Tag: Books
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Episode 8: The Smart and the Dumb: The Politics of Education in India
What does education do? Whose needs are being met by education? What does education mean to different people? Why did schooling fall short in providing equality of opportunity? Vishal Vasanthakumar joins us in this episode to illustrate the complex issues involved in the provision and purpose of education in India. References: Vishal Vasanthakumar: LinkedIn, Twitter,…
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Episode 7: The Multiple Careers of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay
Nico Slate begins his book ‘Coloured Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India‘ with the following paragraph: In the spring of 1941, in the midst of the Second World War, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya sat down in the “whites only” section of a segregated train traveling through the American South. Just across…
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Episode 6: A History of Economic Policy in India
In this episode, I am in conversation with Rahul De, to discuss the key ideas in his book ‘A History of Economic Policy in India: Crisis, Coalitions and Contingency’. Rahul takes us through the meaning of economic history and the need for studying it. He situates industrial development in colonial India and its integration with…
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Archives: The Confluence: A Play by Suri V. Subramanyam
During my visit to the Select Book Shop on Brigade Road, Bangalore, I found a slim copy of The Confluence: A Play by Suri V. Subramanyam. Without even looking for any details, I just brought that book because it’s a very small book (6 pages) and I would need something to read in a single…
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Idea of Forgetfulness
One day, in the early years of Independence, Jagat Narain Lal and Syed Mahmud (both senior members of the Congress Party and part of Bihar Cabinet) were travelling in a train, along with B.N. Azad, the editor of the newspaper ‘The Indian Nation’. During that journey, Jagat Babu and Syed Mahmud began an interpretative dialogue…
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Sonia Gandhi: A Force to Reckon With
Looking at Sonia Gandhi leading rallies in various states for the Congress party in recent days and the aura she has over the crowd reminded me of some things I read about her back in 2014 before Modi became Prime Minister in the book India’s Broken Tryst written by Tavleen Singh. Tavleen Singh is close…
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Book Review: Police matters: the everyday state and caste politics in South India, 1900–1975, by Radha Kumar
This book explores the role of state policing in shaping caste politics in the Tamil countryside from 1900 to 1975. Using the archival records preserved in rural police stations, the author argues that policing as a coercive instrument of state power produced and deployed knowledge of caste in its interactions with subject-citizens through routine police…
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Book Review: Why I am not a Hindu woman: A personal story by Wandana Sonalkar
Why I am not a Hindu woman: a personal story by Wandana Sonalkar, New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2021, pp 169. Wandana Sonalkar is a self-proclaimed atheist and in this autobiographical account titled ‘Why I am not a Hindu Woman’, Sonalkar critically reflects on her position on why she has chosen to renounce her religion. This…
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Book Review: REIMAGINING THE WORLD
AZADI: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction. by Arundhati Roy ‘What lies ahead? Reimagining the world. Only that.’ With these above lines, Arundhati Roy ended her introduction and they reflect what Roy set out to do in the book ‘Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction’. In the nine essays in this book, most of which are previously published or given…
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