the years 1961-1968. Except for two articles on ‘Wages, Prices and Em­ployment’ and ‘Restrictive Trade Pract­ices and Public Policy’, the articles in­cluded in the volume deal with questions…

More than a century of Indian cricket history is comprehended in this succinct work, Indian Cricket. The book deals with first-class cricket in India and also touches on the tours by Indian teams abroad and by foreign teams in India.

Book selection represents the sphere of librarianship which distinguishes the profession from many other occupations. There has been a controversy in the past whether the process of book selection is an ‘art’ or ‘science’.

When one opens a volume like this with an impressive array of contributors, one does so with a certain expectation. But this volume disappoints totally. B.R. Nanda’s introductory article sets a tone for the rest of the book. It is an uninspired piece of writing and only summarizes what the other eleven articles have to say.

The stubborn facts of history and politics are often hidden from the public gaze. Jawaharlal Nehru lifted the curt­ain a little on this in one of his statements, ‘ … It is very well to talk about foreign policy. But you will appreciate that no person charged with a country’s foreign policy can really say very much about it.

Studies on the national movement and the movements for social reform during the nineteenth and twentieth cen­turies have often dwelt on the influence of western liberal thought on Indian leaders who spearheaded those move­ments.

During the recent Emergency, anyone who wanted to get the real news went over to the nearest newspaper office and, if he had a trustworthy friend, asked him if he could have a look at the list of for­bidden items from the censor. Till a few years ago, anyone who wanted to know what the Central Board…

The Indian family has always been a subject of great fascination for sociologists and social anthropologists. This fascina­tion owes itself to the emphasis placed in the Indian tradition upon joint family living and the central place accorded to the domestic unit in ritual and religious activities…