Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Wars generate a spate of books on tactical doc­trine. Chaim Herzog’s book adds to the growing literature on the most important war in recent years,­ the Fourth Arab-Israeli war of 1973: the war which commenced on the day of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of mourning and atonement…

Whenever I think of Indian literature, a story retold by A.K.Ramanujan comes to mind: Hanuman reaches the nether-world in search of Rama’s ring that had disappeared through a hole.

A heart-wrenching account of a child who gets trapped in a flesh trade circle and her relentless struggle to get out of it, Prem Nagar is much more than a work of fiction.

These lines from the opening poem, titled ‘Episcope’, instantly give the reader a sense of richness of words and images that the volume under review abounds in. Poem after poem, Ranjani Neriya weaves an intricate tapestry of myriad images, metaphors and vivid visual verse pictures in a tirelessly flowing stream of sonorous sounds and fecund expressions.

Shyam Selvadurai, who has edited Many Roads Through Paradise, an anthology of Sri Lankan writers is a writer of acclaim, and has published several books, many of which have won prestigious awards.

My narrative will not be your’s. I will live my life. You have to live with your demons.
Daughter by Court Order

In a country like India, it is still the norm in many parts of the country to cut women off from all aspects of family decision making processes, or even from decisions involving their own lives—marriage, family planning etc.

Bidyut Chakrabarty sees the mass uprisings of 2011 in West Asia as reconfirmation of the relevance of nonviolence. Barely three years after the exhilarating successes of the Arab Spring, however, nonviolence is far from the minds of the numerous factions engaged in seemingly interminable conflict for control of those troubled lands.

In that 1971 classic essay, ‘After the Revolution: The Fate of Nationalism in the New States’, Clifford Geertz alluded to the ‘darkened mood’ that had descended upon the new states. The great cultural anthropologist talked of a creeping ‘disenchantment with party politics, parliamen-tarianism, bureaucracy, and the new class of soldiers…

In 1963 Maulana Bhashani met Mao in Peking and Mao spoke to him about Pakistan, USA, USSR, and China. China’s relationship with Pakistan was extre­mely fragile at the time, Mao said to Bhashani…

Sukanya Agashe’s attempt to definitively locate Lanka and to establish a physical geography for the Sanskrit Ramayana covers an astonishing amount of ground, literally and metaphorically. Her documentary research is meticulous and wide ranging, her physical journeys and empirical investigations equally so.

The two authors of this book have over the years developed a type of book-making for themselves. The idea is to pick up some subject of recent history which is full of incident and drama, visit the site, read up as much as you can…

Biography, according to Lytton Strachey, is ‘the most delicate and humane of all the branches of the art of writing’. It is also a difficult art particularly when the story told is that of Jawaharlal Nehru, a man who strode the world like ‘a gentle colossus’ until very recently…

Ideally a Reader is intended to showcase a selection of iconic essays which have contributed directly to the configuration of a particular thematic. This is not easy when the subject at hand is as broad as a cultural history of early modern South Asia and especially so at a time when the idea of cultural history itself has gone through several modifications and mutations.

Defining a region, particularly South Asia, is a difficult academic exercise. South Asia shares a common geographical space, though given that regional trade constitutes just about 5 per cent of the total trade flows the intensity of interaction can be questioned.

Despite the significant achievements in poverty reduction made by the South Asian countries, the region remains home to over 40 per cent of the developing world’s total poor. More than 570 million people survive on less than US$1.25 a day and over 60 per cent live without adequate sanitation. To compound the challenges of population growth and poverty, environmental degradation and climate change, South Asia has also been exposed to increased frequency of natural disasters, which is undermining the sub-region’s economic performance. With a rising interest in the role of public policy and the role of the state in the developmental process, Development and Welfare Policy in South Asia is a welcome addition to the development studies literature.

British Army General J.F.C. Fuller, architect of the great tank battle at Cambrai, described the cities as impregnable in conventional wars. Tanks could never enter the narrow streets of the built up areas and should they succeed and move deep, it was easy to cut their supply line by the defending forces.

Unresolved territorial disputes with neighbours have been a major part of India’s life since Independence. Nearly seventy years after the great Partition and many wars, India is struggling to find a solution to the Kashmir question with Pakistan. Although Delhi took a big step towards cleaning up the boundary with Bangladesh in 2011 it is finding it hard to get it approved in the Parliament.

The ‘Eelam War IV’ that came to an end in May 2009, claimed thousands of lives: over 20,000 civilians perished, and about 6500 troops and 15,000 Tigers killed. This does not include thousands of injured in all the three categories.

As clearly expressed in the introduction, Tibet: An Unfinished Story attempts to present the ‘story of two Tibets: one the Tibet of discovery and aspiration; and the other, a Tibet buffeted by powerful Cold War currents and treachery denied the independence gained by others’ (p. 3). Undoubtedly, the authors, Lezlee Brown Halper and Stefan Halper have done an excellent job as far as the presentation of the two stories are concerned.

Reviews of books about an adversary army can sometimes be misleading and biased. Strongly resisting that temptation I read Christine Fair’s 347 page long book with increasing fascination and also discussed it once in a session at CLAWS with Christine Fair herself in the panel of speakers.