Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain was first and foremost a very courageous woman who dared to fight against all odds and achieve for women a status of dignity, self-reliance and creative agency in a time and milieu that was hostile, inhospitable and even against the equal rights of men and women.
David Kinsley says in his preface that he came to Calcutta to undertake research on the Bengal Vaishnavas—‘and it was with some eagerness that I anticipated seeing Krsna expressing himself in a cultic context’. Then he tells us about the tumultuous celebrations of Durga Puja he saw, finally how ‘in the rear…
The structural violence at both the public and personal levels that Indian women face routinely in the physical world has taken the better part of four decades to recognize, articulate and resist. Today, it continues to remain one of the biggest crises of Indian social life, taking on new forms and permeating new ecologies. Foremost among these new ecologies is the cyber space.
When, during the first half of this century, art surrendered to a revivalist ethos because a subject people had to cling to memories of past greatness to forget their current humiliation, art criticism mostly amounted to singing the greatness of the legend, poetry or epoch of which the paintings were illustrations…
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…