India Books

Returning from my first visit to Bhutan in November, 1999, I searched for a book which genuinely captures the beauty and uniqueness of this Himalayan Buddhist kingdom and her people. The combination of Dompnier's stunning photography and thoughtful text are more than I had hoped to find. The format, choice and excellence of pictures and insightful text aptly convey a sense of this very special place. For anyone interested in the iconography of Tibetan Buddhism, learning about a people and culture unlike any other on this planet, or looking for photojournalism at its best about the Himalayas , I highly recommend this book. Personally, it serves me well to keep alive cherished memories of a place I know I will visit again.

BITTER SOIL contains four of Mahasweta Devi's most compelling stories--works which accent her political and economic humanism in ways which will surprise those who think of her as a feminist writer. Three of the stories are available elsewhere, but Ipsita Chanda's excellent translations give readers a fuller experience of the Bengali text's tone than the previous translations do. "Little Ones," which has appeared as "Children," recreates the experience of a kindhearted social worker overwhelmed by the devastation his government has wreaked on the Agaria, a small indigenous tribe. "Seeds," which Mahasweta herself has translated elsewhere as "Paddy Seeds," is even more supple and jagged in Ipsita Chanda's translation than in the author's own fine English. "Seeds" puts readers inside the mind of wily old Dulan Ganju as he slowly transforms from low-caste trickster to activist, avenging the murder of his son. "The Witch," which is also in Kalpana Bardhan's collection, is set near the same Hesadi village as "Seeds." It features the tribal Oraon midwife Sanichari as representative of the way village life should be, and the teacher, Mathur, as the "misfit" who quietly helps villagers abandon superstition. "Salt," which has not been translated previously, uses the trope of a rogue elephant to represent an economic and governmental system which exploits and destroys anyone who tries to work around its inequities. Mahasweta Devi is best known for her harrowing climactic symbols. In the works for which she is most famous in this country, these symbols generally involve rape of an innocent and heroic woman. In the stories in BITTER SOIL, iconography involving fertility and sexual violence applies to male and female protagonists alike. But it is not these multi-level, dread-inspiring icons which most impress me. Rather, it is the moments of subtle conversation, the quicksilver moments where understanding comes so fully in a single word that reasoning looks like intuition. Her primary interests are in the tribal (adivasi) cultures which she portrays in these stories. One warning for American audiences: Mahasweta Devi spares no one; her works were intended to move her Bengali readers to action. If they instead move American readers to pity or smugness, they fail. So pay special attention to the brief appearances of well-meaning bureaucrats and westernized intellectuals. They get an interesting mixture of appreciation and scorn.

Norma Levine's close association with Tai Situ, Rinpoche, one of the highest Tibetan lamas, is used to highlight her examination of the phenomena of ringsel (spontaneously appearing relics), rangjung ("self arisen" rock and bone artifacts), beyul- the "hidden lands" of refuge, the career of Padmasambhava, Tibet's great culture hero, and ter, the teachings hid by Padmasambhava in rock or in the mindstreams of his disciples. Levine takes care to handle these topics with dignified sensitivity, helping us to view these "miracles" as the physical manifestations of blessing/inspiration.

In London twenty-eight years old TV reporter Mia Bhagat remains in shock that her seemingly healthy father committed suicide. The Bengali expatriate uses her work to somewhat ignore her grief. While on an assignment, Mia meets Karna, an instructor at the Purification Journey Brotherhood where men learn how to conquer the female ego. He could have been the model for her father's painting of the Kumbh Mela Festival of the Pitcher.

Mia falls in love with Karna, but her mother orchestrates a marriage for her with cosmetics businessman Vik Ray. Following their nuptials, the pair moves to his home office in New Delhi where she hosts his galas while praying that her Karna will soon come for her.

