Elisabeth Bandinter’s book (loosely translated as ‘The Myth of Motherhood’) raised a stormy controversy in France, has been denounced by psychologists, educationists and the clergy, and clearly deserves to be read. Unfor¬tunately, at present the book is available to us in India only in French, and it is to be hoped that the English trans-lation comes to this country soon.
It is evident to any observer of the Indian situation that democracy has not led to equa¬lity. So for any social scientist engaged in a study of one seg¬ment of society, this revelation should not come as a shock.
In a study of ‘untouchable politics’ and Indian social change, Barbara Joshi focusses on various aspects—social, economic and psychological—of existence among the schedul¬ed castes.
Most of us are guilty of having a somewhat idealized image of the relationship bet-ween people in the Indian States movement and those in the Indian National Congress (INC) in the critical years before Independence. The image has been created partly by Nehru’s Autobiography, by V.P. Menon’s and Lord Mountbatten’s works and out¬pourings and partly by the publications of bodies like the Janmabhoomi Trust whose founder, Amritlal Sheth, was a pillar of the States Peoples’ movement in Gujarat and Saurashtra.
Yujiro Hayami is a dist¬inguished agricultural econo¬mist whose pioneering work on the specificities of Asian agriculture and the paths of its trans-formation is known all over the world. Professor Hayami, along with Masao Kikuchi, has recently comp¬leted an authoritative book, Asian Village Economy at the Cross-Roads, which will be published by the University of Tokyo. The present book¬let forms a part of that larger work.
In a discussion of Indian feudalism, there are two approaches that are equally misleading and therefore equally to be shunned. One approach is that which argues that India developed in a unique, peculiar and exclusive way of its own; consequently, any concept coined to explain the historical evolution of western Europe can have no relevance for a study of Indian history.
In the early years of the 16th century, the Portuguese des¬cended on the Indian Ocean like wolves on the fold to scatter and destroy the littoral societies of Asia and Africa. To a man they belonged to a breed of hardened criminals. They had no scruples. They spared nobody. Thus, during his second voyage to India, Vasco da Gama intercepted and destroyed any vessel he came across without warning.