This is a short book on a very long and tumultuous period of Indian history and Judd is ambitious in tracing the rise and fall of the East India Company rule and the subsequent British Raj in this summary fashion. However, this concise account is written in the best traditions of popular history and is aimed, one would surmise, primarily at the general reader rather than an academic audience per se.
For years we have been told that Indian English Poetry has come of age, and paradoxically so in independent India. But I am yet to see an anthology which does justice to this statement. The only kind of anthology that can possibly do so is one which is a collection of the best poems written by Indians in English since 1947. Or better still, it should contain the best Indian English poems ever written.
As an outstanding academician and a chief spokesman of the developing coun¬tries, Professor R.P. Anand examines the various problems facing international law and suggests how it should be changed and modified to meet the challenges of tomorrow.’ The present system of inter¬national law is a legacy of the Western Christian Civilization and was developed to suit their needs and aspirations.
The compilation is an interesting po-pourai which deals with the role of the Judiciary in the resolution of ethnic conflicts which arise in plural societies. Three Asian and two African societies feature in the volume, namely, Sri Lanka, India, the Philippines, Tanzania and Mazambique. One of the facet in focus broadly speak¬ing has been the determination of the legitimate limits of judicial intervention in the fields of preference and reservation policies in education and employment.
The emergency of 1975 evokes horror even today. Mercifully, it was short-lived. But even that short period saw enough violations of human rights to fill volumes. There are countries living in a permanent state of emergency: Paraguay, Cameroon, Haiti and South Africa, for instance. The protection of human rights in emer¬gencies is therefore a major concern of contemporary international law.
The reprinting of Mary Frances Billing-ton’s book is a welcome addition to the literature of foreign travellers comment¬ing on India. First published in 1895, Woman in India is a well-organized pastiche of women’s lives in the last few years of the 19th century. Her work is particularly interesting as it deals with a section of Indian society which was not readily accessible to most foreigners.