In this slim book noted economist C.H. Hanumantha Rao brings together his eight essays on regional disparities, smaller states and Telangana written at different points of time since 1969 with an Introduction and an Epilogue contextualizing them and observations on recent developments in Telangana…
There used to be a children’s game played by seven or eight year olds long ago, not really a game but a kind of verbal oneupmanship that seems so cool and clever at that age. The first step was to look for a suitable victim, an innocent new to the game. Then you had to get your victim to start off by saying…
Rabindranath Tagore, who famously declared that he was ‘nothing but a poet’, is read in this book for anything but his poetry. ‘Much of Tagore’s central claim to greatness lies in his social thought’, the back cover of Amartya Mukhopadhyay’s comprehensive volume declares, and even a cursory inspection will show…
Reba Som’s book on Rabindrasangeet appears at an interesting, if not a decisive time, in the history of this musical genre. For many years now, Rabindrasangeet has provided a very modern sense of belonging to Bengalis. The ineffable but emotionally charged lyrics and the distinctive tunes with their stretched accents…
This is an important scholarly work within the broader framework of sociology of religion, where Indian sociologists like M.N. Srinivas, T.N. Madan, Dipankar Gupta and Rowena Robinson have contributed over the years. The concepts discussed had been ethnicity, pluralism, religious institutions and religious texts…
In his insightful essay Writing Political Biography, Rae Wear claims that there is a little bit of autobiography’ lurking beneath the surface of every biography where its foremost reflection is through the choice of subject. While some biographers may be drawn to subjects they admire, others are led by the curiosity to understand…