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Boundary lines between constituencies not only determine who controls parliament or a legislative assembly but their functioning as well. Fixing Electoral Boundaries in India is based on the central idea that drawing constituency boundaries has serious implications for both the practice of politics and the working of democracy. This book underscores the point that demarcating constituencies is not a routine ‘techno-bureaucratic’ exercise but involves ‘philosophical, legal, political, technical and practical’ considerations

This is a volume where the editors lend it gravitas because of their redoubtable scholarship. They are further assisted by twenty essays written mostly by scholars who would invariably be part of a volume like this either because of their previous works and association and thereby justify inclusion in a compendium like this. As the title goes, it provides a wide canvas for the essays to explore wide issues ranging from importance that should be given to history, to importance of poetry in today’s increasingly monosyllabic and geometric world.

Given the legacy of colonialism and the lack of transition that the South Asian states have made to frameworks for understanding alternative cartographic imaginations, nation-states, modernity, development and security issues both at the national and regional level, Niel De Votta’s edited work, An Introduction to South Asian Politics, is an important contribution towards laying out the broad contours and contemporary canvas of South Asian politics. It has been argued that fragile domestic structures in South Asia have largely been responsible for determining the national, regional and international politics of South Asia, and the idea of South Asia in the 21st century and beyond will continue to be governed by this important variable.

Critique is essential to the healthy existence of a society. From its inception as an independent nation to its functioning for more than seven decades there have been many critiques of the dominant ideas that shape Indian society and its daily life. One of the most pervasive ideologies that Indian society is inflicted with is the ‘mahatma-ness’ of Gandhi and the dazzling statesmanship of Nehru. It is normally perpetrated through the medium of text-books and other state apparatuses upon the people’s life. It is not the purpose of this review to argue that Gandhi and Nehru were not great men but to show and acknowledge the existence of an ideological apparatus that profits from maintaining the projection of the extraordinary greatness of these personalities.

The book under review, an edited volume by Saitya Brata Das and Soumyabrata Choudhury, comprising fifteen articles divided into two sections, is one of the important epistemic interventions concerning violence and its metaphysics. Besides addressing aforesaid questions in different ways, the book surprisingly and illuminatingly underlines the question of violence or violence theory in those thinkers/philosophers (Rene Girard, Sigmund Freud, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Schelling, Deleuze, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Musil, Karl Marx and Walter Benjamin) who are otherwise known for their different impactful and consequential works. Identified realms of weight of violence are religion, language and politics.