September 19, 2008 – 5:49 pm
I know Nehru’s legacy as a person, patriot, freedom fighter, and Prime Minister has been examined to death. By both his admirers and arch-critics. In the Indian landscape of the history-political books, the Nehru-as-God books severely outnumber those that critically examine him. The “critical editions” are mostly not subject to review. For example, a book [...]
August 19, 2008 – 1:52 am
It takes tremendous amounts of grotesque perversity to detect ulterior, sinister motives behind producing children’s comics. That’s perhaps why it takes only a Tehelka to do the job. Their target is the Amar Chitra Katha series of comics that educated millions of children mostly about India’s history and mythology. ACK is a case study of [...]
August 10, 2008 – 4:30 pm
Goes by the name of Denise Spellberg.
Starting in 2002, Spokane, Wash., journalist Sherry Jones toiled weekends on a racy historical novel about Aisha, the young wife of the prophet Muhammad. Ms. Jones learned Arabic, studied scholarly works about Aisha’s life, and came to admire her protagonist as a woman of courage. When Random House [...]
April 13, 2008 – 12:14 am
The Mohammadan conquest with its propagandist work and later the Christian missionary movement attempted to shake the stability of Hindu society and in an age deeply conscious of instability, authority naturally became the rock on which alone it seemed that social safety and ethical order could be reared. The Hindu, in face of the [...]
March 15, 2008 – 11:15 pm
The old suspect, A.K. Ramanujan emerges out of the woodwork on Outlook’s pages. The magazine’s leader to this article says:
…in a pocket of the Delhi University, right-wing student activists have taken exception to this essay by the celebrated scholar A.K. Ramanujan, on the many Ramayanas living across languages and narrative genres, each different but no [...]
December 31, 2007 – 11:34 am
When it was first published, Exodus deservedly became an instant bestseller. In a brief period after its publication, it was translated into 50 languages. It remains an enduring, classic saga of the Jews, who as the book shows, "return home." That Leon Uris has poured passion into the book is apparent on every page.Exodus is [...]
August 22, 2007 – 1:52 am
My circle of friends is as large and varied as the interests, hobbies and passions of each person in that circle. There’s no one, absolutely no one there who hasn’t heard of or read the classic Autobiography of a Yogi.
August 12, 2007 – 10:53 pm
Shashi Tharoor is a delightful novelist. I loved his Riot not just for its unique experiment in structure and form but for the author’s skillful treatment of a delicate subject.
I wish Tharoor displays a bit of that in his columns and sundry articles. Sadly, he doesn’t. Blame it on his St. Stephen’s pedigree. I suspect [...]
August 11, 2007 – 11:49 pm
Our cops seem to be eager to perfectly fit the mould that Bollywood/Indian cinema has set for them.
The Hyderabad police have registered a case against controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, who was recently attacked by workers of Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) in Hyderabad, for allegedly creating ill-feeling among communities.
The writer has been booked under IPC [...]
Aavarana is a book Indian secular intellectuals love to hate but cannot ignore. The “average reader” (which increasingly means someone endowed with commonsense, a healthy sense of balance, and has not mortgaged brains at the ideological altar) chose to respond differently. In the miniscule market for Kannada fiction, Aavarna has seen nine reprints in just [...]
Subscribe
Spare the Comics, Dammit!
It takes tremendous amounts of grotesque perversity to detect ulterior, sinister motives behind producing children’s comics. That’s perhaps why it takes only a Tehelka to do the job. Their target is the Amar Chitra Katha series of comics that educated millions of children mostly about India’s history and mythology. ACK is a case study of [...]