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Brave
men fighting for a lofty cause
Reviewed by Bhupinder
Brar
The Sikhs in America: The Clarion Call for Ghadar in British India
Edited by Jaspal Singh and Amrik Singh , Sikh American Research
Centre,Pacific Coast Khalsa Diwan Society, Stockton, Pages: xlvii+448.
US $ 25.
Centenaries
are to countries and communities what anniversaries are to
individuals: occasions to foreground and genuinely relive passing
major milestones in life journeys, or to remember them just
ritualistically. Only, the scales vary. Individuals gather family and
close friends to share the moment; countries and communities raise
monuments, or hold seminars and conferences, and publish volumes.
Ancient
lands and eternal struggles
Reviewed by Aradhika
Sharma
A God in Every Stone
by Kamila Shamsie
Bloomsbury, India
Pages 311. Rs 499
Kamila
Shamsie is brilliant, her fiction crossing international
boundaries with the ease of a frequent traveller and explorer. The
blurb of the novel may mislead the reader into thinking that the book
is an Indiana Jones crossed with Dan Brown history- adventure, but
it's much classier and far more authentic than that.
A
sweet offering to Apollo
Reviewed by Jayanti
Roy
Healer Dr Prathap Chandra Reddy and the Transformation of India
by Pranay Gupte, Penguin Group. Pages 548. Rs 899
The
book a voluminous tome traverses the journey of Parthap Chandra
Reddy from a small village named Aragonda in Andhra Pradesh to UK and
USA and back to India to establish the Apollo brand of multi-specialty
private hospitals 30 years ago. The book is the growth story of the
man and his mission.
Written
with scholarly passion
Reviewed by B. L.
Chakoo
Indira Gandhi: A Personal and Political Biography
by Inder Malhotra.
Hay House India. Pages 395. Rs 599
Today
Indira Gandhi's story —which is so fascinating, so grand, so
odd, so stirring — lives in relation to its tellers and its
receivers; it continues because people want to hear it again, and it
changes according to their tastes and views. In fact, her story is so
famously complex that it transcends the media or the forms that have
transmitted it. However, in Malhotra's perceptive and beautifully
written study a picture of a living, breathing and dying Indira
emerges with new clarity. Skilfully set against the time she lived in
and against the successive political upheavals that engulfed her by a
"veritable sea of troubles,"and made her commit the
"cardinal sin" of bringing the world's largest and mature
democracy under Emergency rule (that turned India into "a virtual
dictatorship"), Indira is portrayed as "a heroine of all
(political) seasons" — who, though by nature was authoritarian,
not easily ready to accept dissent or vigorous opposition, is, in a
fit of sycophancy, shown here as democratic in and personal
style," but also as genial and depressive, aggressive and
generous, blessed with "enormous energy" yet prone, at
crucial moments, to debilitating influence.
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