By Sunil Agnani

What attitude does one assume towards empire? The book under  review suggests in the very title that there is a proper way to hate it. This might also imply that the improper way of hating empire does not do the job well enough or does not go far enough. Among the multitude of arguments that this book deals with and in turn offers, the one that stands out with some degree of distinction is that the Enlightenment has ‘blackmailed’ individuals of especially the colonies by offering them the difficult alternative of either being on the side of progress and hence enlightenment; or contrary to this, putting them automatically on the side of all that is wrong with the colonized societies.


Reviewed by: Amir Ali
Edited by Marie-Francoise Boussac

The last three years have seen an outpouring of works on ports, Rila Mukherjee ed. Vanguards of Globalization: Port-Cities from the Classical to the Modern, Sara Keller and Michael Pearson eds. Port Towns of Gujarat and  Marie-Francoise Boussac, Jean-Francois Salles, Jean-Baptiste Yon eds. Ports of the Ancient Indian Ocean. Incidentally all three are Primus publications.


Reviewed by: Suchandra Ghosh

To a generation born around 1947, Independence Day was a beacon of hope, sparkling with excitement at the idea of building a modern nation-state, freed from the shackles of colonialism. The stalwarts of the National Movement had spent long years in prisons and had had the opportunity to reflect and hone clear-cut ideas about how the newly-independent India that is Bharat was to be shaped. Traumatized by the blows dealt by Partition, they were determined to build a secular, democratic Republic, governed by a Constitution which would ensure freedom, equality, justice and dignity for all; to hit at the roots of casteism, communalism, fissiparous tendencies and other divisive forces within the body politic. And so it began: on the midnight of August 14, 1947, ‘India awoke to life and freedom


Editorial

Seventy-five is an old age for a man but relatively young for a republic or state, even more so for our ancient nation. How has India’s foreign policy done since Independence in 1947?To answer that question, we must first establish metrics to measure success or failure. In India’s case that metric is obvious and simple: the extent to which we are able to transform the lives of Indian citizens so that they live in a prosperous, secure and modern state where every Indian has the opportunity to realize his potential. In other words, the transformation of India into what we want, not what we have.


Editorial

In this 75th year of the existence of India as an independent state, the month of May brought on a cruel heatwave. Indians are accustomed to the difficult life, and heat has been, for large swathes of the country, a permanent fixture on the list of cruelties. Yet, no matter what methods we have devised to stave it off, the experience simply worsens by the year because of human induced climate change, and all methods fail to give respite.


Editorial
Mausumi Kar, Jayita Mukhopadhyay, and Manisha Deb Sarkar

This book analyses the impact of climate change in South Asia and its environmental and socio-economic fallouts. It looks at climate change in the region from an interdisciplinary perspective and recommends some policy measures for addressing climate change. The title of the book is interesting and suggests how South Asia is the most vulnerable region of the world to climate change.


Reviewed by: Akriti Sharma