Although the above description is like the Ganges River, there are several major tributaries not described above that add depth to this insightful look at modern day India through the comparisons between and the interrelationships of a strong cast. Somewhat confused, Mia holds the threads together. Readers will enjoy the focus on materialism vs. spiritualism and heritage vs. globalization that makes BLIND FAITH an interesting glimpse at a changing India.

Harriet Klausner

Ellen Oxfeld's study of the Chinese Hakka community that lives outside of Calcutta in the Dhapa district is a truly insightful and fascinating account of a little-known ethnic enclave. Members of the Hakka community primarily work as leather tanners, but also as beauticians. Immigrants to Calcutta from other Chinese communities work as dentists, restaurant owners, and shoe store owners. The common and fascinating thread between all of these professions is that they are viewed as impure since they deal with human and animal waste, and hence professions in which Hindus cannot participate. These communities are also fascinating because of their motivations for emigrating from their homelands; even though India does not traditionally appeal to immigrants the way the United States does, Calcutta provides unique opportunities for enterprise and has been home to Jewish, Armenian, and other communities throughout its history.

As a young girl who used to frequent Calcutta, I was always fascinated by the Chinese beauticians and shoe-store owners that I would see in my daily activities. Oxfeld's book is invaluable in offering concrete data not only about the history of the Hakka community in Calcutta and Toronto, but also in providing an analysis of leather-working, immigration, and maintaining one's ethnic identity in a foreign land.

A truly fascinating account of one of the world's most mysterious enclave communities, Oxfeld's book provides ethnographers, anthropologists, and lay-people a multi-layered analysis that is both well-written and easy to understand.

An exploration of the Indian film industry through photographs was definitely not what I expected when I initially purchased this book, but the beauty and drama of the images, made it worth the cost. This book does NOT contain any relevant information (history, films, etc.) on Bollywood; it's a coffee table book. The photos themselves (of film stars to the mania of the theaters and fans) brilliantly capture the dynamics and glamour of the industry and it's trance-like hold over it's millions (if not billions) of fans!!!

A Brilliantly written work on the origins and the evolution of the Bengali and Subcontinental revolutionary nationalist movements that aimed to overthrow the despotic imperialist-fascist occupation forces of the British in the Indian subcontinent. Chronological,lucid and absorbing, the author brings in a tremendous amount of authentic sources to give us life-like impressions of freedom fighters such as the immortal Khudiram Bose. The beginnings of Jugantar and the Anushilan Samiti under Aurobindo Ghose and Pulin are also closely studied (there is more emphasis on Jugantar and Aurobindo Ghose, also see Asok Ray's 'Party of the Firebrand Revolutionaries' for more on the Anushilan Samiti) A whole decade of nationalist endeavour passes before our eyes from the creation of these groups to their attempts to defeat the illegal occupation of the subcontinent. And although these movements would be dealt severe blows, it must not be assumed that they were defeated. Jugantar and Anushilan Samiti continued [as fragments] to fight British occupation.Ultimately their efforts would be justified when another great revolutionary,Bengali statesman and nationalist leader Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and his Indian National Army would provide the impetus for the British withdrawal from the subcontinent in 1947. Indeed it was British Premier Clement Attlee who in 1956 said that it was Netaji and the INA who rocked the very foundations of British rule in the Indian subcontinent and created the revolutionary atmosphere [including inspiring the revolt of the sailors of the British Indian Navy and raising the spectre of the First War of Independence of 1857 which threatened defeat for the occupiers of the subcontinent] which made the situation untenable in 1946-47 for British rule in the subcontinent.[when asked what role had Gandhi or Nehru played in forcing the British withdrawal from the subcontinent, Attlee had smiled and said one word, 'minimal'] This book is a must for background to the Indian Subcontinent's independence movement.

