Eurocentric prisms
Nirbhai Singh
Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism
Studies in America
Eds. Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas and Aditi Banerjee.
Rupa & Co. Pages 545. Price not stated.
We have been aping the Westerners for a very long time. It is unfortunate that we have not come out of their domination, though they have trivialised our culture and claim that they are competent to interpret it. The Eurocentric methodology and hermeneutical contribution of the Jews to the sacred scriptures is significant. The Indian study has been formulated within the American and European cultural framework. Being ‘outsiders,’ the Westerners could not do justice to our cultural heritage. Culture is a lived experience and we have been experiencing it since times immemorial. Western interpretations of our texts are overshadowed with their cultural biases. It is very difficult to interpret culture of ‘others’ because they are alien to it. This book focuses on this vital issue.

Legendary singer
M. Rajivlochan
Memories Come Alive: An Autobiography
by Manna Dey. Penguin. Pages 415. Rs 450.
this book brings the great Manna Dey closer to us. Done in a conversational style, it tells us the transformation of the teenage wrestler ‘Mana’ into one of the more memorable singer of Hindi and Bengali songs.

Tale with a twist
Ramesh Luthra
Akela and the Blue Monster
by Chaman Nahal. Ratna Sager.
Pages 116. Rs 79.90.
THE novel Akela and the Blue Monster by Shri Chaman Nahal, a renowned name in the field of literature, is a remarkable attempt in science fiction. Not that it makes an interesting reading for children alone, but for readers in general too.

Pottermania: Beyond the numbers
Deepika Gurdev
it sold 11.3 million copies in 24 hours in the US, the UK and Germany alone. That’s not all; the book made it to the Afghan capital Kabul, sold out in Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo and flew off the bookshelves in India.
The rise and rise of the books

Crusade against social evil
Rajesh Kumar Aggarwal
Child Marriage in South Asia: Brutal Murder of Innocence
by Shobha Saxena. Regal Publications,
New Delhi. Pages 190. Rs 550.
The concept of age at marriage has long been of interest to demographers due to its vicinity with fertility behaviour. The female age is considered to be one factor that directly determines the length of reproductive span and influences the status of women. It has already been established by some earlier studies that early marriages generally result in a shorter inter-generational interval, long childbearing period, high cumulative fertility and rapid population growth, besides curtailing the lactation and child replacement effect, lowering the usage of contraception and resulting in high infant and maternal mortality and morbidity.

A question of identity
David Mattin
Twenty years after going underground, a radical activist is forced to confront his past and find his real self
My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru.
Hamish Hamilton. Pages 278. $16.99.
Hari Kunzru’s third novel can be seen as a departure. While his glitteringly impressive 2003 debut The Impressionist and the follow-up, Transmission, both took race as central themes, this novel is ostensibly about politics. It’s already been noted that there’s not a single Asian character in My Revolutions.Look deeper, though, and this story marks not a radical break, but an intelligent development of Kunru’s abiding preoccupation with the making, and dismantling, of personal identity. Mike Frame leads an anonymous late 1990s existence.

EXTRACT
‘I never promised to build a bridge where no water existed’
Excerpted from Bonding... A Memoir by Vyjayantimala Bali with Jyoti Sabharwal. Stellar Publishers. Pages 409. Rs 695.
Though I was in a very disturbed frame of mind, and no way mentally prepared to fight another election in ’89, Rajiv Gandhi insisted that I must return to the electorate. "No you must contest. You are a sitting member and you are sure to win." I did it for him. My guiding spirit was not there any more, as I recalled Doctor saab’s words, "Even if I have to sell my last shirt, your campaign would not falter." People never imagined that I could do so much of running around And this time my political opponent was a DMK contestant, Aladi Aruna.

US-Israel ties: Pros and cons
An upcoming book challenging whether diplomatic and military support for Israel is in the best interests of the United States is set to spark fresh debate on Washington’s role in the Middle East. The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, written by two of the United States’ most influential political science professors, hit the bookshelves recently. Written by John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt from Harvard, the book follows an article they published last year that stirred impassioned debate by setting out a similar position. Their thesis is that US endorsement of Israel is not fully explained by strategic or moral reasons, but by the pressure exerted by Jewish lobbyists, Christian fundamentalists and neo-conservatives with Zionist sympathies.

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