Amour rouge

In The Romance of Red Stone, Yashwant Pitkar presents architectural ornament as a feast of craftsmanship, an enduring romance with shape and stone in its unending variations. Pitkar’s photographs allow the viewer to appreciate Islamic ornament on architecture at a level removed from the formal- as an articulated surface. An architect first, then a photographer, Pitkar’s images reflect his love and admiration for the buildings of Delhi, Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, amongst others, which he captures in a way he knows best, up close and personal.

His unique photographic gaze is like that of a Mughal miniature painter, or a Company artist, taking the viewer close to the buildings, enough to shut out the dominating forms of the architecture to be immersed right into the aesthetics of surface. For those familiar with these buildings, the photographs allow a return, a recollection of architecture as a phenomenon, giving a sensual experience of places visited; an effective feel for the infinite craft.


Pitkar’s images also work at a deeper philosophical level. The viewer is made aware of the inner meaning of aesthetic representation, of the different ways of inducing the immeasurable. The plays of multiple superimposed levels and of forms and patterns continue like an incantation beyond the photographer’s frame suggesting the infinite.


Mustansir Dalvi’s text complements Pitkar’s photographs by guiding the reader to an understanding of the variety and symbolism of ornamental forms that grace Islamic architecture, especially in the Indian context. Ornament in its many manifestations transforms the architecture, dematerializing immense monuments into elegant jewel-boxes. Dalvi shows how artisan and patron came together in India in a unique integration of two divergent world views and cultures to create a lasting syncretism of Islamic and Hindu traditions that reached its zenith in the architecture of the Mughal period.

From Super Book House, in our Architecture section, in hardcover, 254 pages. Rs 3000.

Making Integrity Cool

One of the true heroes of modern India is Mr E Sreedharan. Anyone who has experienced the Metro in Delhi will swear to it- this simply could not have happened with any other person!

How does he do it? Interviews in the papers or the popular press make him seem curiously old fashioned, even as he takes Delhi really into the future, improving infrastructure and transportation in a significant manner. Sage, New Delhi have a new book out where he describes some of what he practices.

Restoring Values: Keys to Integrity, Ethical Behaviour and Good Governance, edited by E SreedharanManaging Director, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation and Bharat Wakhlu of the Tata Group. The book is the outcome of an effort of the little known Foundation for Restoration of National Values which is based in New Delhi, and which has support from the Tatas as well as other organizations. Set up in 2008, the FRNV aims to "restore our time-tested National and Cultural Values, so that people, individually as well as collectively, find an abiding inner persuasion to be truthful, ethical, patriotic and committed to wholesome development, in their aspirations and goals."

The book has a number of well known contributors who have written on diverse topics of relevance to the basic ideals of the FRNV. This volume is a wake-up call to Indians to shape their country as an ethical nation. The articles in the compilation have been written by some of the most eminent thinkers and leaders of India in various fields who are known for their commitment to living and working with integrity. It addresses the reasons for the absence of honest, ethical and transparent dealings in all sections of the society, including legislative, executive and judicial branches of the government.

The articles present a credible and practical set of ideas and approaches to raise standards of integrity, ethical behaviour and governance in the institutions of our country.

In our Governance and Philosophy sections, in hardcover, Rs 395, 228 pages. ISBN: 9788132104759

Shaping Public Policy

Vijay Laxman Kelkar has been one of the most creative, contemplative and versatile public policy makers of India. Whether it has been articulating a vision for the role of markets and government, or stressing for the importance of a sound public sector balance sheet, or arguing for tax reform and fiscal federalism, or making simple and sound policies through consensus, his contributions are non-parallel.

So reads, in part, the citation for the SKOCH Challenger Lifetime Achievement Award 2010 given to Vijay Kelkar. A more substantial result of the award is the festschrift, India on the Growth Turnpike edited by Sameer Kochhar, President of Skoch Development Foundation, who has been passionately working towards promoting participatory democracy, empowerment and bringing improvements in delivery systems.

Kelkar has unique contributions to the Indian economy in general and has played a key role in financial sector reforms process in particular. The essays in this festschrift are by some of the leading economists, bankers and policy planners of India. While saluting his visionary role in the government, they also provide an insight into some current and critical macroeconomic and finance issues. The writings cover a broad set of topics, among them fiscal, monetary and external sector policies, infrastructure, financial inclusion and education, and the contributors include Nitin Desai, Arvind Panagariya, Indira Rajaraman, Bibek Debroy, Surjit Bhalla among others.

