Rashbehari Bose

Revolutionary leader Rashbehari Bose (1886–1945) was one of the key organisers of the Ghadar conspiracy. Following the failed attempt to instigate an uprising against the British in 1915, he escaped to Japan, to Nakamuraya, an area of Tokyo near Shinjuku. It took him over twenty years, but with relentless perseverance, he kept true to the dream of Indian independence.

Participating actively the Indian freedom struggle abroad, Bose convened a conference in Tokyo on March 28-30, 1942, which decided to establish the Indian Independence League. At the conference he moved a motion to raise an army for Indian liberation. At the second conference of the League in Bangkok on June 22, 1942, a resolution was adopted to invite Subhas Chandra Bose to join the League and take its command as its president. The organisational structure built up by Rashbehari Bose enabled Subhash Chandra Bose to build the Indian National Army (also called 'Azad Hind Fauj').

Before his death in 1945, the Japanese Government honoured him with the 'Second Order of the Merit of the Rising Sun'. (See Wikipedia for more details.)

Bose's story has now been written, first in Japanese by Nakajima Takeshi, a graduate of the Osaka University of Foreign Studies, and a PhD from Kyoto University. Nakajima has also authored Hindu Nationalism and is currently associate professor at the Hokkaido University Public Policy School. The book has been translated from Japanese to English by Prem Motwani of the JNU as Bose of Nakamuraya: An Indian Revolutionary in Japan, and is published by Bibliophile South Asia, New Delhi.

"Rash Bihari Bose (1886-1945) was a revolutionary leader against the British in India and was one of the key organizers of the bomb attack on Lord Hardinge and the Gadar Conspiracy at Lahore. He fled to Japan to avoid a certain death sentence and spent the latter half of his life there. He became close to the right wing nationalists in Japan and was intrumental in almost persuading the Japanese authorities to support the Indian freedom struggle. He did the spadework for the creation of the Indian National Army (INA) before passing the baton on to Subhash Chandra Bose towards the end of his life.

While the post-war generation of Japanese may not know of Rash Bihari Bose, he was a well-known figure in Japan in the years before the Second World War, where he was active trying to secure foreign help for Asia's liberation from the clutches of imperialist powers, and a regular writer on Indian affairs in Japanese newspapers and magazines of the time.

Nakamuraya in Shinjuku, Tokyo, famous for its Indian curry, was the place where Rash Bihari was provided shelter for over three months by his Japanese well-wishers, defying the deportation order against him by the Japanese government. Very few people are aware that Rash Bihari Bose was instrumental in introducing authentic Indian curry to the Japanese.

Pre-war Japan has enamoured researchers the world over for obvious reasons. However, the Japanese language has been the stumbling block as very little literature, especially written by the Japanese themselves, is available in English on this era. It is obvious from this book too. Besides presenting a nail-biting account of Rash Bihari's travails, torn betwen his anti-colonialist stance and his allegiance to the Japanese Asianists for saving his life, which has been totally unknown till date, it provides rare insight into Japan's expansionism in Asia viewed from the Japanese angle."

In our Biography section, hardcover, 323 pages. Rs 700. ISBN: 9788185002989.

Golmaal!

I came to appreciate Utpal Dutt relatively late, considering. Although I recall seeing Bhuvan Shome in a pokey theatre in Calcutta in the 1960's (being more stricken by Suhasini Mulay, admittedly) it was not until Golmaal that I became a fan. Of course now seeing the earlier movies is much more rewarding, although Golmaal will remain a favourite...

As a playwright, director, or as actor Dutt (1929-93) was inspired. This year Seagull, Kolkata have brought out four books by him. "Dutt tried to take revolutionary theatre to the widest mass of people, with political messages for every turning point in a highly sensitive and rapidly changing political scenario, redefining his relationship with the political leadership again and again, getting into violent confrontations with various forces, being driven underground, and getting jailed in the process. His legacy of plays and other writing remain a valuable chapter in Indian theatre history."

On Cinema is a "collection of Dutt’s cinema writings, including his unpublished telefilmscript, In Search of Theatre, reveals a keen critical eye, an impressive knowledge of cinema all over the world and a deep understanding of the price any artist must pay for his commitment to his politics. Written with a sensibility steeped equally in the classics and Marxism, these pieces help us appreciate not only some of the world’s greatest filmmakers but also Dutt himself—the vast range of influences that coloured his creativity and his aesthetics."

