Book Review

Articles

• Review of The Rafale Deal: Flying Lies? by Ravi Nair and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta | Shubham Sharma
  13 May 2023

  Book Review:
  by Shubham Sharma
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  The Rafale Deal: Flying Lies? The Role of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India’s Biggest Defence Scandal
  by Ravi Nair and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
  2022. pp 532 HB: Rs 795
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  Until recently, India, like other Western-capitalist countries, lacked a robust domestic ‘military-industrial complex’ (MIC). It could be defined as the presence of a defence procurement mechanism which involves a transactional nexus between private group(s) that (…)

• The Rise and Fall of Basu Chatterji | M.R. Narayan Swamy
  29 April 2023, by M R Narayan Swamy

  BOOK REVIEW
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  Basu Chatterji: And Middle-of-the-Road Cinema by Anirudha Bhattacharjee
  Vintage/Penguin Random House Pages: 305; Price: Rs 699 ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0670096253 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670096251
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  He put his own hard-earned money into the making of his first film, whose story be bought from noted Hindi writer Rajendra Yadav for Rs 21. It was the late 1960s. Sara Akash became a huge success and gave Basu Chatterji not just fame but a standing in the film world that stood by (…)

• Conquering the last bastion: The growth of Hindutva in Kerala | Sanjana K.S.
  22 March 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEW:blanc]fond noir]
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  Hindu Nationalism in South India: The Rise of Saffron in Kerala
  by Nissim Mannathukkaren
  Routledge
  1st edition (31 July 2024) 272 pages
  ISBN-10 : ? 1032003065
  ISBN-13 ?: ? 978-1032003061
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  A decade since the remarkable victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014 with Narendra Modi in the fore has opened a plethora of academic debates on the party

• Review of Bennett, M. Todd, Neither Confirm nor Deny: How the Glomar Mission Shielded the CIA from Transparency | Chuck Steele
  11 August 2024

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Neither Confirm nor Deny: How the Glomar Mission Shielded the CIA from Transparency
  by M. Todd Bennett
  Columbia University Press 2023. 384 pp ISBN 978-0-231-19347-4 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-19346-7
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  Reviewed by Chuck Steele
  Despite the centrality of the ocean research vessel Glomar Explorer to this fascinating story, this is not a book intended for an audience of environmental historians. It is, however, a first-rate (…)

• Gabriele Dietrich on D’Mello’s India After Naxalbari - Unfinished History
  10 April 2021, by Gabriele Dietrich

  BOOK REVIEW
  Bernard D’Mello: India After Naxalbari. Unfinished History. Aakar Books 2018
  This meticulously researched book deals with “a thread of history that mainstream historians have tended to either ignore or misinterpret. This account puts it straight into our history books.” Arundhati Roy
  Bernard d’Mello is clearly not a mainstream historian.He has made extraordinary efforts to dig up this hidden history and to make it accessible to readers who are not afraid to face this (…)

• Book Review: Gandhi’s ingenuously reconstructed autobiography | Suhas Borker
  30 July 2021, by Suhas Borker

  RESTLESS AS MERCURY:
  My Life As a Young Man
  by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Edited by Gopalkrishna Gandhi
  Aleph Book Company | January 2021 | 400 p
  ISBN: 9788194874140
  https://www.alephbookcompany.com __0__
  As I read the preface by Gopalkrishna Gandhi to Restless as Mercury: My Life As A Young Man, I was reminded of what his elder brother and professor of philosophy Ramchandra Gandhi told me 30 years ago. Back in 1991, we were working together to make Jagran aur Gavahi: Tees (…)

• Aruna Roy’s memoir reminds us as much of some great achievements as of the bigger challenges ahead | Bharat Dogra
  3 August 2024, by Bharat Dogra

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
  Aruna Roy’s memoir published by HarperCollins under the title ‘The Personal is Political –An Activist’s Memoir’ has attracted a lot of attention within a short time, and for good reason. A part of the reason relates to what Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze say in their comment on the book, “Aruna Roy reflects on a life of deep engagement, weaving the personal and the political. A great inspiration.”
  For most people Aruna Roy is a highly inspiring (…)

• When The Other Moves Into Limelight | Radhakanta Barik
  11 March 2023, by Radhakanta Barik

  BOOK REVIEW __0__
  Dark Fear, Eerie Cities: New Hindi Cinema in Neoliberal India by Šarūnas Paunksnis
  Oxford University Press 2019 ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0199493189 193 pages, Kindle Edition __0__
  GLOBALIZATION TRANSFORMED INDIA into modern economy in the mid-nineties. The positive impact on the economy, however, disrupted India’s traditional social structures. Withdrawal of the state from economic activities pushed society in India to modernise but created tenuous relationships in different (…)

• Review: Dreeze on Revising the Revolution by Larry E. Holmes
  22 July 2022

  Reviewed by Jonathon Dreeze (Cornell College) __0__ Revising the Revolution: The Unmaking of Russia’s Official History of 1917
  by Larry E. Holmes
  Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2021. 220 pp. (paper) ISBN 978-0-253-05479-1; $27.99 (e-book), ISBN 978-0-253-05482-1.
  Historians pride themselves on the ability to study the past objectively and produce quality academic research. However, as political developments continue in the United States, with local and state governments (…)

• Cohesive Development: The old is dying, and the new cannot be born | Deborah Darlianmawii, Manik Kumar, Keyoor Pathak
  5 April 2025

  [fond noir][blanc]BOOK REVIEWblanc]fond noir]
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  Birth of an Alternative Development Paradigm: Unfolding of Transformative Mode of Production
  by Sunil Ray
  Germinal Publications, Kolkata
  2024
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  The author is hopeful about the future of the world and