Book Review

Articles

• Book Review of Anand Teltumbde, The Caste Con Census | Srinivasulu Karli
  24 January, by Karli Srinivasulu

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  The Caste Con Census
  by Anand Teltumbde
  Navayana Publishing, New Delhi
  2025
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  Reviewed by Srinivasulu Karli
  There is a strong association made out in the existing discourse on caste in which caste data collected through the census is shown to be critical to the pursuance of social justice politics. This, of course, is sharply articulated by Rahul Gandhi with the slogan of ’jitni abadi, utna haq’ (rights proportionate to one

• Book Review: Quraishi’s The Population Myth | Chanda Rani and Aamir Raza
  1 April 2022

  Reviewers: Chanda Rani and Aamir Raza * __0__
  The Population Myth: Islam, family Planning and Politics in India by S.Y. Quraishi
  HarperCollins India 2021, 256 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9390351545 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9390351541 __0__
  In recent years particularly after the landslide victory of the BJP in 2014 its followers, leaders and biased Media have vigorously perpetuated the propaganda that Muslims are deliberately increasing their population to outnumber the Hindus in India. A common (…)

• Review of Electrifying Mexico by Diana J. Montaño | Jaclyn A. Sumner
  12 August 2023

  BOOK REVIEW
  Reviewed by Jaclyn A. Sumner (Presbyterian College)
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  Electrifying Mexico:
  Technology and the Transformation of a Modern City
  by Diana J. Montaño
  University of Texas Press 2021. Illustrations. xiv + 373 pp. (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4773-2345-8
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  In Electrifying Mexico, Diana J. Montaño examines how government officials, engineers, citizens, and others worked to illuminate and power up Mexico City, the nation’s capital and emblem of progress. Montaño’s book is (…)

• A Doctor with a Heart | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  29 October 2022

  Reviewed by M.R. Narayan Swamy __0__
  When The Heart Speaks: Memoirs of a Cardiologist by Dr Upendra Kaul Konark Publishers Pages: 202 Price: Rs 750 __0__
  There are plenty of good doctors in this country, fortunately. Yet, it is not easy to know a doctor who is a successful professional, nationally recognized and yet a warm-hearted human being whose heart bleeds for the peaceful society that Kashmir, his home state, once was.
  Dr Upendra Kaul devotes much of the book to his more than (…)

• 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 (…)

• Review of Rashme Sehgal’s The Flower Seller of Ganeshpuri | Enakshi Ganguly
  12 March 2021

  Reviewed by Enakshi Ganguly *
  The Flower Seller of Ganeshpuri by Rashme Sehgal Mahanadi Books. 2020 [ Available via Amazon]
  Indians love visiting religious destinations. Pilgrims are invited to explore sacred places. The sacred temple of Swami Nityananda who died in 1961 is located in the small village of Ganeshpri around 80 kilometres north of Mumbai and has emerged as a hub for pilgrims from across the world.
  Each of these pilgrim centres has a vast tribe of service providers who (…)

• Book Review: Kramer on Woodhouse, ’The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism’
  8 November 2020

  Keith Makoto Woodhouse. The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. 392 pp. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-16588-4
  Reviewed by Anna Kramer (University of Colorado)
  (August, 2020)
  One of our central tasks as historians is to take our subjects seriously, and Keith Makoto Woodhouse does just that in The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism, successfully wrestling with the ideas and methods of radical environmentalists (…)

• Revisiting the 1943 Bengal Famine | Arup Kumar Sen
  19 July 2024, by Arup Kumar Sen

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  The Bengal famine of 1943 has found expressions in the academic discourse over the years. Amartya Sen’s Poverty and Famines (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981) and Paul R. Greenough’s Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine of 1943-44 (Oxford University Press, 1982) are classic books on the subject. Madhusree Mukerjee’s more recent book titled Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II (Basic (…)

• Covid-19 Pandemic Drove the Indian Economy on the Brink | Dipak Prakash
  27 February 2021

  Book Review by Dipak Prakash *
  Indian economy’s greatest crisis: Impact of the Coronavirus and the road ahead by Arun Kumar Penguin Random House India Private Limited, 264 pages - Dec 31, 2020
  The author Prof. Arun Kumar (well known for his magnum opus Black Economy in India) has attempted to explain how the widow’s cruse is likely to go empty. He succinctly explained why the insane and ill-conceived policy of the government be held responsible, and more so the Modinomics. Voodoo (…)

• Review of Bailey’s The Architecture of Empire | Rachael Maxon
  1 February 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  The Architecture of Empire: France in India and Southeast Asia, 1664-1962
  by Gauvin A. Bailey
  McGill-Queen’s University Press
  2022. 488 pp.
  (cloth), ISBN 978-0-228-01142-2
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  Reviewed by Rachael Maxon (University of Iowa)
  Bailey