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  • Learning from the past of India’s forests | Dinesh C Sharma
    15 August

    BOOK REVIEW India’s Forests: Revisiting Nature and History Arupjyoti Saikia & Mahesh Rangarajan (Editors) Vintage 343 pages Price 999 Forests have been at the centre of human life since ancient times. They are part of history, archaeology, myths, culture, livelihoods, politics, commerce, and much more. Forests are closely inter-linked with all activities in the modern era – food, fuel, water, energy, development, transportation, human health, recreation and so on. Their extent, quality (…)

  • How Erdogan Turned Turkey into a Fiefdom | M.R. Narayan Swamy
    25 August, by M R Narayan Swamy

    BOOK REVIEW From Life Itself Turkey and Istanbul in the Age of Erdogan
    by Suzy Hansen
    Profile Books When you read a political biography of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, you feel you are discovering modern-day dictators around the world. It is not a surprise that he once boasted: “Now there are only two experienced leaders in the world. They are myself and Vladimir Putin.”
    American journalist Suzy Hansen also puts Erdogan in the same bracket as Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping – men who insist on (…)

  • An Expose of Hitler’s Disdain for India | M.R. Narayan Swamy
    26 November 2022, by M R Narayan Swamy

    BOOK REVIEW
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    Hitler and India:
    The untold Story of his Hatred for the Country and Its People
    by Vaibhav Purandare
    HarperCollins Publishers
    207 pages
    Price: Rs 399
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    Adolf Hitler is considered by some as a friend of India because he hosted, even if briefly, Subhas Chandra Bose. This is perhaps one reason why his autobiography Mein Kampf sells well in this country. The reality is nauseatingly different, as journalist-author Vairbhav Purandare unveils in this path (…)

  • Savita and Bhim Rao Ambedkar: A Most Unusual Partnership | Deepti Priya Mehrotra
    20 May 2023, by Deepti Priya Mehrotra

    BOOK REVIEW:
    by Deepti Priya Mehrotra
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    Babasaheb: My Life with Dr Ambedkar, by Savita Ambedkar
    translated from the Marathi by Nadeem Khan
    Vintage, Penguin Random House India 2022, p. 337 HB. Rs 599 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0670096695 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670096695
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    Accepting and Treasuring One Another
    Savita Ambedkar writes, of her relationship with BR Ambedkar, ‘despite our most unusual circumstances, we accepted each other and treasured each other like something precious.’ (…)

  • Arun Shourie Tears Apart ‘Veer’ Savarkar and his Myths | M.R. Narayan Swamy
    15 August

    BOOK REVIEW The New Icon: Savarkar and the Facts by Arun Shourie
    Penguin/Viking Pages: xviii + 543; Price: Rs 999 Vinayak Damodar Savarkar bragged, exaggerated and even lied. When the Congress battled the British, he did not mind collaborating with the colonial masters. He was adept in spewing hate. Scholar and veteran journalist Arun Shourie says one has to in fact search hard for revolutionary acts that can be traced back to Savarkar. It is such a man who got the sobriquet ‘Veer’ (Brave) (…)

  • A Star of Cochin Port Sounds Wake Up Call for Kerala | M.R. Narayan Swamy
    13 September 2025, by M R Narayan Swamy

    [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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    Notes from Willingdon Island: The Past, The Present, and The Future of Cochin Port and its Hinterland
    by N. Ramachandran
    Konark
    Pages: xxvi + 334; Price: Rs 900
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    This is a beautiful and straight-from-the-heart account of the Cochin Port

  • An Irish legend Indians will always adore and respect | M R Narayan Swamy
    25 August 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

    BOOK REVIEW
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    Hero of Kumaon: The Life of Jim Corbett by Duff Hart-Davis
    HarperCollins India Pages: xii + 259; Price: Rs 399
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    It was an Ashoka moment that transformed the legendary Edward James Corbett from a widely-admired hunter of man-eaters in the hills of Kumaon to an ardent conservationist, an avid photographer of wild animals and, finally, as a successful author that fetched him unprecedented international fame.
    Jim, as he was popularly known, had once taken (…)

  • Chandrashekhar Azad - latest biography of an iconic revolutionary | Chaman Lal
    26 July 2024, by Chaman Lal

    To mark 23rd July birth anniversary of Azad
    Two names are most evocative names among Indian revolutionaries of freedom struggle. Both were comrade in arms. Chandershekhar Azad was the Commander-in-chief of Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA), who was named as Balraj in Bhagat Singh handwritten posters on the assassination of Lahore ASP, J P Saunders. Another significant document-Philosophy of the Bomb. Authored mainly by Bhagwati Charan Vohra but improvised with Azad (…)

  • Maruti Suzuki Workers’ Struggle: Inside Stories | Deepti Priya Mehrotra
    8 April 2023, by Deepti Priya Mehrotra

    BOOK REVIEW
    by Deepti Mehrotra __0__
    Japanese Management, Indian Resistance: The Struggles of the Maruti Suzuki Workers By Anjali Deshpande and Nandita Haksar
    Speaking Tiger, Harper Collins https://speakingtigerbooks.com/ 2023 / 366 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9354474446 | ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9354474446 __0__
    Real Stories: Behind the scenes
    Maruti Suzuki workers have been in the public eye, largely due to the death of a manager, on 18 July 2012. Worker-management tension seemed to snowball (…)

  • Sustained from Below: Dalit Women and the Ambedkarite Movement’s Limits of Liberation 
| Theertha Praveen Panachoor
    25 June

    BOOK REVIEW 1. The Prisons We Broke, Baby Kamble, trans. Maya Pandit. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2008. 2. We Also Made History: Women in the Ambedkarite Movement, Urmila Pawar and Meenakshi Moon, trans. Wandana Sonalkar. New Delhi: Zubaan, 2008. 
The history of the Ambedkarite movement in India has largely been written as a history of its leadership. Its constitutional achievements, its formal organisations and its founding figure are well documented. What has received far less attention is (…)