Writing in The Hindu Businessline, G Srinivasan says A dozen essays by reputed economists in honour of Dr Vijay L. Kelkar cannot be construed merely as personal panegyrics as each one of the economists has taken up a larger theme that has a crucial bearing on India's development saga and its incessant quest for joining the developed country league by 2020.

In our Economics section, 317 pages, hardcover, Rs 995. ISBN:9788171888306

Monty and Jick

Major General A A ("Jick") Rudra served in both the World Wars, and in the British and Indian armies. He was the seniormost office of the Indian army in independent India and was largely responsible for setting it up in the first place...

In the serendipitious (and often bumbling) way in which SwB works, a request for the book Major General A A Rudra: His service in Three Armies and Two World Wars by Major General D K ("Monty") Palit, Vir Chakra brought this fascinating biography to our notice.

What a life! What a man, and what a family! Son of Principal Sudhir Rudra of St Stephen's college, Jick was in England as a student when WWI broke out. He saw action in France and Belgium... and that set the tone for much of his career, taking him to Waziristan, Baluchistan, the Arakan, Kashmir. The list is long.

The book captures the mood of colonial India from a very different perspective- the Indo-Anglian, as it were. And Kiplingesque too in its own way, though the times were those of the waning Raj. The Rudras had played a big role in bringing Mahatma Gandhi back to India, and there is a charming account of how Jick asked Gandhiji if he should take up a commission in the Indian Army. (Gandhi was noncommital, and Jick was petulant, but adamant!)

The book- and indeed the life- deserves to be better known. From Reliance Publishers, New Delhi, in our Biography section. Rs 350, 348 pages hardcover. ISBN: 8175100435.

Speak, memory...

The iconic M T Vasudevan Nair, one of the most illustrious writers and filmmakers in modern Kerala has a new book out from Viva.

To readers in English, Bear With Me Mother, a book of memoirs and stories, offers a rare glimpse into the mind of a literary master who recollects the people, places and ideas that inspired his stories. Featured in this collection are anecdotes, accounts of journeys, a homage, meditations on the literary craft, personal photographs and such classic stories as ‘The Soul of Darkness’ and ‘Elder Sister Oppol’.

Born in July 1933 in Kudallur, Kerala, MT was the youngest of four brothers. He began to write very early in life, and his short story ‘Valarthumrigangal", written while he was a student at Victoria College, Palakkad, won the first prize in the World Short Story Competition conducted by the New York Herald Tribune. He went on to win several literary awards, including the Central Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Kaalam (1970); three Kerala Sahitya Akademi Awards: one for the novel Naalukettu (1959), the second for the play Gopuranadayil (1978) and the third for the short story ‘Swargam Thurakkunna Samayam’ (1981). He was given the prestigious Jnanpith Award in 1995.

Chronicling the decadence of a magnificent and uninterrupted agrarian civilization in the lush countryside of central Kerala, his novels and short stories won him the Jnanpith and several central and state Sahitya Akademi awards. MT’s work as screenwriter and director is Indian cinema at its finest: Vasudevan Nair has been associated with Malayalam cinema since 1965. He has directed six feature films, three documentaries and a television serial. He has written forty-one screenplays, and many films based on his screenplays have won national and state awards. His first film, Nirmalyam, which was written, produced and directed by him, won the President’s Gold Medal in 1973. He won the National Award for the best screenplay thrice: for Oru Vadakkan Veeratha in 1989, Sadayam in 1990 and Parinayam in 1994, and the National Award for the best film twice: Kadavu in 1991 and Oru Cheru Punchiri in 2000. He was conferred the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 2005.

In our Indian Literature in Translation section, Rs 295, in paperback, 352 pages. ISBN 9788130909608

We, the little people

A family that writes... and how! Leila Seth, mother of Vikram, and a distinguished writer in her own right (On Balance, her autobiography was remarkable for what it did not hesitate to say) has a new book out from Puffin.

