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When Indians
starved
Reviewed by Gurpreet K. Maini
Churchill’s Secret War: The British
Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II
By Madhusree Mukerjee.
Tranquebar.
Pages 352. Rs 495.
WINSTON
Churchill’s views about Indians have reeked of contempt, disdain and
an apparent abhorrence. Madhusree Mukerjee’s book discloses that it
was not merely an abstraction, but there is definitive evidence of how
this deep-rooted prejudice triggered one of the deadliest famines in
modern history.
Dialogues
with a historical backdrop
Reviewed by Roopinder Singh
Seven Plays on Sikh history by
Sant Singh Sekhon
Trans. Tejwant Singh Gill
Sahitya Akademi.
Pages. 562 Rs 300.
SANT
Singh Sekhon (1908–1997) taught English, yet it was his writing in
Punjabi that earned him great name and fame. One of his twelve
full-length Punjabi plays, Mittar Piara, won the Sahitya Akademi
Award in 1972. It is only fitting that India’s premier literary body
has now published a translation of his plays in English.
Fostering
peaceful ties
Reviewed by B. S. Thaur
Relations of NDA and UPA with
Neigbours
By Dr Rajkumar Singh.
Gyan Publishing House.
Pages 424. Rs 790.
THERE
is a saying that we can choose our friends but we can’t choose our
neighbours. It implies that for a peaceful living, we have to have
cordial relations with our neighbours. This all the more applies to any
group of neighbouring countries for peace in the region.
Administering
armed forces
Reviewed by D. S. Cheema
Managing Military Organisations: Theory and Practice
Eds Joseph Soeters, Paul C. van Fenema and Robert Beeres.
Routledge.
Pages 280. Rs 695.
THIS
book is edited by three eminent scholars from the Netherlands Defence
Academy who have carefully selected writings of 34 authors (most of them
from their own institution), out of which a large number have background
of armed forces and others are academicians who have worked in different
military organisations.
Time
for metropolis to grow up
Reviewed by Hamish McRae
Triumph of the City
By Edward Glaeser
Macmillan.
Pages 456. £25.
MANY
see the city as a burden on humankind, and the globe's growing
urbanisation as an environmental and social threat. For others, cities
are places of opportunity. And people are voting with their feet because
half the world's population now lives in cities. But this huge
phenomenon of urbanisation has received very little modern economic
analysis.
Brouhaha
over Bapu
Gandhi book based on archives,
says writer Prasun Sonwalkar
Pulitzer
prize-winning author Jeseph Lelyveld, writer of a new book on Mahatma
Gandhi that has generated a controversy in India, says that his work is
"not sensationalist", and is based on material that is already
published and available in the National Archives of India (NAI).
Urdu
Book Review
Family and
feminine perspectives
Reviewed by Amar Nath Wadehra
Khushboo Meyrey Aangan Ki
By Renu Behl.
Modern Publishing House.
Pages 128. Rs 150.
Lakharay owh nay jo ambaraan
tay karan tehriraan
Maarkay hujh kalam di palat dinday nay takdeeraan
(They are writers who inscribe their thoughts on the skies/with a stroke
of pen transform destinies)
CALL
it destiny or coincidence, Renu Behl had started her literary journey as
Urdu poet but, on the advice of an experienced litterateur, she switched
over to prose. Soon she discovered that her short stories were in great
demand. Various magazines, newspapers and other publications readily
hosted her works in their columns.
Lament
for lost era
S. D. Sharma
Urdu litterateur Akhlaq Mohammad
Khan, popularly known as Shahryar, who shot to fame for his songs in Umrao
Jaan, talks of the language’s fading charm and efforts for revival
Urdu
hai jiska naam sabhi jaante hain Dagh, sarre jahan mein dhoom hamari
zuban ki hai..." This couplet by poet Dagh Dehlavi is a candid
comment on the epoch-making era of the Urdu language and literature,
when these were at the zenith of popularity under the patronage of
Mughul rulers.
Talking
of turbulence
Nonika Singh
Human
rights issues in India might be perceived as "ivory tower
intellectualism." However, that didn’t deter India-born Oxford
Brooks University reader Pritam Singh from exploring the same in his
latest book, Economy, Culture and Human Rights: Turbulence in Punjab,
India and Beyond.
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