Books

The book under review is the South Asian edition of J. Barton Scott’s Spiritual Despots: Modern Hinduism and the Genealogies of Self-Rule. Scott’s is a scholarly exposition of the lineages of the ...

There’s no better lullaby than listening to a story, a childhood ritual for so many of us. And now, audiobooks often slip into the role of a nanny. Mumbai recently saw the India launch of one such p...

If George Eliot were alive, not only would she have turned 199 on November 22, but she might also have been mighty miffed that many people still think she was a man. This is frustrating, given how wel...

Although in the Constitution, the lawmakers outlawed untouchability, they could not overcome their own caste mind-set and skilfully consecrated caste, which, in fact, is the source of untouchability. ...

All cities are alike, yet the same city can mean different things to different people. Each citizen sees it in a different way; each visitor brings with him/her a fresh perspective; each time we revis...

For William Wordsworth, poetry may well have been the recollection of the poet’s feelings in a moment of tranquillity. But reality is not all rainbows and unicorns — or daffodils, for that matter ...

Lodged as he was in the belly of the beast, Ahluwalia narrates the developments in economic policy for about 25 years from 1991, but does not turn a sufficiently critical gaze towards it. When we do s...

Megha Majumdar traces the lives of three distinct characters in a sparkling debut novel titled A Burning that is marked by an undeniable flavour of Calcutta that goes beyond placing the city in the ba...

It was the summer of ’99, the first year of middle school. Our crime was driving the English teacher up the wall all year and the punishment was swift, certain and — to our young minds — unfair....

Unrestrained curiosity and an innocuous question to a media mogul took me on a wild journey on the banks of the Ganges at the foot of the Himalayas, in Haridwar, 13 years ago. I was on the verge of a ...