How does anything happen? The question seems simple enough, but its answer, once you have side-stepped the philosophical minefield of whether causes exist at all, can take you into diverse intellectual domains:
The Partition of British India in 1947 into the new nations of India and Pakistan, and the transformation of East Pakistan into the Republic of Bangladesh, in 1971, were events characterized by violence, displacement, and multiple alienations.
The books under review are two additions to the long and distinguished line of books that have puzzled over the improbable success of democracy in India. Sumantra Bose starts off by recalling Seymour Martin Lipset’s view that ‘the more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy’.
The main argument of this comprehensive volume of nuclear weapon activity in Asia is that it is only here that there is the fear of renewed and widespread nuclear proliferation. The era of bipolar competition is looked back upon with nostalgia as an era when the two superpowers fully realized the dangers of nuclear weapons and strove to keep them safe…
India is perhaps the best place to be a vegetarian. Unless you want one, your options while dining in or out are never restricted to a bowl of steamed vegetables.
The poetry of this collection of poems is the poetry of the glide. It is poetry that results from the choreographed re-focussings of the main thought into the body of the poem.