Current Issue
Volume 50 Number 9 September 2026
Read the Issue >>

By Guy Standing

In this, the shift away from the possibilities of ‘education commons’ has been towards facilitating education to serve the needs of industry and a larger economy in which the learner becomes primarily a worker, an employee, and a subject of the larger capitalist system. Human capital, now accepted uncritically in most international circuits and policies (including India), focuses on enabling ‘money-making, employability, competitiveness and the fetish of the age, economic growth’ (p. 62). In this shift, Standing highlights the loss of the key foundations of what liberal, classical Western education once stood for: Paideia (search for truth); Arete (moral virtue); Schole (learning with public participation in the life of polis); Praxis (practice as an end in itself); Parrhesia (speaking truth to power); Matthesis (moral or ethical thinking skills);


Reviewed by: AR Vasavi

By Jean-Pierre Filiu

A History, one of the authoritative works on this contested strip of land, is Professor of Middle East Studies at a leading French University, and a well-known columnist. He has visited Gaza multiple times through the decades and knows the land, its history and its inhabitants intimately. However, Filiu undertook this clandestine and imperilled visit after the most recent and savage war to see for himself the site of his study; to check if anything at all remained of the civilization.


Reviewed by: Rohini Mokashi-Punekar

By Patrick Bixby

There were more than 1.5 million émigrés, stateless persons who had become refugees, deprived of citizenship, denaturalized and denationalized. (The 2025 figure is nearly 120 million; 43 million refugees and 68 million internally displaced.) The next year, in 1921, the League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen, a zoologist and oceanographer, Nobel Peace Prize winner, proposed a supranational passport. The eponymous Nansen passport offered a lifeline to those thus cut loose. Marc Chagall, Igor Stravinsky and Vladimir Nabokov were among countless other celebrities who were beneficiaries. The passports could not be cancelled; the holder was protected from deportation; but it did not automatically confer the right to work and notice for travel had to be given in advance. Refugee law emerged. Alongside came intolerance,


Reviewed by: TCA Rangachari

By Indira Jaising with Ritu Menon

Running through the later chapters is a profound anxiety about the fate of constitutional democracy in contemporary India. Jaising writes about citizenship, secularism, civil liberties, judicial accountability and the treatment of dissenters with the urgency of someone who believes that foundational constitutional commitments are under strain. Her discussions of the Citizenship Amendment Act, the National Register of Citizens,


Reviewed by: Sahil Hussain Choudhury

Edited by Yatindra Singh Sisodiya, Uday Singh Rajput, Pushpendra Kumar Mishra

Vijay Shankar Choudhry has evaluated the journey of the idea and practice of federalism in postcolonial India. The idea of federalism faced different stages and challenges, and after diverse experiences now scholars and policy makers have accepted the idea of cooperative federalism. Sweety Sinha differentiates between competitive and cooperative federalism and argues that in recent times one can find the existence of competitive-cooperative federalism in India, where the Centre and different States are competing for foreign investment and also cooperating on different aspects of governance and welfare. However, another contributor,


Reviewed by: Kamal Nayan Choubey

By Zoramthanga

He sheds light on its planning and the major sites of conflict, besides making a realistic assessment of its successes and failures. He also dwells on the counter-insurgency operation of the Indian army. It was to suppress this very uprising that the Indian Air Force launched an attack within its own territory, the only such instance to date. The author mentions many of the places where the air force struck. The army’s strategy of grouping villages into guarded enclaves is also critically discussed. While its purported objective was to shield villagers from the conflict, according to him the real reason was to cut off supplies and information to the rebels.


Reviewed by: Abhinav Pankaj Borbora

By Ira Mukhoty

‘It is, of course, fashionable to blame a stepmother for most of the misfortunes of the world, but Frenchman Claude Martin’s stepmother appears to have inspired in him a veritable obsession.’ This opening statement of one of the chapters should give the reader an idea of the delightful prose that characterizes The Lion and the…


Reviewed by: Bharati Jagannathan

Edited with an Introduction by V.M.S. Subagunarajan. Translated from the original Tamil by R. Vijaya Sankar

‘Annihilating Caste in Caste Associations’ and ‘Periyar at Caste Abolition Conferences’. At first glance, talking about annihilating caste at caste association meetings might seem paradoxical, but Periyar’s praxis becomes clear once we understand how he strategically utilizes the pre-existing caste forums for his own end of furthering the anti-caste agenda.
In every one of the caste meetings of the Sengunthars, Nadars, Adi Dravidas, and Chettiars, Periyar unfailingly emphasizes, ‘No one is above you. No one is below you,’


Reviewed by: Aazhi Arasi A

Edited by Yagati Chinna Rao and Raj Sekhar Basu

2025

There is a strong plea made for the foregrounding of the non-Brahman (emic) outlook in preference to the dominant, more or less traditionalist (etic) opinions on caste. Quoting Badri Narayan, the editors observe that ‘mainstream histories have always involved the “de-historicisation of Dalits”, which Dalits have identified and responded to by denying the characterization of themselves as passive objects. This denial takes the form of a search for their own history….’ However, there is a regrettable lack of clarity here. The onus of undoing the misrepresentations of history, if vested in the Dalits alone, would make the correct writing of history a rather exclusivist, if not essentialist, endeavour.


