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The ancient Sanskrit texts have many references to the practice of fine arts in India. But not many of the fine arts have survived through the ages. How¬ever, what was regarded as fine arts in ancient India cannot be included in the present day meaning of the term. There were sixty-four fine arts that in¬cluded physical culture, use of weapons, elephant riding, instrumental music, dancing, painting, body decoration, astronomy, magic, wood-craft etc.

R. Parthasarathy, returning from ‘exile’, wrote ‘My tongue in English chains/I return, after a generation, to you.’ Taking this poem as a paradigm of Indo-English poetry, M. Sivaram¬krishna says in his introduction to this collection of critical essays on the work of eleven poets, ‘It is in terms of this triadic frame of reference…the transcen¬dence of Anglo-mania through an assertion of the Indian identity, the discovery of a ‘viable’ past and the residue of linguistic significance—that the following pages try to map out the features of the unchained tongue, that is Indo-English poetry today.’

This attempt to ascertain the worth of Saleem Peeradina’s poems must, neces¬sarily, be made in the context of recent Indian English poetry. Let me begin, therefore, by quoting from Chirantan Kulshrestha’s introductory essay to the critical anthology Contemporary Indian English Verse (New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1980).

By training a political scientist, Dr Karkhanis has chosen a new field to work on. Here he explores the ‘significant relationship between the press and the Indian political institutions.’ His aim is to ‘analyse the role of the press in Indian politics’ and to assess its ‘impact on India’s governmental processes’, a chal¬lenging and a promising area of inquiry.