In We, the children of India: the preamble to our constitution, former Chief Justice Leila Seth makes the words of the Preamble to the Constitution understandable to even the youngest reader. What is a democratic republic, why are we secular, what is sovereignty? Believing that it is never too early for young people to learn about the Constitution, she tackles these concepts and explains them in a manner everyone can grasp and enjoy. Accompanied by numerous photographs, captivating and inspiring illustrations by acclaimed illustrator Bindia Thapar, and delightful bits of trivia, We, the Children of India is essential reading for every young citizen.

And, it must be said, the older citizen might find this telling and retelling instructive and insightful.

In our For Children section, Rs 150, 40 pages in hardcover, pages. ISBN:9780143331513

Mathematical beginnings

Enough and more has been written and said about the historical contributions of India to world mathematics, some of it from serious scholarship, some by an appreciation of the history of ideas, and, regrettably, some of it sparked by cultural jingoism.

The Chennai Mathematical Institute organized a conference in 2008 to explore some aspects of the history of Indian mathematics, and this has now appeared as Studies in the History of Indian Mathematics edited by C. S. Seshadri. This volume, published by the Hindustan Book Agency, New Delhi, contains articles based on the talks of distinguished scholars both from the West and from India.

The topics covered include: (1) geometry in the Sulvasutras; (2) the origins of zero (which can be traced to ideas of lopa in Pànini's grammar); (3) combinatorial methods in Indian music (which were developed in the context of prosody and subsequently applied to the study of tonal and rhythmic patterns in music); (4) a cross-cultural view of the development of negative numbers (from Brahmagupta (c. 628 CE) to John Wallis (1685 CE); (5) Kuññaka, Bhàvanà and Cakravàla (the techniques developed by Indian mathematicians for the solution of indeterminate equations); (6) the development of calculus in India (covering the millennium-long history of discoveries culminating in the work of the Kerala school giving a complete analysis of the basic calculus of polynomial and trigonometrical functions); (7) recursive methods in Indian mathematics (going back to Pànini's grammar and culminating in the recursive proofs found in the Malayalam text Yuktibhàsà (1530 CE)); and (8) planetary and lunar models developed by the Kerala School of Astronomy. The articles in this volume cover a substantial portion of the history of Indian mathematics and astronomy.

This book will serve the dual purpose of bringing to the international community a better perspective of the mathematical heritage of India and conveying the message that much work remains to be done, namely the study of many unexplored manuscripts still available in libraries in India and abroad.

Contributors include C S Seshadri, K Plofker, M S Sriram, S G Dani, Frits Staal, Raja Sridharan, R Sridharan, David Mumford, Amartya Kumar Dutta, K Ramasubramanian and P P Divakaran.

In our History of Science section, in hardcover, 402 pages, Rs. 650. ISBN 9789380250069

Empire!

Karuna Mantena teaches Political Science at Yale. Her research interests include modern political thought, modern social theory, the intellectual history of empire, the theory and history of imperialism, South Asian politics and history, and theories of race and culture. She has recently taught courses on Indian politics, empire and political thought and postcolonial political thought.

In her first book Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism that is newly available from Permanent Black, she presents a novel account of the origins, substance, and afterlife of late imperial ideology.

Karuna Mantena challenges the idea that Victorian empire was primarily legitimated by liberal notions of progress and civilization. In fact, as the British Empire gained its farthest reach, its ideology was being dramatically transformed by a self-conscious rejection of the liberal model.

The collapse of liberal imperialism enabled a new culturalism that stressed the dangers and difficulties of trying to “civilize” the natives. And, hand in hand with this shift in thinking was a shift in practice toward models of indirect rule.

Mantena shows that the work of the Victorian legal scholar Henry Maine was at the centre of these momentous changes. Alibis of Empire examines how Maine's sociotheoretic model of “traditional” society laid the groundwork for the culturalist logic of late empire. In charting the movement from liberal idealism, through culturalist explanation, to retroactive alibi within nineteenth-century British imperial ideology, Alibis of Empire unearths a striking and pervasive dynamic of modern empire.

In our History section, in hardcover, 296 pages. Rs 695. ISBN: 9788178242873

Away from home

Seeing the last post on Interior Decoration, a friend wrote in to alert us to the University of Arkansas' recent offering, Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry, edited by Neelanjana Banerjee, Summi Kaipa, and Pireeni Sundaralingam.

