Sunday, February 24, 2002		Literature

On the other side of society
Anupama Roy
Shadow Lives: Writings on Widowhood Edited by Uma Chakravarti and Preeti Gill.
Kali for Women, Delhi. Pages 263. Rs 280.
IN the past several months we have lived through animated and acrimonious debates around history writing. Fears have been expressed that history may be recast into a mould where the histories of multiple oppressions and the numerous sites of struggles they threw up may be pruned to produce a sanitised account which does not compel any person, class or community, to acknowledge its complicity in the oppressive past, and absolves them, moreover, of the responsibility to affirm an investment in a democratic future.

Terror: the reality in South Asia
Jai Narain Sharma
The Killer Instinct
by O P Sabharwal. Rupa, New Delhi. Pages 353. Rs 495.
WE are, we are told, are in the age of deterrence and not of not of war –nor of "brinkmanship" but of "crisis management". Yet below this and to an extent guaranteed by this strategic stalemate lies an underworld of politically motivated violence — sometimes organised, often encouraged by states which, in their official pronouncements, proclaim adherence to peaceful coexistence and the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries..

Gandhi: his politics and practices
Ashu Pasricha
Gandhi and His Religion
by P.A. Raju. Concept Publishing, New Delhi. Pages 150. Rs 225
GANDHI was not a philosopher or a theoretician who developed his theories and evolved a system which would give a rational explanation of life and its different facets and, if possible, its ultimate goal.

Examining secular sensibility sensibly
Anoop Beniwal
Secular Common Sense
by Mukul Kesavan Penguin, New Delhi, 2001, 136 pp., Rs. 150
SOME concepts never stabilise; they are destined to remain debatable forever. One such concept is nationalism, and everything that is associated with it: secularism, democracy, citizenship and so on. It has over the years, evolved into a ‘gunnysack concept’, that is not only arbitrarily filled with one’s meaning but is also punched empty of its inconvenient semantic stuffing by ‘others’.

Unravelling myths & legends
Prerana Trehan
The Book of Devi by Bulbul Sharma, The Book of Vishnu by Nanditha Krishna, The Book of Krishna by Pavan K. Varma, The Book of Ganesha by Royina Grewal
Viking Penguin India, Rs 195 each
REMEMBER the stories form the Mahabharata and the Ramayana that grandmother used to narrate on those wonderfully lazy afternoons or late at night? Or those colourfully illustrated Amar Chitra Kathas that taught us more about history than did the 10 years of fatally boring history books in school? Remember the reverence and awe those stories invoked?

BOOK EXTRACT
Above the joys of attachment
IN Radha, Indian women found a symbol for the vicarious release of their repressed personalities. Radha’s intense yearning for Krishna echoed their own subconscious frustrations. Her uninhibited pursuit of physical fulfilment with him mirrored their own libidinal stirrings. The secretive, illicit and adulterous nature of her affair with Krishna provided a particularly apt framework for them to identify with.

SIGNS & SIGNATURES
Fleeting joys through prism of images
Darshan Singh Maini
Imprimis
My signed column, "On Target" has had a run of 10 years or so, and those familiar with my work would readily understand the character of the new column. I seek, above all, to make my signatures valid amidst changes of continuities at once. All this, lifeafflictions and suffering as also moments of reprieve, of fleeting joys would, in my case, get refracted through the prism of images and figures of speech. Basically, the aim is to remain authentic, true to the salt of the truth as I see it.