Magnificent Obsession

Sitting on my desk is a sumptuous diary for the year 2009, Homi. This is the birth centenary of Homi J Bhabha, founder of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC), the moving force behind the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE)... And much more. And to celebrate this extraordinary life, all the above institutions have planned a series of events, scientific and cultural, through this year and the next...

The diary is handsome- I have yet to write anything in it!- and is filled with archival photographs that document the birth of many of the institutions that Bhabha founded, along with photographs of Nehru, JRD, world leaders and events, and of some of the paintings that Bhabha collected for the TIFR, by Ara, Hebbar, Husain and others. Produced by the TIFR Archives, this diary is a valuable record of a very important part of post-independence India, the birth of "big science" in the country.

In our Occasional Listings, under Diaries. Rs 300 plus shipping. Write to us.

Bhabha lived- or that is the impression- a charmed existence. Supremely talented, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society at an early age. Educated in Cambridge, where he did a Mechanical Tripos, and then a Mathematics Tripos, he followed his passion, physics, with distinction. Widely known for his theoretical work on relativistic exchange scattering (which is known as Bhabha scattering) and the Bhabha-Heitler theory on the production of electron and positron showers in cosmic rays, Bhabha returned to India in 1939, and the war intervened, so he stayed... Changing the academic landscape of the country in the most fundamental way.

The story of Bhabha is accessibly documented in G Venkataraman's book Bhabha and his Magnificient Obsessions. This is a part of the Vignettes in Physics series published by the Universities Press, Hyderabad. GV knew Bhabha and worked with him, and he describes the man and his achievements (in a simple and chatty manner, characteristic of all the books that GV has written).

"This book is about the remarkable scientist Homi Jehangir Bhabha who, at the age of eighteen, went to Cambridge to study Physics and started his research career there. In 1939, when Bhabha came to India on a short vacation, he was forced to stay on as the Second World War broke out. This was, of course, a blessing for the country as he later steered the country’s scientific destiny. The book records Bhabha’s contributions which were in many dimensions and were not just purely scientific."

In our Biography Section. Rs 150, 222 pages, in paperback. ISBN: 9788173710070

An artist for the masses

A new book from MAPIN, Ahmedabad, Raja Ravi Varma: Life and Times in Colonial India celebrates the career of Raja Ravi Varma (1848 - 1906) who, arguably, was the first major Indian artist to adapt western techniques to paintings on Indian themes... His portraits, as well as the images of familiar stories from mythology in the late 1880's captured the imagination of Indians awakening to the possibility of Independence... Then modern techniques of mass production, via oleography, brought these paintings to the common man- and there is probably not one middle-class home in South India that did not have a reproduction of Saraswati, or Krishna and Yashodha, or some similar image...

His influence- and reputation- was huge. Ravi Varma's work "has maintained a lasting effect on the Indian sensibility, making him the best-known classical painter of the modern era.

This book is an account of Ravi Varma's traditional background and environment and the manner in which they related to the modernization of colonial India; his profession as an aristocratic itinerant painter, his royal patrons, his portraits and the analysis of his mythological and iconic paintings; his influence on the Indian mindset, the sources used by him and his controversial status from the late nineteenth century till today even while contemporary painters continue to be inspired by his art and his attitude. There is also a chapter devoted to the technical examination of his paintings, their conservation, his methodology of painting and the problem of fakes and copies. The book is lavishly illustrated with pictures taken from princely and private collections and museums. Several royal states of India as well as the rich and powerful were patrons of Ravi Varma whose portraits he painted in large numbers. These also appear in the book among the works that have never been seen before, previously undisclosed maps, letters, photographs and other archival material."

The author, Rupika Chawla is a conservator of paintings who has been instrumental in restoring several Ravi Varma paintings.

Raja Ravi Varma: Life and Times in Colonial India is in our Art Section. Hardcover, 416pages with 384 colour illustrations. Rs 3500. ISBN: 9788189995089

i-POD: Back in the public domain

Sarai Reader 01: The Public Domain. A milestone in media studies in India, the first of the annual Readers brought out by Sarai, the New Media Initiative, in Delhi.

