Projit Bihari Mukharji, Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies and Braided Sciences, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016, xii+374 pages, price not stated. Much before the Chopra Report (viz. Report of the Committee on Indigenous Systems of Medicine, authored under the…
Book Reviews Deepak Kumar, The Trishanku Nation: Memory, Self, and Society in Contemporary India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2016, 211 pages, Rs 495. Intellectuals always struggle with the question of relevance of their work in the face of the…
Recent studies of the contemporary situation of labour in neoliberal economies and of labour movements have emphasized a ‘decline of trade unionism’. This assessment is widespread and holds true for India, especially when we consider that the period following large-scale…
The purpose of this note is to look at certain formulations in Györg Lukács’ little booklet called Lenin, published in 1924, shortly after Lenin’s death, and to examine whether their validity extends beyond the specific historical context in which they…
A history, and not a hagiography, of the Progressive Cultural Movement in India was long overdue, but nobody attempted to undertake such a novel and noble task, as if (this is exclusively my perception) there was nothing to talk about…
The life of Georg Lukács (1885–1971), the outstanding Marxist theorist, intersected so closely with the major revolutionary events of his time that it almost constitutes a history of the twentieth-century European proletarian revolutionary movement. Joining the Hungarian Communist Party in…
Georg Lukács is one of the best-known Marxist intellectuals of the twentieth century. He acquired this reputation during the 1960s, when so-called western Marxism was considered a centrepiece of intellectual debate and with which it was necessary to be familiar…
Georg Lukács places the issue of form at the centre of his early book The Theory of the Novel, and views form as integral to the humanist approach. In this context, he suggests categories such as nature, human consciousness and…
Translated by Nausheen Jaffery, edited by Swapna Liddle, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2017, 172 pages, Rs 650 The publication in 2017 of the English translation of Sair-ul-Manazil by Tulika Books is part of a journey that began 197 years ago.…
Prabhat Kumar Shukla, Neel ki Kheti aur Angrezi Raj: Bihar mein Kisano ka Pratirodh 1780–1917 (Hindi), Anamika, New Delhi, 2017, 190 pages + Appendix, Bibliography, Glossary and Index, Rs 550 Most scholarly works in the social sciences in India continue…