India Books

'From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan' offers an intrigueing travelogue through nineteenth century India revealing a culture whose uncanny developments in the metaphysics of mind in the material world are today shedding light upon far reaching intuitions. The way Blavatsky reveals India without the fogs of mysticism but through an insightful first-person narritive makes this an exellent introduction and captivating look into the exotic world of Hindustan. It's truly adventuresome and fascinating. For anyone looking into the anthropology of ancient and modern India this book will prove insightful, or for those looking to escape into an exciting travelogue. Blavatsky and her traveling companions are both intellectual and charming. I've had this book for a number of years and I continuously comeback to it for its wonderful wealth of thought and adventure.

Read this more for its artistic value than its historical accuracy...it is a delight for any true follower of HPB's life and times and invaluable look at India from a traveler's point of view.

The evaluations of activities were accurate, and the helpful hints on planning really helped us optomize our trip. When you use this guide, you'll imagine that the author is really there with you.

This was the first book I bought to get ready for my trip to Nepal. I have not gone on that trip yet, but after reading this book I felt ready to tackle any travel encounters that may come my way. This book has extensive travel information to Nepal, dozens of phone numbers and up-to-date internet URL's related to Nepal and travel needs, as well as good information about hotels, restaurants, sights, you name it. This is a fantastic book to start out with if you are planning on visiting Nepal, and the price here is much less than what I paid for it at B&N. Happy traveling!

The first half or so of the book is dedicated to a chronological biography. The second half has sections dedicated to the different facets of Gandhi's contributions.

Not only was Gandhi a remarkable man, but I think Parekh does his memory justice with an equally thoughtful and evenhanded treatment of his legacy.

Well done!

I had just finished reading this wonderful book on Mohandhas Karamchand Gandhi. It touched my heart. I am only 12 years old and I am very glad to have an uncle like Bhikhu Parekh(the author of the book). I hope you read this great book on how wonderful Gandhi was to his people and how he fought for the independence of his country.

This is a very readable and insiring book about one of the greatest figures of the 20th century, with many photos that make Gandhi's life feel even more real. The effectiveness of Gandhi's application of nonviolence is well explained, both in his life history and in an interesting appendix about nonviolence in the world today.

This is one of two books, that I sat and read cover to cover, in one stretch. This is the book that all who have personal grudges, anger or hatred towards their fellow men, should read. I know, I have experienced the change. This book allowed me to be calm, forgiving, and compassionate. At times of dispair, I re-read this book and find peace within myself. This book teaches you the way of life, the way to peace. I would highly recommend this book, especially at times, when you think this world is unjust, unfair. I wish the whole world reads this book and make every effort to transform themselves; then there will be peace through the entire universe. Please, please read this book.

excellent collection of indian poetry. found it accidently while browsing in a huge 6 story library. quite a lucky find.

"Please, make me the gardener of your flower garden", a lover asks his beloved. He calls himself a servant and his beloved the queen. He dreams to serve her idle days. He wants to keep fresh the grassy path where she walks in the morning; he wants her feet to be greeted with praise at every step by the flowers.

And what he wants for his reward? He asks to be allowed to hold her little fists like tender lotus-buds and slip flower chains over her wrists; to tinge the soles of her feet with the red juice of flower petals and kiss away the speck of dust that may chance to linger there.

This is the way Rabindranath Tagore, the greatest Indian poet of all times, introduce us to this enchanted collection of poems, poems that touch the most profound strings of our hearts. His poems tell us about love and life - and they are rich with the description of nature and beauty. Anybody that loves or has loved cannot remain indifferent to his poems. Some readers "have smiles, sweet and simple, and some a sly twinkle in their eyes. Some have tears that well up in the daylight, and others tears that are hidden in the gloom." But we all have need for him, the poet, who is "ever as young or as old as the youngest and the oldest of the village".

His poems tell us of impossible love - like the love of the free bird and the cage bird: "Their love is intense with longing, but they never can fly wing to wing. Through the bars of the cage they look, and vain is their wish to know each other. They flutter their wings in yearning, and sing, 'Come closer, my love!' The free bird cries, 'It cannot be, I fear the closed doors of the cage.' The cage bird whispers, 'Alas, my wings are powerless and dead.' "

His poems tell us of secret love: "The young traveler came along the road in the rosy mist of the morning. He stopped before my door and asked me with an eager cry, 'Where is she?' For very shame I could not say, 'She is I, young traveler, she is I.' "

His poems tell us of lovers' emotion: "When my love comes and sits by my side, when my body trembles and my eyelids droop, the night darkens, the wind blows out the lamp, and the clouds draw veils over the stars. It is the jewel at my own breast that shines and gives light. I do not know how to hide it."

His poems tell us of the need for love confidence: "Do not keep to yourself the secret of your heart, my friend! Say it to me, only to me, in secret. You who smile so gently, softly whisper, my heart will hear it, not my ears."