On Theatre is a "collection of Dutt’s theatre writings, including the transcript of a round-table on ‘Jatra and Its Relevance’ that he participated in, records the evolution of his theatre sensibility, nurtured on Shakespeare and Communism, Jatra and Sophocles. No play escaping his attention, and no actor or director held sacred, Dutt attacks and analyses, compliments and condemns, venting both his ire and his appreciation with equal gusto, and reveals, in the process, his high expectations not only of his contemporaries but, most importantly, also of himself."

Three Plays presents three of Dutt’s plays, "in his own translation, each exploring human relationships and the tensions of class and power in a revolutionary situation. Hunting the Sun (Surya Shikar) takes us back to the pre-Mughal period, with Buddhism emerging as an intellectual revolutionary force; The Great Rebellion (Mahavidroha) is set in the battlefields of the First Indian War of Independence in 1857; and Nightmare City (Duswapner Nagari) is set on yet another battlefield—the city of Calcutta in the 1970s."


In Towards a Revolutionary Theatre, "Dutt explores the contradictions between an actor’s personality and his roles as he is forced to juggle the socio-political influences of his times. He debates on ‘political theatre’, attempting to place revolution in its historical perspective and presents his own views on matters revolutionary, drawing upon his incredible reading of world history, theatre and literature. He also writes of his association with the Indian People’s Theatre Association and the Little Theatre Group, his Marxist leanings and his determination to make a mark in ‘active politics’ through his entire body of creative output."

Like all Seagull titles, the books are imaginatively produced. They are listed in our Film Studies and Drama Sections.

On Cinema, Hardcover, 168 pages, Rs 350. ISBN : 9788170462521
On Theatre, Hardcover, 208 pages, Rs 475. ISBN: 9788170462514
Three Plays: Hunting the Sun, Hardcover, 282 pages, Rs 475. ISBN : 9788170462569
Towards a Revolutionary Theatre Hardcover, 180 pages, Rs 395. ISBN : 9788170463405

No Woman's Land

Tulika's new book, Islam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir: Between India and Pakistan brought to mind an older title from Women Unlimited, No Woman's Land. While the earlier book was an " unusual mix of memoirs, interviews, reminiscences and reflective essays", in this new book, Nyla Ali Khan, Associate Professor in the Department of English at University of Nebraska-Kearney writes on being caught in the middle. Of women, Muslims, and victims of the decades-long conflicts.

Describing the book in her preface, the author says "I have chosen to deploy oral evidence in my book, which has allowed me to approach events, notions, and literatures about which there was meager evidence from other sources. The use of oral history has empowered my interviewees/correspondents, people of J & K, in significant ways, bringing acknowledgment of hitherto disregarded opinions and experiences. In some instances, I have taken the liberty of reproducing e-mail responses, which I received from my interviewees, verbatim. I was keen on providing personal reminiscences from participants about landmark events without mediating between oral evidence/historiography and more elitist versions of history. My primary goal is to ensure that future generations of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir don't forget because if we stop remembering, we stop being."

Khan is the grand-daughter of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, the first Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. and is thus uniquely placed to write such a book. In a review, Agha Ashraf Ali says "Probably the first time a Kashmiri women rises above herself and her unfortunately limited role (particularly in these last two decades of violence, destruction and mayhem) and attempts to voice her opinion so emphatically. You will come to clearly understand through Nyla Khan’s instructive style that a journey into Kashmir symbolizes a strange exaltation that is an undefinable quest but, like a torrential rainstorm, both cleansing and destructive.”

And in Ashish Nandy's analysis “… Sadly, Kashmir has been captive, during the past sixty years, in the making of the myths of origin of India and Pakistan. Even more sadly, it now seems unable to resist the birth of a new creation myth of its own, which promises to replicate the efforts of its tormentors faithfully. Once a community experiences the trauma of state-formation at its expense, its capacity to envision a different kind of political arrangement weakens. Happily, the myth may not have yet gelled in Kashmir. This is where Nyla Ali Khan comes in.…”

In our Gender section, in paperback, 200 pages. Rs 395, ISBN: 9788189487577.

National Statistics Day

A recent book from Hindustan Book Agency in their very successful TRIM series (Texts and Readings in Mathematics) is Lectures on Insurance Models by S Ramasubramanian of the Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore. A fitting book to post about today, June 29, on the occasion of National Statistics Day.