"The Sarai Reader can be seen both as a navigation log of actual voyages and a map for possible journeys into a real and imagined territory that we have provisionally called the "Public Domain". This republic without territory is a sovereign entity that comes into being whenever people gather and begin to communicate, using whatever means that they have at hand, beyond the range of the telescope of the merchant, and outside the viewing platform of the microscope of the censor.

Our Public Domain has no borders and issues no visas...."

Bold, brash, breezy.... Wildly popular, for quite some time now it has been out of print.

Till today, that is. With Sarai 01: The Public Domain, Scholars is very pleased to launch our i-POD service, the POD here being, of course, Print On Demand.

Some titles- especially the more eclectic- need the occasional resurrection rather than constant reprinting, and for these Scholars is more than happy to offer you a limited edition i-POD version. Write to us for details.

Meanwhile, Sarai 01. 248 pages, 14.5 cm x 21 cm. Paperback: Rs 350, US$ 20, € 20. Shipping extra.

Secret Lives

सर्वहारा रातें- उन्नीसवीं सदी के फ्रांस में मजदूर-स्वप्न
is the Hindi translation of Jacques Ranciere's
Nights of Labour: Workers' Dream in 19th Century France.

Algerian born Jacques Rancière is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris. He is well known for his book Reading Capital written with Louis Althusser. Nights of Labour is a work that examines the philosophical and poetical writings of workers in 19th century France, "an influential work of social history which examines in detail the records of ordinary workers' lives in order to produce a new picture of their surprising political sophistication."

"Through an examination of the lives of these worker autodidacts, Rancière introduced a new way of thinking about the idea of the worker, and of the injunction that divides between those entitled to a life in thought and those born to do manual labour. Ranciere wrote The Nights of Labour after years of archival work. It traces the world of worker intellectuals in 19th century France, who, through their poems, music, letters, produced a world that did not celebrate work as in conventional socialist texts, but a life outside it. Radical in its style and argument, Nights of Labour, offers not just a revision of working class history, but the relation between politics, knowledge, aesthetics and equality, all of which have become topics of Ranciere's future books."

The first in a series of translations of texts to be published by Sarai-CSDS and Vani Prakashan, this book has been translated from the English by Abhay Kumar Dube.

In Hindi, in paperback, 455 pages, Rs 325. ISBN: 9788181439550. Write to us... लिखिए!

À la recherche du temps perdu

Languages, as most of us will readily testify, are living entities that adapt and evolve with the times. And become extinct, unless nurtured by population, culture or literature.

And sometimes not even then... As the Andamanese tribes become extinct, so does their tongue, and the efforts of my colleague, the linguist Anvita Abbi at JNU to preserve whatever is left is a fight against time... Her book Endangered Languages of the Andaman Islands is "on the languages of one of the world’s most endangered and ancient linguistic groups- the Andamanese. Andamanese, a language isolate, is considered the fifth language family of India. Based on fieldwork conducted in the impregnable jungles of the Andaman Islands, the author brings out a comparative linguistic sketch of Great Andamanese, Jarawa, and Onge. The book provides the first detailed description of phonology, word formation processes, morphophonemic processes, lexicon containing words from various semantic fields, and syntax of the three languages.

Similarities and differences between Great Andamanese, Jarawa and Onge are discussed to suggest possible genealogical affiliations and language contact. Considered to be the remnants of the first migration out of Africa 70,000 years before present, Andamanese communities and their language are highly endangered."

Indeed, speakers of these languages number 8 for Great Andamanese who don't even speak the language among themselves, 250 for Jarawa, and 94 for Onge... They are the last survivors of the pre-Neolithic population of the Southeast Asia. The book comes with a CD that contains songs rendered by the tribes, sound and video files, which help to provide more detailed phonetic and prosodic information as well as phonetic variation among the speakers of the dying and ‘mixed’ language such as Great Andamanese. The unique linguistic structures and the comparative typology will be of interest not only to linguists but also anthropologists, historians, South Asian and Southeast Asian scholars... Indeed to all of us. The title is not listed on SwB, being published in Germany, but we will be happy to source it. About US$125, ISBN: 3895868663.


