Join us!   We're also twittering. Come listen. |   HIMAL Special Offer   Get a 2-year subscription of Himal Southasian and receive a FREE t-shirt!!! |   NEW AT HIMAL   We Blog! |   In the magazine   Delay in the September issue. | Children of the tehreek by Sanjay Kak: The recent violence suggests that, after 20 years, Kashmir has indeed changed – though not in the ways commonly suggested. |  

Exclusive Reviews and Bookshelf (June 2010)

REVIEWS FROM OUR CURRENT ISSUE:

 Melting-pot constituencies
by Beena Sarwar

Karachiwala : A subcontinent within a city
by Rumana Husain
Jaal, 2010
An excerpt from the review of Rumana Husain's 'Karachiwala : A subcontinent within a city':

This is not just a book about how the city grew uncontrollably after 1947, with the influx of a million or so refugees seeking economic opportunity as much as refuge. Rather, this is very much the human story of a city that is a microcosm of Pakistan, where locals were long ago outnumbered by migrants or their descendents – not just from across the border, but from all over the country. As the author delves into the homes and lives of some 80 of these families, it is apparent that they have retained much of their distinct cultures – although, with the younger generations growing up in this ‘melting pot’, borders and boundaries have started to blur. Interestingly, some among the youths have embraced features of their religious identity that their parents had shrugged off. There is, for instance, the young Sikh who proudly sports a turban and beard that his father had cast aside; or the young Bohra woman who, after getting married, prevailed upon her husband and his parents to adopt a more religiously conservative lifestyle, even getting her mother-in-law to shed the sari in favour of the rida, the Bohri burqa.

To read the full review, continue here.

Beyond two dimensions
by Anne Feenstra

Strange Maps : An atlas of cartographic curiosities
Frank Jacobs
Studio,2009
An excerpt of the review of Frank Jacobs' 'Strange Maps : An atlas of cartographic curiosities':

While Jacobs’s collection underscores the awe-inspiring in the ordinary, the book also shows beautiful maps of horrible events. In 1900, one James Mooney mapped, in three stages, the European invasion and marginalisation of the traditional homeland of the Native American Cherokee tribe, an area that eventually vanished under the shocking encroachment that took place during the Gold Rush of the 1830s – when it was all over, hardly 600 Cherokees had escaped from what was once a thriving and widespread community. Jacobs has titled this map of an ever-shrinking territory, ‘Going, Going, Gone’.

Along the same lines, another dramatic map shows a statistical graphic of Napoleon Bonaparte’s march to Moscow and back during 1812 and 1813, documenting the tragic loss of human lives. This image, basically two lines that vary in thickness and delineate the number of people killed, was made in 1869 – a graphical indication of the distances, the rivers to be crossed and the loss of lives during the various stages of the march. Napoleon started his journey with a 442,000-strong army, arriving in a deserted Moscow with only 100,000. Only 4000 troops returned, an immense loss of life that this map, designed by Charles Joseph Minard, is able to show in an astoundingly clear way.

To read the full review, continue here.

Representing Pakistan to the world
by Khaled Ahmed

Quiet Diplomacy : Memoirs of an ambassador of Pakistan
Jamsheed Marker
Oxford University Press, 2010
An excerpt of the review of Jamsheed Marker's 'Quiet Diplomacy : Memoirs of an ambassador of Pakistan':

From 1986 to 1987, Marker was ambassador to the United States, the climax of his career. This was the period during which General Zia ul-Haq was furtively developing a nuclear device. Again, Marker proved to be able to influence the US establishment to repeatedly postpone action on threats delivered by Washington related to Pakistan crossing ‘red lines’ on the enrichment of nuclear material. This stalling became untenable, however, after A Q Khan’s confessions to journalist Kuldip Nayar made it clear that Pakistan had attempted illegally access nuclear technologies. Thereafter, there was no holding back the US from invoking the Pakistan-specific Pressler Amendment, which since 1985 had required annual certification by the US president that Pakistan does not possess nuclear weapons. The Amendment had been regularly circumvented in the following years, largely due to Marker’s initial involvement.

To read the full review, continue here.

Also in the issue our discerning editors do a quick take on the latest published books in the Bookshelf.