Raghubir Singh is arguably one of India's most well-known photographers and certainly one of the best I have seen in print. Most photographers will shy away from colour but Singh composes beautifully in this medium (and it wouldn't do Bombay justice to shoot it in black and white...) Above and beyong his talent with the lens, he has a very keen eye for the city, and captures the personality of the people who live there: laissez faire, slick, cosmopolitan. A typically Indian book - unabashed and bold - appropriately reflective of its subject matter. Naipaul is an odd choice for designing this work, given his relative distaste for India, but creates the perfect tension to accompany the photographs. In summary, Singh is in prime form in this book, doing what he does best: chronicling the people that define a city.

No doubt you have seen the recent ads for a cheap little cloth bracelet decorated only with the letters "WWBD." They stand for "What Would the Buddha Do?" It's really a good question. So good that for ages it has stalked me everywhere I go.

Haunted by missing answers, but skeptical of the huge number of recent (often Tibetan-derived) Buddha books which now crowd every bookstore, my impulse was to try resurrecting whatever could be known of Indian Buddhism, especially at the time the Buddha was still living and for the century or two thereafter. I flattered myself that I would be blazing a very cunning trail, guaranteed to detour neatly around all the mistakes and errors which would certainly have been grafted onto his "pure" doctrine in the two and a half millennia since the Buddha died.

As I saw it, the challenge was primarily to identify the best translations of the oldest texts. Everything else would surely follow. This led me crashing headlong into the Pali scriptures, and I tore at them with all the finesse and sophistication of a grave robber on his first big heist.

The remarkable treasures found preserved in the Pali canon dazzled me. Indeed they still do. However I have gradually come to understand the significance of such treasures quite differently than I once did. And I have been persuaded (sometimes rather painfully) of the futility, arrogance, and chauvinistic myopia implicit in any attempt to reconstruct a pure, uncontaminated Buddhism on the assumption that others (including whole nations full of traditional practitioners) either lacked the sensitivity required to attract one to "truth," or were intellectually too lazy to reject whatever fallacy they just happened to stumble over.

I blush to admit how short-sighted, even mean-spirited my initial game-plan was. The chagrin this insight caused me is mitigated slightly by a realization that many others have preceded me down the very same path. A fair number of them have left their sun-bleached bones littering the trail to prove it.

Of course these are not precisely the same "bones" Schopen had in mind when choosing the title for his book "Bones, Stones and Buddhist Monks." But his work, along with many of his colleagues (especially Donald S. Lopez, Jr.), is a major source of some of the most persuasive lessons imaginable about what really does constitute a religion, and how an outsider can ever hope to go about comprehending the nature of one. The fact that the intellectual roots of both these authors sink deep into the very Tibetan studies I once avoided chastens me, and has itself helped to redefine my own conceptual horizons.

Schopen argues in particular that it is virtually impossible to develop a comprehensive understanding of any complex human social practice, especially including religion, totally from canonical texts alone. One must, he urges, factor into one's awareness the totality of sources of information available, such as ancient inscriptions, archaeological finds, and even accounts of and about practitioners applying their faith and beliefs in their own daily lives.

To the unsuspecting student, much of what Schopen reveals strikes home with the force of a well-aimed karate chop. A great deal of it goes directly against the grain of what many of us were convinced by our early religious training, in which it tended to be regarded as an article of faith that scriptural evidence was paramount, and all other concepts had to conform to it -- or be summarily discarded.

In stark contrast to this tradition, Schopen demonstrates unequivocally that, compared to the actual practice of Indian Buddhism, much of what the early texts would have us accept as "Buddhist" is at least limited, likely misleading, and perhaps even intentionally distorted. His most fundamental premise is disarming in the actual evidence for what are taken to be established facts in the history of Indian Buddhism. If nothing else, such an exercise makes it painfully obvious that most of those established facts totter precariously on very fragile foundations."

Schopen carefully dissects one after another traditional Western notion about Buddhism. Once he has the bones and muscles laid completely bare, he scrupulously compares archaeological facts against canonical assertions (and later assumptions derived therefrom). He then surgically cuts through more diseased tissue than one would find in the worst inner-city hospital -- and fallacious canonical assertions and assumptions scatter all over the operating room floor, where they remain embarrassingly messy, but no longer so dangerous to the patient.

