Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Ideology and Utopia in the United States in 1956-1976 represents the writ­ings of Irving Louis Horowitz over a period of twenty years. Consequently, topics discussed in the book range from the Politics of Assassination to the Revo­lution of Falling Expectations. It is true that the author has tried to give a sem­blance of organization…

Indian judges continue to believe that normative changes in law on their own can bring about social reform. In an unprecedented move a two judge bench of Justice Dave and Justice Goel in Prakash v. Phulwati (2015) suo moto ordered registration of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) to examine the constitutionality of discriminatory provisions of Muslim Personal Law (MPL).

This is a book by a professional as opposed to an armchair planner. The title of the book is suggestive, as is the beginning. ‘Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less travelled by’, (Frost), raising expectations that fresh insights would be provided regarding the future course of regional as also urban planning in India…

The book’s contemporariness is obvious in the context of the resurgence of autonomist politics accompanied by street violence/strike in the Darjeeling hills after a brief lull. For any observer of hill politics, it is obvious that the ground reality in the insurgent region has remained largely the same even after the change in the political regime, local organizational leadership and a new player BJP gaining traction in the region.

An old ballad sung by Joan Baez many years back went something like this: Show me the prison/Show me the jail/Show me the hobo/who sleeps down by the rail/ And I’ll show you a young man/With so many reasons why/There but for fortune, go you and I.

While Indian society has been secular for centuries, the Indian state has adopted secular and democratic ideas only in the post-Independence phase—that is, since the 1950s. Sadly, both secularism and democracy have come under attack in India in recent times, according to one of the foremost historians of our age, Romila Thapar.

The book under review is another addition to the People’s History of India
Series; concise and lucidly written, this series is marked by the principled allegiance to historical evidence and a secular, scientific approach to Indian history. Written for scholars and students, they provide a succinct survey of the latest historical trends, and provide directions for further research in Indian history.

The book is the fifth volume in the Penguin series on ‘The Story of Indian Business’ edited by Gurcharan Das. This book has been authored by Arshia Sattar and is a collection of short stories and carefully selected extracts from well-known Sanskrit works.

I have rarely been so impressed by a piece of writing on hard, practical, eco­nomic problems written in the language (as Mr. Jha puts it) of laymen, as by this little book, especially because there are some major items over which I disagree with the author. Mr. Jha has been in the centre of things for well over two de­cades now…

‘The emphasis in choosing the read­ings in this volume has been on articles using the tools of analytical economics to deal with problems which have policy implications and articles which deal directly with the appraisal of economic policies adopted by the Government of India during the years of planned economic development…

Writing Self Writing Empire intro-duces the reader to the cultural world of the Mughal Empire and
the pluralistic ways of the Mughal imperial court through the works of Chandar Bhan Brahman, a munshi or a state secretary of the empire.

When, oh! when, will Indian publishers approach textbook production with both the intelligence and sensitivity that it demands and the sincerity and dignity that it deserves? It is especially dis­couraging to see a slipshod, erratic text from a prestigious publishing house like Orient Longman.

The Goddess and the Nation provides a timely, if somewhat troubling re-minder of one strand within the
nationalist movement, tracing its development primarily through a study of visual representations of Bharat Mata, a deified mother India, and her children, especially her sons. Lavishly illustrated and annotated, it carries the reader through over a century of colonial and postcolonial history.

Dr. Nagaraja Rao is well-known to the reading public in Indian philosophy by his numerous learned as well as popular articles, reviews, books and lectures. The present work offers a consolidated presentation of the pano­rama of Indian philosophy starting from the Upanishads and culminating…

This book is also available in English under the title: Writings on India’s Parti­tion edited by Ramesh Mathur, Maheep Singh and Mahendra Kulasreshta. The 22 page introduction analyses the influence of Indian Partition on fiction, giving the political background to this dark chapter in modern Indian history…

This book is a revised version of the author’s doctoral thesis, submitted to the University of Delhi. Being basically an expository account of Curzon’s treatment of the administrative problems of Indian agriculture, the sub-title is a misnomer.

I picked up Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity with much excitement and expectation. Excitement came from personal reasons for reading something new on ‘my’ city, a home that I returned to after some years of living out. Expectations grew by reading its cover and the first two printed pages dedicated to the praises for the book by some of the authors whose own writings on Delh…

In a book on ‘population and law’ the readers should expect an account of where the principles of planned parent­hood and birth control stand in the legal system of the country. In India the most relevant branches of the legal system in this context are obviously the personal laws…

To those who lost family members, the 2733 lives extinguished in four days in the capital of the world’s largest democracy is a deep chasm which has destroyed the lives of those who had to carry on living.

The task of policing in Delhi is far more complex than any metropolitan city in India. The author, a serving police officer in Delhi, has done an excellent job of telling his readers why it is so. He has analysed in detail the nature of policing the largest city and capital of the country in the background of its history and problems peculiar to it.