But this is not just about language... So much more goes into making a people, and this is also in danger of becoming a distant memory of our species. In this context, the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, a voluntary organisation based in Vadodara, Gujarat, gives voice to and establishes spaces of equality for tribal and nomadic groups. Bhasha documentation and conservation of oral traditions, languages and cultural practices, socio-economic empowerment and human rights of tribal and nomadic communities. Bhasha has established the Adivasi Academy at Tejgadh for development of Tribal Studies as a serious philosophical and social thought. The Academy houses a Museum a Documentation and Media Unit and a Resource Centre. The Academy has instituted research and training courses for tribal empowerment and its extension work is spread in over 400 villages of Gujarat. Bhasha's community development work includes micro credit, food grain banks, water collectives, agriculture, non formal education and healthcare.

Bhasha was founded by Ganesh Devy, "an uncommon man who is fighting to preserve the vanishing cultures of rapidly vanishing tribes in the subcontinent", who was Professor of English at the M. S. University, Vadodara, and Director of the Tribal Training Academy, Tejgadh. Devy is one of the strongest champions of - and a strong voice for- Adivasis, and several of his books are available on our site.

Scholars is pleased to enable the online ordering of all Bhasha publications through their exclusive page on our site, in our Institutional Lists.

The day after this post, The Hindu reports: With 196 of its languages listed as endangered, India tops the UNESCO’s list of countries having the maximum number of dialects on the verge of extinction.

Roman Noir

Sunetra Gupta is Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University. She is also the author of four novels of which the first, Memories of Rain won the Sahitya Akademi Prize in 1997. Another, A Sin of Colour won the Southern Arts Literature Prize, 2000.

Add to that, a fifth. So Good in Black from Women Unlimited, 2009.

"Max Gate, an American travel writer and his once beloved friend, Byron Mallick, a charming and refined Bengali businessman, meet again in extraordinary circumstances on the shores of Bengal.

It is the eve of the transit of Venus in 2004. Byron is facing charges of murdering a crusading journalist, Damini, whose cousin, Ela, haunts Max's being years after their love affair has ended. Ela ricochets between her deep attachment to Byron, her loyalty to her husband and her desperate love for Max. Meanwhile Max's former brother-in-law, Piers O'Reilly, is determined to bring Byron to justice.

... As this gripping and intricately layered tale unfolds, all certitudes about love, friendship and morality dissolve into tantalising ambiguity, defying easy resolution. In the end, only the redemptive power of memory seems able to seal the scars of loss and betrayal."

In our Indian Writing in English section, Paperback, 291 pages. Rs 350, ISBN: 9788188965545

The importance of being Ernesto

A new Leftword title, Becoming Che...

"Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara went on a trip through South America with a friend, Alberto Granado, in 1952. The account of that journey is contained in Che’s classic The Motorcycle Diaries. What is not so well-known is that Che took to the road again the following year, aged 25, this time with Carlos Ferrer, affectionately called ‘Calica’.


As Che was to recall later, "That departure so full of people, intermittent crying, the strange gaze of the people in second class staring at all the fine clothes, the leather jackets, etc., gathered to send off two odd-looking snobs loaded with luggage. The name of the sidekick has changed from Alberto to Calica, but the trip is the same: two free-spirits spanning out over South America not knowing exactly what they’re looking for or which way is north."


Becoming Che is an account of how Ernesto, the “snob,” became the quintessential revolutionary, Che Guevara." With a foreword by Alberto Granado, Becoming Che: Guevara’s Second and Final Trip through Latin America is by Carlos ‘Calica’ Ferrer. In our Biography section, in paperback, 185 pages, Rs 275. ISBN: 9788187496809.

Fugitive Poems

Arun Kolatkar occupies a special place in the pantheon of Indian poets... writing in two languages, Marathi and English, he said,

You need a double barreled gun
to shoot a bilingual poet
One bullet in the head will never be
enough to kill me.

His heart spoke in Marathi, but as his biography on Wikipedia says of his Kala Ghoda Poems, with this work, "Indian poetry in English seems to have grown up, shedding adolescent `identity crises’ and goose pimples. The remarkable maturity of poetic vision embodied in the Kala Ghoda Poems makes it something of a milestone in Indian poetry in English."

A collection of Kolatkar's shorter poems and translations has been brought out by Pras Prakashan, Mumbai: The Boatride and Other Poems. Initiated by Kolatkar shortly before he died in 2004, this volume has 95 of his poems, some translated from Marathi, some originally in English. The poems date from the 1950's onwards and with few exceptions, appeared first in "fugitive magazines or out-of-print anthologies". Indeed, The Boatride was first published by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra in his (now defunct) magazine damn you!