This is the first anthology to showcase South Asian American poetry and it has been received with effusive praise. Billy Collins says “Rarely does one have the pleasure of seeing so many poets violate the truth that no one can be in two places at once. Indivisible provides hundreds of local poetic delights and deserves a place among the best anthologies of poetry.” while Vijay Prashad, whose The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World has featured in an earlier post on this blog says “No-one can speak for ‘America’ or ‘Humanity,’ but these poems give us a glimpse of both. Scattered among them are treasures and heartbreaks, mercurial descriptions of life and languid backward glances at what is left behind, what cannot be recovered. This is a language map of South Asian America. Come. Come for a ride.”

Indivisible's editors, Banerjee (a teaching artist at the San Francisco Writers Corps and a past editor-in-chief of Asian Week), Kaipa (a neuropsychologist in Berkeley, CA) and Sundaralingam (an award-winning poet, playwright, and cognitive scientist) have brought together forty-nine American poets who trace their roots to Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

Featuring award-winning poets including Meena Alexander, Agha Shahid Ali, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and Vijay Seshadri, here are poets who share a long history of grappling with a multiplicity of languages, cultures, and faiths. The poems gathered here take us from basketball courts to Bollywood, from the Grand Canyon to sugar plantations, and from Hindu-Muslim riots in India to anti-immigrant attacks on the streets of post–9/11 America.

Showcasing a diversity of forms, from traditional ghazals and sestinas to free verse, experimental writing, and slam poetry, Indivisible presents 141 poems by authors who are rewriting the cultural and literary landscape of their time and their place.

Inner Verse

Women Unlimited's next book is a collection of poetry by 54 women. Most of the poetry is in translation: Interior Decoration brings together many of India’s best known women poets, as well as some of its less familiar ones in this landmark volume. Its rich and varied selection presents a feast of poetry in translations that are remarkable for their fidelity and poetic rendering.

An experience of womanhood may be the locus of this anthology, but modes of expression vary by circumstance. Some women locate freedom in the sky, while others talk of being a witch, or dance, or food. Some speak of the pain of husbands and the love of children, others of a lover’s touch, and the value of mothers, work, and writing. Their voices are tinged, or ringing, with joy or anger, frustration or satisfaction, regret or ironic resignation. As women and as poets, they offer advice, consolation, perspective — and startling insight.

A colossus like Kamala Das or Gauri Deshpande finds an echo in Mandakranta Sen, or Malika Amar Sheikh even, unexpectedly, in Mamang Dai. Amrita Bharati’s intensely solitary interior landscape is counterpointed by the searing imagery of Salma; Savithri Rajeevan’s oblique subversion with Jameela Nishat’s overt dissent.

Myth, fable, contemporary reality, fantasy and folklore are the sinew and substance of poems that range from the fact of discrimination to the exhilaration of discovering the power of the word.

Contributors to the volume include Meena Alexander, Anamika, Temsula Ao, Amrita Bharati, Sampurna Chattarji, Challapalli Swaroopa Rani, Mamang Dai, Kamala Das, Sanskritirani Desai, Gauri Deshpande, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Saroop Dhruv, Ghantasala Nirmala, Gagan Gill, Bilqees Zefirul Hasan, Ilampirai, Manisha Joshi, Vasanth Kannabiran, Kshama Kaul, Amita Kokate, Kondepudi Nirmala, Lalitha Lenin, Pradnya Lokhande, Kavita Mahajan, Uma Maheswari, Malathy Maithri, Jyotsna Milan, Debarati Mitra, Panna Naik, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Prathibha Nandakumar, Jameela Nishat, Savithri Rajeevan, Ravulapalli Suneeta, Kutti Revathi, Rose Mary, Sa Usha, Mamta Sagar, Salma, Mandrakanta Sen Mithu Sen, Rajee Seth, Shahjahana, Malika Amar Sheikh, Menka Shivdasani, Suganthi Subramanian, Sukirtharani, Anitha Thampi, Vaidehi, Vatsala, Archana Varma, Vijayalakshmi, Vimala and Volga.

Some familiar names, and many that should be...Exhilaration and discovery, then, are what inform the spirit of this unusual offering.

In our Poetry section, in paperback, 334 pages, Rs 395. ISBN: 9788188965625

Renewable Energy News

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) of the Government of India has, it must be admitted, one of the least attractive governmenta websites there is... And considering the importance of what they do, this is a great pity. A search for solar energy initiatives took me to their site, but the navigability of their homepage made the maze at Hampton Court seem considerably more comprehensible... The MNRE minister, Dr Farooq Abdullah, would do well to pay some attention to being more accessible!

