This book is an important contribution to the existing literature on the social and intellectual history of Indian Muslims in the nineteenth cent¬ury. It is a sympathetic account of the temporal and spiritual concerns of the Ulama, and attempts to show how these concerns were integrated into a unified world-view.
The publishers of Fontana Paperbacks have for some time past earned the gratitude of students of European history for bringing out a highly succ¬essful series on the history of Europe written by eminent scholars, and a companion series on the economic history of Europe under the editor¬ship of CM. Cipolla. To this they have added a third string, the Fontana History of War and European Society, under the general editorship of the noted social historian Geoffrey Best.
The Pictorial Guide is the Bombay Natural History Society’s (BNHS) centenary gift to Indian birdwatchers. For several years the book most widely used for field identification has been Salim Ali’s Book of Indian Birds (now in its ninth edition); more recently, Martin Woodcock’s well-illustrated Hand Guide to the Birds of the Indian Sub¬continent has also become popular.
Janet Rizvi’s Ladakh: Cross¬roads of High Asia has been prefaced as a background and introduction to Ladakh. It is divided into three main parts: the geographical, the past and the present. The book is based on her two-year stay (1976-78) in Ladakh where her husband was the Development Commis¬sioner. One is immediately struck by the intensity of her impressions and her abiding urge to assimilate as much as possible of that stark yet capti¬vating ampitheatre.
This is an uneasy book which disconcerts the reader with the narration of the history that ultimately culminated in the election tragedy of February 1983. It is moreover, a book which is very readable and lucid to the very last page. Published a year after the State Assembly Elections in Assam, it leaves little doubt of a possible repetition of the tragic episode in the context of the General Elections ex¬pected later this year.
Debra and Gopiballavpur are two regions in the district, of Midnapore in West Bengal which shot into prominence between 1969 and 1971 when armed bands of peasant guer¬illas backed by poor and land¬less villagers under the leader¬ship of CPI (ML) killed landlords, seized guns, took possession of the properties owned by the landlords, burnt the records of debts and set up revolutionary committees as alternative power structures.