Page 136 - EW May 2025

Books

‘Treasury of the Book new Indo-Islamic-Anglo
of Wisdom’, the author Saxon culture began to 100 YEARS OF A PASSAGE
narrates in engrossing take root as societies inter- TO INDIA: INTERNATIONAL
detail the great contribu- acted, and India entered ASSESSMENTS
tions to mathematics, an era of cultural trans- Harish Trivedi
astronomy and astrology formation and assimila- ORIENT BLACKSWAN
that emanated from the tion. With independence Rs.1,350 Pages 243
court of the Raja of Sindh in 1947, a new identity
and the text of The Great began to take shape with
Sindhind, a compilation the revival of Hinduism
of all that Hindus knew of and Hindu culture and already been sufficiently Fifteen original
the spheres and stars. It the emergence of a strong covered by previous schol- essays of this
was compiled by one of the national identity. ars, so what more is there enduring book find
greatest scientific minds This seminal book to say? Surprisingly and “fissures in the Indian
of Indian history, Brahma- embellished by 50 pages magnificently, the fifteen soil” that still yield
gupta (598-670 CE). The of illustrative photographs original essays in this new perceptions and
concept of the zero, nine vividly describes how for compendium find “fissures the Marabar caves
numerals, decimal system, over a millennium, India’s in the Indian soil” that echo again...
origins of algebra, algo- culture and heritage still yield new perceptions,
rithms, trigonometry, a spread with its traders, and the Marabar Caves
practical manual of Indian monks and philosophers echo once again with a say in this section, about
astronomy, were all sent along the Golden Road tantalising ambiguity and David Lean’s adaptation
across the Hindu Kush to and transformed the surfaces. in cinema, which won 11
the Caliph of Baghdad. world, creating around it- The opening essay is by Academy Award nomina-
By the 13th century, self an Indosphere, not by a novelist, Anjum Hasan, tions, will surely arouse
the centres of learning of the sword, but through the and begins delightfully curiosity. Forster dis-
mathematics had shifted sheer power of its ideas. with Forsterian language trusted the transition from
from Arab-Asia to Europe- ANIL THAKORE that a child heard from a text to screen and during
an cities. With the advance Forster-devotee father and his lifetime denied even
of Arabs into the European didn’t know what it meant! Satyajit Ray the permis-
continent through Toledo Fresh exegesis The personal and the po- sion to convert A Passage
in present-day Spain, litical merge over time and to India into a film. After
Indic-Arab mathemat- the book offers complex Forster passed away, says
ics found a new centre of ESPITE ITS con- meaning for Anjum. Madhu Singh, “David
development. stant presence in From that, we move Lean charmed and bullied
Dalrymple traces the Duniversity syllabi swiftly to a bilingual es- Forster’s literary estate
decline of institutions and its mesmerising ap- say by Rupert Snell ‘On into giving him the rights
of learning and sciences peal to readers throughout Translating A Passage to the film”.
in India to the 12th and the world, EM Forster’s into Hindi’ based on an As editor, Harish
13th centuries. Within a mystifying novel A Pas- experiment with six Indian Trivedi has erased the lines
decade after the death of sage to India (1924) is translators that yielded between creative criticism
the Prophet Muhammed, still open to fresh exege- an astonishing variety of and creative writing, by in-
Islamic armies marched sis. Harish Trivedi has ‘equivalent terminology’ cluding Anamika’s charm-
into India in waves over compiled an outstanding even with the title of the ing piece, ‘Adela Adrift in
a period of two centuries volume of essays that ex- book. India as ‘Hind’ or India’ in which she imag-
to ransack and destroy plores a “dark unfathom’d ‘Bharat’ carries varying ines a post-story of Adela
almost all the great centres retrospect”, leading us connotations and that’s Quested being appointed
of art and culture, and the back to the labyrinthine possibly the point about a governess in a princely
sciences which were des- coils of this never-forgot- the politics of language. household of India. Using
ecrated or abandoned. ten book. French and Polish a letter and diary format,
This was followed by One could enquire that translations provide two it is a scathing attack
colonisation by western the historical, biographi- essays that establish the on the social forces that
powers, particularly the cal, colonial, postcolonial, popularity of Forster’s misunderstood Adela’s
British, which saw a deep postmodern and feminist novel in venues not known ‘malaise’, her incoherence,
erosion of Indic culture. A aspects of A Passage have about. But the final es- and her vocabulary after

136 EDUCATIONWORLD MAY 2025