A long love poem- his only, bhakti poetry translations, song lyrics... there are many surprises here for the connoisseur of Kolatkar. And a place to (re)discover the poet.

In our Poetry section. Hardcover, 262 pages, Rs 480.

Babel-icious

This is about a book that is not (yet) published in India, but one that should be, seeing that (a) it addresses issues of importance to us, and (b) an old and good friend, Bonnie Zare (who teaches at the University of Wyoming in Laramie) is one of the editors.

Other Tongues: Rethinking the Language Debates in India is hot off the press from Rodopi. Edited by Nalini Iyer (at Seattle University) and Bonnie Zare (University of Wyoming), this is a part of their series, Cross/Cultures - Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English.

"Other Tongues: Rethinking the Language Debates in India explores the implications of the energetic and, at times, acrimonious public debate among Indian authors and academics over the hegemonic role of Indian writing in English. From the 1960s the debate in India has centered on the role of the English language in perpetuating and maintaining the cultural and ideological aspects of imperialism. The debate received renewed attention following controversial claims by Salman Rushdie and V.S. Naipaul on the inferior status of contemporary Indian-language literatures.

This volume offers a nuanced analysis of the language, audience and canon debate, provides a multivocal debate in which academics, writers and publishers are brought together in a multi-genre format (academic essay, interview, personal essay) and explores how translation mediates this debate and the complex choices that translation must entail.

Other Tongues is the first collective study to bring together voices from differing national, linguistic and professional contexts in an examination of the nuances of this debate over language. By creating dialogue between different stakeholders – seven scholars, three writers, and three publishers from India – the volume brings to the forefront underrepresented aspects of Indian literary culture."

Other contributors to the volume include Urvashi Butalia, Arnab Chakladar, Geeta Dharmarajan, Chitra Divakaruni, Mahesh Elkunchwar, Mini Krishnan, Nina Swamidoss McConigley, Christi Ann Merrill, Josna Rege, Pradip Sen, Lavina Dhingra Shankar, S. Shankar, and Anushiya Sivanarayanan.

As we said, not yet on our lists, but we will be more than pleased to get a copy for you! Write in to us. The book is in Hardcover, xxxvii+ 208 pages, US$ 64 or € 49, ISBN: 9789042025196.

All creatures great and small

The Asian Agri-History Foundation (AAHF) is a nonprofit trust set up (in 1994) to "facilitate dissemination of information on agricultural history to promote research on sustainable agriculture in the South and Southeast Asia region. This region had generally provided food security to its population for several millennia, with only occasional famines in a few limited pockets (due primarily to drought). Farmers in the region had evolved some of the most sustainable agricultural management technologies suitable for different agroecoregions."

Well... one of the things that they do is to take tradition seriously and ask serious questions of it. Some of the research projects I found listed on their site are interesting: Scientific Validation of Incorruptible Self-purificatory Characteristic of Ganga Water or Medicinal Smoke (Havan) Reduces Airborne Bacteria. These are old chestnuts, and one would really like to know, using modern science, what the truth of the matter is... Some other projects seem very worthwhile: Managing Tea Plantation Using Vrikshayurveda, Rediscovering Scented Rice and so on...

A book that they have just published is Mriga⋅pakshi⋅shastra (The Science of Animals and Birds) by Hamsadeva, translated into English by Nalini Sadhale and Y L Nene.

One might quibble that Shastra is hardly synonymous with Science, as a reviewer, Darshan Shankar has done in the latest issue of Current Science, but the book offers a fascinating peep into the practice of natural history in the 13th century. The sense of classification and observation was clearly strong enough for the author to differentiate six different types of the Asiatic lion: Simha, mrigendra, panchasya, haryaksha, kasarin, and hari. Of these, Mrigendra (The Majestic lion) is described so:

• "Those (lions) having all physique and long mane, and are bereft of anger are called mrigendras by the experts.

• They are slightly irate when hungry. They are fond of capturing deer and other animals. They are often in search of elephants and are stated to roar louder.

• They wander in bushes and also in sandy areas. Tall, intoxicated, and brave they are dreadful with their formidable molars.

• They are sexually active in rainy season. They sleep less but are very healthy. They like to roam in the shade and can sustain hunger.

