Hari Jai Singh

A book by a well-known journalist is bound to arouse extensive interest and India between Dream and Reality comes in this category. It is an attempt to make an assessment of present-day India in relation to its ancient as well as its recent past. The task may be an exciting one, but it is also somewhat elusive if its purpose is, as it seems to be in this book, to show how the present has failed to sustain its past, for every revolution is a revolt against the past and India which has a long history has seen quite a few.


Reviewed by: P. RAMASWAMY
Sima Sharma

The book is a collection of papers pre¬sented at a seminar. The objective is an important one, of growing concern to ex¬pert and layman alike. The contributors include economists, scientists, a historian, a women’s rights activist, a media person, a jurist (who however does not, here, deal with juridical matters) and writers. It is in the nature of the very wide subject that every aspect of our national life can¬not be covered.


Reviewed by: C.B. MUTHAMMA
Sarvepalli Gopal

Malcolm Muggeridge’s Life of Christ contains this statement of windowpane transparency:
Christ’s mother, Mary, conceived him out of. wedlock…

The sentence dispels, deftly but simply, the coyness with which narrations down the ages have veiled that unself-conscious provenance in a Bethlehem manger. Dr. S. Gopal’s absorbing biography of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan commences, similarly, with a paragraph of refreshing candour:


Reviewed by: GOPAL GANDHI
David Rubin

Some readers may question the utility of reviewing a book that has hardly been seen in this country even three years after publication. If such readers will grant that the primary purpose of a book-review is to make known the existence of that book, then at least that purpose will be served here. Students of Anglo-Indian fiction are by no means snowed under with critical material, and any addition to this sparse field needs to be taken note of as soon as possible.


Reviewed by: SUJIT MUKHERJEE
S P Bakshi

When I first opened the book and read through some of Bakshi’s verses, I felt that there was a familiar ring about them of Fitzgerald’s rendering of Omar Khayyam’s verse. As I proceeded further, I came across references to Khayyam also. The structure of the verses too, though not identical, appeared to be a variation of the same basic structure.


Reviewed by: BHISHAM SAHNI
Uanhenga Xitu

Uanhenga Xitu insists on using his Angolan village name, rather than Agostinho Mendes Carvalho, his Portu¬guese name. Already we see the import¬ant and subversive possibilities of the use of language, within reach of an activist writer.


Reviewed by: NINA SIBBAL