Edited by Yatindra Singh Sisodia, Ashutosh Kumar & Pratip Chattopadhyay

Second, it offers a nuanced account of federalism by examining the dynamic interplay between central authority and regional autonomy. While acknowledging the rise of centralizing tendencies in recent years, the contributors demonstrate that States continue to remain critical arenas shaping political discourse and governance practices. The volume also shows how regional parties have challenged the dominance of national formations, reshaping the competitive landscape of State politics.


Reviewed by: Shashikant Pandey
By Gitanjali Surendran

Surendran underscores the importance of Dharmapala to this project of universalizing Buddhism by decoupling him from the nation-state frame. Dharmapala is even today popularly remembered as a Sinhala nationalist. However, Surendran argues that we ought to understand his role in making Buddhism the first non-semitic religion to be named and placed in the category of a ‘world religion’.


Reviewed by: Suraj Thube
Edited by Manisha Sobhrajani

My memory of the word goes back to the year 2008, when I was seven years old. The Valley erupted in a major agitation against the land transfer of 40 hectares of forest land to Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB). The Valley reverberated with loud chants of the word. The lyrical, catchy slogans were registered in my young and impressionable mind. Back then mostly for the rhythm.


Reviewed by: Shimaila Mushtaq
By Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Anya Foxen

‘The Serpent in the Melting Pot: Kuṇḍalinī in North American Counterculture’ examining the concept of ‘experience’ is perhaps the most theoretically sophisticated and engaging. Drawing on thinkers such as William James, Michel Foucault, and Talal Asad, the section contends that religious experiences are not raw, unmediated phenomena. Instead, they are always articulated within particular discursive frameworks. Kuṇḍalinī, therefore, becomes a case study in the historicity of interiority itself.


Reviewed by: Amol Saghar
By Youri Martini

who enjoyed the support of influential figures within the imperial harem. Despite the shift, the Jesuits continued to carry out their duties and were able to translate further portions of the Gospel into Persian. By 1582, however, the debates at the Ibadat Khana had been suspended. In the same year, hostilities between the Mughal and Portuguese further complicated the situation, leading the Jesuits Provincial in Goa to consider recalling the missionaries


Reviewed by: Anas Zaman
By John Richards, Manzoor Ahmed, and Shahidul Islam

In turn, the political economy of education comes to mean the field concerned with political decisions about educational governance and their consequences for human development. While this may be a dominant approach in the academic settings where the authors are based, it is clearly a limited one. Here the political, the economic, and the educational appear as relatively discrete domains that interact externally. Education possesses its own technical foundations, politics has its own logic of power and administration, and economics names the domain of welfare, allocation, and productivity.


Reviewed by: Manu V Mathew