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Books

questioning the equanim- Times of India at a time
ity with which the justices when Bros Samir and A NEW HISTORY OF INDIA: FROM
of the Supreme Court Vineet Jain were cutting ITS ORIGINS TO THE TWENTY-
presided over a clearly dys- editors to size. FIRST CENTURY
functional judicial system, All these battles fought Rudrangshu Mukherjee,
Shobita Punja, Toby Sinclair
and “discordance” between by him for probity and
its oft expressed anguish accountability in public ALEPH BOOK COMPANY
about the blatant viola- life are set out in elaborate Rs.999 Pages 480
tions of citizens’ rights and detail in this engaging
its inaction in punishing memoire. In the process,
officials of the State. Later Shourie’s fearless, icono- Refreshing The story of the
this led to an exposure of clastic journalism cata- development of
Supreme Court judge P.N. lysed the post-Emergency history Indian civilisation and
Bhagwati who was roundly magazines boom which its march to modern
pilloried for passing birthed periodicals such nationhood told with
contradictory judgements, as India Today, Sunday, HIS IS A TEXT- elegance, precision
and his famous letter to Business India and Busi- BOOK with a and sensitivity
Mrs. Gandhi after she was nessWorld. The latter two Tdifference. It covers
returned to power at the publications broke with a well-known story of the particular way to embody
Centre in 1981, in which socialist tradition to lift the development of India as the complexity of India’s
he gratuitously likened her corporate veil and trans- a civilization, of its march historical experience. The
return to the “reddish glow formed vilified capitalists to modern nationhood visual material is splen-
of the rising sun”. into business and industry and does it with elegance, didly arranged and there is
In his 12-year career heroes. precision and sensitivity. a clear exposition of how
in the Express, Shourie If there is a downside It is this quality of tying tombs and masjids altered
exposed the corruption to the memoire of this together discrete elements the landscape.
and abuse of office of the messianic journalist and of updated research, well- Another key process the
highest and mightiest in exposer of chicanery, known debates and under- book captures is India’s
the land. Among them: corruption and hypocrisy standing with a brilliant orientation to the larger
Rajiv Gandhi for his in high places, it is that array of visual material outside world — some-
involvement in the Bofors Shourie is inclined to that makes this textbook thing that textbooks do not
gun import scandal; indulge in an overkill of genuinely a novel exercise often capture. The inbuilt
“trader in unions” Datta his targets. Even after their in synthesis and analysis. tendency to look at Indian
Samant who shut down the corruption and misdeeds Let me focus on some historical development as
Express offices in Mumbai are exposed beyond all of the unusual themes that an insular process of clas-
for weeks; successfully reasonable doubt, he is the textbook takes up as it sical grandeur, followed
aborted Rajiv’s press determined not to let go. plots the history of India by Islamic rule and then
gag defamation Bill and This perhaps explains the from its first urbanization by British control whose
took on the old-style size of this tome. in the form of the Harap- modernizing tendencies
“popes” (editors) of Secondly in the inter- pan culture to a series of were often too unpalatable
established newspapers; ests of authenticity, he migrations and settlements for the majority of their
outed the corruption of is obliged to report all that gave the subcontinent subjects, meant that very
Maharashtra chief minister conversations — includ- states, empires, social little attention was paid
Abdul Rehman Antulay ing words like yes and no formations and cultural to India’s links with the
for running a cement — in Hindi written in the symbols. larger worlds of Asia and
distribution scandal, and Roman script. This makes Among these are the the Indian Ocean. This
laid low several other reading translations a development of an art and book decidedly reverses
sawdust caesars who tedious business. But these architectural idiom, of the the trend as it refers to
strutted the national and are minor flaws in this en- enrichment of the archi- the commercial vitality
regional stages in those lightening memoire which tectural landscape under of the premodern Indian
tumultuous years. For one hopes will be supple- successive political dispen- economy and its linkages
all this, he made many mented by an account of sations. What is impressive with early modern state
enemies and was sacked his years in politics and is the lucid explanation of building practices.
from the Express, and government. architectural elements that A third point of entry in
worked for a while in the DILIP THAKORE came together in a very the text which is defini-

96 EDUCATIONWORLD JANUARY 2024