Why is the short story called the short story when the long story is called not the long story but the novel? Why could it not be called simply the story? Following the illogical English usage,
Leftism, as commonly understood, is a blanket term covering everything from reformism to the more eccentric reaches of the New Left. What Gombin means by it, however, is those sections to the Left of the Communist parties which do not claim to be within the Marxist-Leninist tradition…
A book written about the British influence on the Indian garden is bound to elicit curiosity in the minds of botanical aficionados and students of imperial history:
In a few more years, perhaps as little as fifteen, an entire generation of persons to whom dak bungalows mean something will have gone on to the circuit house in heaven.
This is a slim and beautifully produced book of maps about India’s history, culture, religion and politics, wide ranging in its scope and very enlightening too. For reasons best known to Indian historians and their publishers,
2013
With our destinies, We all have a pact, It is the memories, That can choose their act M iljul Mann is not a ‘slice of life’ novel, but a ‘slice of mind’ novel.
2013
It is in the kitchen of the Chattopadhyay household that Khema, the daughter of a low caste Bagdi household retainer, Bamundi,
2013
Savia Viegas, the author of two previous novels Tales from the Attic (2007, Saxtti) and Let Me Tell You about Quinta (2011, Penguin) has recently self published two graphic novels, Eddi & Diddi and Abha Nama.
Today India is home to about 1,500 tigers. A century ago, sportsmen killed that many every year. One Rajput, Fateh Singh, bagged 375 himself, not to mention 991 leopards, over his hunting career. The populations, conditions, and cultural meanings of wildlife in India have changed fundamentally since the heyday of the Raj.
Of Birds and Birdsong serves the purpose of a reference book, text book and field guide without being one. It is lay person-friendly. And it is useful for the nature specialist.
Navina Jafa wears many hats. Classical dancer, academician, ‘heritage consultant’, are terms associated with her many roles, but perhaps she is best known for ‘Jafa Heritage Walks’, an exercise in what she describes as ‘academic cultural tourism’.
I always have two open books on the round antique table in my hallway, chosen for their illustrations and subjects.
There has been a raging debate on the nature and scope of doing anthropology in contemporary times. The debate is more precisely about the politics and poetics inherent in the practice of ethnography contributed by the likes of Clifford Geertz, James Clifford, George Marcus among others. It has posed an imperative for anthropologists in the contemporary world to explore new methods and new sights with a fair sensibility toward the politics of writing culture.
After A. Svechin’s work entitled Strategy published in 1926, Sokolovskiy’s collection first published in the summer of 1962 was the most comprehensive work on Soviet military strategy. The second and third editions were published in the Soviet Union in August 1963 and March 1968 respectively…
It is difficult to pigeonhole this book as a ‘philosophical tract’, a ‘prophetic discourse’, a ‘journey into the human mind’, a ‘guide for human survival’, a ‘spiritual treatise’. It is an amalgam of all these and more. Embellished with profuse quotations from various sources, modern and traditional, spiritual and scientific, the volume reaches out to those who are already uneasy about the way we on this earth are progressing. C.B. Rao as he is fondly called, an Indian Administrative Service Officer, has not allowed the iron of long years in the bureaucracy to enter his soul or stifle creative thinking. If this sounds like high praise from a fellow bureaucrat, let the discerning reader decide if he is correct in the use of such adjectives!
The colonial encounter has thrown up a serious existential and intellectual challenge to the traditional Hindu in the nineteenth century.
In 1997 Partha Chatterjee stated eloquently that ‘there is no promised land of modernity outside the network of power. Hence one cannot be for or against modernity; one can only devise strategies for coping with it.’
To argue that banking cannot be done with the poor because they do not have collateral is the same as arguing that men cannot fly because they do not have wings.* – – Muhammad Yunus
The past decade has seen the introduction of a series of rights-based legislations in India, which the author calls a ‘veritable rights revolution’, with the enactment of the Right to Information Act (in 2005), the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (in 2005), the Forest Rights’ Act (in 2006) and the Right to Education Act (in 2009).
Let us begin by posing a simple question: have contemporary western democracies ceased to interrogate their political (democratic) processes? Not quite, perhaps.