Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Kabir is now widely acclaimed as one of our most eminent poets from any Indian language, but this wasn’t always so. Until about half a century ago, he was regarded in Hindi as perhaps the last of the quartet of the four great bhakti poets and ranked after Tulsi Das, Sur Das and Mira Bai. In a marked reversal, Kabir’s…

While telling a story the awakening of love and desire is an illusion, a chimera. The desire is the desire only for the story, the love only love for the story. (From Bhikshuni aur Nai).In Teji Grover’s recent collection of stories, seven stories have been strung together in a sequence. In English translation, roughly the titles would be ‘The Nun and the Barber’, ‘My Poets’, ‘Grey Flowers etc’., ‘Sindbad’, ‘Just a Story’, ‘Suparna’, and ‘Su’…

A lot is being said about Premchands tradition in Hindi, but only a very few fiction writers have an understanding of what it really means. While someone is burning Premchands books, someone else is holding on to his tail to cross the Vaitarani, the mythical river that divides the earth and the nether regions…

This is a novel by a journalist which is certainly an advantage. The journalist is always present inside the novelist and knows well that his opting for story telling is driven by his urge to catch and tell facts that are beyond the reach of journalism. This understanding gives Davanal a distinct tinge and flavour…

The more we conjectured and enquired the more facts and things deserving mention we gathered. But in regard to them it became more and more difficult to distinguish between truths and falsehood. Were they lies that looked like the truth Or were they truths that resembled lies Or were they both truth and lies…

These days I find the prettiest things growing in my garden are weeds. They are the ones I pluck and put in my singlerose vase. They stay fresh for days on end; true (to nature), hardy and beauteous. Shivam, satyam, sundaram: the righteous, the truthful and the beautiful the quintessence of literary aesthetics…

Jaatidansh Ki Kahanian edited by Subhash Chandra Kushwaha is a thoughtprovoking and unique collection of essays and stories in Hindi by dalit writers. What distinguishes this anthology from other anthologies of dalit stories in Hindi such as the one edited by Ramanika Gupta is an entire discursive section dealing theoretically with issues which are also raised through the medium of the stories…

Written in Hindi, and under translation into Urdu, Punjabi, Marathi,Malayalam, English and German, Sheoraj Singh Bechains autobiography, is a paradigmatic lifestory of a member of one of Indias numerous dalit castes. Bechains book is an extended narrative of his struggle against social disabilities imposed on him by birth…

Devendra Choubeys book Adhunik Sahitya Mein Dalit Vimarsh (Dalit Discourse In Modern Literature) is a collection of essays written by him on various aspects of Hindi dalit literature, published in journals over a period of 15 years. It is a timely intervention in dalit studies which merits a sustained, serious, critical evaluation and theorization on its literary production…

The book under review on linguistic politics in India born out of a happy marriage of anthropology and history is a very well planned and carefully organized textual commentary giving an account of use and misuse of the labels language and mother tongue for political purposes. The book is divided into six chapters on each…

Well-known writer and Sahitya Akademi Award winner (2008) Manohar Shyam Joshi, has had a very varied and distinguished literary career, writing novels, short stories, film scripts, as well as being a prolific journalist.Written in a satiric, comic vein, the brief novel eventually culminates in frustration and depression, not only for the protagonist…

One must thank the publishers and the translator for making Giriraj Kishores Pehla Girmitiya available in English. Published first in Hindi in 1999, it has taken this award winning novel more than a decade to arrive in English. It is a huge book, and not just in length but also in its scope and intent. The Girmitiya Saga is not just a book about Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi…

This highly readable book provides a recent history of Indias population problem. It is not a demographic analysis as the title might suggest, but rather a collection of episodes that are woven into the authors own life experiences.Ashish Bose, a renowned demographer, recounts, through the deft use of vignettes from his own experience, Indias contemporary history in the population and family planning field set within the larger political context…

Mention Kalahandi and it immediately evokes images of poverty and destitution. The hunger zone. Stories of starvation. Even the sale of children. Why is it that such conditions continue to prevail in that region? Is Kalahandi a special case, an aberration in independent India Arima Mishras passionately written book tackles these questions headon…

Vijay L. Kelkar, the chairman of thirteenth finance commission, has about thirtythree years of experience in Indias public policy. From his role as an economic adviser at the Ministry of Commerce in the year 1977, to working in the finance ministry as an adviser to the finance minister in 2004,

Globalization has presented itself as unavoidable, a universal truth supposedlyabove, all the disputes between groups with differentiated power. (Porro: 286)Superbly written and edited, Land Tenure, Gender and Globalization offers detailedglimpses into the heterogeneous nature of the local, as it confronts and responds to the global, via case studies from Ghana…

This book consists of 39 essays written over a period of one year for a weekend newspaper. The great appreciation of the weekly column by readers has led to this.The author, a seasoned Central Banker and currently the Senior Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, has been a policy maker, university lecturer, and an author of many papers on economic issues…

It is surprising that there are not many serious studies on crime in India, notwithstanding the fact that prevalence of crime affects every day life so seriously. The academic community has by and large ignored this subject.

The regulatory framework around water n India grew over a long period of time and resembled a patchwork that contained laws of diverse origins, some drawn from ancient local customs and traditions and others from British common law by the colonial government. The resultant amorphous laws, principles, rules and judicial…

Globally, malaria continues to be a major disease with 300 to 500 million clinical cases every year, with about 1.5 to 2.7 million deaths. It kills more than one million children each year in Africa alone. In India there are about a million or more cases every year; however, we have seen a rising incidence of the more dangerous…