Even though there has been a slight slump in the flow of American visitors to China in recent months, the travel accounts of the period of the ‘China Rush’ from 1971 till 1973 continue to pour out. One type of account coming from the American radicals of the anti-war campaigns seems to show their radical utopia emerging in China…
A relatively late arrival in the sphere of applied economics, the new branch of urban economics has grown at a phenomenal rate—at least in terms of the volume of literature. But unfortunately not many among the growing number of new volumes on urban economics have much to say…
Books on the fine arts are few in Kannada, and most of these offer a few general remarks on the growth of these arts in India—such as that the arts have been wedded to religion in this country for centuries—and then proceed to introduce the different schools of a particular art. Dr. Karanth’s…
Hungarian by birth, Charles Louis Fabri (18991968) became in later life as much an Indian as an Indologist. He was a member of Aurel Stein’s archaeological expedition into the heartland of Asia in the thirties, taught at Santiniketan, was curator of the Lahore Museum, and spent the last two decades of his life in Delhi…
Doctoral dissertations, especially in our time, have a strange habit of finding their way into print. Most of these do not seem to have serious academic value; many of them are not read anyway and are really the products of extra-academic compulsions (one of which is the famous, no longer transatlantic ‘publish or perish’)…
1976
Richard Adams writes a memorable story of redemption through suffering, in his intensely moving Shardik. Readers who are acquainted with Watership Down will find Richard Adam’s second book quite unlike his first in theme and content. Yet equally arresting. The style of writing, the scale…
This book should dispel the apprehension—which is there in the minds of many in the country—that the message of the International Women’s Year and the revival of the movement for development of women, might disrupt our way of life. It reveals the basic fact that even English educated upper middle class urban women…
Andre Gunder Frank’s book which was written at the very beginning of the ascent of the ‘Dependence theory’ is a difficult book to read and to review. It does not make for easy reading partly because the draft which was prepared in 1963, was published almost without change after a lapse of several years…
In any study of developing societies and particularly when efforts are made to analyse the process of transition from traditional patterns to those of modernity, it is inevitable to blur the line between different institutional structures—both traditional and secular. It is very difficult to separate religion from politics…
1974
For outright complexity and inconstancy, the politics and rivalries of the Middle East have few equals. They affect extra-regional and global developments. The diplomatic conse-quences of post-1945 decolonization in the Arab world, the deepening involvement of the superpowers in the area and in the succession…
The book under review is intended to be ‘a general descriptive and explanatory history of British colonialism since the middle of the nineteenth century’. The study is not based on any original research, being an attempt to synthesize all existing historical material of which, in purely quantitative terms…
Edgar Allan Poe declared that the definitive characteristic of the short story was its unity of effect and said that the short story writer, ‘if wise, has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents, but having conceived, with deliberate care a certain unique or single effect…
It is noble to think of utopia and nobler still to believe that it can be realized. The authors of the above works have chalked out—with conviction and imagination that at times verges on fancy—the future world orders which would permit the realization of four central…
Contradiction and Change by Anand Chakravarti is the outcome of intensive field work in Devisar, a multi-caste village in Rajasthan. The book is of interest to the serious student of sociology. This is not a light book to be pursued by those who are interested in getting a glimpse of the process of the changing patterns of Indian society…
It is good to see that at long last imaginative books are being written on otherwise dull subjects. As the name suggests, Kuriyan’s book is indeed a very good general survey of India. The purpose of this little book is to provide, in a consolidated manner, a comprehensive picture of India…
Autobiographies by Indians have one unique quality—their pedestrianism. An exception was Jawaharlal Nehru’s Autobiography and now we have another, Chari’s.Starting from his schooldays in Secunderabad to the peak of his career as a senior advocate in the Supreme Court he describes his life in a racy style…
I do not think of society as being bad, or as capable of being bettered. I con¬sider it absurd.-Garine in Les ConquerantsWe know that we have not chosen to be born, that we will not choose to die. That we can do nothing against time…
Dr. Mahadevan’s translation and selection is a most useful reference work and reading the excerpts from the Minor Upanisads is fascinating. He has given short explanations with certain passages from nearly all the 108 Upanisads but, though the front-cover blurb claims these are ‘easy-to-read translations’, it is difficult to agree…
Though not a particularly scholarly work, John Pemble’s book explores new arenas in the fashionable subject of the 1857 uprising. The first part of the book, entitled the ‘City’, is an eminently readable depiction of the Court life of Lucknow, with interesting observations on the emergence and themes of Urdu poetry that flourished in the Court of Oudh.
The Second World War is a great divide in the history of 20th century Britain. It marks the transition of Britain as a world power to a period of post-imperial identity crisis. The 30 years since the war were difficult years of adjustment. A major protagonist was reduced to the role of a participant in the Greek chorus of nations.