This biographical work on the towering Hindustani vocalist, Gangubai Hangal (1913-2009), is based on a series of visits the author made to the diva’s home, and extensive interviews with people close to her subject. The author’s discovery of this extraordinary personality spans a period of four years (2005-2009).
This biographical work on the towering Hindustani vocalist, Gangubai Hangal (1913-2009), is based on a series of visits the author made to the diva’s home, and extensive interviews with people close to her subject. The author’s discovery of this extraordinary personality spans a period of four years (2005-2009).
It is a common perception that Art and Disadvantage do not go together. The disadvantaged do not have the time for Art or any such creative activity. The pursuit of creative activity is a privilege for the advantaged or those who have the resources and the time to learn and practise their art.
Much has been written and spoken about as well as protested against the brutality of Israel’s occupation over the Palestinian territories. However, Palestinian freelance journalist, Laila El-Haddad’s honest account of being a wife, mother, daughter and simply a Palestinian under occupation exposes the reader to a reality incomprehensible beyond the boundaries of the separation wall.
The Fear That Stalks, a product of a conference organized by CEQUIN in collaboration with UNDP and NCW, speaks to the complicated nature and multifaceted dimensions of gender-based violence in public spaces. This excellent collection of nine essays spread over three hundred pages anticipates some of the debates on sexual violence that resounded in the streets of Delhi in the winter of 2012.
1990s was the era of great transformation in the history of Indian politics. Since then no single party won a majority in the national polls until and this phase is largely known as the ‘post-Congress era’. Coalition politics is a result of rise of regional parties on agendas of national importance.
The volume is an invaluable collection theoretically bound together with a thoughtful Introduction and a concluding chapter that generalizes the findings of the cross national research. It attends to one of the fiercely debated questions in security establishments and amongst strategic thinkers across the world as to who should police insurgencies…
In this riveting book set against the backdrop of the war that the United States waged in Iraq and its military interventions in Iran and Afghanistan, DiMaggio examines the role of media in supporting, legitimizing and building pro-war public opinion in support of America.
What role should the news media play in a democracy? Do journalists function as watch-dogs in order to check the abuse of power by authorities?
The Modi-Sharif meeting in Delhi on 27 May, following the swearing-in ceremony and the subsequent debate on the relevance of Article 370 brought J&K briefly back into public debate. India and Pakistan have, since then, reverted to their domestic preoccupations—developmental and governance issues in India; the military operations in FATA to tackle terrorism in the aftermath of the TTP attack on Karachi airport in Pakistan.
When I was asked to review this translation of a Mughal memoir, my reasons, at least I believe, were very different from that of the translator of the volume. The memoir is a narrative of the events of a part of the eighteenth century and translated from ‘Original’ French to English.
The importance of the book under review is not just that it remembers the nationalist movement at a time when it appeared to have been forgotten, but also tells us how to remember the nationalist movement. Chronologically speaking, reflections on the nationalist movement have gone through four stages.
The inequalities of income and wealth in our time are blatant. There is a feeling of outrage when we see the opulent demonstratively flaunt their scission from everyone else and contrast the abysmal poverty on display:
The Bangladeshi writer Nasreen Jahan’s The Woman Who Flew (2012) is a novel translated from the original Bengali Urukkoo (1993) by Kaiser Haq. The title of the novel indicates an act of ‘flying’ from the gross and unrefined in search of the ‘sublime’. The novel depicts the realities of life and the significance of art in the life of those people…
2014
Sultana’s Dream by Begum Rokheya Sakhawat Hossain could well be every South Asian woman’s dream come true! This wonderful feminist fable, written in 1905, much before the word feminism itself made its appearance in India is a book that needs to be gifted to every woman and indeed man whom we love and care for.
2014
From Ghalib’s Delhi to Lutyen’s New Delhi is an edited set of records, from the collections of the National Archives of India, pertaining to the founding and development of New Delhi from 1911 onwards.
Despite Aijaz Ahmad’s majestic rebuttal, Frederic Jameson’s claim that ‘all Third World texts’ are allegorical and are to be read as ‘national allegories’ seems credible, albeit minus its sweeping generalization, with reference to many fictional narratives produced across Indian languages in the twentieth century.
The book is a part of the series—Makers of Islamic Civilization and as the Series Editor has mentioned in the book—‘…the aim is to provide an introduction to outstanding figures in the history of Islamic civilization…’
There is a lot more in the simple title of this book than may appear to an unsuspecting eye. The words used in Urdu for the kinds of writings included in this volume are ‘Afsana’ and ‘Kahani’(the distinction between the two is not a settled issue in Urdu criticism). Both ‘Afsana’ and ‘Kahani’ lose something if translated casually as a short story or a tale…
To meet a poet of one’s own language in a different language is like meeting a friend or an acquaintance in an alien land. The strangeness of the medium turns into a torchlight which illuminates the hitherto unknown or unseen facets of the person. You are left wondering if it is the same person you were confident of having known well.