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:…
Maya Tudor, The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan, Cambridge University Press, xvi+240 pages, 2013, Rs 795. What are the reasons that some developing countries, on deliverance from colonial rule, are able to…
Rattan Lal Hangloo (ed.), Indian Diaspora in the Caribbean, History, Culture and Identity, Primus Book, New Delhi, India, 2012, 174 pages, Rs 795. Davesh Soneji, Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory, and Modernity in South India, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2012,…
Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age: Religious Authority and Internal Criticism, Cambridge University Press, first South Asian edition, 2013, 364 pages, Rs 795. Nilanjana Sengupta, A Gentleman’s Word: The Legacy of Subhas Chandra Bose in South…
Perry Anderson, The Indian Ideology, Three Essays Collective, Gurgaon, 2012, 191 pages, Rs 350 Charu Gupta, Gendering Colonial India: Reforms, Print, Caste and Communalism, Orient BlackSwan, New Delhi, 2012, viii+394 pages, Rs 845.
Nitya Ramakrishnan, In Custody: Law, Impunity and Prisoner abuse in South asia, Delhi, jointly published by SAGE Publications India and South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR), 2013, 452 pages, Rs 995. Bhairabi Prasad Sahu, The Changing Gaze: Regions and the…