His poems tell us of a love story: "Hands cling to hands and eyes linger on eyes: thus begins the record of our hearts. It is the moonlit night of March; the sweet smell of henna is in the air; my flute lies on the earth neglected and your garland of flowers is unfinished. This love between you and me is simple as a song."

His poems tell us of lovers departing: "An unbelieving smile flits on your eyes when I come to you to take my leave. I have done it so often that you think I will soon return. To tell you the truth I have the same doubt in my mind. For the spring days come again time after time; the full moon takes leave and comes on another visit, the flowers come again and blush upon their branches year after year, and it is likely that I take my leave only to come to you again. But keep the illusion awhile; do not send it away with ungentle haste. When I say I leave you for all time, accept it as true, and let a mist of tears for one moment deepen the dark rim of your eyes. Then smile as archly as you like when I come again."

Reading those poems I felt like visiting a flower garden full of scents and beauty in a magic ancient kingdom.

This is a wonderful, moving academic book. It dispels the myth of monolithic patriarchy in Indian society by showing how women attempt to master their own fates. The author has done the best job in recent years of getting inside the life of a village in India, and we are given vivid descriptions of how women battle male attempts to control them. As a college teacher I plan to use it in courses dealing with women's issues and in cultural studies of India. I recommend it as a reading in intermediate and upper level undergraduate courses on India and on women.

This is an excellent, in-depth portrait of the life of women in India, and in particular how women exert influence in a strongly patriarchal society. As a college teacher I am planning to use it regularly both in teaching about India and about women in traditional societies. It might also be useful alongside a text in an introductory course in social anthropology or women's studies.

This one of the few books I have read that I have truly enjoyed to the very end. It was on a list of recommended reading by a well-known professsor of anatomy and physiology. (I am a not-so-well known new instructor of the same subject.) There are many clear, accessible explanations of how the body's nervous system works, along with inspiring stories of leprosy patients and the people who came alongside them. If I had read this book in my 20's, I think I might have truly wanted to go into medicine.

The single most important text on pain to be published in this century. The layman or medical professional will find long-awaited answers for pain management in their own lives or in the lives of their patients. A "must read" for every health professional and person in pain. I recommend it to every patient that I treat who is suffering from signficant pain. Michael Reith, Occupational Therapist

I wish people would see that Tagore breaks the barrier of cultural appreciation. He is not only the most important Indian writer...he is one of the most important world writers. In Gitanjali, his simple lines of a lust for the unification of some divnity and him is unparalleld by anyone of anytime.

I wish people would see that Tagore breaks the barrier of cultural appreciation. He is not only the most important Indian writer...he is one of the most important world writers. In Gitanjali, his simple lines of a lust for the unification of some divnity and him is unparalleld by anyone of anytime.

The first thing I have to say about this brilliant book is: PUBLISHER! come out with an inexpensive paperback edition!! This book is of wide interest to travelers, students of cosmopolitan culture, and reads like a travelogue. The publisher has priced it as an academic textbook of interest only to libraries. That is insane.

This book is of strong interest to hippies, club kids, neo-hippies, followers of Burning Man, festival freaks, psychedelic people, world travelers, students of counterculture history, and electronic music lovers/producers/DJ's. It is rich with stories of modern India and Spain, Goa, Pune and Ibiza, and the role these places play in the modern global nomadic counterculture. It is a fascinating study of world countercultures, and how the hippies of the sixties became transformed into the ravers of the nineties and the freaks of the new millennium.

It is also an inspiring travelogue for present and aspiring expatriates, and other global nomads, who see the road as a home instead of a way of getting somewhere. I just also finished reading Tim Ferris' "4 Hour Workweek", and see strong connections between the two books. Both books are about people who use their imagination to transform their lives and challenge the conventional, sedentary existence that most people live.

For at least the next three decades the major changes happening in the world will be occurring on the transnational front. People who embrace lives of hypermobility will be best poised to experience and facilitate this. This applies to people who do not consider themselves counterculture types.

Though this book is about the "expressive counterculture", d'Andreas makes a strong case that global capitalism and the counterculture are caught in a constant dialectic struggle. The freaks, no matter how hard they try to avoid it, become the avant-garde of global capitalism and tourism. They have become the risk-taking scouts for big corporations. Anyone interested in mainstream global capitalism will benefit from this detailed work.

Publisher: make this book affordable!!

A friend gave this me this book to read because I am involved in neo-spirituality and alternative medicine and I must say that I found the book to be suprisingly easy to read. The author recalls events with vivid detail, well enough to transport the reader to the various sites of study; then uses this beautiful imagery to illustrate his theories on neo-spirituality and globalization. Although I do not fully understand some of these theories (I am not a social scientist), this is a beautiful read and certainly a necessity for anyone in this field of study.

The author deserves great praise for a very well written account on a subject often ignored by historians. The people of Sindh have been excellent traders for a few thousand years and the author has done well to describe the development of 2 Sindhi networks developed in the past couple hundred years.

