In this book Dilip Kumar Roy pays tribute to six ‘illu¬minates’ of modern India—Sri Aurobindo, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Mahatma Gandhi, Sant Gulab Singh and Mahayogi Anirvan. Some of these men he has written about in his earlier, more interesting book, Among the Great.
The volume under review is a collection of Schumacher’s writings and speeches, pains¬takingly compiled and edited by a colleague. Schumacher was deeply involved in two areas during his life: these were energy and management control of a large corporate body. The first four chapters of the book deal with the energy crisis and the last two with the question of public ownership and controls.
Hot Water Man is a story set in Karachi during Bhutto’s rule. But like most British writing on the subject of the jewel in the British crown, it is the story of a search for a lost kingdom—the Raj. And Bhutto figures only marginally, as does the real Pakistan. Where the authors of these works are not writing of the actual period, as Paul Scott did so successfully, they are trying to trace its remnants.
Portuguese imperialism sought to present itself as the embodiment of a divine Caesar and thereby to absolve itself from the obligation of render¬ing the spoils either unto God or unto Caesar. Rapine became thus an essential part of the crusade. The Portuguese could thus evolve a curious blend of lust for gold and souls. Its numismatic expres¬sion was the Cruzado.
Among the Western inter¬preters of Indian art, Alice Bonar was remarkable in that she was not only an art his¬torian but also an artist her¬self with the deep insight and vision which only a practising artist can possess. Born in Switzerland, she studied art in Brussels, Munich and Basle and set up her own studio, first in her native country and later in Paris.
This book, a revised version of the author’s Ph.D. thesis, seeks to ‘highlight processes of socio-religious transforma¬tion within a specific region and cultural context into which iconography provides useful and interesting insights’. The author believes that this approach will fulfill a long-felt need for a meaningful analysis of the evolution of iconographic concepts and their im-pact on socio-cultural groups and religious systems.