Reviewed by: Tapan Basu

By Prabhat Patnaik

While Keynes saw state intervention as an embodiment of ‘social intervention’ that could achieve full employment, Patnaik argues how states are themselves constrained in their interventions, apart from the fact that genuine full employment can never be achieved under Capitalism. Marx attributed the incapacity of states to improve Capitalism to the fact that states themselves were controlled by Capitalists—what Patnaik refers to as a sociological perception.


Reviewed by: Padmini Swaminathan

By Ankur Bhatnagar and C. Saratchand

This includes details of the origins of commercial banks during colonial times, the bank nationalization of 1969 and its impact on credit markets, the liberalization era of the 1990s and the rise of private banks. The authors have elaborately covered cooperative banks and regional rural banks, explaining their role in financial inclusion, highlighting and discussing the tension between profitability and social responsibility. There is a detailed discussion of the current structure of the banking system, including public sector banks,


Reviewed by: TCA Ranganathan

By Sanjoy Hazarika

Hazarika pays close attention to how these changing river landscapes make simple ideas of belonging more complicated. The river flows through Tibet, India and Bangladesh, but its life and culture go beyond national borders. The book’s discussions of migration and identity politics in Assam stand out. Without taking sides, Hazarika shows how environmental risks, erosion, displacement and worries about population all come together in complex ways. This becomes clear when he reminds one of the earthquake of 1950 and the devastation it left. It was also when the river had a massive course correction. At times, River Traveller feels almost like a farewell to the environment. Climate change is a constant presence in the story. Talks of melting glaciers, unpredictable rain


Reviewed by: Parvin Sultana

By Selma Carvalho

There were labour migrations mostly of sailors and cooks as well as men of enterprise and service with the result that a small but influential group of Goans in Zanzibar soon became well known as influential retailers working for big European firms like Spencer & Co., shop owners, journalists managing the government press and post offices. Carvalho tracks this story by locating specific individuals and we will do the same to highlight the merits of the approach. CR Souza is the principal protagonist who arrived in Goa in 1865 to become one of its richest merchants. His connections with English captains, however tenuous, helped. By 1891, his experience as a table servant and cook brought him in close proximity to Consul (Kirk) and Sultan (Barghash). Souza entered retail trade and became part of what Carvalho calls the Goan shopocracy in East Africa, after which they were


Reviewed by: Lakshmi Subramanian

Edited by Jaya S. Tyagi, Saiyid Zaheer Husain Jafri and Amar Farooqui

Indian weavers were not totally oblivious of the idea of cooperative societies as panchayats or shrenis had existed in India since ancient times. Moreover, panchayats also used to control transactions and prices of goods till as late as the early nineteenth century. Yet these very weavers could not associate themselves with the new organizations formed by the government. The formation of new organizations and societies interfaced with the existing social relations. In a community where ustads, grihastas and sardars had always played an important role in decision making, and where panchayats were included within the public sphere of the community, attempts to elect or nominate


Reviewed by: Manu V Devadevan

By Krishna Mohan Shrimali

This led, further, to disintegration of large kingdoms. Shrimali, while following Sharma’s formulations closely, pushes the beginnings of feudalism to circa 100 CE. This timeline removes Sharma’s key causative factor, i.e., the Hun invasions, from the frame of analysis because these took place only around the fourth-fifth century. This leads to the situation of a solution emerging about four hundred years before the crisis. Secondly, the early centuries of the Common Era are associated with the high point of international trade. Shrimali airbrushes both anachronisms by saying, ‘…the rise of the toiling, subject and immobile peasantry and artisans…are the hallmark of the feudal apparatus…’ (p. 427). If agrarian relations alone were to define the nature of society,


Reviewed by: PK Basant

By Kundan Kumar

Further strength of the monograph lies in its integration of environmental history into political analysis. Kundan Kumar’s close reading of inscriptional references to rivers, forests, irrigation structures, and agrarian categories allows him to reconstruct the ecological contexts of state formation. The transformation of forested zones into agrarian villages emerges as a crucial dimension of early medieval expansion. Political authority was inseparable from environmental modification, rulers and their beneficiaries reshaped landscapes to generate revenue and sustain ritual institutions. In this sense, territoriality was materially grounded in processes of cultivation and ecological reordering.


