Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

This book is a monograph on the architecture of Centre for Development Studies designed by architect Laurie Baker. The Centre for Development Studies is regarded as a masterpiece of Laurie Baker and this book offers a documentation of the project. The project is compiled in the book in the
form of many photographs and drawings of various buildings of CDS.

Cultural contacts between India and Southeast Asia were effectively broken with the coming of colonialism to Asia. British, French and Dutch colonial ambitions divided up Southeast Asia and the administration of their areas was kept entirely separate.

The glory of the British empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth century was often associated with the phrase ‘The sun never sets on the British empire’. It was a statement of pride and celebration and the book under review by leaving the second half of the phrase has raised questions about historical continuities and contemporary relations of global power.

Peter Robb’s third book drawn from the diaries of one Richard Blechynden (1759–1822)—architect, surveyor, and civil engineer, who moved permanently to Calcutta in 1791—focuses on the ‘special meaning and function’ of friendship among Europeans, and between Europeans and Indians in early colonial Calcutta.

Modern Times is the first of a promised two part work in which Professor Sarkar sets out to review the current state of 19th and 20th century Indian historiography, and to add to his own already remarkable oeuvre.

In 1674, Mahamat Prannath (1618–1694 CE) and his followers sought to find an audience with the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb (1619–1707) in the imperial capital of Delhi.

This monumental work, I gather, is an adaptation from the American edition of 2011 and not having consulted the original, I was naturally left wondering just how much the author ‘adapted’ with a South Asian readership in mind. It was, however, quite obvious to me that the present work represents the cumulative insight and expertise that Hiltebeitel has acquired over the years, particularly in relation to the study of the epics and dharma literature.

We are living in a present which is tense for many reasons. Identities are sought to be forged on the basis of particularly manufactured images of the past, in which aviation technology and plastic surgery and nuclear weapons go about almost in an existential abandon.

Women are often reminded rather patronizingly of their important role in shaping the world. This is of course a reference to their role as mothers of future citizens, warriors and leaders, of men who would go onto shape the world.

The book is an anthology of writings by women in Bengali, translated into English by various scholars and edited by, Ipshita Chanda and Jayeeta Bagchi.

Conjugality Unbound brings together an impressive range of scholarship that engages with the diverse implications and presuppositions of marriage as an institution and relationship in the Indian context, which is guided by social, cultural, economic, religious and legal parameters.

The medieval ages, however you mark its temporal coordinates, are a bright period in India’s history. My choice of the metaphor of ‘bright’ is deliberate, of course, because history textbooks, which make space for mostly dynastic and military details, make them appear dark.

The book’s title in itself is an indication of the approach of its contents to the fact of Nature not being confined to specified protected areas alone. It is to be found way beyond and the issue really is how the growth of human needs be reconciled within the given static natural space.

Emma Tarlo’s work is a nuanced, multilayered, complex and fascinating ethnography of the politics of being ‘visibly Muslim.’

Public Institutions remained at the centre of academic engagement with politics in India during the 50s and 60s.

In November 2014, twelve years and twenty-four extensions later, the Nanavati Commission of Enquiry submitted its final report on the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat.

An increasing sense of disillusionment and discontent have been markedly visible in the context of marginalized groups such as the Adivasis since the colonial period.

The Kashmir conflict continues to be one of the long pending issues be fore the United Nations. The people in this northern-most State of India have lived amidst chaos, confusion, trauma, turmoil and prolonged conflict.

Gender, Conflict, and Peace in Kashmir by Seema Shekhawat offers rich insights into a hitherto unaddressed dimension of the Kashmir conflict—namely, the role played by Kashmiri women in promoting and sustaining the violent separatist movement in the Valley in the 1980s and 1990s and how their participation influenced the trajectory of the militancy in Kashmir. The book is a valuable addition to the literature on women, violence, and peace in South Asia, and the author must be commended for the skill and sensitivity with which she has collected rich first-person narratives of women at the frontlines of political violence.

At a time when Sri Lanka is going through a political transition with the defeat of Mahinda Rajapaksa in the recently concluded national elections, it is important to revisit the unsettled agenda of political solution to the ethnic question in the island nation. It is time to realize that the ethnic polarization in Sri Lanka was due to systemic political exclusion and alienation ingrained in the Constitution.