By Bhaswati Ghosh
In ‘Rivers Run Back’, the reader journeys through several temporal locations – Allahabad, Shamirpet, Dubai, New York, and Vancouver. But this isn’t a voyage limited to space and time; it is one that drills down into the inner recesses of the characters’ mind.
By EPM Swalih
Akhil Gupta’s study is different from other postcolonial scholars working within a western theoretical framework. He shows a unique way to engage with Euro-American theories. And that is why I began to love his work. His interrogation of the theories of governmentality, biopolitics, and sovereign ban results from his grounding in Mandi district of Western Uttar Pradesh, India. He compels us to think with the Euro-American theories only if we are able to critically approach them. I find his attempts in provincializing Europe[1] as one of the most rewarding tasks ever undertaken by the postcolonial scholars.
By Abu Saleh
The book points out that from the very beginning of the investigation process, the Gujarat Government didn’t follow the standard forensic procedures that are the basic requirements in any criminal case. Mr. Nag corroborates this when he says that the burnt train was kept open and accessible to the public for many days and the forensic experts investigated it only after two months. Also, improper and inadequate record-keeping show a systematic effort to divert the investigation process.
By Safia Begum
Noorani delves into Patel’s daughter, Maniben Patel’s diary for a revealing observation. Maniben writes, “On 21st August, Patel threatened ‘to resign if army was not sent to Hyderabad’”. He also said, “I am very clear in my mind – if we have to fight – Nizam is finished. We cannot keep this ulcer in the heart of the unions.”
By Mosarrap H. Khan
However, engagement with the secular world does not imply abandonment of faith. Rather, Seabrook and Siddiqui’s study illustrates that faith is the most important pivot that makes the dream of transformation feasible. Among the poor Muslims in Calcutta, faith thwarts the seductions of extremism and violence.
By Mosarrap H. Khan
Aman Sethi’s A Free Man:A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi, focused on the life of Mohammed Ashraf, is by no means a sociological work. It is a journalistic work that explores the life of one of those thousands of nameless workers who, while contributing significantly to India’s growth story, are often rendered faceless and seen as having no individual subjectivity.
By Abigail Licad
Added to the constant need to negotiate between perspectives in poems is the paradoxical use of English, the colonizer’s language, to enact verbal resistance against the colonizer’s deeds and legacies. Further, the effort to find precise correspondences between ideas and English words is limited by the use of a foreign language.
By Bina Shrestha
Jhumpa Lahiri does it again what she does best: vivid description of emotions, relationships, lifestyle in the simplest of language. She brilliantly describes the daily lives of a Bengali family, from the nitty-gritties like eating fish-stew made in mustard and chilly-paste ground on a stone slab, to the purposelessness of the Naxalite movement that claimed many innocent lives.
Cafe Dissensus Everyday 