Swati Ganguly

In the period between 1850 and 1947, parallel to the slow expansion of a public education system set up by the colonial administration, the subcontinent witnessed several experiments in both school and higher education. Almost all of these experiments were in one way or another a response to the crises brought about by the colonial experience (including the colonial policies on education).


Reviewed by: Varadarajan Narayanan
Disha Nawani

All three published by Eklavya and edited by Disha Nawani, Nandini Manjrekar, Rashmi Paliwal, Ruchi Shevade.. All three books published by Eklavya and edited by Disha Nawani, Nandini Manjrekar, Rashmi Paliwal, Ruchi Shevade, Noam Chomsky. while speaking on ‘values for a new world’, identify three major problems of the world today


Reviewed by: Sharad Chandra Behar
Jandhyala B.G. Tilak

The book Education in India: Policy and Practice is a collection of papers/articles on education written in the journal Social Change over a period of five decades. It was published in 2021, when Social Change celebrated its Golden Jubilee.In his introduction to the series, Manoranjan Mohanty writes about the major social and economic changes and mass movements in India in the post-Independence period. Specific theme based issues of the journal have captured these developments.


Reviewed by: Sadhna Saxena
Urmila Chowdhury

Warriors come in many shapes and forms: artists, writers, humourists; a democracy needs them all, and Shovon Chowdhury is each of these. Today when the fourth pillar of democracy has all but crumbled, we need these truth sayers. The journalism fraternity lost a rare human being when he passed away in February 2020.


Reviewed by: Malati Mukherjee
Gayatri Sinha

The first of the two-volume opus that explores India’s ‘multifaceted journey of the photographic apparatus’ (Karode, p. 10) edited by art critic and curator Gayatri Sinha, Points of View: Defining Moments of Photography in India is a collection of 15 articles while its companion, The Archival Gaze: A Timeline of Photography in India, 1840-2020 charts out the historical terrain of photographic practice.


Reviewed by: Malavika Karlekar
Amit Ambalal

In his seminal essay, ‘Ornament’, published in the Art Bulletin (1939), AK Coomaraswamy had analysed the meaning, function, and symbolism of ornament, adornment, or embellishment in Indian artistic traditions. Towards this, he interpreted evidence from a range of textual sources—the Vedas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, epics, Pali Buddhist canon, Jatakas, and the Alamkara Shastras—developing upon J Gonda’s earlier research on the terminological and semantic implications of the term alamkara (ornament/adornment).


Reviewed by: Parul Pandya Dhar