2015
The world today is probably far more complex than ever before. Several waves of global migration of populations have reshaped or altered ethnic composition and cultural make up of nationstates. In effect, many mono-cultural nation states have turned multicultural, multi-linguistic, multi-ethnic and multi-religious.
The book under review examines the exclusion of Mizo in the national discourse of ‘diversity’ not only perpetuates their marginalization but also the creation of their identity in their own unique ways through vernacular Christianity and practices relating to death in a veng or locality.
This is a book about how anthropologists seek to make sense of the social worlds they choose to understand. And then how they engage with philosophy, if they do at all. Not by looking up to philosophy as providing some kind of an overarching theory about ‘life’ or to anthropology’s claim to address the particularities of everyday life. Rather, the remarkable contribution this book seeks to make lies in Veena Das’s assertion that the ‘philosophical puzzles’ that philosophers like Stanley Cavell…
2015
The site of Amaravati in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh has attracted a great deal of scholarly interest for over two centuries. The stupa that once stood here was among the oldest and most splendid in the subcontinent. Its structural remains and inscriptions constitute important sources for the early history of Buddhism and its exquisite limestone relief sculptures are considered masterpieces.
2014–15 is the centenary of the commencement of the commitment of India’s unsung heroes to one of the world’s greatest human tragedies—the First World War. A number of books have been published and a few high profile events have been conducted at India’s national capital to mark the event, principal among them being the efforts of the British High Commission, the United Service Institution and the Indian Army.
The book originated at a workshop in Delhi University’s Department of Sociology in 2010. Consequently it helps fill a gap in writings on internal security that are usually security related and state centric at that. The development perspective relying on human security and peace studies on conflict resolution frameworks are fast emerging as strong competitors.
The book under review brings together a selection of papers first presented at the conference ‘Contesting Shi’ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Ismai’li Shi’ism in South Asia’ held at Royal Holloway, University of London, in September, 2011.
2015
Venkat Dhulipala challenges what he takes to be a widespread assumption that Partition did not need to happen. It all happened so fast. Did Muslim voters who supported the League in the elections of 1945–46 really want a separate country?
2015
Anita Agnihotri’s collection of short stories leaves one with a melancholic feel ing: something that occurs to every thinking individual while reading daily newspapers, but she chooses to ignore.
Dipannita Dutta’s book Ashapurna Devi and Feminist Consciousness in Bengal: A Bio-Critical Reading comes at a time when debates concerning possible trajectories of feminist politics and activism in India have critically intensified.
The historical is not defined by the past; both the historical and the past are defined as themes of which one can speak. The historical is forever absent from its very presence. This means that it disappears behind its manifestations; its apparition is always superficial and equivocal; its origin, its principle, always elsewhere.
The book provides interesting insights into key developments that have informed and configured the Indian news media in recent times.
Since the advent of television in India the number of licensed television sets in India grew from 55 in 1964 to a lakh in 1975 and to just over two million connections in 1982; in 1991 a total of thirty-four million families owned television sets, growing to 65% of the Indian population owning television sets by 2014—the societal and political landscape has transformed quite dramatically.
In the age of digital photography where more and more images are being taken to be stored in the hard drives of computers a certain fascination with photography of the distant past has resurfaced.
Chapter 4, on page 99 of Zitzewitz’s book The Art of Secularism begins with a quote by painter Gulammohammed Sheikh where he says, ‘in one sense it is the communal situation that opened doors to understand the role of religion in life.
2015
History always offers rich pickings and an edited volume of rigorous historical research seldom disappoints. Shifting Ground: People, Animals and Mobility in India’s Environmental History is an excellent example and one thing can certainly be said about it—that even though a little unevenly, it shifts ground very effectively.
This is a collection of forty-nine articles, transcripts of speeches and lectures by a former diplomat divided into seven sections of seven pieces each; seven to represent the sapta-chiranjeevi or seven immortal beings in the Hindu pantheon; each section carries a helpful subtitle, Hanuman as the first Indian diplomat to be sent abroad, Vibheeshana who stands for righteousness and so on.
The Indo-US relationship assumes importance in a multipolar world with shifting alliances—new partnerships are being formed, some are being renewed and others are breaking up. The US and India have never been as aligned as they are today.
Given the plethora of debates that have come up in the last few years on the stability of Pakistan, Pakistan: Making The Economy Move Forward, makes an attempt to address this key stability-instability paradox, by critically examining the strengths and faultlines of Pakistan’s economy.
Kaushik Roy takes a long view of the processes that have shaped the geo¬politics of Afghanistan, unlike most of its recently published military histories. In his words, this publication consists of a political and military narrative of Afghanistan’s conventional and unconven¬tional warfare spanning five centuries.