William M. Paul

The notion of the state is central to political theorizing but ironically in Marxism. Both with the originators and its latter exponents, its account is sketchy. Hegel, who was the starting point for Marx for all his major concerns, worked out the details of a modern state by his distinction between the realm of state and the realm of civil society but Marx’s account is sketchy and reticent in working out the details of the modern state.


Reviewed by: Sushila Ramaswamy
Indrani Chatterjee

As I began to read Forgotten Friends: Monks, Marriages, and Memories of Northeast India a fresh bout of political mobilization demanding separate statehood had already spiralled up in Assam. These competing political claims had overlapping geographies and try to transcend the limits of modern political boundaries.


Reviewed by: Arupjyoti Saikia
Sanjay Srivastava

Can there be a more opportune time for an extensive discussion of sexualities in postcolonial India? Each and every day, it seems, we are confronted yet again by the systemic sexual violation of subaltern subjects, marked by one or more intersecting vectors of difference: caste, class, gender, sexual orientation.


Reviewed by: Anjali Arondekar
Assa Doron

Assa Doron, Director of the South Asia Research Institute at the Australian National University, and formerly tourist, tour guide, then anthropologist in Banaras, demonstrates in this book the different, difficult, complexly interwoven feats that the discipline of anthropology is capable of. The setting of the book is Banaras.


Reviewed by: Nita Kumar
Manoshi Bhattacharya

Manoshi Bhattacharya’s riveting book brings to the fore one of the most dramatic episodes in our freedom struggle, the Chittagong Armoury Raid. Bhattacharya’s book drawing upon an extensive array of sources skillfully depicts the circumstances which culminated in the attempted insurrection on 18, April, 1930.


Reviewed by: Sabyasachi Dasgupta