"Insurance has become a necessary aspect of modern society. The mathematical basis of insurance modelling is best expressed in terms of continuous time stochastic processes.

This introductory text on actuarial risk theory deals with the Cramer-Lundberg model and the renewal risk model. Their basic structure and properties including the renewal theorems, as well as the corresponding ruin problems are studied. As heavy tailed distributions have become increasingly relevant, there is a detailed discussion on such distributions. The Lundberg risk process with investment in risky asset is also considered.

The book will be useful to practitioners in the field and to graduate students interested in this important branch of applied probability."

In our Mathematics section, Rs 280, Hardcover. 206 pages. ISBN: 9788185931937

Viva McQuarrie!

One can bemoan the lack of good Indian textbooks in almost any subject, but there is simply no getting away from it that for whatever reason, most- and I know there are exceptions- attempts by "Indian authors" to write a good textbook are severely compromised. One common tendency is to cut and paste- plagiarism, far from being punished, is actually rewarded by students preferring to buy a 'well plagiarised' book rather than the more expensive original! Then there are the books that are written with a captive audience in mind- either students who will be told to buy the book in question, or books that are written with a particular syllabus in mind!!

The more pernicious reason, I believe, is that pedagogy for its own sake is neither appreciated nor encouraged, and with the teaching versus research approach to academic practice that is endemic in our country, there is no incentive for the more original among our scholars to sit down and write a good textbook.

And for whatever reason, that problem is not quite so evident in the west where the number of good textbooks (written mainly by competent practitioners in the field!) is actually growing with the years. Having misspent a youth in studying chemistry, I can recall the pleasure with which my classmates and I devoured Morrison and Boyd, available in an Indian reprint for Rs 12. Thirty some years later, regrettably there is still no substitute for the reprint it seems...

Be that as it may, this post is about Donald McQuarrie's latest book, Mathematical Methods for Scientists and Engineers. Students of chemistry will be familiar with the name- McQuarrie is justly "famous for his clear writing, careful pedagogy, and wonderful problems and examples", with many books to his credit. These include a classic text on Statistical Mechanics, and a Physical Chemistry to rival- or complement- Atkins.

And Viva Books, New Delhi have done us all a service by bringing the book out in a reasonably priced reprint for the region. The book as well as McQuarrie's Statistical Mechanics can be ordered here, as can other books from Viva. Write in if you want a title not explicitly listed!

Pride and Joy

"400 years ago, the word "queer" meant odd or unusual. 100 years ago the word was used as an insult for anyone who was different from society's norm of gender and sexually "correct" behaviour. It was used to demean and marginalize people. Today, people across the world have reclaimed that word to empower, celebrate and unite people of diverse genders and sexualities. With the rainbow as our symbol of beauty in diversity, we celebrate Queer Pride in solidarity with queer people across the world."- Delhi Queer Pride

Tomorrow, this 28th of June 2009, Delhi will celebrate its second ever Queer Pride. Hundreds of queer people; lesbians, gay men, bisexual, transgender and intersexed people and their friends and families will come together to celebrate with pride, the dignity and rights of sexually marginalized people all across India and the world.

To speak of sexuality, and of same-sex love in particular, in India today is simultaneously an act of political assertion, celebration, defiance and fear. Indeed, in times when the issue of queer sexuality is beginning to find more space in popular representation, it is important to give voice to a concept, an identity and politics that is only now, and slowly at that, beginning to enter the consciousness of the nation.

Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan bring together Because I Have A Voice, a groundbreaking collection of writings that states boldly and clearly that queer lives and politics are inextricably linked with each other. The words of this anthology are those of the queer community itself, spoken in their own voice, as one and yet as individuals, each of whom has a story to tell, and a view to share.

The two editors of the anthology and its twenty-seven contributors discuss the queer mo(ve)ment in terms of its definition and composition; the legal challenges which face the community, particularly the activism against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code; queer protests and demonstrations which have played a strong role in building wider public consciousness about the issue; a burgeoning queer culture; and the everyday lives of queer people which become in themselves creative sites of resistance. This volume is in many ways an unprecedented effort, as the voice of a community that refuses to be silenced, and the words on these pages are, perhaps, the beginning of its own moment of assertion.