Reviewed by: Amol Saghar

By Anirudh Deshpande

Nowhere is that tension clearer than in the contested legacy of Chhatrapati Shivaji, claimed in turn by Hindu nationalists, by high-caste Brahmins, and by Bahujan-Dalit movements. Deshpande’s careful reading shows instead a practical and tolerant ruler who respected all faiths, built a mosque in his capital for his Muslim subjects, and trusted Muslims with the command of his navy. That record sits awkwardly with every party that invokes his name to divide people. Beneath the portrait runs a sharper argument, which is that the icon was itself manufactured over time,


Reviewed by: Avanish Patil

Military thinkers after him including Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) point out that Machiavelli’s understanding of military matters was of a very high order. Machiavelli emphasized that it was not always prudent to rely on established military doctrines as this could mean depending on others’ ideas. He therefore advocates reliance on one’s own arms or ability to conduct warfare.


Editorial

By Rohit Saran

While doughnut pie charts laying out ownership patterns of NSE-listed companies can be illuminating, the average person does not get meaningfully informed about the implications of categories such as ‘promoter’ and ‘non-promoter’, or about the shifts in equity ownership. Are large-cap stocks being preferred by retail investors? What income bracket are these urban investors coming from? Are Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) investing differently over the last decade, and what sectors are they concentrating on? For more probing questions,


Reviewed by: Yusra Khan

By Anoushka Jain

The book would be a remarkable tool-book for those walkers or others (whether in Delhi or distant from it) keen on knowing Delhi, especially the monuments in Old Delhi, and the general ambience around them—street food, transport facilities, the people. A valuable aspect of the book is that it ‘creates a roadmap for a feminist lens of reading the city’, and focuses on ten powerful, influential women of the historical past, particularly the Mughal past, who contributed to the cityscape and architecture of Delhi. These women, erased from the patriarchy-driven contemporary popular accounts, perhaps because of their non-conformism and daring emboldened spirit, are retrieved by Jain from behind the purdah, the walled harem.


Reviewed by: Meena Bhargava

By Namrata Chaturvedi

An ordained sister in a nun’s habit, she was seen going for lessons in Hindustani music to Ustad Latafat Husain Khan, who was from the Agra Gharana of Hindustani classical music. Her Ustad had composed many poetic pieces (bandishes) under the pseudonym ‘Premdas’. In her own words, it was music that became her main means of entering into meditation. Vandana Mataji also wore saffron robes and maintained that she was a Christian. Through Vandana Mataji’s story, Chaturvedi notes that one can be born Zoroastrian, become Christian and practice Hindu sannyasa and nama japa.


Reviewed by: Juanita Kakoty

Translated by Maria Heim

As such, Milindapanho is historically significant as evidence of vibrant inter-civilizational exchange in the ancient world, albeit historians are still uncertain as to the historicity of this particular event. For Buddhists, of course, the conversion of an initially sceptical Menander/Milinda into a committed Buddhist by the end of the dialogue serves as an example of the rigour and refinement of the Buddhist philosophical understanding of the nature of reality.


Reviewed by: Maya Joshi

A Retelling by Meena Arora Nayak

Nayak rightly says that ‘Those of us who grew up listening to or reading Vikram and Vetal stories have a mental image of the Vetal. For some of us, that image derives from the popular television series, Vikram aur Betaal that aired on Doordarshan in 1985-86. In this series the Vetal is shown as an old man with scraggly white hair and an evil grin under a long witchy nose, riding on Vikram’s muscular back.’ (Not to mention the orange-red lipstick that the Betaal wore!) Nayak calls the Vetal a shapeshifter and so could be defined in many ways, however, she draws a close association between the Vetal and the ‘shadowy ghoulish creatures such as bhutas, pretas and pishachas. The former two are spectral remains of people who have died….


Reviewed by: Sudhamahi Regunathan

By Anamika

The opening section sets the tone for this method as, through Saroj, the novel returns to the domestic and emotional underside of literary reputation. Nirala appears not as a monument but as a man caught in affection, loss, poverty, and eccentricity. The section on Miraben and Kasturba Gandhi complicates the familiar Gandhian moral grammar. Anamika highlights the complex relationship between the two women, shaped in part by Gandhi’s controversial experiments with celibacy and the public scrutiny surrounding his closeness to Miraben. Without reducing the relationship to scandal or sentiment, the novel quietly raises questions about how public perception may have influenced the emotional dynamic between the two women. Anamika approaches these relationships with restraint and psychological nuance.


