Sunday, December 30, 2001		Books

Gandhi’s truth against the colonial might
Review by Rashmi Sharma
Satyagraha and Social Change
by Suman Kwatra. Deep and Deep, New Delhi. Pages 175. Rs 400.
"I take it, Mr Gandhi, that you are the author of the satyagraha movement." "Yes Sir." "Will you explain it briefly?" And so Lord Hunter, as chairman of the official committee appointed to enquire into the first nationwide satyagraha movement in India, opened his examination of Mohandas Gandhi on January 9, 1920. "It is a movement," Gandhi explained, "intended to replace methods of violence and a movement based entirely upon truth."

The way society treats women
Review by Anupama Roy
Women, Gender Equality and the State
by Sadhna Arya. Deep & Deep Publications, New Delhi.
FEMINIST scholarship has provided some of the most enduring and comprehensive frameworks for understanding the nature of the modern state. It is ironical that the power relationships which inform society, and in their aggregate form constitute the state, also get reflected in the courses which are taught in most of our universities.

Odd people, caught with odd thoughts at odd moments
Review by Deepika Gurdev
The Unknown Errors of Our Lives
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Pages 268. Singapore $16.
SO what are the known or unknown errors of our lives? The book’s epigraph, from Jamaica Kincaid’s "The Autobiography of My Mother", states: "Who you are is a mystery no one can answer, not even you."

OFF THE SHELF
Jinnah to Musharraf — birth and growth of fundamentalism
Review by V. N. Datta
SINCE independence India’s record of producing and publishing authoritative works on history — ancient, medieval and modern — has been uniformly impressive, particularly in social and economic history. But research on non-Indian history, especially in respect of neighbouring countries, has been, by and large, almost dismal.

Manto and two other masters
Review by Tejwant Singh Gill
Rilke, Kafka, Manto: The Semiotics of Love, Life and Death
by Rosy Singh. Harman Publishing House, New Delhi. Pages 280. Rs 560.
TO write about Rosy Singh’s book "Rilke, Kafka, Manto: The Semiotics of love, life and death" is a daunting task. It is at the same time a challenging one. The three authors whom she has juxtaposed were so like and unlike one another.

PUNJABI LITERATURE
Socially analytical stories, but in convoluted style
Review by Jaspal Singh
SHORT story writing in Punjabi had a very promising start in the thirties and the forties of last century. Gurbakhsh Singh Preetlari, Sant Singh Sekhon, Sujan Singh, Kartar Singh Duggal and a little later Kulwant Singh Virk are some of the illustrious men who laid a solid foundation for this literary form.

It is Osho all over again
Review by Kuldip Kalia
The Little Book of relationships
by Osho. Penguin Books New Delhi. Pages not numbered. Rs 75.
WHAT is relationship? How do we relate life to love; love to sex; sex to solitude; solitude to loneliness; and loneliness to alone-ness? Are these intertwined, twisted, challenged, provoked or seduced as and when the so-called relationship is established? What are the forces which bind together but, at the same time, differ the existence of being existed?