Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Corporate history affords severalcase studies of companies changing and reinventing themselves over time, acquiring a contemporary shape and form simply not foretold in their original genetic code. Mutations in product profile are a part of corporate evolution. But few companies manage to retain the unmutated gene of corporate criminality…

This book under review tries to explore the complex relationship between religion and development in two different ways. It questions the modernist assumption that religion is the personalaffair of an individual while development is entirely a matter of secularpublic policy. Examining religion as a sociological category…

The current academic scholarship over the idea of nationalism represents a dynamic shift from the modernist ideals and framework. The idea of nationalism is critically analysed by posing certain essential postmodern question, which earlier had a little discursive capacity. Parimala V. Raos work on Tilaks nationalism supplements this methodology…

This book is a collection of nine articles on different aspects of the economic history of India during British colonial rule. They were published in Nineteenth Century Studies, Bengal Past Present, Journal of Development Studies, Frontier, Journal of Peasant Studies, IESHR, as also in edited books like Essays in Honour of Professor S.C.Sarkar…

Zanskar was opened to foreigners in the late 1970’s and this is among the first of the travel books which can be expected to follow from the opening of the area. Peissel is well known to those familiar with the travel literature on the Himalayas and his account of a visit to the kingdom of Mustang, remains interesting reading for those concerned with western Nepal and its vicinity.

The present volume, of which Brenda Beck is the editor as well as main contri­butor, is an interesting collection of seven essays on social anthropology, physical geography, demography and urban deve­lopment.

While reviewing the first volume in the series edited by M.S.A. Rao, (The Book Review IV, 1, July-August 1979) I had commented on the substantive issues of theory, concepts and methodology’ that Rao had raised in his introduction.

It will remain for a long time one of the much debated issues in Indian Ad­ministration: whether Jawaharlal Nehru did the right thing in 1947 in opting (deli­berately or otherwise) for a policy of ‘gradualism’ rather than making a clean break with the past.

The adequacy of public services in the democratic context and environment of rapid change is a matter of continuing concern. As the residuary of authority there is a continuing love-hate relationship between the public and governmental ser­vices for, the latter is supposed to serve the former.

Between Govind Kelkar’s visit to China in April-May 1978 and mine in May-June 1979 there was a year full of rapid policy changes. She travelled in China when the Chinese leadership was inclined to retain the overall orientation of the Cultural Revolution and integrate it with a programme of four modernizations while denouncing the extremism of the Gang of Four.

Nobody ever thinks of writing a book on ‘America After Carter’ or ‘Britain After Margaret Thatcher’. But books ·and articles on ‘Post-Nehru India’, and ‘China After Mao’ abound. Why? Is it that America and Britain are crisis-free societies? Obviously not; they have been visibly moving from crisis to crisis.

The quickies are upon us again. The post-election deluge (post-1977 election, that is, when the profitable and chic pub­lishing fashion really started) is now being followed up with a pre-election deluge (pre-1980 election, that is). This is the second set in what will, in true Ladies’ Singles fashion, hopefully be a best of three sets match.

The book is not a mere addition to the much discussed topic of Britain’s responsibility towards India and India’s response to it as well as her reaction. Nor is it a mere narration of the emergence and growth of a political party. Indian Na­tional Congress Versus British presents a factual analysis of how an all powerful alien government and a national political party fought their elaborate battle over six decades.

Arya Dharma by Kenneth Jones was the first serious historical study of the Arya Samaj movement. Now Jordens complements Jones’s work by providing a comprehensive historical account of the life and ideas of Dayanand Saraswati.

The undivided Bengal with its Muslim majority had a Muslim problem which was not exactly the same as the Muslim problem of another Muslim majority province of the pre-Partition days, the Punjab; in fact, the Punjab’s was more a problem of the sense of insecurity felt by its Hindus.

In the twenties and thirties, and up to 1942, the South, and for a time the Cent­ral Assembly under British rule, rever­berated with the voice of Satyamurti, patriot, orator, parliamentarian par ex­cellence.

A mother-daughter relationship has always been a complex one to decode given its subjectivity. But Vrinda Nabar’s Family Fables & Hidden Heresies: A Memoir of Mothers and More manages to strike that right balance between myopic proximity and clinical objectivity…

I must admit, I received my copy of this book on the same day as the Guwahati molestation case, and I was riling with anger towards men as sexual predators and women as victims of abuse at the hands of men who can’t control their sexual urges and also society. The act of sex that day at least wore a pall of oppression…

The popular adage ‘appearances are deceptive’ applies aptly to these first two volumes of the proposed ten volumes of the off-beat autobiographical writings of Ashk, the Hindi novelist, playwright, cri­tic, poet and publisher.

The book opens up a gamut of emotions that rules human psychology. The inner pages carry cartoons of how people are attracted to each other through various mental mappings. Vikram Doctor’s foreword and the editors’ introduction entice the mind leading to such sexual urges…