Schopen establishes that early Indian Buddhism was, for the most part, scattered into numerous doctrinally autonomous communities of Buddhists, in many of which the "orthodox" canon was either irrelevant, altogether unknown, or at last ignored by all but a tiny number of literate, conservative elite.

Schopen's evidence persuades us overwhelmingly that early Buddhism monks (and their numerous, often underestimated nun-counterparts) were far more human in conduct, and far more Indian in outlook, than anything portrayed by the canonical texts. These early clerics seem to have been marked more indelibly by the Hindu heritage in which they had been reared than has usually been conceded. They may all have left home in favor of monastic life, but they still appear to have retained strong emotional ties to their parents, homes and traditional cultural heritage. Schopen's evidence is that they were "concerned -- even preoccupied -- with ritually depositing and elaborately housing the remains of at least some of the local monastic dead," though this particular topic is one about which the Pali canon happens to be inexplicably mute.

Despite heavy scholarly focus on the various Vinayas, the actual lives and practices of these monks and nuns do not ever appear to have been governed very rigidly by any sort of monolithic central text or law, but were subject instead to widely varying mores and customs, dependent largely on the area in which they were located. Many monks seem to have come from well-to-do families, and despite their decision to take holy orders it is not clear that they ever totally renounced all worldly goods. Far from the scriptural portrayal of an "isolated and socially disengaged" clergy, many of them apparently owned (or had access to) property and at least handled money. They were routinely responsible for commissioning and donating impressive and expensive works of art, emphatically including Buddha images (whose evolving cult there is reason to believe the monastic community itself was largely responsible for fostering and encouraging).

In dramatic contrast to what the Pali Vinaya would lead us to believe -- and directly contrary to a central and most fundamental Buddhist principle regarding the illusory nature of any immortal ego, personality or soul -- Schopen shows that the early monks certainly acted as though the Buddha's personality or entity survived his death and that, in his relics, stupas (and eventually sculptures), he continued to be present among them as though he were still full of life and even in need of suitable living accomodations. Surviving legal documents prove that these relics were thought fit to receive and own property -- and in their own name.

Unless one has made a habit of reading in the most far-flung and highly specialized journals and books about philosophy and religion, it is unlikely he will ever before have encountered any of the twelve papers collected in "Bones, Stones & Buddhist Monks." Despite their scholarly origins, however, these works turn out for the most part to be readable and reasonably user-friendly. Schopen writes with vigor, conviction and passion, but still has a sense of humor and is willing to help the reader by choosing interesting and comprehensible illustrations and examples.

Schopen takes no prisoners, and the reader must be prepared to have his most cherished beliefs and suppositions challenged -- even assaulted. I guarantee that, though Schopen may not exactly smash -- he is at least likely to put a dent in -- nearly every icon in sight, even including poor old T.W. Rhys Davids, whom I used to regard as the father-of-it-all, but who now (along with this long-suffering wife Caroline) seems to have become the fall-guy for so much of what went wrong in Western Buddhist scholarship.

As hard-nosed as he may occasionally get, Schopen does not write to discourage. Of course he admonishes the reader to be critical of sources, to consider all relevant evidence, and to reject any idea for which a suitable factual rationale cannot be found. However his intention is to affirm the search for truth, and to obect to that would be inexcusably perverse.

Come to think of it, this is awfully close to a stance the Buddha himself was known to take -- and the standard of proof to which he thought a new idea ought to

Although I am a practising Thevardian Buddhist , I find this book on Tibetan Iconography and symbolism very interesting It have decipher the ancient secrets of the Tibetan and made it easy to comprehend to every lay Buddhist I strongly recomend this book to any inspiring Tibetan Buddhist learner