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The picture on the cover of Sudhir Mahadevan’s book is a Bioscope; a techno-material ‘assemblage’ that he will argue is emblematic of film cultures in India. Writes Mahedevan: The Bioscope is the combination of the past and the present. It represents the key symbol of early cinema brushing against new and not so new media. It is the refashioning of an ‘optical device’ of still pictures predating the cinema in the 19th Century, into a source of moving images with the help of home viewing technology and digital formats.

As stated by Kapila Vatsyayan, Chairperson, IIC Asia Project in her Foreword, the book is the author’s ‘personal voyage or certainly a journey of exploring and identifying the many levels of communications between India and countries of South East Asia over a long period of history.’ The journey has been lucidly captured in the text that illustrates the large number of colour visuals in the book. Many of these have been sourced from museums in countries of South East Asia during the author’s long sojourns in the region.

This is a book by arguably one of the best historians of migration of today. It definitely lives up to the fact that it won the American Historical Association’s John F. Richards Prize in South Asian History. The work is of a high scholarly nature, yet it makes you want to read it like a novel reminding one of the narrative genius of the likes of Amitav Ghosh. It is a solid history of migrations around the Bay of Bengal but can be of interest to scholars of environment, geographers and cartographers, not to say to those who are interested in the region itself.

Meera Nanda’s new book continues with her mission to critically examine the interface of science, religion and Right Wing politics in India, which is a highly significant theme today with the growing trend of saffronization of knowledge production. While in her previous works such as Breaking the Spell of Dharma and Other Essays (2002), and Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism (2004), she explored the theme for largely an academic readership, the book addresses the general reader.

The work under review is a collection of essays written by one of the well known historians of the Delhi Sultanate, Mohammad Habib. There are eight essays in this collection that deal with the social and cultural transformations in the Sultanate period. Some of these essays have turned out to be quite controversial, and have generated exciting controversies among historians. The essays ‘Sultan Mahmud of Ghaznin’ and ‘Chishti Mystic Records of the Sultanate Period’ have, for instance, been endlessly debated among historians, and we have still not heard the last word on the controversies that surround them.

Connectivity between India and China has always been a difficult issue. Historically, though there was flow of ideas and goods between the two sides, these connections were lost over time. With the economic rise of both India and China the debate over the benefits which border trade and connectivity can provide for further development of the region has gained momentum. To encash this India and China started border trade at Nathu La in July 2006.