• Although calm in appearance, they cannot be overpowered and cause fear in the minds of other animals. Although slow in gait, they cannot be ensnared.

• The front portions of their body are covered with mane. They have shining yellow eyes. Some have long hair on the chin and spots on the skin. "

In our Natural History section. Oversize, 400 pages, with 160 colour plates. Rs 1200. ISBN: 9788190396318

The Butterfly Effect

In a masterly essay that has just appeared in the New York Review of Books, William Dalrymple writes of Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos, a Penguin Viking title that came out in 2008.

The review is long. A pleasure to read for the prose, and terrifying to read for the content- Dalrymple updates Rashid to beyond 26/11 to alert us to the problems that remain and the problems that lie ahead in this part of the world post Bush. He writes "Ahmed Rashid's book convincingly shows how the Central and Southern Asian portion of this tragedy took shape in the years since 2001. Rashid has long been an authority on the politics of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.... In his new book, Rashid is particularly perceptive in his examination of the causes of terrorism in the region, and the way that the Bush administration sought to silence real scrutiny of what was actually causing so many people in South and Central Asia violently to resist American influence. "

The Penguin description is forceful too. "Since 9/11, the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq, the West has been fighting a "War on Terror", through force and through the building of new societies in the region. In this clear and devastating account, with unparalleled access and intimate knowledge of the political players, Descent into Chaos chronicles our failure.

Having reported from central Asia for a quarter of a century, Ahmed Rashid shows clearly why the war in Iraq is just a sideshow to the main event. Rather, it is Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the five Central Asian states that make up the crisis zone, for it is here that terrorism and Islamic extremism are growing stronger.

Documenting with precision how intimately linked Pakistan is with the Taliban and other extremist movements, while remaining the US's main ally in the region, Rashid brings into focus the role of many regional issues in supporting extremism, from nuclear programmes to local rivalries, ineffectual peace-keeping to tyrannical rulers. For Rashid, at the heart of the failure in Iraq is the US's refusal to accept the need to build nations.

Ambitious and urgent, analyzing events, policies and personalities across the largest landmass in the world, Descent into Chaos chronicles with chilling accuracy why Islamic extremism is now stronger than ever."

Clearly an important book to read if one is to understand the fragility of the situation... when small changes can have big effects. So to adapt a metaphor of the Chaos Theory, it is as if the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Washington can eventually create a thunderstorm in Islamabad.

A special import now on our Essays and Nonfiction and Strategic Affairs sections. In paperback, 544 pages. Rs 495, ISBN: 9781846141751.

Gateway to Heaven

A new book from Yoda Press: GAY WRITERS IN SEARCH OF THE DIVINE, a study of Hinduism and Homosexuality in the Lives and Writings of Edward Carpenter, E M Forster, and Christopher Isherwood by Antony Copley

"Gay Writers in Search of the Divine is an exploration of how three English writers—Edward Carpenter, E MForster, and Christopher Isherwood—all three of whom shared a similar sexuality, sought in Hindu spirituality one way of achieving personal autonomy and fulfillment. Antony Copley reveals how these writers reconciled their inner conflicts and were led in the direction of Hinduism either by friendship or the influence of gurus. Tackling the themes of the guru-disciple relationship, their quarrel with Christianity, relationships with their mothers and the problematic feminine, the tensions between sexuality and the attraction of Hindu mysticism, this fascinating work seeks to reveal whether Hinduism offered the answers and fulfillment these writers ultimately sought."

Coming to India to search for oneself has been a traditional pastime. The Beatles, Britney, Madonna.. Why, even Jesus is said to have spent years here... Coming to India to find your other can, as this book examines, also be quite revealing...

In our Gender Studies section, Paperback 336 pages, Rs 350. ISBN: 9788190666824. Only sold within South Asia.

Where is Asrafi Hajam?

The Adivasi voice has often only been heard in a wider setting through the writings of a small group of people who have championed the cause of preserving both the language and the idiom.

Mahasweta Devi has written extensively on the tribal cause.... but why? She explains this in an interview that is published in the latest issue of the journal Moving Worlds. Chotro: Adivasi Voices and Stories is a groundbreaking publication on tribal communities in India and has articles not only by Mahasweta Devi, but also Ganesh Devy, Shiv Vishwanathan and others. Poetry, essays. And short stories, including one by Mahasweta Devi, entitled Seeds, from which we take the title of this post.

