Under the assault of social media, attention spans have contracted somewhat. But that is not any reason to worry. There are short introductions available to catch up on weighty matters, such as in the case of national security. These help in gaining a working understanding of issues outside a reader’s usual beat and on the quick, being small handbooks intended unambitiously as ‘introduction’.
The book under review, Another South Asia! orbits around a simple but ambiguous premise of what South Asia is. While the answer to this question varies academically, politically and discursively, Dev Nath Pathak, through this book, has tried to provide an alternative conceptualization or imagination of this region.
In his memoir Neighbours in Arms, the former U.S. senator, Larry Pressler, advances a simple theme: ‘India’s democratic government [and] location … make it a natural … geopolitical ally. We should decisively choose India … We must downgrade Pakistan and treat it as it is: an irresponsible, dishonest, rogue state’ (pp. 53–54). His book focuses on his legislative efforts in the eighties and Pressler claims that if a law bearing his name
In 2006, AC Grayling, a well known and respected British philosopher stirred up a lot of discussion with his book Among the Dead Cities: Was the Allied Bombing of Civilians in World War Two a Necessity or a Crime? The book delved into the aerial bombing of German cities by the British and the Americans. Grayling termed the bombing as a crime against humanity as he saw it as causing disproportionate harm to civilians, being militarily ineffective in defeating the Axis Powers.
Most books written on the history of philosophy tend to remain confined to a consideration of the more prominent and iconic philosophers, looking upon them as isolated islands that loom out in a vast sea that itself remains unexplored. In a history of Islamic philosophy, the familiar big names are the Mutazalites, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, Al-Ghazali, Ibn Arabi, Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Khaldun, to name just a few.
Years ago I was told by a friend that if only Jyotibabu had become Jyotida, the Left would not have declined (and nearly disappeared) in West Bengal. In other words, had prominent bhadralok (babu) leaders—Jyoti Basu, for example—of the Left cared a little less about preservation of their self-image and more about ‘connection’ with people things would, perhaps, be different today. Readers, of course, will know that there is much more to the story of the end of Left rule in the State.