To use a cliche, something Pothan Joseph abhorred, he was an institution by himself. Among the ‘greats’ of Indian journalism, during a period when giants abounded in the Indian press unlike at present, Joseph was as much admired and loved for his personal qualities as he was respected for his writing skill…
Very few political leaders in the world, not to talk about a woman, have attained such iconic stature, fame and received so many laurels as the symbol of democracy and freedom as that of Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, who has made enormous sacrifices, including her own family life and spent her best years in captivity…
Partho Datta’s book turns out to be a particularly instructive read in a city struck by an epidemic of dengue and viral fevers in an August of disappeared monsoons, the spread of the vector and virus linked in no small degree to civic mismanagement and lapses in public health administration…
The Rebellion of 1857 has elicited a relentless flow of academic and popular responses, scholarly as well as polemical works, though unarguably, the fiftieth (1907), hundredth (1957) and hundred and fiftieth anniversaries (2007) have generated exemplary interventions on the nature, internal contradictions as well as inhering diversities of 1857.
At a time when it has become fashionable in some academic circles to champion the cause of empire as a guarantee of global stability, at a time when Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s influential Empire seeks to make colonialism respectable by advocating the notion of a ‘centreless Empire’, at a time when we are being told by apologists such as Niall Ferguson that imperialism has been a benign historical force, Partha Chatterjee’s important book, Black Hole of Empire, reminds us that empire is ultimately about lies, deceit and violence…
Professor Misra’s book, Quest for an International Order in the Indian Ocean is a well structured analysis of the politico-strategic significance of the Indian Ocean, the interests of the big powers and the response of the littorals…