Nayantara Sahgal

As another addition to the spate of publications on Indira Gandhi and Emer­gency, this book does not provide any fresh insights into either the personality of the former Prime Minister or on the economic/political developments which led to centralization of the state in the form of Emergency…


Reviewed by: Achin Vanaik
Urmila Phadnis

In the last decade, studies on women have made an impact in the field of liter­ature and social sciences. Whether to become a ‘libber’ or be known as ‘Ms’ is a topic of active discussion in women’s forums the world over. The women’s liberation movement has highlighted the so-called weaker sex’s increasing…


Reviewed by: Malavika Karlekar
Brojendra Nath Banerjee

Foreign aid to India is a subject which has attracted good deal of scholar­ly attention. Its topicality, too, has seen many revivals, the latest occasion being Carter’s visit to India early this year. Surprisingly, the works available so far have failed to present an in-depth analysis on the subject, verging…


Reviewed by: Ashutosh Varshney
Meenakshi Mukerjee

English has an uneasy existence in India, for we in India are not at home with it in spite of the Times Literary Supplement’s consistent advocacy of the recognition of Indian English. In India it is nobody’s language unless you would like to consider it the language of Anglo-­Indians (Eurasians), but their number is small…


Reviewed by: J.P. Guha
Indira Parthasarathy

A Tamil proverb says that a half-nosed  person is the king among  noseless persons, This proverb can be applied with precision in the modern Tamil literary sphere where anything vaguely resembling political writing and every­thing that is made to seem revolutionary is hailed. The mere mention of a wor­ker, revolution…


Reviewed by: C.S. Lakshmi
Vishwajyoti Ghosh

History, notoriously, is not about the past.-Amitav Ghosh in The Man Behind the MosqueVishwajyoti’s Ghosh’s Delhi Calm reminds one of the daily calm that is being witnessed along with the daily alarm of scams, jams, inflation and general deflation of spirits. The phrase ‘India shining’ was the buzzword a few years back…


Reviewed by: Amit Ranjan