Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

If the poor have to be schooled in struggles to reclaim their humanity, how can schooling help the privileged to reclaim theirs? The book under review, Classroom with a View: Notes from the Krishnamurti Schools seeks to provide a possible answer. The history of these schools spans nearly a century and we have a large corpus of literature on them.

In the period between 1850 and 1947, parallel to the slow expansion of a public education system set up by the colonial administration, the subcontinent witnessed several experiments in both school and higher education. Almost all of these experiments were in one way or another a response to the crises brought about by the colonial experience (including the colonial policies on education).

All three published by Eklavya and edited by Disha Nawani, Nandini Manjrekar, Rashmi Paliwal, Ruchi Shevade.. All three books published by Eklavya and edited by Disha Nawani, Nandini Manjrekar, Rashmi Paliwal, Ruchi Shevade, Noam Chomsky. while speaking on ‘values for a new world’, identify three major problems of the world today

The book Education in India: Policy and Practice is a collection of papers/articles on education written in the journal Social Change over a period of five decades. It was published in 2021, when Social Change celebrated its Golden Jubilee.In his introduction to the series, Manoranjan Mohanty writes about the major social and economic changes and mass movements in India in the post-Independence period. Specific theme based issues of the journal have captured these developments.

Warriors come in many shapes and forms: artists, writers, humourists; a democracy needs them all, and Shovon Chowdhury is each of these. Today when the fourth pillar of democracy has all but crumbled, we need these truth sayers. The journalism fraternity lost a rare human being when he passed away in February 2020.

The first of the two-volume opus that explores India’s ‘multifaceted journey of the photographic apparatus’ (Karode, p. 10) edited by art critic and curator Gayatri Sinha, Points of View: Defining Moments of Photography in India is a collection of 15 articles while its companion, The Archival Gaze: A Timeline of Photography in India, 1840-2020 charts out the historical terrain of photographic practice.

In his seminal essay, ‘Ornament’, published in the Art Bulletin (1939), AK Coomaraswamy had analysed the meaning, function, and symbolism of ornament, adornment, or embellishment in Indian artistic traditions. Towards this, he interpreted evidence from a range of textual sources—the Vedas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, epics, Pali Buddhist canon, Jatakas, and the Alamkara Shastras—developing upon J Gonda’s earlier research on the terminological and semantic implications of the term alamkara (ornament/adornment).

The enduring tradition of cricket literature regards the game as a quintessentially English—more precisely, Anglo-Saxon—institution. In this view, cricket encapsulates the values of an eternal England unsullied by the forces of modernity. This literary tradition was inaugurated in the early nineteenth century, at the very moment when industrialization was profoundly transforming the English landscape. Over time, the idea of cricket as a national sport centred in the countryside and devoid of class tensions became deeply entrenched.

The book under review is a collection of articles that presents a multi-dimensional view of the here and now of cinema in India with indications of what trajectories it might follow. The editors say in their introduction that they ‘invited researchers from a variety of disciplinary and critical perspectives to reflect on Indian cinema’s current place among other media-cultural forms, public institutions and what the forms’ possible futures might be’ (p. 3).

Trifles makes perfection, and perfection is no trifle’ goes a famous saying, often ascribed to Michelangelo. Bollywood films are far from perfect, but a ‘crazy trivia guide to Bollywood’ can be as mesmerizing as a blockbuster is to the countless addicts of Hindi commercial cinema.The pan-India appeal of films made in Bombay (should Bollywood be now renamed Mullywood in view of its changed name to Mumbai!) continues unabated despite challenges from the South.

One of the festivities that is held in great reverence is the Durga Puja. Though it is a five-day journey, Bengal, and Bengalis (across the globe) prepare for the festival throughout the year.The Making of Goddess Durga in Bengal: Art, Heritage and the Public is a collection of articles authored by various scholars is an ethnographic study, divided into four parts, of its colonial past and the artists involved. 

Suresh Menon’s collection of essays, Why don’t You Write Something I Might Read? is that rare book that leaps up at first glance with multiple hooks. To begin, is the poignant pull of Westland’s Context logo—from what used to be India’s oldest independent book house, felled for closure earlier this year, after its buyout by Amazon.

The book under review is indeed a very carefully curated anthology of essays that brings together the lesser known side of thinker, scholar and activist Chitta Ranjan Das. The volume is a collection of Das’s writings on a wide variety of subjects related to culture, politics, literature and life and thereby holds up the spectacular canvas of his extremely creative and life-affirming personality.

Where do stories come from? Where and how do they reach? How does the reader respond to the stories unknown, unheard and unwritten earlier? How do stories of the other become instrumental in understanding the interface between the self and the other? The twelve stories in Asprishya Ganga and Other Stories articulate the experience specific to identities such as community, class, occupation, region and language.

Pebble Monkey! What an enchanting title, you think. You open the novella to a quaint world–at 12,000 feet, on a snowy mountainous terrain, live ibexes. One ibex dislodges a pebble. The pebble is thrown up in the air, and when it falls it bounces into the tunnel. Soon afterwards, someone can be heard swimming in the water.

Radiant Fugitives by Nawaaz Ahmed is a lavish book, with a plethora of complex themes dealt with in a generous, benevolent way. The canvas is large. It straddles America and Chennai, misogyny and homophobia, Islam and Blackness in America, and a slice of time stretching from America’s attack on Iraq up to Obama’s victory in elections.

As the title itself suggests, childhood and memory are the two very important dramatis personae of this book. Deepa Agarwal is an accomplished writer of literature for children and young adults. It is this biozone that her reading and imagination have revealed and animated for her readers. And, when she uses this expertise to cross-pollinate her poetry, the result is as vibrant as a field of wildflowers in the bugyals of the Himalayas.

Written in lyrical prose, Sharanya Manivannan’s graphic novel, is a treat to read. It evokes emotions as does powerful poetry. The accompanying sketches by Manivannan recreate a magical world under water. Page colours include multiple shades of blue, red, and yellow, while doodles and writing are in white. The book explores stories and lore about merfolk.

…when, as a consequence of the growing age of human society, the swaddling cloth of its infancy starts oppressing its body, would it not be better at that time to create for it an extensive cloth of new ideas? Must we constrain its body such that it fits within its old limits?’—these words are a part of the introduction by the writer Yashpal for his seminal political novel that was considered a pioneer in the world of Hindi literature and was published in the early 1940s.

Life in an ‘edgy’ city is more a cause for dread than for wonder in our part of the world. The violent underside of ‘developing’ neo-colonial/globalizing urban spaces has had its share of steady gazes, for instance, Mumbai, Maximum City or even Calcutta: City of Joy. So, the immersive experience of Karachi that Samina Shackle offers us echoes and resonates with the subcontinental reader in a way that goes beyond exoticization of a culturally and economically distant land.