By David Arnold

David Arnold begins his book with an impressive but brief survey of historic references to poison in India’s past. Poisons were widely known in ancient India. For example, in several ancient Indian texts appears the legend of vishkanya or poison-maiden, a woman whose body had been impregnated with poison as she took incremental doses of poison. Any physical intimacy with her could be fatal. As Sushruta Samhita mentions, ‘if she touches you, her sweat can kill, if you make love to her, your penis drops off like a ripe fruit from its stalk’ (p. 18).


Reviewed by: Gagan Preet Singh
By Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay

Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay’s Historiography in the Modern World: Western and Indian Perspectives is a brilliantly compiled book, a re-view of the whole trajectory of historical thinking, sometimes based on primary sources and at times on secondary texts. Upadhyay’s book not only records history as an objective area of study, it also documents the history of historical methods. Unlike what the title suggests, the book is not only an exploration of the concept of historiography focusing on modern times, it also looks into the evolution of the concept from pre-modern to the modern times.  However, as the author suggests, one has to make a distinction between the past, history and historiography.


Reviewed by: Rajat Roy
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