India Books

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 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.

This three volume set is available. For addtional information
contact educabook@yahoo.com

There is no better source than this three volume set for those who are interested in the subject of Ethnic background of the Punjabis. It is fascinating to read about the origins, trails and tribulations of various tribes of Aryan, Scythian and Hun origins migrating to the plains of five rivers, called Punjab. It is these tribes who embarked upon creating Indian Civilization and Hinduism. This book goes into great detail about various castes which originated out of this melting pot during 2000-700 BC. This is a must read for people of Punjab and belonging to Jats, Rajputs, Gujjars, Arain and a host of minor castes. As a Punjabi myself, it was fascinating to find the detailed historical background of my ancestors; through Vedic, Epic, Maurya, Saka, Muslim and British periods.

Pravina Shukla's The Grace of Four Moons: Dress, Adornment and the Art of the Body in Modern India is an elegantly written, yet accessible text that documents everyday art of and on the body of her collaborators in Banaras, India. This book not only documents and elaborates about individual case studies, but envelopes them all together in a larger meta-study of the way in which scholars have (and have not) approached the study of body art as a simultaneous reflection of self and community.

This ethnographic text rooted in Folkloristics, illuminates how choices of individual "adornment" in Banaras become integrated into the different layers of individual life processes and culturally rooted aesthetic-frames from which generalizable principles for the study of body art across disciplines and the globe become abundantly clear. Readers will see that the individuals involved are not those who choose to adorn themselves. The research frames comes to include, the families of the women being featured, the makers of jewelry, the salesmen, as well other social and consumer networks that all relate back to the object and radiate outward to include national and global markets, which implicitly integrate notions of the interconnected "local and global" into the study of individual creativity. The integrated focus of this book brings together the dynamics of individuals-as-artists (of varying sorts whether physical craftsmanship or the art of assemblage) with the objects that they "speak" through, as well as the lenses through which beholders "see" through and read out culturally, regionally, gendered, aged, and class based messages.

This text highlights the hallmarks of folkloristic scholarship that is the focus on individuals as artists, and ability to document tradition and variations within parallel systems of production. This study does not focus on a single women, but multiple women, enacting their realities through material culture in different creative ways--India is by no means demographically homogenous, and we can implicitly read this discourse of regional and cultural diversity out of this text. One of the key elements in this text is the notion of choice. While privilege and caste might bring certain option to the table, the participants here shape their lives of their own volition, choosing each day how to represent themselves, on their own terms to the worlds in which they live. However, choice is also modified by implications of the larger social and cultural systems in which these women live, such as the influence of Hindu religious beliefs and the popularity of contemporary Bollywood films. Reader are able to see the ways in which these larger social phenomena become part of the discourses of the self in India, as they would in any modern, media saturated society.


More explicitly, Dr. Shukla creates explicit dialectics between contexts of production and display through use, which are brought together in a unique social and cultural contexts. Readers can see the way in which personal aesthetics are both individual and cultural, as part of intertwined discourses of the self as produced by a series of participants--jewelry and sari makers, knowledgeable vendors, experienced customers as well as the ultimate factor, personal preference. Where women appear to be the focus, we see the interchange between men who make saris, jewelry and assemble bangle sets, and women who create personal assemblages to adorn their bodies are active, mutually constitutive participants in this larger process of self-adornment in India. This perspective is clearly articulated by the way in which the chapters flow, as displaying and wearing body art in this context is prefaced first by the processes of making and buying it.

This is the perspective that has ultimately been missing from previous studies of dress and adornment. It is at the intersection between contexts where function and meaning gain powered as they are obscured, contested, and ultimately realized. It is the art-object's movement through these places and spaces that facilitates its meaning, which culminates on the wearers body in an intimate microanalysis arising from the interactions that negotiate social and personal aesthetics and expectations--display is however, but one stage in the life of these objects. Through the explication of similar objects in multiple contexts ranging from stages of production, consumption, and display, one sees the convergence of forms in the special context of the wedding. Readers get the range of everyday choices, and the specialized context of wedding attire, which includes the rearticulating of everyday types of art-objects (saris, bangles, and other jewelry) in a ritual context, heightening their relative meanings.

In these spaces between contexts, which are linked through art-objects, interactions between the images of real people become qualified by a person's interactions with the ideal images of gods that pervade Hindu culture, adding yet another qualifying layer from which to modify the meanings of what outsiders might consider simple artifacts.

The author makes nuanced distinctions between what people bring to and take away from their "home" locations, who they are, and what sorts of resources (for instance, financial and cultural capital) they have at their disposal to adorn their bodies to illustrate the utter complexity of often disregarded everyday adornment. She chooses to focus on individual case studies of women in Banaras with comparable resources in order to highlight diversity among rather than between social groups. A focus across between casts would only reaffirm social disunity without illuminating the nuances of personal expression, which allow the reader to experiences these women as agents of their own identity making, rather than solely products of their castes. This is not a study of India, this is the story of multiple Indian women as individual artists living within differentially connected or disconnected social networks that in-turn influence their personal aesthetic choices.

