This year, in May 2015, Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai received the Man Booker International Prize, and this burst the belief of Hungarians that they have a great literature that cannot be translated and understood. At the distribution ceremony Krasznahorkai was…
Ernst Waltraud and Biswamoy Pati, eds, India’s Princely States: People, Princes and Colonialism, Primus, Delhi, 2010. Romila Thapar, The Past as Present: Forging Contemporary Identities through History, Aleph Book Company, New Delhi, 2014, 326 pages, Rs 595 Gargi Chakravartty and…
This note pertains to Prabhat Patnaik’s review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century, published in The Marxist, vol. 30, no. 2, April–June 2014. It seems to me that any critical assessment of Piketty’s book must, first of all,…
Praful Bidwai, outstanding political analyst, brilliant journalist, erudite social science researcher and public-spirited activist, died on 23 June 2015 in Amsterdam where he was attending the annual Transnational Institute (TNI) meeting. He was a long-time Fellow of TNI. Bidwai had…
Satadru Sen, Disciplined Natives: Race, Freedom and Confinement in Colonial India, Primus, Delhi, 2011, 359 pages, Rs 995 Samiksha Sehrawat, Colonial Medical Care in North India: Gender, State, and Society, c. 1840–1920, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2013, 292 pages,…
Siddharth Kara, Bonded Labour: Tackling the system of slavery in South Asia, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012, xx+314 pages (Tables, figures, b&w photos), US$ 29.50. Social scientists in the contemporary world often differentiate the working people in terms of…
In the lead article of the current number of Social Scientist Irfan Habib discusses the issue of equality which has recently attracted much attention in the advanced capitalist countries. Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book has underscored the threat to democracy from…
Amrik Singh, Mulk Raj Anand: Role and Achievement, National Book Trust, Delhi, 2008, 138 pages, Rs 45. Lisa Balabanlilar, Imperial Identity in the Mughal Empire: Memory and Dynastic Politics in Early Modern South and Central Asia, I.B. Tauris, New York,…
It was just after I had passed my M.A. examination from Aligarh in 1953, that I read Tapan Raychaudhuri’s book that had just been published, Bengal under Akbar and Jahangir (Calcutta, 1953). It set for me a model of how…
Radha Balasubramanian, The Influence of India on Leo Tolstoy and Tolstoy’s Influence on India: A Study of Reciprocal Receptions, Edwin Mellen Press Ltd., New York, 2013, 296 pages, $139.95. Syed Jaffar Ahmed (ed.), Challenges of History Writing in South Asia:…