Sunday, June 9, 2002		Books

Unmasking hegemonic structures
Shelley Walia
Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism
by Esther Leslie. Pluto, London. Pages.298 £14.99
One-Way Street
by Walter Benjamin. Verso, London. Pages 392 £12
A student of philology at Frieburg University; then at University of Berne where he keenly researched in the area of philosophy, Benjamin submitted his doctoral thesis on German Baroque drama entitled The Origin of German Tragic Drama at the University of Frankfurt in 1925.

New look at significance of Indian Ocean
Madan Mohan Puri
Indian Ocean in the 21st Century: Linkages and Networking
edited by S. Z. Qasim. Sai Publishers for the Society for Indian Ocean Studies, New Delhi. Pages vii+257. Price Rs 650.
The Society for Indian Ocean Studies, in collaboration with the Department of Ocean Development and Ministry of External Affairs, organised in early February 1998, a two-day international seminar on the linkages and networking in the Indian Ocean in the new century —-which may well be the Century of the Ocean—-that deliberated on how best the ocean could be used for our economic, navigational and geopolitical needs.

Diaspora's theoretical underpinnings
Surinder S. Jodhka
The Nation’s Tortured Body: Violence, Representation & the Formation of a Sikh "Diaspora"
by Brian Keith Axel. Duke University Press, Durham, USA. Pages XI+297. $64.95
The study of diaspora communities has recently emerged as an important area of research in departments of literature and social sciences. Continuous flow of migrations from all over the world into the Western countries has made many of them quite diverse in terms of the ethnic origins of their populations.

Tax treatment of fringe benefits
K.B.S. Sidhu
New Law Relating to Valuation of Perquisites & Taxation of Income from House Property
Taxmann Allied Services Pvt. Ltd. Pages 332+20. Rs. 250.
THIS book endeavours to cover two distinct issues—valuation of perquisites and income from house property—within the framework of the prevailing income tax law, supplemented by the statutory rules framed there under.

Secularism as hijacked by the Left
G.V. Gupta
Pluralism and Equality
edited by Imtiaz Ahmed et al. Sage, New Delhi. Pages 375. Rs. 325.
KONARD-Adenauer-Foundation aims at promotion of democratic values of equality, pluralism and secularism and sponsors inter-cultural inter-religious dialogues to facilitate it.

MEET THE AUTHOR
South Africa’s voice of the people
Manju Jaidka
MY personal association with J. M. Coetzee dates back to the early ’nineties. I was then at Warren House, the English Department of Harvard University, on a postdoctoral Fulbright Award. It was my first trip to the USA and I confess, I was somewhat disoriented. And then I befriended two visiting professors from South Africa: Dorothy Driver and John Coetzee.

Taking a walk down history lane
Aradhika Sekhon
The Twentieth Wife
by Indu Sundaresan. Penguin Books. Pages: 388, Price: Rs. 295.
IN The Twentieth Wife, Indu Sundaresan has made use of a readymade plot, real historical characters, a royal setting and real life events for the progression of her story and by skillfully juxtaposing fact and fiction, she has created a book that is very readable indeed.

A tale of two industrial cities
Randeep Wadehra
Entrepreneurship in Hosiery Industry
by Dr. DD Sharma & Dr. J.S. Saini Northern Book Centre, N. Delhi. Pages: 170. Price: Rs. 500
INDIAN hosiery has not been able to succeed in establishing its brand name in the international markets as the Chinese and some of the Southeast Asian countries have done. Kanpur, Calcutta and to some extent Mumbai tell you the sad state of India’s hosiery industry.

Focusing on the tribal situation
Yogesh Snehi
The Tribal Situation in India
edited by K. Suresh Singh, IIAS, Shimla, Pages: 610. Price: Rs. 600
SANJOY Hazarika has repeatedly reminded and cautioned successive Indian governments about the dangers of ignoring the predominantly tribal North-East. Indian tribals, as is well known, are the indigenous population of the land. Yet, they are the most neglected ones—economically, socially and politically.