When the first volume of Dr. Sarvepalli Gapal’s life of Jawaharlal Nehru appeared three years ago, there was a definitional dispute on whether it was a biography or a history. The Sahitya Akademi settled it by citing the author and the book for one of its awards.
Banaras is enigmatic; ‘a city of stark contradictions’ that ‘elicits complicated feelings’ and never allows one the satis-faction of a rounded comprehension of its multilayered myriad mysteries. The city’s con-tradictions challenge one’s purse, prudence, and patience but Banaras still retains…
The volume under review can potentially serve as a ready reference for students, teachers, policy makers and researchers, both within the discipline and for those with an interdisciplinary approach. The brief write-ups on the contributions of the doyens of the dis-cipline in India…
It is often lamented, both in academic and popular discourse, that colonial rule had a deleterious effect on the indigenous handloom industry edging the hapless weaver, unable to withstand unfair competition with mill-made cloth, out of the market…
Children’s Book Trust, New Delhi, deserves all praise for its efforts to present a varied fare of folklore, biographies and stories for Indian children.
Despite its corny title taken, as Boo and her innumerable reviewers highlight, from an advertising hoarding, Behind the Beautiful Forevers combines fieldwork, ethnography, journalism, and literary flair to devastating effect.1 This effect is perhaps evi-dent in the largely laudatory reviews and more so in the density…