REVIEWS FROM OUR PREVIOUS ISSUE:

Buddha minus god

     By: Alok K. Bohara

Confession of a Buddhist Atheist
Stephen Batchelor Spiegel & Garu
Spiegel & Grau, 2010
The earlier book by this Buddhist monk-turned author, Buddhism without Beliefs, published in 1997, aroused with significant controversy, with critics accusing the author of having put forth arguments that could undermine the theological aspects of Buddhism. This new work is equally likely to raise eyebrows. The ‘confession’ part refers to Batchelor’s years at the Buddhist monasteries of India and Europe, and his discomfort over the emphasis on ritualistic rote learning and metaphysical practices.

Here, Batchelor demonstrates tremendous gratitude towards his Buddhist tutors, but also cites their “irrational” belief system as a reason for his subsequent attraction to Korean Zen practices. Eventually, after a decade and a half of spiritual adventure, Batchelor disrobed, became a layman and started to write about Buddhist teachings, mostly from a secular perspective. Read full review here.




Comic rectitude

    By: Diwas Kc

Sculpting a Middle Class: History, Masculinity and the Amar Chitra Katha in India
by Deepa Sreenivas
Routledge, 2010
In this new work, Deepa Sreenivas, a fellow at the Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies in Hyderabad, India, turns to a formative period of modern India, examining the Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) comics to pin down the contents of the contemporary Indian middle-class identity. Enormously popular among urban, English-speaking children, the series first made patriotic, egalitarian heroes out of Hindu mythological figures, and then mythologised Indian national heroes. Sreenivas aims, through these comics, to discover the ethical and pedagogical underpinnings of the ‘IT generation’ that grew up reading them.

Anant Pai, the creator of ACK, imagined the series as a way for tradition and the religious past to provide guidance for the modern and secular Indian present. In 1967, the year Pai launched the comics, India was gearing up for major readjustments as, Sreenivas contends, the ‘welfarist’ Nehruvian vision of self-dependence was abruptly crumbling. That year Prime Minister Indira Gandhi devalued the rupee on coercion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), marking the arrival of globalisation in the Indian economy. That same year also saw the emergence of the Naxalite movement, which has since grown to become the lurid disrupter of the ‘Indian dream’. Read full review here.





     By: Meera Nanda

Post-Hindu India: A Discourse in Dalit-Bahujan, socio-spiritual and scientific revolution
by Kancha Ilaiah
Sage, 2010
Kancha Ilaiah burst onto the Indian intellectual scene in 1996, with his now-famous book, Why I Am Not a Hindu. In that work, Ilaiah made a partly autobiographical case for why he, and his fellow Dalit-Bahujan (Shudra) brothers and sisters, feel nothing but anger and apathy toward Hinduism – the religion that had devalued their lives, their culture and their gods while also shutting them out from the ‘high culture’ of the twice-born castes. Nearly 15 years later, Ilaiah has written a new book making the case for why Hinduism itself deserves to die, and why the annihilation of caste will also annihilate Hindu dharma. India, he proclaims, is on its way to a ‘post-Hindu’ future, one he is himself trying to bring about and looks forward to with obvious delight. Read full review here.













Also in the issue our discerning editors do a quick take on the latest published books in the Bookshelf.


Venomous Touch: Notes on caste culture and politics
by Ravikumar
 Writing Indian History: A view from below
by Achuthan M Kandyil
Samya, 2009 Samya, 2009

Philosophising the movement

      By: Ashley Tellis

Ashley Tellis faults the missed opportunity in Ravikumar's  Venomous Touch to combine reportage and analysis but nonetheless finds Venomous Touch an invigorating read because of the energy, passion and integrity of its author. While Kandyil's Writing Indian History is a tiresome plod through ill-chosen sources. Read the review here.











The Caste Question: Dalits and the politics of modern India
by Anupama Rao
Permanent Black, 2010

The afterlife of colonial caste

      By: Shefali Chandra

The transformation of the Dalit identity to a vulnerable subject--as opposed to a truly emanicipated citizen--in the modern liberal state is critically and historically examined in Anupama Rao's The Caste Question. Read the review here.

