If one were to write a history of Namdev and trace the traditions that bear his name, how would one set about doing it? There is no historical record of his life and composition, either in court documents or in inscriptionsa fate he shares with most great bhaktas or devotional poetsaints of medieval and early modern India…
Max Weber spoke of man as a meaning making animalspinning constantly and being suspended in webs of meaning to make sense and give an orientation to the world that he lived in and wished to order. Such a formulation seems to lie at the basis of Heinrich Von Stietencrons study of the iconography of the Ganga and Yamuna on temple doors…
The Harappan or Indus civilization is a subject where the amount of new data and analysis are constantly growing, and it is difficult to keep pace with both. That is why a new book on the subject excites interest. Rita P. Wrights The Ancient Indus: Urbanism, Economy, and Society is part of a series that aims at introducing students…
The book under review written by an eminent artist with emotional appeal has twelve hapters with impressive photographs and lay-out and is not too unwieldy for capturing the salient features of the life of a colossus that Rukmini Devi was. In the preface the author says that she started her research in 1992 collecting data regarding years…
This slim book seems to be the outcome of a well-meaning attempt to understand thoroughly the communicative aspect of Gandhiji’s personality and politics. Much energy has obviously gone into the enterprise; the many tables, appendix, the pages of endnotes at the end of each chapter as well as the long bibliography…
Crooked Stalks is a powerful reminder, especially to those who believe otherwisedespite mounting evidence to the contrary, that development is not a codewritten computer programme. In this wellresearched study of the Piramalai Kallar community of southern Tamil Nadu, Anand Pandian blends precolonial past and colonial history…