Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Happily, over the last few years there has been a boom in English translations of Indian language literatures. Among other publishers, HarperCollins India has been bringing out interesting books from different regions of India, focusing on contemporary fiction in various Indian languages.  Chronicles of the Lost Daughters, a translation of Debarati Mukhopadhyay’s Bengali novel Narach, is part of this exciting exercise. In the hands of Arunava Sinha, one of our best translators, this critique of 19th century Bengal comes alive in English as a gripping, engrossing text.

The Prism of Life is a collection of poems in English by Ivy Imogene Hansdak, published by Writers’ Workshop in 2022. Having completed her higher education from Jawaharlal Nehru University, she currently teaches English in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. In the poetry collection under review, the poet reflects upon the various shades of life and in doing so, aims to connect with the readers, which is evident in the beginning where she dedicates the book to ‘all those who have walked like me through the many shades of life’.

Shilpa Gupta’s sound installation, For, in Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit, is a result of years long research on persecuted poets across time and geographies. It was first shown in 2018 at the Edinburgh Art Festival and Yarat Contemporary Art Space. There are over a hundred microphones suspended from the ceiling and an audio loop of snippets of poems is played; the book is a result of that powerful endeavour undertaken a few years ago.

That the faculty of taste is fundamental to meaning making practices is now a commonplace idea. For instance, some food items make us salivate in desire, the consumption of which brings pleasure. On the other hand, we turn away from food that disgusts us, often refusing to ingest it. However, desire and disgust are only some of the feelings that arise upon an engagement with food.

In The Ayurvedic Kitchen, Sonal Chowdhary and Dr Asghar discuss how Ayurveda approaches food, rather well-being. They emphasize the practical aspects by giving actual recipes. Our ancients looked at systems holistically and approached problems with combination solutions, not single molecules to target a single issue.The book builds up these concepts: the need to recognize the body type of each individual—is it the prakriti vata, pitta, kapha, or a combination?

Shivaji’s Maratha Swarajya is in peril—with the Mughals closing in, his empty coffers mean that his loyal army hasn’t been paid in months. If Swarajya must be saved, there is only one way out and that is to somehow get a lot of money, and soon. So, Shivaji’s guptachars plot an audacious attack on the city of riches—Sura—where bania, Mughal, British and other traders all have amassed hoards of money, gems and other valuables.

Why had no one ever thought of writing a storybook about India’s freedom struggle from a child’s perspective, or why had I not come across one before this?  These questions sprang to my mind as soon as I started reading The Chowpatty Cooking Club. The book is a story of how three children are fired up by the events taking place around them and jump in to do their bit in the fight for India’s freedom.

Hind Swaraj is one of those key texts published in the twentieth century, which on the one hand, were denounced by many critics, and on the other hand, attracted many scholars and activists, who have been working for an alternative model of modernism. The book was criticized by many scholars, including the first Prime Minister of India due to its so-called ‘outdated’ ideas. However, in this book, Gandhi critically evaluates modern civilization and technologies related to it and questions the modern conception of religion, nationalism, and the prevalent violence-based method to counter the unjust and exploitative system.

The book under review, written in Hindi, is a compilation of research papers that were presented as part of a two-day national seminar held to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi at the M.P. Institute of Social Science Research. Titled, ‘Mahatma Gandhi: 21vi Sadi ka Bharatiya evam Vaishvik Pariprekshya’, the seminar was held in Ujjain. There are twenty essays in this book written by various Gandhi scholars. Each article focuses on a particular facet related to Gandhi and his world view.

China’s unprecedented rise has forced the world to restudy and refocus on the major factors behind this development. The Deng Xiaoping era is considered to be the time when China moved out of the trap of a low-income agrarian society to becoming the factory of the world and the second largest economy. The reform and opening up announced by Deng in late 1978 gave China the direction which it needed to gain momentum.

Both the authors need no introduction to the public attentive to strategic matters. Between them, they have fifty years of engagement with strategic affairs. Both have past publications that place them in good standing as readers appraise whether they should pick up their latest wares. While Joshi’s landmark book was on Kashmir—The Lost Rebellion—in the nineties, Sawhney’s co-authored one—The War Unfinished—was on the India-Pakistan crisis of early this century.

Jayita Sarkar’s book traces the origins and development of India’s nuclear weapons programme in the context of overlapping narratives of postcolonial modernity, developmentalism and geopolitics. Sarkar achieves this explanation by way of highlighting the technopolitics binding developmentalism and national security in the vision of its technopolitical elite which conceived and ran India’s nuclear programme.

First published in 2013 from the University of Chicago Press, this book is one of the most important interventions into comprehending Bihar, an eastern Indian province. With reference to post-1947 Bihar, among the western scholars, Francine R Frankel’s essay (1989), many long essays of Harry W Blair, and Paul Brass, too, in his book, Language, Religion and Politics in North India, and also his essay, ‘Political Uses of Crisis: The Famine of 1966-67’ (Asian Survey, 1986)

Stateless were we branded and stigmatized…as outcaste vagabonds at the bottom we remain, with shattered and bleeding hearts we leave, like dumbed cattle benumbed we go (p. 247). The apathy and difficulties in the lives of refugees and stateless people are innumerable, and there will never be enough words to describe their predicament’s severity adequately.

With the establishment of a new dominant party in India since 2014 and its re-election with a thumping majority in 2019, a new political era has been identified with the BJP being called a ‘system defining party’. A lot has been written about the changing political climate of the country with the Bhartiya Janata Party as the dominant party in order to analyse the reasons for the BJP wave sweeping across the nation.

The issue of gender in India is a complicated one—a society that is marked by a dividual sense of individuality—the ‘woman’ may find herself diluted in the various roles and versions that threaten to drown her and her voice, and surely even her desire. The struggle for being acceptable, needed, and valued may be so intense that it is seen to be bargained for one’s own sense of self. It is going to be difficult to review a feminist writing without bringing in all the other authors who have so prolifically written on the subject, but I am going to stick to the book at hand.

In the year of the historic moon-landing, American children were gifted with the educational programme on television named Sesame Street. It revolutionized children’s television in the US and soon became one of the brands of ‘American Values’ in the polarized world. The affectionate muppets in the show were symbols of love, tolerance and cooperation; but above all, they were believed to have inculcated the spirit of individuals’ freedom and dignity amongst school children.

Mention ‘Dr Zhivago’ and people will recall the 1965 blockbuster movie, not Pasternak’s novel published in 1958. Not surprising, because the movie focuses on the emotive love story. The book, on the other hand, reveals the complexity of the events of that tumultuous period in Russia’s history (from 1905 to the Second World War) and their influence on human relationships.

Autobiography is a genre of literature where an individual narrates his/her own life to others through the act of writing. Generally, this is done by the privileged to display their inherent superiority and worthiness to other members, less worthy. Even when personalities from minority or disadvantaged groups are recognized, the standards of evaluating the life of these individuals might be reinforcing the dominant group’s evaluative criteria. 

Dr Sharda Kabir, better known as Savita Ambedkar, was Dr. BR Ambedkar’s second wife. There exist conflicting narratives among various circles of the Dalit public sphere, which is deeply suspicious of Mai Saheb’s (as she was fondly addressed) role in Babasheb’s life and more so in his death. I remembered an anecdote while reading this extremely engaging book under review.