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  • HOME
  • THE BOOK REVIEW
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    • FOUNDER TRUSTEES
    • THE JOURNAL
  • SUBSCRIPTIONS
    • PRINT & DIGITAL EDITION
  • PUBLICATIONS
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    • Table of Contents
    • Reviews
  • MEDIA & EVENTS
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Volume XXXIV No. 1 – JANUARY 2010

Parameters of a Philosophical Quest

Volume XXXIV No. 1 - JANUARY 2010By ThebookreviewindiaSeptember 19, 2017Leave a comment

The Difficulty of Being Good is as wonderful a title for a book as it is a philosophical statement that provides the parameter for a lifetime’s quest. The declaration, for it is such, boldly encapsulates theproblem that has compelled humankind for centuries. For me, it circumscribes the central problem of being, it is the very definition of the human condition.

Eternal Dimensions of An Enigma

Volume XXXIV No. 1 - JANUARY 2010By ThebookreviewindiaSeptember 19, 2017Leave a comment

Like manna from the skies or the well-timed appearance of an oasis to a thirsty wanderer in the desert comes this publication, heralding a critical moment in the study of Indian mythology.

Kerala’s Krishna Bhakti – the Classical and Vernacular

Volume XXXIV No. 1 - JANUARY 2010By ThebookreviewindiaSeptember 19, 2017Leave a comment

The first millennium bc saw the develop ment of the brahmanical traditions of ritual adherence to varnashrama-dharma and the ideology of renunciation. From about 500 bc there was a growth of sectarian worship of particular deities which resulted in devotional worship.

Refreshing Questions, Reassuring Answers

Volume XXXIV No. 1 - JANUARY 2010By ThebookreviewindiaSeptember 19, 2017Leave a comment

This collection of essays contains nine articles on different aspects of the archaeology and ancient history of the Indian subcontinent. Written by young scholars, they provide an indicator to the direction which Indian historiography, particularly in relation to the earlier periods, is taking in the twenty-first century.

A Dark World of Incest And Cultural Attitudes

Volume XXXIV No. 1 - JANUARY 2010By ThebookreviewindiaSeptember 19, 2017Leave a comment

Riven by Lust is a deceptively slim volume: the main text is a little over 200 pages. However, it encapsulates scholarship that is breathtaking in both its depth and range.

Evergreen Memories

Volume XXXIV No. 1 - JANUARY 2010By ThebookreviewindiaSeptember 19, 2017Leave a comment

Professor Meenakshi Mukherjee, who passed away recently, is to me more than a brilliant academic and critic.R.K. Narayan had analysed his own strengths: ‘I have roots in family and religion.’

Squared Away

Volume XXXIV No. 1 - JANUARY 2010By ThebookreviewindiaSeptember 19, 2017Leave a comment

Farrukh Dhondy’s delightful collection of linked short stories, Poona Company, was initially published in 1980 and has been reissued in the Harper Perennial Modern Classics series. Largely centered around a cast of characters that hangs around Sarbatwalla Chowk in Poona in the 1950s,

Tagore Text in Twenty-first Century Translation

Volume XXXIV No. 1 - JANUARY 2010By ThebookreviewindiaSeptember 19, 2017Leave a comment

One of Rabindranath Tagore’s widely discussed novels, Gora, is set in Kolkata some three decades prior to the date of its publication, 1904, and narrates the interactions, intimacies, incompatibilities and introspections within a community of Hindu and Brahmo educated elite of that period.

On a Rich Trail

Volume XXXIV No. 1 - JANUARY 2010By ThebookreviewindiaSeptember 19, 2017Leave a comment

What is the best way to write a biography of a reticent, reclusive, shy man? You get the others, more willing to speak, to speak. And in this, Kamini Mathai, the author has excelled.

Of Stars and Firmaments, Politics and Life

Volume XXXIV No. 1 - JANUARY 2010By ThebookreviewindiaSeptember 19, 2017Leave a comment

Here then is a short description of Telugu cinema: it is a cinema in the Telugu language made with borrowed plots, for ten crore speakers of the language, by an industry that makes politicians because it cannot make profits.’ This is how Srinivas concludes his book on the megastar Chiranjeevi.

A Lasting Legacy

Volume XXXIV No. 1 - JANUARY 2010By ThebookreviewindiaSeptember 19, 2017Leave a comment

The road much travelled by women who lived in the earlier part of the twentieth century was a road paved with an earnest search for meanings, an eager attempt to grasp the new worlds that education and independence opened up for them in its entirety and the consistent attempt to bridge the gap dividing the disparate spaces of their lived realities and the dreams of a new independent nation.

Criminalizing Sex Work Through Legal Debates

Volume XXXIV No. 1 - JANUARY 2010By ThebookreviewindiaSeptember 19, 2017Leave a comment

Codes of Misconduct tells us the story of how through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the colonial government in Bombay city passed a series of laws against prostitution. Many of these laws, strangely, were repetitive and seemed to cover the same ground over and over again.

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