 



Who Killed Karkare? The real face of terrorism in India
by S M Mushrif
Pharos Media, 2009

Hindutva changes strategy

      By: Pushpa Sane

Who Killed Karkare? is a wake-up call to the government and public to take cognisance of the shift in the strategy of Hindutva terror, and the dire threat this poses to Indian democracy. Read the review here.















Also in the issue our discerning editors do a quick take on the latest published books in the Bookshelf

My Name is Khan
directed by Karan Johar
Dharma/Red Chillies, 2010
His name is Khan!: 'My Name is Khan' directed by Karan Johar

      By: S Bhaskar

Starting three weeks before its heralded release, My Name is Khan and its lead star, Shahrukh Khan, became the newest and most fashionable entries to citizen-rights activism, both in India and in cyberspace. The controversy began with Khan’s statement “regretting” the exclusion of Pakistani cricketers from selection at the third Indian Premier League (IPL) auction, which had taken place in December. It then gained massive media attention due to the opposition of the rightwing Shiv Sena, which then continued with the tense release of the film itself.

The controversy proved advantageous for the producers, however, ensuring the film a kind of publicity that money, power and influence could otherwise not possibly have managed. Even before it was released, My Name is Khan had become a cause célèbre, emerging as a symbol (in particular among the affluent and English-speaking classes) of freedom of expression, the citizen’s right to a violence-free public and political culture, and the very basic desire for rule of law. For those in Bombay, watching the film on 12 February, the day it was released, became a way of showing the metaphoric middle finger to the Shiv Sena thugs who had nearly managed to prevent the film from being shown in Maharashtra... continues here
The Hindus: An alternative history
by Wendy Doniger

Penguin, 2009
Aside the chariot: 'The Hindus: An alternative history' by Wendy Doniger

      By: Diwas Kc

Two years after the Indian state channel Doordarshan began daily broadcasting, when only Delhi-ites were lucky enough to get their first taste of television, a question was asked during a children’s quiz show: “Who was the mother of Ram?” The participating children, who had earlier effortlessly handled all the stumpers on Greek mythology, were now dumbfounded. Such was Kaushalya’s status in 1967. This rather inconsequential moment in India’s secular era would have simply passed by had one chance viewer not felt so deeply humiliated by the way “the glorious heritage of India” had once again been trumped. The viewer, Anant Pai, soon left his career with the Times of India, which brought American superheroes like Phantom and Mandrake to Indian readers through Indrajal Comics, and launched his own ­Amar Chitra Katha, through which he issued monthly and fortnightly comic books based on episodes from Hindu epics and puranas. Uncle Pai, as he is better known, thought of himself as an educator, and he must consider it an enormous feat that, after a sensational reception of his comics, golden boys and girls on Bournvita Quiz Contest no longer miss questions on Hindu legends.

In the following decades, Uncle Pai’s comics sold by the millions, which perhaps not astonishingly coincided with the resurgence of ‘Hindu values’ in Indian politics. Assembling the narratives of dazzling characters like Ram, Krishna and Hanuman from stories originating from different ends of India – dotingly ironing out the contradictions, and while at it ridding the ‘unpleasant’ bits – Uncle Pai had one eye on the Hindu past and the other on the post-Independence project of national integration. This double vision of Amar Chitra Katha would prove to be remarkably self-legitimising, becoming imperative to subsequent raconteurs of Hindu legends. Uncle Pai, as it turned out, was only one of the many in modern India who was hoping to simplify the bewilderingly and boisterously diverse past for an emerging country... continues here 

Search of Sita: Revisiting mythology
edited by Malashri Lal & Namita Gokhale
Yatra/Penguin Books, 2009
Thousand faces: 'In Search of Sita' edited by Malashri Lal & Namita Gokhale

      By: Sumana Roy

My mother’s name is Sati. It is, of course, not a name that she would have given to herself. But a name being one of the many matters that parents impose on their children, she learned to accept it, at first grudgingly and later graciously. It is a name that often got her children in trouble: in history class, when teachers would condemn the practice of a widow jumping into her husband’s funeral pyre, her son would find it difficult to write an answer condemning sati. Her daughter, meanwhile, would inevitably misspell her name – it is now a part of family folklore that, as a child, I would always write Sita for Sati.

