The book under review is a companion volume to A.K. Banerji’s earlier study on India’s Balance of Payments 1921-22 to 1938-39 (1963). The hindsight enjoyed by the author has enabled him to attempt the construction of a continuous time-series of India’s balance of payments relating to almost the entire period of British rule in India.
This is a book with a certain topical value but likely to be forgotten soon enough as another doctoral dissertation too hastily published. Despite Shashi Tharoor’s painstaking research, his effort is flawed by his preconceived notions and not quite redeemed by the quality of his scholarship. The thesis is outlined in the intro¬ductory chapter; the facts and the analysis that follow are simply to prove it. The book provides a lesson to students of diplomatic history how not to carry on research.
Contrary to its claim of making a comprehensive study of the problem of north-east India’s frontier tribes, the volume under review deals only with frontier-making in that region and examines the ‘forward policy’ pursued in that respect. Chronologically structured, this narrative pays little attention to the ethnolo¬gical details of the tribes con¬cerned, or to their many-sided problems, economic and social. The title of the volume is therefore somewhat misleading.
Constitutional history has long been the great ignis fatuus of the Anglo-Saxon historical tradition. In this context, it matters little that the Whigs enshrined par-liament with a halo of good¬ness, and Namier shot it down with a relentless expose of the cynicism and self-aggrandize¬ment in political motivation. What matters is that politics remained the crucial subject matter of the historian’s inquiry.
In this collection of articles and speeches made by Romesh Thapar during the course of the last three or four years, he tries to sketch an Indian future. He seeks an under-standing of India’s present and casts critical glances at her past. A careful perusal of these writings makes it amp¬ly clear that this vision of India’s future, where it is not vague and confused, is fanci¬ful, quixotic and unconvincing.
Strategies of Political Emanci¬pation has resulted from six public lectures delivered by Professor Christian Bay at Loyola in 1977. The original lectures have been revised sub¬sequently in view of criticisms and questions raised. The pre¬sent work is a sequel to the author’s earlier major work, The Structure of Freedom, which appeared over two deca¬des ago.