Nevertheless, they do put out a very useful bimonthly newsletter, Akshay Urja that appears in both print and electronic form. I am not sure how one would go about subscribing to the print issue, but the electronic newsletters are freely available online at this site,
http://mnre.gov.in/akshayurja/contents.htm

The magazine has a wealth of information on a range of products and issues. The latest volume, December 2009, has articles on the Jawaharlal Nehru Solar Mission, Biomass gasifiers, decentralized waste treatment and so on. Instructions to make a simple solar oven at home!

One of the books reviewed in this issue is the Directory of Indian Windpower 2009. With a prime objective of providing the basic guidelines to the enterpreneurs interested in Wind Power Project – a comparatively new and environment friendly source of energy, Consolidated Energy Consultants Ltd. took-up a lead in consolidating wind related data/details & publishing an Encyclopedia sort of book. Since its maiden publication in 2001, the Directory Indian Windpower has earned wide acclamation both from the Govt. Departments as well the Industries for its comprehensive coverage and reliability of data.

The current edition like the previous eight yearly issues carries, in addition to the usual features a comprehensive data on wind potential sites in the various states of India, the Govt’s promotional policies, incentives offered by the states/central Govt., supportive role of Center for Wind Energy Technology (C-WET), the technical particulars of the Wind Electric Generator and the current scenario on wind power development – all presented in well structured sections for easy access to the host of informations contained in its run of over 850 pages.

Simplest to write in to us. The Directory is priced at Rs 1500. Akshay Urja is free for download.

New kid on the block

Primus Books, a relatively new imprint on the block and an arm of the ubiquitous Ratna Sagar had two books in yesterday's Book Review of The Hindu.

MARITIME INDIA - Trade, Religion and Polity in the Indian Ocean by Pius Malekandathil discusses the socio-economic and political processes that evolved over centuries in the coastal fringes of India and out of the circuits of the Indian Ocean, to give it the consciousness and identity of Maritime India.

This book dwells upon a wide range of issues, including the nature of maritime trade of the Sassanids with India; the impact of maritime trade on the political processes of Goa; the social processes linked with the settlements of foreign merchant groups in India; the nature of the Portuguese expansion in coastal India; and the nuances of political assertions over maritime centres of exchange and their hinterlands.

The work also discusses in some detail the repercussions of the Ottoman expansion into the Indian Ocean, the impact of Portuguese commercial expansion on the traditional Muslim merchants of Kerala, the changing methods of information-networking between coastal India and the Mediterranean, the burgeoning of Portuguese power units in Bengal, and the role of private traders in the structure and the functioning of Estado da India.

These painstakingly researched and immensely erudite essays that make up the volume are essential reading for scholars and students for an understanding of Indian history in general and its maritime history in particular.

Pius Malekandathil is currently Associate Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Earlier, he was Reader in History at Goa University.

In our History section, xxviii + 212pages in hardcover, Rs 695. ISBN: 9789380607016

The other book is also by a JNU don, Yogesh Sharma who is Ph.D. from l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He is Associate Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU. His field of research includes the European traders and Indian commercial and maritime history. Dr Sharma has co-edited Portuguese Presence in India during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (2008) and Biography as History, Indian Perspectives (2009). COASTAL HISTORIES SOCIETY AND ECOLOGY IN PREMODERN INDIA is edited by him.

The subject of maritime and oceanic history comprises a large corpus and includes related thematic engagements such as the history of overseas exploration and expansion, navalmilitary history, shipping, port cities, the role of migrations and cross-cultural processes.

This extensive field of enquiry also focuses upon the study of littoral societies or the coastal regions, in understanding the influence of the ocean upon these lands. The interface between the land and the sea, with its several ecological and topographical variations, has played an important role in determining human activity, the settlement patterns and material culture in the coastal regions, which taken together constitute huge masses of territories in all continents. The general pattern of existence and the rhythm of life in all these dissociated regions, however, had considerable commonality, due to the overwhelming impact of the two dominant elements-water and land-in shaping the destinies of its inhabitants. Coastal societies have their own particular notion of identity and ambience, which differentiates them from the extensive continental zones. It is in this context, that coastal territories and their histories constitute an interesting theme of enquiry.

