One thing is apparent; the book, Mohammad Rafi: God’s Own Voice has been written by two earnest fans and ferocious defenders of the renowned playback singer Mohammad Rafi (1924–80).
Shashi Kapoor: The Householder, The Star is an almost heartbreaking account—of the fame, and untoward retirement and estrangement from the industry, the painful and premature aging of a once extremely popular and daring showman.
In the intense heat of the Indian summer of 1739, a Persian army could be seen heading in triumph away from the looted city of Delhi. Delhi was the capital of the great Mughals, the Muslim dynasty, originally of Central Asian origin, that had ruled much of India since the mid-sixteenth century.
Migration has been a part of human history from the earliest times. Millions of people are seeking work, a new home or simply a safe place to live outside their countries of birth. People migrated as manual workers, highly qualified specialists, entrepreneurs, refugees or family members of previous migrants.
As the title indicates this book is about the malleable boundaries between migrants, refugees and the stateless in a world where borders become indicators of freedom of movement. The regional focus is South Asia with all its geographical, historical, political and social complexities.
This book needs to be appreciated as a culmination of a three ecade engagement with the city of Madurai and a select set of residents who became the author’s respondents and very close friends. These close acquaintances’ lives, their troubles, travails, joys and everyday struggles are tracked in a way that they become the central cast…
Aquestion calculated to test the mettle of even those intimately familiar with the history of colonial Calcutta—what is common to Mahesh-chandra Das De, Aghor-chandra Das Ghose and Jaharilal Sil? These names will not occur in any roll call of honour but as pamphleteers of urban phenomena such as storms, bridges and fish epidemics, they were nonpareil.
‘The ones who can call themselves contemporary are only those who do not allow themselves to be blinded by the lights of the century, and so manage to get a glimpse of the shadows in those lights, of their intimate obscurity.’ (Giorgio Agamben, What Is The Contemporary?, p. 45)
Secularism in India has always been a contested terrain at both conceptual and practical levels. With the advent of modernity and democracy preceding the wave of industrialization, unlike in the West, it has largely been understood as a peculiar Indian phenomenon distinct from the western secular models.
Secularism in India has always been a contested terrain at both conceptual and practical levels. With the advent of modernity and democracy preceding the wave of industrialization, unlike in the West, it has largely been understood as a peculiar Indian phenomenon distinct from the western secular models.
Secularism in India has always been a contested terrain at both conceptual and practical levels. With the advent of modernity and democracy preceding the wave of industrialization, unlike in the West, it has largely been understood as a peculiar Indian phenomenon distinct from the western secular models.
Until the end of the 19th century the Adivasis enjoyed a relatively bucolic existence in the Princely State of Bastar. They were not subject to the exploitative caste relationships that existed on the plains, and the sparsely populated forests provided them with space to practice shifting cultivation, collect forest produce and hunt animals.
There are two intrinsic aspects that characterize the newness of this study. The book establishes a serious engagement between political theorization and everyday world of tribal communities in contemporary India. It evokes the notion of law as a determining reference point to understand the changing political world of tribal communities.
The books under review are a chronicle of the instabilities and death and destruction that have plagued the wider West Asian region in the recent past. Vijay Prashad brings to note the ‘slow political death of the idea of Arab nationalism’ by highlighting the chaos engulfing Iraq, Syria and Libya and the destructive role of regional players (p. 6).
The books under review are a chronicle of the instabilities and death and destruction that have plagued the wider West Asian region in the recent past. Vijay Prashad brings to note the ‘slow political death of the idea of Arab nationalism’ by highlighting the chaos engulfing Iraq, Syria and Libya and the destructive role of regional players (p. 6).
We need to establish that proper names are an integral part of systems we have been treating as codes: as means of fixing significations by transposing them into terms of other significations. Would this be true if it were true, as logicians and some linguists have maintained that proper names are, in Mell’s phrase, ‘meaningless’ in signification?
– Levi-Straus
A substantial part of the British Indian empire was governed in the indirect mode, through ‘native’ Princes whose territories together constituted about forty per cent of the area of the Indian empire. These Princes acknowledged overall British supremacy, and were allowed some internal autonomy the extent of which varied from State to State.
Both these books deal with regions of the British Empire hitherto considered ungovernable and hazardous. Written by academics familiar with the culture, societal and tribal norms of the area, they provide timely scholastic content to available literature on the subject at a moment…
Both these books deal with regions of the British Empire hitherto considered ungovernable and hazardous. Written by academics familiar with the culture, societal and tribal norms of the area, they provide timely scholastic content to available literature on the subject at a moment when a Committee of Experts set up by the Establishment in Pakistan for reform in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas…
Sumit Ganguly is no stranger to scholars in international and strategic studies. His book The Origins of Wars in South Asia is a popular text with undergraduates. He takes his earlier work that finishes with the 1971 War further in the volume under review by beginning with the Kargil War. His is a slim volume covering the first decade of the century, the beginning of which he dates to this war.