No Author

I do not think of society as being bad, or as capable of being bettered. I con¬sider it absurd.-Garine in Les ConquerantsWe know that we have not chosen to be born, that we will not choose to die. That we can do nothing against time…


Reviewed by: Shoba Sadagopan
T.M.P. Mahadevan

Dr. Mahadevan’s translation and selection is a most useful reference work and reading the excerpts from the Minor Upanisads is fascinating. He has given short explanations with certain passages from nearly all the 108 Upanisads but, though the front-cover blurb claims these are ‘easy-to-read translations’, it is difficult to agree…


Reviewed by: Monika Verma
Sunil Gavaskar

Sunil Gavaskar writes as well as he bats—almost. In a simple and straight­forward style he sets out his cricketing experiences. The narrative is full of little stories and anecdotes, which make interesting reading. In Sunny Days, Gavaskar gives his candid opinion about umpiring in Eng­land,..


Reviewed by: S.R.
Col. B.K. Narayan

It is perhaps axiomatic that charisma­tic leadership absorbed in the projection of its charisma, is followed by nuts-and-­bolts leadership. Of the latter, President Sadat of Egypt is an instructive example. His six years as Egypt’s Head of State have been a remarkably open account of involvement…


Reviewed by: Prabhakar Menon
K.A. Abbas

There is no clarification in the pre­face about the ‘experimental’ nature of this autobiography; there is instead a brief account of the unhappy circumstan­ces in which this book came to be writ­ten. At the age of 60, says Mr. Abbas, it struck him at the instigation of a friend that he had led an interesting life…


Reviewed by: Sunil Sethi
R.P. Noronha

One of the stock criticisms of the post-Independence I.C.S. is that it is totally devoid of unusual individuals. Unique­ness and occasional eccentricity, it has been said, vanished with the British.


Reviewed by: J.S. Lall
Kishori Charan Das

Thakura Ghara, the Sahitya Akademi award winning book of 1976, is the fifth and the latest collection of short stories by the author. ‘God’s Apartment’ is the vantage point from which the author sur­veys the middle class world.


Reviewed by: K. Mahapatra
Norvin Hein

Mathura is a miracle in itself. In its imperial past, it was a scene of high civili­zation, a centre of attraction for far-flung peoples. It remains a magnet; scores of visitors continue to flock there, drawn now not by temporal glory but by the magic of the Krishna legend…


Reviewed by: Salman Haidar
Bhagwan S. Gidwani

Few rulers have been so maligned and misrepresented as Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, who has generally been pictured as an ‘intolerant bigot’ or ‘the furious fanatic’—and consigned to the category of monsters. Generations of readers have accepted this view of the contemporary Englishman, writing with a sense of moral superiority over the so­-called barbarian…


Reviewed by: Soumya Ramaswamy
Radha Sinha

Inadequate food production and the population explosion in developing count­ries were favourite themes for economists during the 1950s and 1960s. They have generally suggested that there is a need to modernize agriculture and increase food production, and take effective mea­sures to bring down the population growth…


Reviewed by: Sreedhar Rao
Subrata Ghatak

In economic matters judgements ba­sed on statistically tested hypotheses are surely to be preferred to hunches or guesses however clever. Where how­ever ‘facts’ derived through statistical analysis fly in the face of what is widely believed to be the reality, before procee­ding to accept them without reservations one…


Reviewed by: Amaresh Bagchi
Galal-El-Rashidi

In the very first paragraph of the first chapter of his book the author claims that the Arab community has played a significant role both in the collapse of the old international order and in setting in train the quest for a new one. While this categorical statement may sound chauvinistic to some, one cannot but agree with him on this point…


Reviewed by: Hari Sharan Chhabra
Baldev Raj Nayar

Indo-U.S. relations have followed a turbulent course. The appreciation of American support to India’s Indepen­dence struggle was soon dissipated by the U.S. arming of Pakistan following their Mutual Aid Treaty of 1954. There­after U.S. sympathy for India, in the wake of the Chinese aggression…


Reviewed by: P.R. Chari
Kenneth W. Jones

Social history as an academic specia­lization is quite recent and in India it is still a largely unexplored field. While in the last few years some critical re-exa­mination has been done of the role of Raja Rammohan Roy as a modernizer…


Reviewed by: Aparna Basu
B.R. Tomlinson

This is a study of British and Indian policy-makers in the penultimate years of the raj. The British, both in London and Delhi, could not see that the days of Bri­tish rule were numbered and planned on the basis of staying on in India indefini­tely by utilizing the Princes and the Muslim communal elements against…


Reviewed by: S. Gopal
Delia Davin

Delia Davin’s study of the rise of the working woman in China is a sober, factual, historical account giving insights of special interest to us in India of an almost identical system of social cons­traints upon women, but in a wholly different social setting. We never had bound feet to cripple a woman’s useful­ness and productivity…


Reviewed by: Tara Ali Baig
M.N. Srinivas

The Remembered Village illustrates most persuasively M.N. Srinivas’s central concerns. First, a healthy respect for the rural person, his life style, his know¬ledge. While social scientists and ad-ministrators are constantly figuring out programmes for rural folk on the assumption that they…


Reviewed by: Devaki Jain
John T. Hitchcock and Rex L. Jones

Man throughout his existence has striven towards an adjustment with the forces of nature. Some problems were easily resolved by his scientific, matter-­of-fact attitude but there were others which were beyond empirical explana­tion. To harmonize with the forces beyond his comprehension, man evolved various assumptions and activities…


Reviewed by: J.S. Bhandari