Where is Asrafi Hajam?

And his brother Mohur?
Where are Mohuban and Parash?
Why can’t anyone answer?
For they have become missing persons on the police register.

A single issue is £12.50 and with postage, Rs 1050. A discount is available for students. Write in to us.

Even then the world
Does not know hunger
How belly burns inside itself

May such hunger
Be once with every belly

From May Such Hunger by Kanji Patel

Chevalier d'Assam

Travel does broaden the mind, a truth that came home earlier this week when I was wandering in Panbazar in Guwahati. The Lawyers Book Stall, LBS, publishes a number of unusual books, none more so than an english translation of Les aventures de Jean-Baptiste Chevalier dans l'Inde orientale (1752-1765) by Caroline Dutta-Baruah and Jean Deloche.

The original book is a memoir of Chevalier who became governor of Chandernagore, a French enclave now in West Bengal in 1767. It was rediscovered in the Bibliotheque de l’institut Paris in 1926, restored and edited by Jean Deloche who published in (in French) in 1984 by EFEO, Paris. The Adventures of Jean-Baptiste Chevalier in Eastern India (1752-1765) is the 2008 translation of the French edition into English... Over two centuries in the making.

Describing the book, Rahul Karmakar, the Guwahati correspondent of The Hindustan Times says "One of the most happening years in Indian subcontinental history are those falling between 1752 and 1765. This chronological passage saw Robert Clive winning the Battle of Plassey in 1757 to establish the East India Company as a commercial power with military might on our soil.

It also witnessed Islamisation picking up pace in cult-crazy Bengal and Vaishnavism of the Sankardeva kind - packaged differently from the brand fostered by Chaitanya - sweeping across Assam, where the clout of the Ahom monarchy was on the decline. This interesting phase also happened to see a Frenchman, Jean-Baptiste Chevalier, travel across Assam, Bengal and Tibet in a bid to expand the business of La Compagnie Française des Indes Orientales - the French East India Company Even if the latter buckled under the sheer force of the 'English' East Indian Company, Chevalier has much to record and tell."

Two marvellous maps first printed in Berlin in 1796 accompany the book and show the Burrampooter [sic] as it joins the Megna [also sic], meanders through Bengal and Assam... And as for Chevalier, his account makes very interesting reading... with tidbits on elephant sacrifice at the Kamakhya temple, opium from Bihar... Not Tavernier, but then, Tavernier didn't go everywhere, certainly not to Tibet...

All in all, a wonderful (re)discovery! Of Assam, of its translators, writers, publishers, all! In our Essays and Nonfiction section, Rs 395. Paperback, 224 pages. ISBN: 9788185921495

Cry Freedom!

Two books on the theme from Tulika this month...

In PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED: Censorship and Intolerance in India Rajeev Dhavan, a Senior Advocate practicing in the Supreme Court of India (and who was educated in Allahabad, Cambridge and London) explores "the relationship between political and social censorship, and, more significantly, the rise of an insidious communal censorship that seeks to divide civil society and intimidate all those who value the gift of self-expression. They show how the forces of censorship in our society use lumpen power to threaten this gift of free speech as they burn books, silence dissent, destroy works of art, and intimidate the artist, researcher, writer, film-maker, actor and free thinker.

The author reflects on how free speech in India has been compromised by state censorship through 'slapp' suits in court, and on issues of official secrecy, contempt of court, and censorship by intolerance in civil society and government. More specifically, he examines the uses and abuses of the law, the case of harassing Husain, the Danish 'Toon' controversy and the right to strike.

The author argues, unrepentantly, that free speech has to be preserved in the overcrowded spaces of the media, on the streets and in the open spaces of our mind, against the onslaught of corporatism, doubtful governance and invidious divisiveness. Freedom of the mind and the right to self-expression and argument can only survive if intolerance is met with tolerance, and tolerance is not seen as weakness.

In our Essays and Nonfiction Section. And Law. Hardcover, 326 pages, Rs 595. ISBN 9788189487454

The second title is Facets of the Great Revolt: 1857 which is being increasingly recognized as one of the major events of the nineteenth century, a turning point in the history of imperialism. The sheer scale of the uprising and its unique place in the narrative of anti-colonial resistance has prompted it to be interpreted on several occasions in the past – by nationalist leaders, historians and officials – and the literature on 1857 has grown in volume as the country observed its 150th anniversary.

