The Portable North American Indian Reader (Viking Portable Library)

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Homi is chased to the edge of madness by a manifestation of fate – a man, no less. She is vulnerable, too afraid to ask for help, for all the good it would do. This is a book of heavy themes presented perfectly through the lens of off-kilter terror and unravelling family drama. The statistical argument of seeing India as a preeminent Hindu country (colonial narrative), according to author is a conceptual confusion, for our religion is not our only identity, nor necessarily the identity to which we attach the greatest importance. History of India, like every other part of world, does contain nightmarish elements, but it also involves people of dissimilar convictions coexisting peacefully in creative activities of literature, music, painting, jurisprudence etc. Sen argues, with much conviction, that India’s past is important for an adequate understanding of the capacious idea of India.

You can feel the presence of Gandhi, Tagore, Ashok and Akbar, whom Sen conspicuously admires and looks up to, almost throughout all the essays - I wouldn't hesitate from calling them the primary protagonists of this book. Desai, N. (2009). Narayan Desai Recalls the Creation of the Mahatma’s Biography. DNA India, October 2. Retrieved June 15, 2022, from http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_narayan-desai-recalls-the-creation-of-the-mahatma-s-biography_1294446/ One of India’s most celebrated and cherished novelists, Perumal Murugan is famed for his willingness to depict rural village life in his literature. He explores the lives, traditions, habits, and behaviours of India’s out-of-the-way communities.Epic literature is not history but is again a way of looking at the past.” Romila Thapar, Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 7. The Wonder That Was India: A Survey of the History and Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent Before The Coming of the Muslims by A.L. Basham The Wonder That Was India: A Survey of the History and Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent Before The Coming of the Muslimswas published in 1954 Nandy, A. (2018). Foreword. In M. K. Gandhi (Ed.), An Autobiography, or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (pp. xiii–xv, M. Desai, Trans. and Introduced and annotated by T. Suhrud). Yale University Press. If you laid all the economists in the world end to end, the old joke goes, you would never reach a conclusion. So it's all the more remarkable that it is as a practitioner of the "dismal science" that Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize in 1998. Sen is a man of conclusions; he is also brilliant at marshalling, with both extensive research and empirical evidence, the arguments that justify his conclusions. The Argumentative Indian -- a collection of 16 essays, many reworked and expanded from lectures and previously published articles -- is an intellectual tour de force from an economist who can lay equal claim to the designations of sociologist, historian, political analyst and moral philosopher. It is a magisterial work, except that the adjective is not one of which Sen would approve. Freedom at Midnighthighlights the freedom struggle of the country and the subsequent Partition of India. Much of the book focuses on the British Empire letting go of its power. However, after this event, who wields the power?

Mr. Sen needs to be reminded that India is much more than Javali, Ashoka, Akbar, Tagore, Gandhi, and the BJP.

I would like to enhance the opening quote of this review with another stolen one as an end note, one undisputed this time, by 19th century Bengali reformist Ram Mohan Roy. Desai, M. ([1940] 2018). Translator’s Preface to the Second Revised Edition. In M. K. Gandhi (Ed.), An Autobiography, or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (p. 41, M. Desai, Trans. and Introduced and annotated by T. Suhrud). Yale University Press. Desai, M. ([1927] 2018). Translator’s Preface to the First Edition. In M. K. Gandhi (Ed.), An Autobiography, or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (p. 39, Trans. M. Desai and Introduced and annotated by T. Suhrud). Yale University Press. Your eyes, now he could see them clearly, they looked like the ocean, so vast and clear, his own reflection felt divine in them To be fair, some parts of the book were really interesting (e.g. the sections dealing with the ideological standpoints of Gandhi and Tagore). But alas, the book is long, repetitive and well ... narrow in its scope.