Available here on our website, the paperback is priced at Rs. 295, with 288 pages.

The Queer Pride March starts at 5:30 pm on Sunday, June 28th, 2009, at the corner of Barakhamba Road, continuing along Tolstoy Marg to end at Jantar Mantar. More information here.

WE, THE PEOPLE...

...OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens: JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation; IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

Sixty years later, these words still provide a worthy framework for the idea of India. Along with Dr B R Ambedkar, one of the prime architects of the constitution was Dr Alladi Krishnaswamy. (The constitution can be downloaded from the NIC site, by the way.)

The Alladi Memorial Trust was founded in 1983 by a scion of the family, Alladi Kuppuswami. This commemorates the birth centenary of Dr Alladi Krishnaswamy and has, among its objectives, the aim of "holding lectures and seminars on issues relating to the Indian Constitution, which are intended to apprise the general public of the various debates concerning constitutional law."

Tulika's new publication of the Alladi Memorial Lectures brings together fourteen lectures delivered over the years for the Alladi Memorial Trust and the Umamaheswaram Memorial lectures – and some seminar papers.

"The essays included here, dating back to 1989, are by eminent jurists, academicians, and social/ human rights activists. They include distinguished members of the Bench like Justice M Hidayatullah, Justice S Ranganathan, Justice V R Krishna Iyer, Justice P C Rao, Justice B P Jeevan Reddy and Justice M N Rao, leading members of the Bar like K G Kannabiran (also a well-known human rights activist), P P Rao and Prashant Bhushan, eminent academicians like Professors R V R Chandrasekhara Rao, K Seshadri and Javeed Alam, and committed activist–academicians like Professor Kalpana Kannabiran and Dr Asghar Ali Engineer.

The topics covered by these essays are very relevant in today’s context. They include basic features of, and the use and abuse of the Constitution; the judicial process; uniform civil code; right to conversion; secularism and minority rights; formation of the Hindu religious consciousness; failure of laws to contain communalism; need for jurisprudence of women’s rights; intellectual property rights; and parliamentary democracy."

Alladi Memorial Lectures is now listed in our Law Section, xii + 296 pages, Hardcover. Rs 595.

Dr. Dev D.

Devdutt Pattnaik writes extensively on Indian mythology, and given the scores of gods and goddesses we have, plus all the other players, demons, and so on, there is a lot to explore and interpret. His new book, featured in today's Hindu is a 177 page analysis: 7 Secrets from Hindu Calendar Art.

Describing the book on his website, Dr Pattnaik says "Hindu Calendar Art maybe gaudy and kitsch, but it is the most modern and democratic expression of a mythic imagery that once adorned temple walls and palm leaf manuscripts. They speak a language that is indifferent to rationality. It is the language of a people’s faith."

And as described in the Hindu article by Rana Siddiqui Zaman, the book- which despite its glossy colour cover, has only black and white reproductions inside- "replete with pictures and chapter-wise explanations on seven gods — Ganesha, Narayan, Ardhanari, Shiva, Devi, Vishnu and Brahma — is penned in a simple, narrative style. According to the book, for instance, the popular god Ganesha, who is worshipped by Hindus before beginning a project, has all logical bearings. His elephant head is symbolic of power. The elephant is a strong animal with no natural enemy in the forest. No animal dares to cross his path, making it a creature that is unstoppable. His fat body and belly imply availability of abundant food and possibility of less work, suggesting affluence and prosperity."

Dr Pattnaik practised medicine for several years before he discovered this avocation, namely that of dissecting myths and explaining them to others.

In our Art and Religion Sections, 177 pages, softcover. Rs 295, ISBN: 9788189975678

Art and visual culture since 1857

Gayatri Sinha is an independent critic and curator who has written extensively on Indian art, particularly the contemporary scene.

Her new book from Marg is titled Art and Visual Culture in India: 1857-2007, and "brings together 19 seminal essays on India's visual culture and its leading manifestations during the period 1857-2007. It traces the shifting role of the artist and art institution through cataclysmic changes in India's history. With Contributions from the foremost art writers, critics, and curators, this volume seeks to contextualize Indian art within the dynamic shifts of Indian social history, Over 200 illustrations provide a selective panorama of the visual arts in the last 150 years.

In our Art section, Rs 3500. Oversize, 335 pages, with over 200 illustrations. ISBN: 9788185026923