At over 600 pages, his book is comprehensive and deeply researched. It is built from extensive research into primary sources, including war diaries, personal letters and regimental records. These sources document the deployment of Indian infantrymen, artillery units, mule transport and logistic corps, and the hardships they endured on the Dardanelles Peninsula from April to December 1915
The author subjects this interpretive tradition to sustained critical scrutiny and ultimately dislodges it with compelling force. Drawing upon expansive and carefully curated archival corpus, he demonstrates that French imperial expansion was neither anomalous nor benign, but instead grounded in modalities of power and domination structurally analogous to those deployed by other European empires.
Today, nine years later, seeing the terrifying effects of Zionist zealotry unfold all across West Asia in real time, Jews with a conscience, whether in the US, Israel or Europe are asking themselves what constitutes morally defensible Jewish politics. What should their stance be, so as to not relentlessly weaponize either the long historical memory of anti-semitism or the relatively recent experience of the Holocaust? How should they stop their co-religionists from seeking to oppress and dominate supposed enemies, especially Muslims, whether in Palestine, Lebanon,
The areas explored in Sheher Mein Gaon sit atop deep and complicated sediments: the residues of older Delhis, the scars of 1857 and Partition, the afterlives of endowment, and the shifting meanings of heritage. Hauz Khas, in particular, poses a question the book might have confronted: why do the architectural remains of great learning complexes in much of the Muslim world continue to function as transregional centres of scholarship, while in India similar sites survive largely as aesthetic fragments, embedded in precarity and neglect? Delhi is full of structures that once organized knowledge, devotion, and public life.
Instead of seeking proportional representation based on identity, the Constitution seems to expect that elected MPs must act as ethical advocates for all citizens. This shifts the focus from who the representatives are to how they act, turning the protection of marginalized minorities into a collective moral obligation rather than mere numbers game. Representation, in this sense, is envisaged as an entirely secular act. The Constitution, nevertheless, is conscious of group rights.
Farida Parvin, an elderly lady, seems at ease looking into the camera perched delicately on the shore rocks, as the mighty ocean spreads behind her and a thin layer of black cloud cuts the frame horizontally. Our attention is drawn to the flower tucked in Farida’s henna-coloured hair that matches the colour of her saree. In the interview with Gadihoke, Khemka tells us that the flower was the subject’s last-minute choice. The last picture is of Shahnoor Khanum who, stands confidently with both her arms on her hips atop a small fishing boat parked on the dry shore right at the edge of the sea.