Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Each day brings news of fresh horror from Pakistan—as I write this review it was the bombing of Data Darbar, a shrine dedicated toLahore’s patron saint, the Persian-born Abul Hassan Ali Hajvery. Revered by Sunni, Shi’a, Ahmediyya, and Hindus, this was perhaps the greatest possible moral insult to Pakistan’s cultural capital…

The book under review is a compilation of papers presented at the Asian Security Conference organized by the Institute for DefenceStudies and Analyses (IDSA) in 2008, the tenth such annual event since it was started in 1999. The IDSA should be congratulated for their commendable initiative to hold this annual event…

A theory of International Relations (IR) which purports to be cultural needs to grapple with at least three categories of problems.The first concerns this whole business of grand theory. Dreams of a final theory, a set of immutable and fundamental truths about the universe which would explain everything that happens…

A consistent lament of those teaching Political Science in India has been the general absence of globally competent thematic collections that address the specific requirements of an Indian readership. Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta contribute fundamentally in remedying this inadequacy by inviting…

Mahatma Gandhi once said that India’s soul lives in its villages. That may well be so, but there is increasing evidence that itsbrain has developed in towns and cities. Unfortunately, while this could never have been the Mahatma’s intention, a curious guilt complex has gripped India’s policy makers as far as the development…

Faiz Ahmed Faiz walked up the stairs to the high terrace of his house in Karachi, and looked down at the city that lay in front ofhim. The country was going through a phase of intense repression under the rule of General Ayub Khan. What Faiz could see from his vantage point was a seamless and unified urban grid that resembled…

In recent years several books have been published on Indian cities. This is a healthy trend because the more we know about our cities,the more effectively we will be able to mediate its development. In this genre, the most written about city in India is perhaps Mumbai. Publications on the city have ranged from coffee table books, fiction…

Mushairah is a poetic symposium in which contemporary poets congregate and recite their original poems. In its classical form, a Mushairah is a literary spectacle where poets of the day exhibit their tremendous creative energies, combined with deep imagination and emotional intensity in their poetry…

Mainstream historiography of Medieval India has hardly explored the early period of the Delhi Sultanate. As the author states in the Preface, the modern historians of Medieval India, with the exception of Peter Hardy, have utilized the compiled histories of the Medieval Period primarily as sources of information…

Dislocation and rootlessness are modern phenomena which stem from the emergence of the nation state and has opened up an entire arm in academics that focuses ‘on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences.’ As Homi Bhabha puts it, ‘The move away from the singularities…

The book, was first published by Harvard University Press in 1978. At that time, it was one of the few studies on the Portuguese em-pire in Asia focusing on the 17th century and specifically on south-western India and was hailed as a major contribution. The book has been republished by Manohar in 2010 (without any revisions) making it…

this cant about England’s ‘mission’ in India is an afterthought only. Clive and Hastings would have laughed at It is no exaggeration to say that the English school-boy is a young savage At an age when liberal studies should begin to expand his mind and social restraints should curb his egotism and form the heart,…

The West’s gaze of the East is being looked upon with some suspicion in recent years, especially where there have also been relations of power between the observer and the observed. Michael Dodson’s book lays bare the complexity of the ‘persistent truths’ of Orientalism, its ideological underpinnings and its modus operandi…

Of the ideologues of empire in the late nineteenth century, Henry Maine had perhaps the most profound intellectual impact oncontemporaries, ranging from arch-imperialists of the Lugard variety at one extreme to Marx and Engels at the other end of the ideological spectrum. More than anything he influenced…

This book begins with an engaging dedication to the memory of Ramu Gandhi (1937–2007). Ramu was seen at the India Interna-tional Centre day in and day out, a part of the scene, a friend to most members of the club and to the author of this review. I am happy to be able to record my tribute to him…

The purpose of Khwaja Razi Haider’s book is to shed light on the life and personality of Ruttie Jinnah, the wife of Mohammed AliJinnah. It is a well known fact that Jinnah was an extremely private person and this book tries to satiate the curiosity of researchers and lay readers about the inner aspects of Jinnah’s life….

The book under review by the eminent scholar-cum-advocate A.G. Noorani was published in Pakistan and it will attract much attention and debate in India. Noorani’s thesis, argued with formidable skill and compelling documentary support, is that Jinnah started as a secular nationalist…

What are the long-term implications of protectionism, as practised today in the developed market economies? Many economists argue that tariff and non­tariff barriers to trade are harmful not only for the countries which face these barriers but also for the countries which impose them.

It is always interesting to meet a travel­ler returned from a remote and exotic land; it is especially so when he is a well-­informed historian. But when that historian happens to be one of the most brilliant of his profession

The increasing interest of historians in re-defining the nature and aspects of early British commercial interaction with the Indian sub-continent has found expression in a number of important publications. Among these the works of Holden Furber