Growing up should have helped to clear the distance between the two names, but marriage, and the noise of its symbolism, ensured that I continued to languor in the lazy substitutability of ‘Sita’ and ‘Sati’. There could be no better cheerleader for that cruel totem of self-sacrifice than Lord Ram’s wife – virtuous, innocent, giving – she who sacrificed her youth, comfort and even her dignity for a cruel and foolish husband. Reading this fine new anthology of essays, fiction and art was therefore a double delight: first, to discover a history of reception about a cult figure is an adventure in itself; and, second, to clarify, if only for the lapses of one’s childhood spelling error, how the bold and courageous Sita has, over centuries of misinterpretation and angular storytelling, come to be seen as the quintessential doormat... continues here

Nine Lives: In search of the sacred in modern India
by William Dalrymple
Bloomsbury, 2009
 Seeking seekers

      By: Rukmini Krishnan


Rarely does a travel writer efface himself so thoroughly as to let other voices speak as William Dalrymple does in Nine Lives. The Scottish writer introduces his narrators briefly, and then proceeds to pop his head in only at rare moments. In this, he diverges from the style of his earlier writings, which he describes as having highlighted himself and his own adventures. In this new work, we are presented with the spiritual (and mundane) biographies of nine seekers of truth from a wide range of religious traditions. Of course, out of the vast and intricate paths to truth that are explored in India, nine individuals represent necessarily a limited range, but Dalrymple has included stories  from across Southasia, from Sindh to Lhasa to Tanjore. His seekers come from places, as he puts it, “suspended between tradition and modernity”... continues here

 




 

Aria
translations by Sudeep Sen
Yeti Books & Monsoon Editions, 2009
Strip off my words: 'Aria' poetry translated by Sudeep Sen

      By: Rabindra K Swain

Be they Bengali or Icelandic, the poems included in Sudeep Sen’s new book of translations are good but – perhaps even more important, for this particular work – also read well in English. The works of Mandakranta Sen, for instance, a bold young poet from Bengal, are almost oracular in tone, which would seem to be a difficult nuance to translate. “One who writes poetry in the middle of the night/ With hair undone is a witch,” she writes. But with subsequent lines this emerges as a poem of subversion, giving the female power a free rein. The poet has a streak of Sylvia Plath in her work, reminding readers of the cataclysmic power of reproduction with which a woman can be endowed: She has to be possessed to let poetry flow from her. The “dawn” finds her “conceiving ... the sun”, and by noon she has reached the “full-blown advanced stage”. This poem, with its swift movements in the process of forging life, is an accomplished work. It is romantic in vein and marked by a freshness of idiom, making it contemporaneous with the other poems featured in Aria.

This collection is an unusual mixture of translated voices from around the world, something as yet uncommon in India.. continues here

Also in the issue our discerning editors do a quick take on the latest published books in the Bookshelf!

The wayward empire: 'Days of the Raj' by Pramod K Nayar

Days of the Raj: Life and leisure in British India 
by Pramod K Nayar
 Penguin 2009

    By: Rakesh Shukla

Picking up any book that bears a quaint gramophone, a derby, a tennis racket and the British flag on the cover brings to mind a light-hearted tale my otherwise serious grandfather once shared. An English – for Indians, all white foreigners fall into this catchall category, leave aside making fine distinctions between Scots and Irish – officer turns to take command of the parade and orders Column will advance! No one stirs. The bewildered officer turns to the subedar-major, who shouts Kallambillad bans! and the native Indian soldiers march forward. Similar phonetic wordplays about English ladies being taught everyday phrases like There was a banker for Darwaza band kar (ie, close the door), andThere was a cold day for Darwaza khol de (open the door), provided us much amusement while growing up in the cantonments of independent India... continues here






The God Market: How globalization is making India more Hindu
by Meera Nanda, Random House, 2009

When a great tradition Hinduises: 'The God Market' by Meera Nanda

      By: Vijay Prashad

Excerpt from the review: This new work is Nanda’s first major ‘mainstream’ attempt. It repeats many of the formulations from Prophets Facing Backward, but now in a much more approachable way. There is still the warning about the demotion of the scientific temper, but here the argument shifts. In Prophets Facing Backward, Nanda explored her view that the increased “technological modernization is serving to further an equally aggressive cultural re-traditionalization, visible in the growing influence of religious nationalist ideas on the institutions of civil society and the state.” Globalisation has made Hindutva acceptable. In the new book, she warms to the theme, and puts it at the centre of things.

