Odisha and Odiya language faced a crisis in the second half of the nineteenth century. Institutions and dispositions introduced by colonial modernity had produced a crisis of survival and autonomy before the Odiya speaking gentry. The new system of education, style of governance, use of technology, maritime trade, new revenue regulations, modern science and healthcare practices, and even food and other articles of consumption and new forms of entertainment, had unsettled a traditional social order. The Odiya literati responded to this crisis in several ways.
There are certain books that never lose their charm and value despite the passage of time. It is mainly because of the intellectual stimulation their contents give us and the variety of academic debates they initiate. One of such works is Essays in Medieval Indian Economic History edited by Satish Chandra. This volume being a collection of representative articles taken out of the Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (1935–1986) and originally published in 1987 as a part of the Golden Jubilee Celebrations of the Indian History Congress,
The volume under review is a compilation of much that has been published as research papers on Indian education since 2000. They have a very contemporary location in terms of the importance of ideas being discussed, and also the academic relevance of what has been included. Although put together as a reading in the disciplines of Sociology and Social Anthropology, much of the discussion in the introduction as well as in a variety of papers transcends disciplinary boundaries, and poses therefore the challenge of what the integrating framework should be like.
Khwaja Ahmed Abbas donned many hats in his lifetime which includes writing poetry, short stories, novels and making films. For the uninitiated, K.A. Abbas was an active member of PWA and one of the founding members of IPTA. With the corpus of 74 books, 40 films, 89 short stories and 3,000 or so from his column writings, Abbas Sahab’s writings constitute a treasure-trove of information on the evolution of the idea of India. At the time of writing one of his last columns for the Blitz, Abbas Sahab makes an important observation about the then budding journalist P. Sainath—the proof of his astute reading of the media in general and politics in particular.
Shafey Kidwai’s book is true to its title and it delivers what it promises. The chapters in this book may have been written over a long period of time but probably the book was waiting for a time when the distinction between literature and nonliterature (read journalism) is not so sharp. A different context would make earlier journalistic writings appear as literature. How do we read the essays of Addison, Matthew Arnold or Sir Syed Ahmad Khan today if not as literature? The two components of the book, literature and journalism, are defined by their textuality, a major point of debate in critical theory today.
The Gypsy in the World of Ideas by Rajen Harshe is a successful attempt at addressing the issues of Indian society, politics, intellectual history and institutions through the perspective that developed consequent upon Harshe’s longstanding experiences as an academician and institution builder. We can find here idea and praxis mixed together creating thoughtful reading for the readers. Breaking the conventional formats it ardently depends on the use of metaphors and poetic symbols.
Let me introduce the book to the readers with an anecdote concerning the subject matter of the book. I joined as a medical undergraduate student at the Delhi’s University College of Medical Sciences (UCMS) in 1986, which by that time had shifted just adjacent to Shahdara in eastern Delhi, within the newly constructed campus of Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital (GTB). Having passed through the humdrum of Shahdara or other crowded and maddeningly chaotic localities of East Delhi to reach the GTB campus, its spacious locale and high rise buildings of the campus were bound to make an impression on any visitor.
This is a recent offering by Amartya Sen, who currently teaches economics and philosophy at Harvard University. He was earlier Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and is a Nobel prize winner.The book contains 13 essays, selected and organized by the editors of The Little Magazine, (TLM) who have resisted the urge to make them ‘contemporary’. They are presented in a chronological manner, covering the broad fields of culture, society and policy. An intimately warm, yet gently provocative, foreword by Gopalkrishna
Unforgotten is the product of Bianca Brijnath’s doctoral research at Monash University. It can be considered as a significant contribution to anthropological literature on ageing, dementia and its care in India. Though her research is limited to urban middle class (which she acknowledges as a limitation), it is truly revealing in terms of the confined participants and their lived experience with dementia and sevâ. Sevâ a concept which Brijnath explores in all its forms and layers as care work is shaped in everyday family life centred on cooking, feeding and eating; in doctor shopping and looking for an ilâj or cure; and bearing the attended expenses.
The picture on the cover of Sudhir Mahadevan’s book is a Bioscope; a techno-material ‘assemblage’ that he will argue is emblematic of film cultures in India. Writes Mahedevan: The Bioscope is the combination of the past and the present. It represents the key symbol of early cinema brushing against new and not so new media. It is the refashioning of an ‘optical device’ of still pictures predating the cinema in the 19th Century, into a source of moving images with the help of home viewing technology and digital formats.