I'd highly recommend this book (and not only because it covers the history of my ancestors).

sb

BY LAKSHMI SUBRAMANIAN

The Global World of the Indian Merchant 1750-1947: Traders of sind from bukhara to panama

By Claude Markovits, Cambridge, Price not mentioned

This is a book many of us have been waiting for. Periodic pronouncements have been made about the resilience and prescience of the Asian trader operating within and against the writ of the colonial economy of the 19th and 20th centuries. Along with these, the long debate on the world economy has sustained a level of interest and enquiry about the dynamics of non-European commercial activity in widely dispersed areas of the globe. Serious gaps and doubts have, however, remained and we are often left wondering, "Whose world economy was it anyway?" Was Asian enterprise a tedious aggregate of small, but countless, transactions indulged in by the colonial state with its own calculations and compulsions.

On the other hand, the visibility and movement of Indian merchant groups in the emerging global economy since the 19th century have invested the Asian experience with a certain significance, which, in turn, warrants a closer examination of the process, its antecedents and its projections. Claude Markovits's study attempts precisely to do all this and more, with the result that we have a narrative that is rich in detail, sensitive to the play of historical configurations and supported by a theoretical framework that is balanced and not overly ambitious. He focuses on two communities - the Shikarpuris and the Sindworkis, and through them proceeds to weave a story of dispersal and circulation, rather than that of a unitary diaspora with overarching Indian connotations.

Markovits argues that south Asian merchant movements were essentially temporary migrations and that the settlements, when these did occur, were largely involuntary. Nor did these correspond to any unitary category of caste, territory or religion and were in every sense the outgrowths of regional compulsions and local realities. The experience of the two communities chosen by Markovits, the Shikarpuris and Sindworkis, illustrates the juxtaposition of local processes with that of the global economy, where the activities of merchant groups took on a fuller meaning.

Obviously, such an approach is admissible when dealing with the operation of a colonial economy and not that of a national one, and it is no coincidence that the study should stop at 1947. Within this framework of local and global history, Markovits teases out a fascinating story of the merchant networks of Sind region, that has suffered an overdose of orientalizing descriptions. He also traces their emergence in the context of 18th century transition politics and their expansion in the high noon of British imperialism and Russian centralization. There is also the story of their spatial advance from Bukhara to Panama. The relocation of the south Asian merchant networks in the world economy in the 18th century is a well-established fact, even if its implications are not so well drawn out. The 18th century, in particular, is seen to have constituted a turning point in the positioning of the Asian merchants who suffered major reverses and in the process facilitated the marginalization of Asia in the newly emerging world economy centred firmly in Europe. The process of relocation was not coeval with that of decline and dislocation, and according to Markovits, it was marked by sharp regional and sub-regional variations.

Additionally, the establishment and workings of the colonial economy reared a sub-stratum of commercial functions and operations that were deftly handled and taken over by enterprising indigenous groups. It is within this context that Markovits positions his communities. He argues that far from operating in a residual space left open by the colonial dispensation, these merchant networks adapted successfully to a trading world dominated by European capital through a complex process of collaboration and conflict. The Shikarpuri and Sindworki networks developed under very different circumstances. The surge in Indo-Central Asian trade from the 1840s enabled the Shikarpuris to rework an existing network of caravan commerce and credit transactions under the dispensation of the Uzbeg khanates of central Asia. Meanwhile, the Sindworkis regrouped under the British dispensation and took advantage of the extension of the colonial economy from Bombay into Sind to operate a trade of truly global proportions. The Shikarpuri network was forced out of its base in Sind by changes that followed in the wake of colonial subjugation and changing configurations of commercial exchange. They exploited their old connections with central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan to emerge as principal moneylenders and traders, especially in the khanate of Bukhara. The details of the network have been deduced from a mass of legal material that the Russian authorities felt compelled to share with the British government in the eventuality of any death-related succession dispute involving a British Indian subject. One of the most striking features of the network to emerge from this legal discourse is the working of Shikarpuri panchayats in most localities of central Asia. The Sindworkis, on the other hand, were very much part of the colonial economy and began as modest peddlers of native crafts to a European clientele. This venture expanded substantially to include, in subsequent years, a wide range of curios that found their way into the European markets. Their initiative and intrepidity were quite remarkable. Consider the trader who protested against Australian immigration restrictions and flashed his credentials as a trader of repute who bought and sold exotic goods besides carving the occasional tortoise shell or setting a piece in jade. Curios became doubly important as the tourist traffic caught the fancy of European visitors, enabling a massive expansion of Sindhi enterprise on both sides of the Suez that soon turned to trade in textiles and financial speculation.

In all, this is a fascinating story of commercial dynamism. What makes the story even more fascinating is the exploration of the proclivity to spatial and social mobility among the networks. Caste did not play a central role in forging solidarities. The affinity seemed very much to lie with the region and with the ability to travel extensively and, in the process, ensure a circulation of skills and entrepreneurial labour.

Circulation however, remained confined to males, very rarely did wives accompany their partners. The absence of female company did not, however, deflect the passion for riches as merchants alternated between celibacy and permissiveness to balance the sexual economy of circulation.