Recently, there has been an increasing awareness of the need to study, in detail, the ideas of the Rebels regarding their own cause, the varied composition of their ranks and the different understandings of their legacy. The essays in this volume have been written essentially in response to this need, by scholars who have sought to explore much hitherto neglected material on that event. Readers will find much that is refreshing and provocative in this volume, and will get glimpses into the minds of the Rebels who belonged to different areas and classes, as well as their organizational capabilities and the problems they confronted during the Great Revolt."

The editor, Shireen Moosvi, is a distinguished historian at the Aligarh Muslim University.

In our History Section. Paperback, 160 pages, Rs 225. ISBN 9788189487447.

Caste matters

Ravikumar, a prominent activist of the dalit movement in Tamil Nadu is general secretary of the Viduthalai Ciruthaikal Katchi (VCK) and has been elected to the Legislative Assembly in Tamil Nadu. Although he is one of the founders of Navayana, his new book of essays Venomous Touch: Notes on Caste, Culture and Politics has been published by Samya, with a foreword by Susie Tharu. The translation is by R. Azhagarasan of Madras University.

"Combative, however partisan, and yet often beguilingly playful, these essays, many translated from the Tamil for the first time, bring Ravikumar’s concerns to a wider audience. Ranging from the centrality of caste, the logic of communalism, ideas on culture, the politics of the media, education, censorship and literature, just to mention a few of his interests, these essays provide an unsettling impact on the consensuses of democratic India. As he himself talks of in the Preface, for him the personal is political, and questions of power in society, derived from his engagement with Marx, Bakunin, Derrida, Foucault and other philosophers and his wide readings in Tamil literature, permeate his writings.

Ravikumar charts the history of discrimination against dalits in terms of land ownership, labour and education, condemns the celebration of the golden jubilee of independence under Hindu authority in ‘independent India’. He declares that fundamentalism moves hand in hand with consumer culture. He provocatively critiques the film-maker Lenin’s much awarded docu-feature, Knock-Out. He writes on some of the most horrendous tales of the slaughter of dalits––the Melavalavu murder–-where power overturns the rule of law. Throbbing with righteous anger at centuries of oppression and denial against dalits, this collection of essays, as Susie Tharu says in her incisive Foreword, act as ‘both poison/venom and remedy’.

In our Dalit Studies and Essays and Nonfiction sections. Hardcover, 320pages. Rs 650. ISBN 978-81-85604-76-3

Startlingly inventive

Thats how the blurb on the book describes Githa Hariharan... And having seen this inventiveness from when The Thousand faces of Night, her debut novel hit the stands (and went on to win the Commonwealth Writer's Prize), its very welcome news that a new novel by Githa is to be released next week.

Fugitive Histories from Penguin "exposes the legacy of prejudice that, sometimes insidiously, sometimes perceptibly, continues to affect disparate lives in present-day India.

"Other people's stories. How did they get stuck in her head, how did they become hers?"

Mala's home in Delhi is empty, save for a lifetime of sketches left behind by her late husband Asad and the memories they conjure. Sifting through them on restless afternoons and sleepless nights, Mala summons ghosts from her childhood, relives the heady days of love and optimism when Asad and she robustly defied social conventions to build a life together-and struggles to understand how events far removed could so easily snatch away the certainties they had always taken for granted.

As their story unfolds, others emerge: of Sara, Mala and Asad's daughter, who, unable to commit to a cause that will renew her faith in her parents' ideals and her own, embarks on a search for purpose that brings her from Mumbai to Ahmedabad, the venue of recent carnage. Of Yasmin, whom Sara meets across a lately created 'border', a survivor of mayhem secretly dreaming of college and the miraculous return of her missing brother, Akbar, as she navigates menacing by-lanes to reach her school safely every day. Of innumerable other lives trapped in limbo-some caught in a mesh of memory, anguish and hate, others seeking release in private dreams and valiant hopes.

... Hariharan portrays with remarkable precision the web of human connections that binds as much as it divides."

Not for nothing does she get called an outstanding writer by the likes of Coetzee. In our Indian Writing in English (IWE) section next week.