Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Fat, oblong, register-shaped, its densely packed (and extremely unwieldy) 347 page body encased in striking turquoise and gold,Mazaar, Bazaar: Design and Visual Culture in Pakistan, landed on my desk a couple of weeks ago; carrying with it the images, iconography and essence of a country and civilization…

This catalogue centres on the idea and image of the Jina or Tirthankara and was published to complement an exhibition recently held at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York. The art objects include serene, solid, and stark images of Jinas that are a perfect foil for the rich palette of painted Jain cosmographs…

This is a succinct monograph on the morphology of the architectural motif of the torana, or the festooned or simply arched portal, that is a fundamental constituent, endlessly repeated in the history of Indian architecture. Lavishly illustrated and printed on heavy art-paper renders it a fairly weighty tome, no doubt one that scholars…

The work of an art restorer is a painstaking affair. Often confronted with a painting covered with soot and grime accumulated over time, bringing a painting to life once again can take months, even years. It involves extensive research into the artist’s social circumstances, reconstruction of working methodology…

Feminine forms have always been represented with great diversity in the Indian subcontinent and the variety of data available can overwhelm most scholars. Every local village has its own kuladevis or devatas and shrines devoted to deities. Every family has its own rites and rituals which have been handed down over several generations…

Ecclesiastical edifices in diverse cultural landscape have played an influential role since their emergence in the Indian subcontinent.
Temple, perhaps, was the most perceptible institution that could register socio-economic and cultural transformations in the surrounding society of which it was an inseparable part. Primarily it emerged as a centre of worship and pilgrimage but its role as museum of art and architecture cannot be denied…

Stranger to History is the story of a dual quest. It is the account of a son’s journey to find his father and of his efforts to discover theroots of his faith. The reader accompanies the young man in his discoveries of mind, faith and philosophy in the heartland of Islam from Istanbul to Damascus and from Mecca to Tehran…

The volume under review includes the work of more than thirty scholars of Islam and Muslim societies in South Asia. The representation is very balanced in the sense that along with many eminent scholars in the field some budding scholars have also contributed to this book. So some of the research findings…

Raziuddin Aquil’s book is well put together. It offers an excellent entry point into the subject of Sufism in the medieval Indian con-text to the uninitiated. Its attractive cover and easy-to-read Introduction, delightfully devoid of jargon, make it a delectable offering. The table of contents holds much promise in the impressive…

India and China are two countries in the world where there are more boys than girls in all age groups. In India, there are just 933 females for every 1,000 males (2001 Census). This is because females are just more likely to die than males. Infant girls may be killed soon after birth; they may be starved, poisoned or suffocated to death….

The study of the informal economy has in recent years become a matter of compelling importance. The many changes at the globallevel in terms of the liberalization processes, deregularization of labour markets and the use of new technologies that impact labour conditions have necessitated closer attention…

Western India was expe-riencing unforeseen changes in its economic and political scene during the years subsequent to the First World War. The textile mills in Bombay and Ahmedabad were trying to increase their production following a decline of imports from England and the decline in production from local handlooms…

The author begins by saying, ‘this book is an attempt to try and understand the shortcomings of the varied strategies that have beenadopted for biodiversity conservation by India since Independence, both in terms of policy as well as implementation’. Keeping the Sariska National Park in view, a background…

Women grieving publicly is the common image of disaster. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Women suffer disaster un-equally. More women are victims than men of disasters—both natural and manmade. Women get less rehabilitation. Women have less voice in expressing their distress…

This anthology on myriad engagements of social science literature with Pakistani women’s lived experiences comes with two important caveats. In the first chapter, Sadaf Ahmad, its editor, bemoans the lack of a corpus of knowledge on Pakistani women which is nuanced and contextualized,…

The recent violence marking Kashmir’s long summer of discontent is just one more reason why borders need to be studied and under-stood. In Borders, Histories, Existences: Gender and Beyond, Paula Banerjee, head of the Department of South and South East Asian Studies, University of Calcutta, not only trains the light on territory less travelled, she does it through a multi-layered approach…

This is a collection of previously published research papers, unpublished conference papers, and endowment lectures written between the 1970s and the 2000s. In the first section after the introduction are four essays that relate to the interface between archaeology and text: seeking the literal truth of the epics; investigating the emergence of complex society and the state in the Deccan and in Punjab; and the nature of the early cities of Bengal.

Iravatham Mahadevan, an administrator- turned scholar noted for his profound scholarship in multiple aspects of the science of ancient scripts in general and Harappan writing in particular, belongs to the galaxy of the leading epigraphists of the world and ranks foremost among the scholars in Brahmi script. The study under review, Early Tamil Epigraphy is his magnum opus.

Most narratives of the historiography of ancient India inspire a strong sense of déjà vu. There is the mandatory bashing of the imperialist historians, followed by a litany of complaints against the nationalist historians. This is followed by an account of post-Independence developments, in which the writing of ancient Indian history is presented as coming of age, with the imbalances and biases of the earlier eras replaced by a more sophisticated and sounder understanding of the past.

History at the Limit of World History and The History of History are remarkable because of the somewhat eccentric views that the two authors, of very different persuasions, hold on what ought to be hisory. Aristotle, Hegel, Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derida, Jacques Lacan, Michael Bakhtin, Rabindranath Tagore et al are passed in review by Ranajit Guha, and Ranajit Guha, in his turn is passed in review by Vinay Lal along with an equally odd assortment of Hindu communalist historians