The present volume examines a number of themes pertaining to different coastal regions of India: coastal ecology, commercial crops, transmission of diseases, fortifications, port hierarchy, new port towns, vessels and boats, fishing communities, social life of women, etc. It should be of interest to students and scholars of maritime history of India.

Contributors to this volume include Anirudh Deshpande, Jangkhomang Guite, Pius Malekandathil, Tilottama Mukherjee, Joy L.K. Pachuau, Vaibhav Sharma, Abhay Kumar Singh, and Arvind Sinha.

Well-researched and documented, quite a few of the articles throw valuable new light on the early modern maritime history of India. (The Hindu).

Also in our History section, xii + 216 pagres in hardcover, Rs 695, ISBN: 9789380607009

The setting sun

The erstwhile Chief Minister of Punjab and Congress leader, Amarinder Singh's book “The Last Sunset: Rise and Fall of the Lahore Durbar” is on Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

A review of the book by V N Datta in The Tribune is very generous to the author who is hardly a professional historian: "With his insights and sensitivity, Amarinder Singh has presented a masterly survey of one of the gloomiest and most traumatic periods in Indian history. His analysis of war operations is clear, bold and cogent; and his narrative is concise and lucid, free from jargon. Indeed, an admirable study from a non-professional historian!"

Politicians, by the nature of their profession, often have time on their hands, and Amarinder Singh has used his time out of office well. Amarinder Singh is not a professional historian, nor is he trained in the austerities of historical discipline which does not in any case disqualify him to produce a historical work. Some of the finest and most learned historical works have been written by non-professional historians. [...] Singh is an established author of two military studies: Lest We Forget, The History of Indian Army (1947-65) and on Ridge too Far in the Kargil Heights (1999).

In our History section, in hardcover, 347 pages, Rs 695. ISBN 9788174367792

The road taken

Zidane Meriboute is a Senior Legal Consultant at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva He is also ICRC's Consultant for Global Affairs for Operations in the Muslim World. His first book, the winner of a major European literary prize is Islam's Fateful Path:The Critical Choices Facing Modern Muslims that has recently been translated into English, and is made available in India by Viva.

Asma Afsaruddin, Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Univeristy of Notre Dame calls it ‘a timely and eloquent appeal to both Muslims and non-Muslims to recognize their common values and the possibility for peaceful co-existence this shared heritage implies.'

Increasingly Islam struggles against negative stereotypes as a religion of intolerance, extremism and fear, which has failed to meet the challenges of modernity. Zidane Meriboute here proposes a fresh perspective on the crisis facing Muslims today. His novel and original approach looks to the Islamic Sufi tradition and the progressive liberal thought of the 12th century philosophers Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) as holding the key to a successful transition towards modernity.

The humanity and questioning which Sufism engenders, combined with the philosophical rigour associated with the works of Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sina, can produce - according to the author - the foundations of a new Muslim world view contrary to the current and dangerous fundamentalisms. Salafi thinkers and others who claim to be returning to an austere and ascetic interpretation of early Islam have, in Meriboute's view, hijacked their faith and produced two negative outcomes. Firstly, they have blocked the path towards the evolution of any kind of modernist thinking among Muslims. And secondly, they have created a rhetoric and encouraged events (most notoriously, 9/11) which have resulted in the demonization of their tradition.

As the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds grapple to understand how Islam is likely to evolve in the 21st century, and beyond, the appearance of this book, highlighting the Sufi and The humanity and questioning which Sufism engenders, combined with the philosophical rigour associated with the works of Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sina, can produce - according to the author - the foundations of a new Muslim world view contrary to the current and dangerous fundamentalisms.

Salafi thinkers and others who claim to be returning to an austere and ascetic interpretation of early Islam have, in Meriboute's view, hijacked their faith and produced two negative outcomes. Firstly, they have blocked the path towards the evolution of any kind of modernist thinking among Muslims. And secondly, they have created a rhetoric and encouraged events (most notoriously, 9/11) which have resulted in the demonization of their tradition.

As the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds grapple to understand how Islam is likely to evolve in the 21st century, and beyond, the appearance of this book, highlighting the Sufi and progressive philosophical traditions within the Islamic faith, is an enormously important contribution to a better understanding of one of today's most intractable problems.

In our Strategic Affairs section, in paperback, 256 pages, Rs 395. ISBN: 9781845117412