No list of books is ever quite enough, even if it is a selection from just forty-nine weeks of varied reviews. From Jonathan Gil Harris’s Masala Shakespeare to Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, th...
This is a study of the non-communist or centre-Left in Europe, with an explanation connecting its decline and the rise of xenophobic right-wing populism as the major response to economic hard-Right ne...
Which of us are Aryans? is a collection of five essays dealing with the politically volatile question of Aryan identity. Romila Thapar shows that the Sanskrit word arya (airiia in Old Iranian) did not...
Which concepts might help us, take us forward, take us further, or away? “The modern world is one of simulacra. Man did not survive God, nor did the identity of the subject survive that of substance...
Looking for the Nation: Towards Another Idea of India (Speaking Tiger, Rs 350) by Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee says that countries are born with, and live by, dates. Some dates are reminders of the prom...
Taking the cue from Homi K. Bhabha’s concern about “the fate of the arts and humanities the world over” in the face of the rush towards technological immediacy and professional instrumentality, ...
All the Wrong Turns: Perspectives on the Indian Economy by T.C.A. Ranganathan and T.C.A. Srinivasa Raghavan is yet another book on the deficiencies of formulation and execution of economic policy in I...
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 ...
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. ...