Edited by Himanshu Prabha Ray

A second, and more ominous, outcome of colonization was its propensity to create and control the minds and histories of the colonized. The development of archaeology under state sponsorship in the 19th and 20th centuries and the monumentalizing of heritage played a significant role in this process by documenting and categorizing archaeological sites and monuments, creating thereby monolithic identities for Hindu and Buddhist monuments in India and Southeast Asia. However, a striking aspect of the recent archaeological data is the emphasis on local and regional diversity, whether in the context of Buddhism, the Hindu temple, or inscriptions.


Reviewed by: Rila Mukherjee
By Pascal Alan Nazareth

One of the ten Asia lectures, for instance, deals with ‘Fundamentals of Islam and Islamic Fundamentalism’. In fifteen pages, the author has masterfully summarized the contentious issues, contextualizing them against the currents of history with an unerring commitment to details.


Reviewed by: Amitabha Bhattacharya
By Zoya Hasan

Some readers are likely to be familiar with all the events painstakingly chronicled by the author. However, in an era of alarmingly low news consumption, this book performs an admirable function of effectively reminding and explaining to all readers why and how Indian democracy has been on trial over the past decade or so.


Reviewed by: Nalini Rajan
By Aharon Barak

Unfortunately, the book doesn’t explore how societies can reliably identify and appoint individuals who embody these judicial ideals. The appointment of judges is a crucial issue in many democracies—including India—and a more in-depth discussion on institutional mechanisms for judicial selection would have strengthened the work.


Reviewed by: Arunav Patnaik
Edited by Manoj Kumar Jena

Through her field study and narratives in bhajan ashrams and temples in Nabadwip, the ‘city of widows’ (p. 29), Nilanjana Goswami explores the position of women amidst the exclusionary nature of religious practices as also the commingling of religion and politics, demonstrated through the presence of framed photos of local ministers and MLAs (Members of Legislative Assembly) in the bhajan ashrams.


Reviewed by: Malavika Menon
By Anshu Srivastava

However, one must point out that, a) the research focus on only ‘software professionals’ can be critiqued on the ground that it cannot be considered as representative of a much larger and a heterogeneous new middle class, as the author herself observes, which is not confined to urban metropolitan India, nestled in gated communities/SEZ or EPZ; b) the author needed to explain the shift in the cultural and political agenda of the new middle class in more detail.


Reviewed by: Ashutosh Kumar