In The God Market, however, the problem is not simply Hindutva. Rather, it is the social ground that has enabled Hindutva, namely neo-Hinduism. Neo-Hinduism, for Nanda, is the brand of soft spirituality pervaded by Deepak Chopra, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and their ilk. And it is not so much merely the growth of neo-Hinduism, but rather the symbiotic relationship between this neo-Hinduism, Hindutva and globalisation, that is the issue here. The problem of causality is essential, as Nanda, being a devout scientist, would recognise... continues here

PLUS Read Author Meera Nanda's response here

Pathways of Dissent: Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka
 
edited by R Cheran
Sage, 2009


Pathways of dominance: 'Pathways of Dissent' edited by R.Cheran

      By: Sivamohan Sumathy

Excerpt from the review: The academic allure of the title’s use of the term dissent provides an analytical entry point into the volume and the entire project of Tamil nationalism. Dissent has a political salience that is useful and productive, particularly at this juncture of charting new directions for those who work with and within the idea of a Tamil nation. The sweeping hegemony of Jaffna-centrism dominant in the volume contradicts the idea of dissent, striking a note of dissonance from the very beginning. This bias is no accident – if all the chapters, barring one, take Jaffna as their focus, they do so not in the spirit of dissent, nor to scrutinise its dominant place in the narrative of nationalism. Rather, through academic sleight of hand, they do so to reinforce its dominance. Full review here



Also in the February issue, our discerning editors do a quick take on the latest published books in the Bookshelf


Bhutanese Mists

Within the Realm of Happiness
by Kinley dorji
Kuensel Corporation, 2008		 Becoming a Journalist in Exile
by T P Mishra
TWMN-Bhutan, 2009


By Carey l Biron





























Hindutva then and now
Savarkar and Hindutva:The Godse connection
by A G Noorani
LeftWord, 2009		 Violent Gods: Hindu nationalism in India’s present; narratives from Orissa
by Angana Chatterji
Three Essays Collective, 2009

By Subash Gatade

















 

 











The value of values

 
The Beautiful Tree: A personal journey into how the world’s poorest people are educating themselves
by James Tooley
Penguin/Viking, 2009

By CK Lal























 

Convervation history

A Boy from Siklis: The life and times of Chandra Gurung
by Manjushree Thapa
Penguin, 2009

By Smiriti Mallapaty

 




























BOOKSHELF

Five Queen’s Road
by Sorayya Khan
Penguin, 2009
 
Train to India: Memories of another Bengal
by Maloy Krishna Dhar
Penguin, 2009
 
Two new books touch upon the lesser-known aspects of the turbulent time of Partition. While Sorayya Khan’s sensitive novel is about the Hindu experience in Lahore before and immediately after Partition, Maloy Krishna Dhar’s autobiographical work tells the story of the tribulations of Bengalis during that time. Dhar, as a little boy, boards the train in Dacca, ostensibly headed to safety in Sylhet. The bloodbath and targeted killing of the Hindu minority that followed is a story that has yet to be fully told, more than six decades later.

Khan’s slow-paced tale, on the other hand, is understated but no less effective in conveying the brutality, alienation and loss of identity during those days. The poignant story of Dina Lal, a Lahori Hindu who refuses to leave his home as expected, is superbly told. His coping with his sons’ migrating to a newly carved India for their safety, the abduction of his wife Janoo, and his conversion to Islam to save his skin are narrated through the eyes of a Muslim colleague, Amir Shah, and his family, who have moved in to Five Queen’s Road as ‘protection’ for Dina Lal. The sprawling house with its immaculate garden, itself a relic of the Raj, is as much a character in this many-layered book of human relationships as any other. (Laxmi Murthy)

Education in Nepal: Problems, Reforms and Social Change
edited by Pramod Bhatta
Martin Chautari, 2009

Despite the claim that there is plenty of scholarship on education in Nepal, this collection of writing highlights how difficult it is to keep up with the drastic changes in the political and social landscape of this small but unpredictable country. With pieces spread across over a decade, the political commentary feels dated at times. Moreover, political considerations may distract from underlying problems. For instance, Martha Caddell’s piece that cleverly employs the motif of schools as battlefield – both metaphorically in the ideological sense and in reality by describing the political uses of violence on schools sites by the Maoists – fails to take up an analysis of unions and the labour conditions of teachers.

