Isabel Huacuja Alonso

Members of the Ajnabi Radio Shrota Sangha (Strangers’ Radio Club) in Bhagalpur, Bihar, regularly tuned into Radio Ceylon, broadcast from Colombo, Sri Lanka, to vote for their favourite songs on Binaca Geetmala, a subcontinental hit countdown show. The club was among 400 radio listeners’ groups that were voluntarily formed by Hindi film music fans in India, mid-1950s onwards, to collectively listen to and talk about the popular music that they ironically did not have access to via their national broadcaster, the All India Radio (AIR).


Reviewed by: Faiz Ullah
Michael Mann

In Gillian Tindall’s engaging book on Bombay, City of Gold (1982), she describes initial encounters with colonial buildings and her incredulous response: ‘Hallo! Fancy seeing you here?’. Indeed, colonial buildings may seem strange implants in the tropical landscape despite their historic presence for three centuries on Indian soil. Michael Mann argues for Calcutta that between 1770s and 1830s, the East India Company committed itself to a vision—that of building another Rome and set a trend.


Reviewed by: Partho Datta
Sudeshna Guha

History is an ever-evolving subject. Historians have, in recent times, attempted to study this subject through various novel ways. And understanding the human past through historical objects is one such technique which has become quite popular in recent times. Sudeshna Guha’s latest work A History of India through 75 Objects belongs to this category of history writing.


Reviewed by: Amol Saghar
Anupama Roy

Who belongs to the nation? And, how do we become members of a state? The responses to such questions are often contested. These contestations have led to violent conflicts, and therefore, citizenship laws were created to determine the membership to a political community. In Citizenship Regimes, Law, and Belonging: The CAA and the NRC, Anupama Roy examines the form and content of recent changes to citizenship regimes and laws in India by locating the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA 2019), the National Register of Citizens (NRC), and the Land Border Agreement (LBA 2015) in their historical, ideological, and political contexts.


Reviewed by: Swaha Swetambara Das
Paul Tucker

This book is about Geo-Economics (the intersection of economic and geo-political objectives) and self-confessedly examines issues from a Euro-centric, or even at times, from a narrower Anglo-American perspective. It examines what, from this perspective, is the central question which bedevils global policy today: ‘How can liberal democracies maintain their values even as they find themselves interdependent with powers whose traditions and attitudes stand at odds with their own?’


Reviewed by: TCA Ranganathan
Meenakshi Thapan

We live in a terribly violent world characterized by hyper-nationalism, militarism, war, reckless social Darwinism and massive environmental disaster.  Yet, even amid the all-pervading darkness, some of us continue to strive for the lamp of truth. Possibly, Meenakshi Thapan’s book seeks to remind us that we should not give up but try our best to illumine the new generation through a practice of education that radiates the spirit of love, peace, dialogue and the ethic of care.


Reviewed by: Avijit Pathak