Implicitly readers are able to understand, that while adornment is part of the creative repertory of each of the women that are part of this larger story, it is not their only or preferred creative outlet. The text by no means claims that these women's worlds area defined by dress or confined by their bodies, rather Dr. Shukla points to accompanying examples such as outside professions and domestic food preparation as parts of a larger body of creative opportunities in which these women assert their own tastes and make beautiful things in their own lives.


Within this text readers begin to experience a vocabulary-of-dress as part of a communicative system, that much like verbal communication, both gives and receives messages, and in each interaction modifying the subsequent exchange. This discourse of body art is therefore active rather than stagnant, constantly being rethought and reevaluated through agents. This is not a book about how all Indian women dress and have always dressed (as essentializing discourse of static adherence to "traditional norms") but it is about current, living women expressing themselves through their body art now.


The author complicated the notions of display by highlighting culturally defined norm of both seeing and being seen in this area in India. Being seen and seeing become complimentary, reciprocal activities. The role of beholder is a culturally embedded phenomenon as well as an experience between individuals who share a sign system. Readers are also allowed to enter that relationship, although mediated by time and space, through beautiful photography we are allowed to make out own assessments--to create our own discourse about the art under discussion.

Throughout the text there is a wonderful sense of empowerment, where women are controlling their personal aesthetics and in essence expressing to the participants in their world. "This is how you may view me today." This implied through references the way in which gaze may be turned inward, as women's choices affect how they want to be seen and how they see themselves. At the same time, the reader may understand that not all choices are made to attract gaze, a women may want to distance herself from her husband or family and this chooses an aesthetic to detract gaze from her body (337).

Here we are looking at dress and the body as composite parts of a culturally and socially embedded semiotic system of understanding mobilized through tangible realities of color, texture, length, fabric, and pattern etc. We are shown the relationship of the individual simultaneously engaging with their own trade, aesthetics, and social role, with other individuals in roles of, producer, seller, and audience as a series of cultural mediators.

In The Grace of Four Moons, the author allows us to see that in terms of notions of beauty and art, objects are not where notions of aesthetics begin, but rather where they end. They reflect deeply held personal and cultural beliefs of life, beauty and the production of identity. Terms like "vanity" "modesty" "hygiene" "style" "creativity" "public" and "private" merge onto a continuum of the relative values of personal aesthetics. These elements, positioned relative to the body, then move with the body through geographic contexts, and in their movement, we may see how art becomes laminated on the body to express how an individual becomes situated in and between spaces potentially indicating both physical and social transitions. This perspective illuminates how one may study clothing and body art in diasporic contexts where concepts of home become by force or choice, relocated.

What is most important about this book is the way any reader or researcher working on body art can seamlessly integrate their work in the this multi-part model synthesized here. This is not a work about India, or how Indian women adorn their body, it is a comprehensive model for the study of body art across the world that emphasizes the complexity of self-adornments and how in temporary, transitory and permanent ways becomes simultaneously intertwined in multiple social, personal and economic contexts. By connecting discussions of micro contexts on the body and in the closet, and macro contexts of regional and national trade and commerce, this text shows readers how body art not only allows individuals to enact identities based on social expectations, but to simultaneously recalibrate those enactments in the face of personal desires and social change.
-
Rachel Gonzalez
Doctoral Student
Department of Folklore & Ethnomusicology
Department of Anthropology
Indiana University-Bloomington

The Grace of Four Moons' subtitle promises (and delivers!) an exploration of dress and adornment in modern India. The author's discussion is engaging and well-written putting her into dialogue with dress scholars such as Valerie Steele and Joanne Eicher. The book is beautifully illustrated, scholarly, and written in accessible language making it a `must read' for anyone interested in how people everywhere communicate through their appearance. In writing this ethnography of dress, Shukla provides a model for those concerned with material culture in general and dress in particular. Designers, curators, folklorists, and anyone who enjoys learning about the rich possibilities of dress and adornment will find this book a fascinating read.

Great Book, a classic, if you are a student of Dzogchen this book is a must read.

Among those accomplishments illustrating the heights to which we can rise as a species may be found the literature of Ati Yoga (rDzogs chen, The Great Perfection). Ati Yoga is not a belief system; faith is an impediment. Rather, it is an epistemology; its literature a gnostic effulgence illuminating that part of our experience we deem the spiritual. "The Great Image: The Life Story of Vairochana The Translator" is a fluid, brilliant articulation of that innermost knowledge and belongs on the book shelf of any who revel in the history of human achievement.