As stated by Kapila Vatsyayan, Chairperson, IIC Asia Project in her Foreword, the book is the author’s ‘personal voyage or certainly a journey of exploring and identifying the many levels of communications between India and countries of South East Asia over a long period of history.’ The journey has been lucidly captured in the text that illustrates the large number of colour visuals in the book. Many of these have been sourced from museums in countries of South East Asia during the author’s long sojourns in the region.
This is a book by arguably one of the best historians of migration of today. It definitely lives up to the fact that it won the American Historical Association’s John F. Richards Prize in South Asian History. The work is of a high scholarly nature, yet it makes you want to read it like a novel reminding one of the narrative genius of the likes of Amitav Ghosh. It is a solid history of migrations around the Bay of Bengal but can be of interest to scholars of environment, geographers and cartographers, not to say to those who are interested in the region itself.
Meera Nanda’s new book continues with her mission to critically examine the interface of science, religion and Right Wing politics in India, which is a highly significant theme today with the growing trend of saffronization of knowledge production. While in her previous works such as Breaking the Spell of Dharma and Other Essays (2002), and Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism (2004), she explored the theme for largely an academic readership, the book addresses the general reader.
The work under review is a collection of essays written by one of the well known historians of the Delhi Sultanate, Mohammad Habib. There are eight essays in this collection that deal with the social and cultural transformations in the Sultanate period. Some of these essays have turned out to be quite controversial, and have generated exciting controversies among historians. The essays ‘Sultan Mahmud of Ghaznin’ and ‘Chishti Mystic Records of the Sultanate Period’ have, for instance, been endlessly debated among historians, and we have still not heard the last word on the controversies that surround them.
Connectivity between India and China has always been a difficult issue. Historically, though there was flow of ideas and goods between the two sides, these connections were lost over time. With the economic rise of both India and China the debate over the benefits which border trade and connectivity can provide for further development of the region has gained momentum. To encash this India and China started border trade at Nathu La in July 2006.
It is often a matter of surprise and disappointment that two countries, namely India and Japan, well-established and vibrant democracies which have no historical baggage of any dispute, and which on the other hand are bound by Asian cultural traditions and values, and the teachings of Buddhism, still do not find themselves having a substantive relationship. Actually there are considerable complementarities in the economic field; moreover, the two share a common security concern of the rising power of the neighbour.
Boundary lines between constituencies not only determine who controls parliament or a legislative assembly but their functioning as well. Fixing Electoral Boundaries in India is based on the central idea that drawing constituency boundaries has serious implications for both the practice of politics and the working of democracy. This book underscores the point that demarcating constituencies is not a routine ‘techno-bureaucratic’ exercise but involves ‘philosophical, legal, political, technical and practical’ considerations
This is a volume where the editors lend it gravitas because of their redoubtable scholarship. They are further assisted by twenty essays written mostly by scholars who would invariably be part of a volume like this either because of their previous works and association and thereby justify inclusion in a compendium like this. As the title goes, it provides a wide canvas for the essays to explore wide issues ranging from importance that should be given to history, to importance of poetry in today’s increasingly monosyllabic and geometric world.
Given the legacy of colonialism and the lack of transition that the South Asian states have made to frameworks for understanding alternative cartographic imaginations, nation-states, modernity, development and security issues both at the national and regional level, Niel De Votta’s edited work, An Introduction to South Asian Politics, is an important contribution towards laying out the broad contours and contemporary canvas of South Asian politics. It has been argued that fragile domestic structures in South Asia have largely been responsible for determining the national, regional and international politics of South Asia, and the idea of South Asia in the 21st century and beyond will continue to be governed by this important variable.
Critique is essential to the healthy existence of a society. From its inception as an independent nation to its functioning for more than seven decades there have been many critiques of the dominant ideas that shape Indian society and its daily life. One of the most pervasive ideologies that Indian society is inflicted with is the ‘mahatma-ness’ of Gandhi and the dazzling statesmanship of Nehru. It is normally perpetrated through the medium of text-books and other state apparatuses upon the people’s life. It is not the purpose of this review to argue that Gandhi and Nehru were not great men but to show and acknowledge the existence of an ideological apparatus that profits from maintaining the projection of the extraordinary greatness of these personalities.