Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Anita Agnihotri’s collection of short sto­ries leaves one with a melancholic feel ing: something that occurs to every thinking individual while reading daily news­papers, but she chooses to ignore.

Dipannita Dutta’s book Ashapurna Devi and Feminist Consciousness in Bengal: A Bio-Critical Reading comes at a time when debates concerning possible trajectories of feminist politics and activism in India have critically intensified.

The historical is not defined by the past; both the historical and the past are defined as themes of which one can speak. The historical is forever absent from its very presence. This means that it disappears behind its manifestations; its appari­tion is always superficial and equivocal; its ori­gin, its principle, always elsewhere.

The book provides interesting insights into key developments that have in­formed and configured the Indian news media in recent times.

Since the advent of television in India the number of licensed television sets in India grew from 55 in 1964 to a lakh in 1975 and to just over two million connections in 1982; in 1991 a total of thirty-four million families owned television sets, growing to 65% of the Indian popula­tion owning television sets by 2014—the so­cietal and political landscape has transformed quite dramatically.

In the age of digital photography where more and more images are being taken to be stored in the hard drives of com­puters a certain fascination with photogra­phy of the distant past has resurfaced.

Chapter 4, on page 99 of Zitzewitz’s book The Art of Secularism begins with a quote by painter Gulam­mohammed Sheikh where he says, ‘in one sense it is the communal situation that opened doors to understand the role of reli­gion in life.

History always offers rich pickings and an edited volume of rigorous his­torical research seldom disappoints. Shifting Ground: People, Animals and Mobil­ity in India’s Environmental History is an ex­cellent example and one thing can certainly be said about it—that even though a little unevenly, it shifts ground very effectively.

This is a collection of forty-nine ar­ticles, transcripts of speeches and lec­tures by a former diplomat divided into seven sections of seven pieces each; seven to represent the sapta-chiranjeevi or seven im­mortal beings in the Hindu pantheon; each section carries a helpful subtitle, Hanuman as the first Indian diplomat to be sent abroad, Vibheeshana who stands for righteousness and so on.

The Indo-US relationship assumes im­portance in a multipolar world with shifting alliances—new partnerships are being formed, some are being renewed and others are breaking up. The US and In­dia have never been as aligned as they are today.

Given the plethora of debates that have come up in the last few years on the stability of Pakistan, Paki­stan: Making The Economy Move Forward, makes an attempt to address this key stabil­ity-instability paradox, by critically examin­ing the strengths and faultlines of Pakistan’s economy.