It is perhaps axiomatic that charismatic leadership absorbed in the projection of its charisma, is followed by nuts-and-bolts leadership. Of the latter, President Sadat of Egypt is an instructive example. His six years as Egypt’s Head of State have been a remarkably open account of involvement…
There is no clarification in the preface about the ‘experimental’ nature of this autobiography; there is instead a brief account of the unhappy circumstances in which this book came to be written. At the age of 60, says Mr. Abbas, it struck him at the instigation of a friend that he had led an interesting life…
One of the stock criticisms of the post-Independence I.C.S. is that it is totally devoid of unusual individuals. Uniqueness and occasional eccentricity, it has been said, vanished with the British.
Thakura Ghara, the Sahitya Akademi award winning book of 1976, is the fifth and the latest collection of short stories by the author. ‘God’s Apartment’ is the vantage point from which the author surveys the middle class world.
Mathura is a miracle in itself. In its imperial past, it was a scene of high civilization, a centre of attraction for far-flung peoples. It remains a magnet; scores of visitors continue to flock there, drawn now not by temporal glory but by the magic of the Krishna legend…
Few rulers have been so maligned and misrepresented as Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, who has generally been pictured as an ‘intolerant bigot’ or ‘the furious fanatic’—and consigned to the category of monsters. Generations of readers have accepted this view of the contemporary Englishman, writing with a sense of moral superiority over the so-called barbarian…