By Deepti Misri

What does it mean to say that the history of postcolonial India has been a history of violence? Given the daily barrage of reports on the escalating violence in India, such a claim may seem alarmingly familiar, even eerily ordinary. Can there be a more opportune time for an extensive discussion of sexuality, gender and violence in postcolonial India? Each and every day, it seems, we are confronted yet again by the systemic violation of subaltern subjects, marked by one or more intersecting vectors of difference: caste, class, gender, sexual orientation, to name a select few. On the one hand, recent events have ignited a much-needed robust and public conversation on gender, sexuality and cultural practices within India. The relationship between organized feminism,


Reviewed by: Anjali Arondekar

Arecurring question while I was choosing the books for this special issue on gender was: does one pick up books that analyse social formations and institutions, cultural meanings and practices, economy and polity, using gender as an analytical category or those which use ‘woman’ as a synonym for gender, attempting to alter, add, re-define existing knowledge and make a critical statement about the prevailing structural inequality? The collection before you (and part of the August issue since all the reviews could not be accommodated in this volume) reflects the eclectic and fraught terrain of variegated perspectives, methodologies and sources. Another consideration was to include books that are in close conversation with feminist ideas and share the commitment of feminist praxis, which may (not) analyse gender relations in a conventional sense but expand the scope to think about critical events, governance, performance, arts, literature, high politics, etc.


Reviewed by: Geeta Thatra
By Dipavali Sen

Till about the dawn of the twentieth century, Chanakya’s Arthashastra and his other works had remained in oblivion for modern scholars. The singular credit for the discovery of this 2500 year old manuscript on statecraft and political economy goes to Dr Rudrapatnam Shamashastry of Mysore, who not only unearthed the text but heralded a new era in Indian administration and statecraft. At the same time he also helped refresh the western minds that Indian thought was not entirely geared to discovering the ‘other-worldly’ merits.


Reviewed by: Malabika Majumdar
By Debotri Dhar

The book cannot be categorized as belonging to a particular genre as far as its story line is concerned. Undoubtedly a fiction, the reader is left wondering if the protagonist was actually a ‘real person’ who did not wish to reveal her identity, and yet wanted the world to know about her life and the people linked with her—their experiences, their mindsets, and their thinking that most of the time directed their actions. What comes across is a level of honesty that existed in the primary players and an acceptance of human failings—if one may call it that—of their loved ones.


Reviewed by: Kirti Narain
By Anjum Hasan

Qayenaat, the heroine of The Cosmopolitans, has been married once, doesn’t like to cook, has a friend called Sathi who’s actually her ex-boyfriend, but hasn’t quite gotten over her, and is fiftythree years old.The novel opens with the arrival of Baban Reddy on the Bangalore art scene. On display at ‘Navya’, the new art gallery is Baban’s gigantic piece of art Nostalgia. So big is Nostalgia that you have to climb up a ladder to inspect it closely! The art lovers of Bangalore are agog with the news and vying with each other to catch the attention of the artist Baban, who has a lady-friend accompanying him called Tanya.


Reviewed by: THE COSMOPOLITANS
By Barkha Dutt

I must admit to having agreed to review this book by the celebrated Barkha Dutt after a spectacular launch spearheaded by Dutt herself through her pivotal position in NDTV, with a degree of trepidation. Yet the opening chapters and my discovery of Barkha being the daughter of that Amazon among free India’s young journalists of the time, Prabha Dutt, much admired by her contemporaries, who, like her, quested to break new ground in a brave new world, allayed these apprehensions. Through her own words Dutt comes across as a demonstrable example of what free India has made of the new woman: emancipated, independent, free thinking, not only ready but keen to challenge accepted wisdom and go where few Indian women have gone before.


Reviewed by: Wajahat Habibullah