Category: Books

Rt.Hon.V.S.Srinivasa Sastri How Indian Nationalism evolved? Life and Times of Sir Pherozeshah Methta By Rt.Hon.V.S.Srinivasa Sastri, 1945, PP 225 This is an old book, almost moth-eaten; I laid my hand in an old bookshop. But what a book! This book, as I see, has lots of lessons, even warnings, to the present day India, the…

How Winston Churchill was denied a unanimous honor by the famous Oxford Union Debating Society! Street fighting years An autobiography of the Sixties-by Tariq Ali,PP 381,2006,Seagull,Kolkatta This is by any account a great book. A book that is youth idealism personified. Tariq Ali, the author was a sort of hero to my own generation in…

The publication of Mr.Jaswant Singh’s book, A Call to Honor, had justly created a storm. Apart from the more sensational disclosures about the existence of a mole or a spy in the PMO of Narasimha Rao and the circumstances that led to the IC-814 hijack to Khandahar, the other details about the Pokhran-II, Kargil, 9/11,…

Indians themselves don’t know! This review has to be read in the context of the criticism made about the speech of the Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh when he accepted a Hon degree from Oxford University. Discovering India’s past for the sake of Indians! The Buddha and the Sahibs The men who discovered Indian’s lost religion…

Classical music in democratic times! From the Tanjore Court  to Madras Music Academy A social history of music in South India By Lakshmi Subramanian, OUP, 2006, pp 196 The rise and fall of classical music? Not necessarily! It is always great to be a connoisseur of classical music, arts. Only a high society that appreciates…

Sen’s new book seems to raise some questions about which there can be diverse arguments. Sen doesn’t tell the whole truth. Much of the misrepresentation and distortion of Indian diversity and Indian character had been done by the Britons. These distortions we Indians had come to believe, more so the Western-educated Indians themselves.   I…

By David Crystal, Cambridge, pp 200,2003 A timely book for India,  for educators as well as  the general readers. English today is spoken by some 15 crore people world wide. English is a mother tongue in USA, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand and in South Africa and several Carribean countries. Spanish is spoken in…

By O.P. Kejriwal, pages 293, 1999, OUP This  is a rare book. A history of the history books on India. A band of Englishmen who came to India as servants of the Empire, went on to make their names immortals, as discovers of the Sanskrit language, translators of Sakuntala, Bhagavad Gita, Rig Veda and other…