Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

At a time when India is seen, rightly or wrongly, as intensely engaged in an effort to get closer and closer to the United States, it is useful to read this book by the wellknown journalist and author Kalyani Shankar. The principal theme is how Indira Gandhi was crafty enough to outwit Richard Nixon, himself a superb practitioner of the wicked art of realpolitik, in the context of the 1971 war between India and Pakistan bringing into being Bangladesh. Those of us who are old enough do have an idea of how Indira Gandhi did it.

This is another book on Keynes and still not another book. It offers fascinating insights by a Keynes buff. This book has several thoughtful pieces on what Keynes wrote, the works on Keynes and also aspects of Keynes’s work that have not been highlighted.

This has been a tumultuous decade for the academic study of India. In his Offence: The Hindu Case, Salil Tripathi provides a timely overview of the growing censorship and harassment that scholars working on India have faced.

This earnest and thoughtful volume is invaluable, not least because it brought back to the present reviewer the presence of Professor K.J. Shah, the first philosopher who connected emerging approaches to purushartha, including his own, to Gandhijis thought and praxis. Parel himself discusses in the introduction K.J. Shahs work on Gandhi.

Apart from the fact that the major river systems in our countryIndus, Ganges and Brahmaputratraverse our neighbouring countries, almost all perennial rivers of India flow through more than one state.

The slight sarcasm added in the subtitle to Environmental History,as if nature existed, triggers questions for the reader of this volume. Why as if? Are we to be taken en route through a landscape of perceptions and constructions, or are we brought to see the raw realities behind benign conservation regimes? Or is this a question for the environmental historian, an initial word of caution not to take nature for granted in our analyses?

Since the inception of the discipline, there has been a close link between archaeology and the state. This was the case since the early decades of the nineteenth century when archaeology was both an imperial project and a military endeavour, often an offshoot of colonial policies and which included their relationships with the colonized subjects.

This book ventures into previously nexplored areas of South Asian history, indicating the exciting possibilities of research in social and economic history.