Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Contemporary criticism of Indo­-English poetry continues to harp on its favourite themes: the alien idiom and Indian sensibility, self consciousness of the poet, lack of a sense of humour, lack of an integrity of experience and social consciousness and so on.

When I was asked to review Bishwa-nath Ghosh’s Tamarind City: Where Modern India Began, I figured my eligibility had to do with the novel I had written set in the Madras (as it was back then) of the 1970s. I hope I’m right because, if on the other hand…

The marketing function has been fully exploited in mulch of the developed western world. In the less developed coun­tries the role of marketing is yet to be adequately appreciated. This is a natural consequence of the fact that in less deve­loped countries the main problem is to create surpluses over…

Bunny Suraiya’s debut novel Calcutta Exile is an impressive and bitter-sweet epilogue to the Anglo-Indian community during its heyday in what was once the ‘second city of the British Empire’. A novel centered around the Ryan family of Sharif Lane in central Cal-cutta…

The usual practice is to turn a book or a story into a movie. What if you could turn a movie inside your head into a novel? Reading through Kiran Nagarkar’s novel, The Extras, that is exactly the feeling you get. The characters, the thrill, the twists and turns…

In Marathi theatre Mahesh Elkunchwar spearheaded a modernism through his plays. They challenged the unequal power relationships between the genders. Opening the win-dows to let out the stagnant air of discrimination was the running leitmotif of the plays…

The directors who shaped the contours of modern Indian theatre were born in the 1920s. Ibrahim Alkazi (b. 1923), Habib Tanvir (1923-2009), B.V. Karanth (1928-2002) and Utpal Dutt (1929-1993) are, arguably, our most important post-Independence directors…

The book under review edited by Udayan Vajpeyi attempts ‘to initiate new areas of interdisciplinary debate and focus critical attention to the interface between theory and practice of modern Indian theatre’, accord-ing to Ashok Vajpeyi, the editor of this series.

‘Dance is a dynamic and expressive performing art… Dance reflects and shapes contemporary local and glo-balized cultures, communicating ideas through the related practices of performing and choreographing. As a lifelong activity for individuals and groups…

Many of us have heard of Orchha—perhaps as a vacation spot dotted with notable architecture. But few of us might be aware of the turbulent history of this kingdom and how its champion, Raja Bir Singh Dev Bundela (r. 1604-1627) shaped it into the jewel it is today…

This book deals with the environ­mental implications of an economy based on the exploitation of non-renewable mineral resources and fossil fuels. It purports to establish that a viable world economic order requires drastic changes in life styles, strict population control and a switch to non-renewable resources…

This volume is the by-product of a conference held in Cambridge in 1975, whose object was to bring together youn­ger historians of the economic and social history of South Asia, i.e. those who began their research work in the sixties and seventies. The conference had no specific theme…

This volume consists of the proceed­ings of a conference on India sponsored by the Asia Society in New York and held in September 1977. The organizers of the conference were two US AID offi­cials, Arthur Gardiner, Jr. and John Mellor, assisted by Marshall Bouton (now in the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi) and Philip Oldenburg of the Asia So­ciety. The objective, as stated by Mellor in the preface, was to re-examine ‘U.S.

This book is yet another contribution of Professor Daya Krishna to theoretical perspectives on social sciences. Daya Krishna takes up for treatment a much discussed and thrashed-out issue in political science—the concept of politi­cal development. This is a concept that has provided considerable stimulation to many social scientists to think and write…

The study of social movements by so­ciologists is comparatively a recent pheno­menon. In Indian sociology, this research trend began to take a shape during the sixties, when agrarian, tribal, backward class and Naxalite movements etc., increasingly received the attention of sociologists. M.S.A. Rao’s book Social Movements and Social Transformation…

RC. Dhere’s Srivitthal: Ek Mahasamanvay first published in 1984 is a seminal study in Marathi of the history of the cult of Vitthal in the Deccan region of India. Compre-hensive in its scope and in-depth in the manner in which it envisions the significance of Vitthal for his worshipers and for the lived life within traditional and cultural mores, this study is an invaluable source book.

When the first volume of Dr. Sarve­palli Gapal’s life of Jawaharlal Nehru appeared three years ago, there was a definitional dispute on whether it was a biography or a history. The Sahitya Akademi settled it by citing the author and the book for one of its awards.

Banaras is enigmatic; ‘a city of stark contradictions’ that ‘elicits complicated feelings’ and never allows one the satis-faction of a rounded comprehension of its multilayered myriad mysteries. The city’s con-tradictions challenge one’s purse, prudence, and patience but Banaras still retains…

The volume under review can potentially serve as a ready reference for students, teachers, policy makers and researchers, both within the discipline and for those with an interdisciplinary approach. The brief write-ups on the contributions of the doyens of the dis-cipline in India…

It is often lamented, both in academic and popular discourse, that colonial rule had a deleterious effect on the indigenous handloom industry edging the hapless weaver, unable to withstand unfair competition with mill-made cloth, out of the market…