Reviewed by: Tarika

By Rajkamal Choudhary. Translated from the original Hindi by Mahua Sen

Later, after her death, she seems to carry the legacy of sexual promiscuity and is a prime example of how a woman’s reputation is shaped, created and navigated in a man’s world. Her daughter, Priya, comes to terms with her own sexuality and sexual identity much later, but strangely when sexually assaulted, the act of violence is deemed to be a necessity to ‘make her a normal straight woman again’ (p. 156). One must read this in the context of the social fabric of the 1960s but also realize that such prejudice and ignorance about gender roles and sexuality are prevalent to this day.


Reviewed by: Sayan Aich Bhowmik

Edited by Hmingthanzuali and Mary Vanlalthanpuii

The first few essays focus on women’s fashion in Mizoram, early Mizo songs, the gender imbalance in the production and consumption of food, folklore and trailblazing women such as Nuchhungi Renthlei who became the first Mizo to document Mizo folktales in the Serkawn Graded Readers, a reader that has enabled young schoolgoers to become familiar with their own cultural past. The pursuit of this cultural materialist approach is indicative of a growing interest amongst Mizo scholars in both tracing shifts in their culture and understanding how these changes have shaped their identity or influenced their relationship with tradition.


Reviewed by: Shibani Phukan

By T.C. Ghai

‘The Fiend’, mute spectators who are cursed with self-awareness and introspection as they watch, with a sense of alienation and existential angst, the world changing so fast as to become unrecognizable and, in the process, unhousing them from all that gave them a sense of belonging to it. These characters form a quartet with the sculptor in the final story, ‘The State’, as he hefts a hammer in a futile but courageous attempt to undo his crime of complicity in the creation of a dictator who set out disguised as a revolutionary before his true face was revealed.
‘The Blackout’ and ‘Smell’ are both richly complex allegories and the fabular structure serves as a window into a world that is disorienting in its unpredictability and


Reviewed by: Anjana Neira Dev

By Rekha Sethi. Translated from the original Hindi and edited by Hina Nandrajog

Gagan Gill writes with a sense of detachment pondering over philosophical and melancholic meanderings of life from a woman’s perspective. She does not declare herself as avowedly feminist; however, her works are in pursuit of peace and truth imbued with the preachings of Buddhism. An activist and a journalist, Katyayani enriches the existing prolific tradition of socio-cultural poetry in Hindi, although with very few women’s voices to boast about. Her commitment to a truly egalitarian society guided by Marxist thoughts examines the practices of structural inequalities along gender lines. The vision of women as autonomous beings with a consciousness of their own is the most important highlight of her oeuvre.


Reviewed by: Anchala Paliwal

By Jaydeep Sarangi

On 24 August 1690, Job Charnock set up the East India Company’s headquarters on land that was spread over three villages of Bengal—Sutanuti, Kalikata and Gobindapur. Named as Calcutta, this city became the capital and headquarters of the British Empire in India till the early twentieth century. The spirit of Job Charnock, who is looked upon as the founder of Kolkata, haunts these poems in more ways than one. While the Calcutta High Court convincingly established in 2003 that Charnock could not be considered the founder of Kolkata given the fact that settlement in the region predated him, Charnock remains a significant presence in the cultural history of Kolkata and in the psyche of these poems.


Reviewed by: Basudhara Roy

By Anil Golani

Love constitutes another dominant strand of the collection. Appearing in multiple forms—romantic, devotional, remembered and lost—it becomes a recurring emotional landscape through which many of the poems travel. In works such as ‘Love, Eternal Love, Love Unleashed’, ‘The Pangs of Love’, ‘Love and Lust’ and ‘Redamancy’, love is portrayed as a spectrum of experiences encompassing ecstasy, longing, fulfilment and heartbreak. Golani’s treatment of love avoids excessive sentimentality; instead, it acknowledges the inseparability of joy and pain within human attachment. Images of fire, thirst, wounds and union recur throughout these poems, creating thematic continuity and emotional resonance.


Reviewed by: Usha Mujoo Munshi

Collected and edited by Janet Browne

The Quotable Darwin cites actual quotations from his autobiography, his lively letters, and his extensive writings and reflections by his contemporaries, and leads us through the course of his early life, the voyage, his views on subjects like slavery, indigenous peoples, marriage and his personal life, and the course of development of his theory; h


Reviewed by: S Ananthanarayanan