It is now well documented that the balance of payments crisis of 1991, which saw the government turning to the IMF for emergency finance, provided the grounds for a policy shift, marking a new phase in India’s relationship with foreign…
The period since the 1990s has seen a fundamental change in the manner in which science and technology had been practised in India, viz. from an emphasis on development and self-reliance to an emphasis on integration into and connectivity with…
In 2007, following the practice of erecting pandals (tent-houses) in the style of famous buildings during the Durga Puja celebrations, the FD Block Durga Puja Committee in Salt Lake, Kolkata had recreated the Hogwarts School of Magic and Wizardry from…
When a society moves from one stage of the material base of production and, consequentially, different social relations of production, to another historical stage, it has to go through an extremely complex and long process of dialectics of social transition.…
Michael H. Fisher, The Inordinately Strange Life of Dyce Sombre: Victorian Anglo Indian MP and Chancery Lunatic, Hurst and Company, London, distributed in South Asia by Foundation Books, 2010, 396 pages, Rs 660 Partho Dutta, Planning the City: Urbanisation and…
Centenaries can be useful occasions for reflection and understanding. In the case of someone as contentious as Saadat Hasan Manto (1912–1955), his hundredth birth anniversary offers an occasion to not merely locate Manto in the continuum of the short story…
‘Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.’ – Sigmund Freud It would be appropriate if we replace ‘poet’ in Freud’s statement with ‘artist’. A great artist does not depend on psychology, science and research. His…
I begin with the basic question of how to read Saadat Hasan Manto today, sixty five years after the Partition and at a time when traditional ways of reading litera-ture are being seriously questioned. It is true that more than…
The objective of this paper is quite straightforward and modest: the paper tries to understand ‘politics’, or rather the ‘political role’ of intellectuals, in a postcolonial society. Discussing two short stories written by Manto, ‘Naya Qanoon’ and ‘1919 ki Ek…
I wish to begin with two truisms: one, from the 1930s right up till the mid1950s the Progressives were a force to reckon with; and two, while a ‘progressive’ in every sense of the word for various literary as well…