Let me start with a confession of the envy that the book under review aroused in me. 2011 was the centenary year of Agyeya and many universities and literary academies across India held seminars, symposia and lectures to mark that occasion. None of them could produce a book documenting the deliberations that happened and here is a university in a far away land reaching out to us with a well edited volume containing the proceedings of a symposium held there to celebrate the cosmopolitan Agyeya. I had to fight with myself to overcome the reluctance to talk about this book as it might reveal the weakness and carelessness with which we pursue our task of intellection in Indian academic institutions, especially in the departments of Hindi. But that is a lamentation I must postpone for some other occasion. This collection of twelve papers and presentations on different aspects of Agyeya gives us a glimpse of the emerging scholarship on Agyeya and modern Hindi literature, especially in universities outside India.
July 2013, volume 37, No 7