No Telugu novel in the recent past has been as eagerly await¬ed, avidly read and heatedly discussed as Tulasidalam. Never before have seminars been held to discuss a popular novel and its influence on society. The circulation of ‘Andhra Bhoomi’, a weekly which serialized Tulasidalam, suddenly shot up and surpas¬sed that of the other establish¬ed weeklies.
Once upon a time Hindi novelists and poets participa¬ted actively in the Independ¬ence struggle, craved being jailed with their political heroes, and wrote their blister¬ing indictments of immorality in all spheres of life, in large novels packed with innocence and experience.
Naipaul comes from a conservative Brahmin family in Trinidad, West Indies, and in Trinidad many Hindus have chosen to preserve the age-old prejudice against Muslims. Naipaul himself has never shown much interest or sym¬pathy towards Muslims in his writings. Among the Believers focusses on Muslims in Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indo¬nesia. I was sure it would be an easy book to dismiss.
Both the books under review are the outcome of two separate conferences held in Honolulu at the Culture Learning Institute of the East-West Centre in Hawaii. The first book consists of ten papers discussed at the December 1976 conference on ‘Emerging Issues in Cultural Relations in an Interdependent World.’ It deals with the subject from the standpoints of economics, political philo¬sophy, education and research.
There is a common adage in American academic par¬lance, ‘publish or perish’. The theory justifying this saying is that the compulsion for publishing makes it pro-bable that only some publica¬tions will be worthwhile in terms of new ideas and inno¬vations. It is perhaps too tall a claim to say that gradualist reform as a strategy for human development is any¬thing new or innovative.
The richness of historical detail with which David Hardiman has woven his narrative would amaze even the most hardened empiricist. But there is something about the style which sustains one’s interest even when the going is slow. When one sifts the detail, there emerge two cen¬tral themes which seem to have guided the author in his research, namely, the textures of social differentiation and of mass mobilization.