This interesting post on Desicritics seeks to examine the controveries surrounding the rewriting of, or the politicizing of history textbooks by governments around the world. Diganta, the author of the article digs up several interesting findings related to this controversy. I’m not knowledgeable enough about textbook controversies around the world. The controversy around Indian history [...]

Here is good and bad news, both in the same package. Arundhati Roy is to return to fiction writing, 10 years after winning Booker prize with her first novel, The God of Small Things. In an interview, Roy said she would ‘stagnate’ as a writer if she were to continue to publish only non-fiction.

Preface Oct 20, 1959, Ladakh: Havaldar Karam Singh and his 20-strong troop, doing their routine border patrolling rounds amid heavy snowfall. In an eyewink nine men in the patrol are buried dead under a hailstorm of bullets, and the rest including Karam Singh are taken prisoners. Courtesy the Chinese army. What stuns the Havaldar is [...]

Next is Michael Crichton’s latest novel. It follows the same pattern and approach as Jurassic Park, Lost World, and Prey in terms of structure, research and storytelling technique.

No other city in India manufactures as many commercial products as Mumbai. In my view, manufacturing is not the same as creation. Creation breathes, has life, has virgin values. Mumbai cannot create anything. Kamatipura is the cynosure of the collective loss of virility of the whole of Mumbai. By itself, Mumbai personifies this gargantuan destruction [...]

Introduction The complete title of this book reads: Decolonizing the Hindu Mind: Ideological Development of Hindu Revivalism. Authored by one of the most brilliant scholars of our time, Dr.Koenraad Elst, this is a must-buy work for anybody who seeks to understand Hindu revivalism in post-Independence India. It is based on his doctoral dissertation on the [...]

Congratulations on winning the Booker. I’ve never read any of your books so it’ll be unfair to comment on the literary worth of your Big One. My only request: please don’t let this prize metamorphose you into another [tag]Verbal Terrorist.[/tag] [tags]Booker Prize, Kiran Desai, Literature[/tags]

There’s a reason people in India shop for books on the roadside; and it’s emphatically not because of the dirt-cheap prices. Chances are stacked high on the positive side of obtaining books like 90 Minutes at Entebbe. Where does one begin?

This is not a book review as I had promised earlier. Rather, this entry seeks to explore my own understanding of the controversial Dead Sea Scrolls affair. Note: I’ve drawn the entire material in this entry from the Profiles in Deception book.

In the first part, I spoke about how John Marshall the colonial archaeologist deliberately suppressed archaeological evidence that his subordinates unearthed. This fraud ostensibly was perpetrated to further the cause of British imperialism. In this part, I shall examine the portion that deals with the Ayodhya dispute.