The novel, written for kids 9 and over, is primarily about the upheavals that occur in the life of an Indian-Canadian family when the grandmother (Naniji) visits from India. The protagonist is Tara a lively and sensitive 15-year-old. She is initially resentful of her visiting grandmother because the grandmother seems to disapprove of Tara's mother's somewhat Western ways and indeed of the Canadian ways of the whole family: the kids don't know Hindi, nor about Diwali; they don't play the sitar and, worst of all, know nothing of the family's role and sacrifice during the Indian Independence movement.

This is too much for Tara: "This is the world I live in. But how do I fit? I'm not one of the true natives, the First Nations, and not one of the whites who marauded the globe colonizing, who tell the history of Canada from when they arrived. I'm too dark for the Samanthas and the rednecks, but not dark enough for Tolly, or Indian enough for Naniji, too Canadian, too Western. Always too something. Never just right."

Tara reads a paper at school about Naniji's role in the Indian Independence movement. The most evocative part of the book occurs when Tara alternates between wanting to read the paper to her class, and not wanting to because of how her friends will react to it and to her (how it will affect her acceptance within the group). She reads the paper anyway. As she had feared, some of her classmates do "shutter down" - close up by seeming to brand her as "other". But, unexpectedly, some of them actually congratulate her and thank her for introducing her to an aspect of history and of herself of which they had been unaware.

Her mother and Naniji are proud of her - that is, until Naniji hears Tara proclaim how she, Tara, is a "regular" Canadian. At this point Naniji "shutters down" because she cannot countenance the fact that her granddaughter is a proud Canadian - what of the family's heritage, sacrifice and history back in India? What of their allegiance to India?

"Naniji catches me staring and tries to smile. She's stiff, but it's not like before, with the criticism and disapproval and the hostility. Her eyes - they are hurt."

The resolution of the conflict within the family and within Tara's own mind is handled by Ms. Gilmore with great maturity and eloquence. She articulates opposing points of view with clarity and grace. Without talking down to the reader, she addresses sensitive issues such as race and color, assimilation and alienation, head-on. This is important especially because these issues are hardly ever addressed in a safe, non-ideological way, without putting one or the other side down as the victim or the aggressor, the turncoat or the conservative.

I highly recommend this book - not just for kids in this age group, but even for their parents and grandparents. In fact, I would go so far as to say this book should be made required reading for all kids (on any rung of the assimilation ladder) because it will create a better understanding and awareness of the inner script that guides our public lives.

To read more of this review, go to desijournal.com

The novel, written for kids 9 and over, is primarily about the upheavals that occur in the life of an Indian-Canadian family when the grandmother (Naniji) visits from India. The protagonist is Tara a lively and sensitive 15-year-old. She is initially resentful of her visiting grandmother because the grandmother seems to disapprove of Tara's mother's somewhat Western ways and indeed of the Canadian ways of the whole family: the kids don't know Hindi, nor about Diwali; they don't play the sitar and, worst of all, know nothing of the family's role and sacrifice during the Indian Independence movement.

This is too much for Tara: "This is the world I live in. But how do I fit? I'm not one of the true natives, the First Nations, and not one of the whites who marauded the globe colonizing, who tell the history of Canada from when they arrived. I'm too dark for the Samanthas and the rednecks, but not dark enough for Tolly, or Indian enough for Naniji, too Canadian, too Western. Always too something. Never just right."

Tara reads a paper at school about Naniji's role in the Indian Independence movement. The most evocative part of the book occurs when Tara alternates between wanting to read the paper to her class, and not wanting to because of how her friends will react to it and to her (how it will affect her acceptance within the group). She reads the paper anyway. As she had feared, some of her classmates do "shutter down" - close up by seeming to brand her as "other". But, unexpectedly, some of them actually congratulate her and thank her for introducing her to an aspect of history and of herself of which they had been unaware.

Her mother and Naniji are proud of her - that is, until Naniji hears Tara proclaim how she, Tara, is a "regular" Canadian. At this point Naniji "shutters down" because she cannot countenance the fact that her granddaughter is a proud Canadian - what of the family's heritage, sacrifice and history back in India? What of their allegiance to India?

"Naniji catches me staring and tries to smile. She's stiff, but it's not like before, with the criticism and disapproval and the hostility. Her eyes - they are hurt."

The resolution of the conflict within the family and within Tara's own mind is handled by Ms. Gilmore with great maturity and eloquence. She articulates opposing points of view with clarity and grace. Without talking down to the reader, she addresses sensitive issues such as race and color, assimilation and alienation, head-on. This is important especially because these issues are hardly ever addressed in a safe, non-ideological way, without putting one or the other side down as the victim or the aggressor, the turncoat or the conservative.

I highly recommend this book - not just for kids in this age group, but even for their parents and grandparents. In fact, I would go so far as to say this book should be made required reading for all kids (on any rung of the assimilation ladder) because it will create a better understanding and awareness of the inner script that guides our public lives.

To read more of this review, go to desijournal.com