Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Feminist politics and law share a rather troubled relationship, Flavia Agnes’s magisterial two volume account of a particularly difficult aspect of this relationship is going to be read and referred to by scholars and activists.

James Scott, in this provocative book, has attempted to write an account of those in the margins, of people living in the peripheries of the great river valley civilizations in history. In the process, he questions nearly every accepted theory and belief about ‘great civilizations’ and their ‘uncivilized’ neighbours.

Escalating demands for the recognition or reordering of territories and people characterizes popular movements in several parts of South Asia today.

The anthology under review is an important contribution to environmental history particularly because it focuses on early and early medieval India.

It is always interesting when a scholar of the arts becomes a con-noisseur, or the other way around. Scholars and academics have their world, and their methods.

The present artisan posterity in several parts of India still carry centuries-old tradition of decorative motifs, patterns and design ensemble. This book digs out dollops of incognito facts that depicts Indian textiles in the world fora as coveted merchandise.

In a beautiful phrase deployed early in the book, Pinney writes of a retort that ‘leaps across the years like a vein of silver in a dark passageway (p.12).’ That phrase is a telling one, for it illuminates both the technique and the spirit of Pinney’s book.

This collection of essays on changing perspectives in Indian art history is based on the proceedings of a seminar on ‘Historiography of Indian Art: Emergent Methodological Concerns,’ organized by the National Museum, Institute of History of Art, Conservation and Museology, New Delhi in 2006.

The presumed anonymity of the artist in pre-modern India remained for long a scarcely challenged premise in Indian art historiography.

No book could be more concise, vehement, avid and well researched on the mosques of Cochin. No scholar has taken interest in researching this important architectural heritage, and updating the required information in this context and bringing it to public domain, like Patricia Tusa Fels has done in this elegantly designed book.