Book Watch
India - through the lens!
PENGUIN India's Republic Day offering, The Definitive Images: 1858 to the Present, is not just what the title suggests — a photographic history of India since the First War of Independence or what British historians dismissed as the Sepoy Mutiny.
No doubt, a number of the 72 frames included in this book with an introduction by noted journalist, Khushwant Singh — a man who enjoyed a ringside view of India in its defining years — capture the historic, but not necessarily glorious, moments of the transformation of the "notion that was India" into a modern nation State.
But, that is only part of this visual story which includes pictures of Gandhi at his wheel, Nehru's midnight-hour "Tryst with Destiny" speech, trains overflowing with refugees following the Partition, Pakistan's surrender in 1971, Kapil Dev with the World Cup in 1983, the demolition of the Babri Masjid...
For the most part, lensman Prashant Panjiar — who has put the book together — has zeroed in on photographs that capture the essence of the "wonder that is India" and the resilience of its people which has allowed a nation plagued with every ill known to mankind inch forward against all odds. These pictures of a timeless India and evergreen stills from Bollywood bring relief in an otherwise haunting journey where the milestones include images of the funeral of a child killed in the Bhopal gas tragedy, three sisters who committed suicide because of dowry, and the face of the Gujarat carnage — Qutubuddin Naseeruddin pleading for his life.
The Definitive Images: 1858 to the Present, Prashant Panjiar and Khushwant Singh, Dorling Kindersley, Rs. 1,250.
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Militant `bytes'
HAVING chosen the path of violence, they have preferred to let their guns and grenades do the talking. In fact, but for the reluctant `militant'-turned-counter-insurgent-turned-MLA, Kukka Parrey, and the "Forever Hawkish", Syed Ali Geelani, the nine other militants featured in Pradeep Thakur's Militant Monologues are for most Indians just names that have off-and-on cropped up in reports on militancy in Kashmir.
A journalist by profession, Thakur makes an attempt to understand the `jehadi mind' as he puts it by tracking down the militants and talking to them. Using the access that his profession allows him, his effort has been to draw them out to talk about themselves and the circumstances that put them on this course.
Some of those included in the book have given up the gun — besides Kukka Parrey, this list includes the "Robin Hood-turned-MLA" Usman Majid and once "frontline fighter" Liaquat Ali — making Thakur's task easier as far as accessing them was concerned. Others like Asiya Andrabi — whom he calls the "Daughter of the Faith" — have still not given up their mission.
Militant Monologues is the vexed Kashmir issue as seen through the eyes of those who kept militancy alive in the Valley through the years. In an increasingly jingoistic India, Thakur could well draw some flak for the seemingly one-sided approach. But, then, he makes no attempt whatsoever to package it any other way.
Militant Monologues: Echoes from the Kashmir Valley, Pradeep Thakur, Parity Paperbacks, Rs. 180.
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Leaders, take note!
THIS is the year when two of the world's biggest democracies — India and the United States — go to the polls. Election years being the only time when politicians pay heed to people, Pulitzer Prize-winning author James MacGregor Burns could not have timed his book on leadership any better.
More so, because by looking at the "Leaders who Changed the World", Burns is primarily trying to make a case for putting leadership the world over to work at global poverty which is at the root of other problems facing the world. Given that India is home to a sizable proportion of the world's poor, Burns uses Indian case studies to advocate grassroots and collective action.
Proceeding along the lines of his 1978 Pulitzer-winning book Leadership, the political scientist is of the view that change is not the work of one "great man" who "single-handedly makes history" but the result of collective achievement of a "great people". Without denying the role of leadership as a catalyst in setting off a process, he makes out a case for empowering people to take charge of their destiny.
Among the world leaders profiled in this book are Elizabeth I, George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Mahatma Gandhi and Mikhail Gorbachev, all of whom transformed their worlds, albeit with varying degrees of success.
Leaders who Changed the World, James MacGregor Burns, Viking, Rs. 495.
ANITA JOSHUA
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