The more robust pieces in the collection contextualise education quite successful across historical changes. Pramod Bhatta’s excellent review on decentralisation critically assesses the discursive employment of the concept, combined with effective on-the-ground observations. Pratyoush Onta takes on the flip-side of the concept, with an interesting reflection of the centralisation and nationalisation of schools during the Panchayat system of the 60s by investigating history textbooks at the time. One particularly interesting thread that the reader encounters is a critique of the influence of foreign aid on educational policy and the problems of developmental interventions. The collection might point to the disciplinary narrowness of the field, but for an introduction to the issues of education in Nepal, one would be hard-pressed to find a better place to start. (Alston A. D’Silva)

Malgudi Schooldays
R. K. Narayan
Puffin, 2009
 
This is one of those books that make a reader take a trip down the memory lane. Malgudi may only be an archetypal town in Deccan where people meet, things happen and destiny unfolds, all in slow motion. But emotions of school-age children everywhere are similar. Teachers face challenges, discover joys and learn to cope. Parents have their predicaments. And everyone grows as they confront each other and learn to adjust. The story also tells that formal teaching may take place inside school compounds, but most of learning is done in everyday life. A most delightful book with arresting illustrations by R. K. Laxman that every Southasian teacher, parent and students will find instructive.(CK Lal)

Hamra Hajurama: Our Grandmothers
photo.circle, 2009

Often, memories of lived experiences are anchored in a sea of nostalgia, usually revisited with delicacy, and filled with concern about destabilising upheavals the proprietor of the stories may feel. For a project – coordinated by NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, co-founder of the Kathmandu-based photographer’s platform photo.circle – that comes so close to the past, Hamra Hajurma is neither sentimental nor discreet. Seven photographers and six writers narrate the stories of twelve grandmothers in Nepal from different geographic and social backgrounds, telling of times of tribulation, misfortune and reticence. Being women who have endured, the grandmothers share their stories not in wistful reminiscence, but rather in encouraging pragmatism and a hope for better days. Many, like 60 year-old Dilshara Budha Magar from Rukum, would have had more opportunities available to them, like education, if born in a different era. Yet, despite being illiterate and relatively poor, Dilshara dreams of travelling and seeing the new world.

It is surprising to witness private histories conceded to an anonymous public with such ease – only one writer is confronted by a “silent rebuff” upon inquiring about one grandmother’s life. And in the rebuttal an answer is found: “She knows that to allow me to tell her story is to let me decide what her life is about, to let me fix her and wield control over her.” One can only hope that the exercise results in a feeling of liberation rather than that of being confined by their narrative. (Smriti Mallapaty)

Share it »                                                                                                  

Web Exclusive

Graffiti that reads Azaadi or Freedom on the footbridge over River Jhelum in Srinagar.
  
Dilnaz Boga

 The Kashmiri and the Indian by Shivam Vij

People-to-people dialogue is the best way out of the Kashmir logjam.

More
The battle for bauxite – Sudha Ramachandran writes about the Dongria Kondhs of southern Orissa who are up in arms on the grounds that their land, culture and way of life, their very survival as a distinct tribe, is under serious threat from UK mining giant Vedanta Resources.
Delayed transit – Saad Hammadi on the Nepal-Bangladesh transit trade agreement, the modalities of which have finally been worked out between the two countries. What remains to be seen now is how soon these agreements will be implemented.
More

Online Poll

Bandhs: 'Coercion' or 'Democratic protest'?
Coercion & blackmail
My democratic right.
I sit on the fence.
Holiday! :-)
 
GET OUR FREE NEWSLETTER Register to receive news and alerts every month.