Book Reviews
- Himani Bannerji, Decolonization and Humanism: The Postcolonial Vision of Rabindranath Tagore, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2024, x+234 pages, Rs 995It is perhaps evidence of the living influence of Tagore on our lives and our culture that studies on his work keep coming out even when more than eight decades have elapsed since his death. He also refuses to be docketed into any neat alcove as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, masters at docketing and co-opting cultural heritage, have discovered to their frustration.
- Dhirendra K. Jha, Golwalkar: The Myth Behind the Man, The Man Behin the Machine, New Delhi: Simon & Schuster India, 2024, xiv+386 pages, Rs 899.Future history writing in India will associate the last decade of the twentieth and the initial decades of the twenty-first centuries with two principal developments. First, this period initiated an economic revolution in which the economy was freed from various shackles, which impelled it along the path of rapid growth. Second, the same period also experienced a new sharpness to identities and a push towards a conservative orientation in general.
- Lata Singh and Shashank Shekhar Sinha, eds, Gender in Modern India: History, Culture, Marginality, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024, 348 pages, Rs 1495Gender in Modern India: History, Culture, Marginality is a welcome addition to the available literature on gender studies in India. Edited by Lata Singh and Shashank Shekhar Sinha, this volume is a collection of fourteen articles, all written by scholars who are experts in their fields. Using interdisciplinary tools, the collection foregrounds the ‘overlaps, seepages, crossings, interweavings, and enmeshings’ that constitute women’s lives in India.
- Saurav Kumar Rai, Ayurveda, Nation and Society: United Provinces, c. 1890–1950, Orient BlackSwan, 2024, 292 pages, Rs 1400
Saurav Kumar Rai’s Ayurveda, Nation, and Society presents a detailed study of the relationship between Ayurveda, Indian nationalism and colonialism. Through an extensive analysis of archival materials, the book examines how Ayurveda, traditionally seen as a static and ancient medical system, was transformed during the colonial period into a politically charged symbol of Indian identity.
