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Battles Half Won: India's Improbable Democracy by Ashutosh Varshney

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Battles Half Won: India's Improbable Democracy by Ashutosh Varshney A R E V I E W O F B O O K S VOL XIX NOS. 1 & 2 ● JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2014 ● PRICE : Rs 85 Battles Half Won: India’s Improbable Democracy by Ashutosh Varshney Deb Mukharji recommends two books on the Bangladesh War: 1971 by Srinath Raghavan and The Blood Telegram by Gary J. Bass Rajmohan Gandhi’s history of Punjab Prem Shankar Jha agrees with Deepak Nayyar’s Catch Up Ecology Economy – challenging the liberal-capitalist hegemony ● Courage and Conviction: General VK Singh’s autobiography Nishant Shah on The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon Shashi Deshpande revels in Filomena’s Journeys by Maria Aurora Couto ● Fiction: Helium by Jaspreet Singh; Nilanjana Roy’s The Hundred Names of Darkness Githa Hariharan takes issue with Michelle Cohen Corasanti’s The Almond Tree C O N T E N T S A REVIEW OF BOOKS VOL. XIX NOS. 1 & 2 36 pages JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2014 Founder Editors Dileep Padgaonkar Arvind N Das † (6.9.1948 - 6.8.2000) 6 Battles Half Won: India’s Improbable Democracy by Ashutosh Varshney Harish Khare Editor Rukmini Bhaya Nair 8 Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten by Rajmohan Gandhi Ellora Puri Associate Editor Manisha Sethi 9 Partition’s Post-Amnesia: 1947, 1971 and Modern South Asia Shohini Ghosh Publisher & Art Director by Ananya Jahanara Kabir Brinda Datta 10 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh by Srinath Raghavan Deb Mukharji Editorial Advisory Board: and The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger and a Forgotten Genocide by Gary J. Bass Tabish Khair, Amita Baviskar, Boria Majumdar, Alice Albinia, 12 Courage and Conviction: An Autobiography, General V. K. Singh Vipul Dutta Sukumar Muralidharan, Aveek Sen. with Kunal Verma Subscription and Editorial 14 India at Risk: Misconceptions, Misadventures and Security Policy Anirudh Deshpande Address: 2204 Sector D 2, by Jaswant Singh Vasant Kunj, New Delhi - 110070. Tel: 91-11- 2689 7545 15 Indian Mujahideen: Computational Analysis and Public Policy Manisha Sethi Tel/Fax: 91-11- 2689 2429 by V.S. Subramanian, Aaron Mannes, Animesh Roul and R.K. Raghavan E-mail: [email protected] 16 Catch Up: Developing Countries and the World Economy Prem Shankar Jha by Deepak Nayyar Printed and published by Brinda Datta, 2204 Sector D 2, 18 Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower Mohan Guruswamy Vasant Kunj, New Delhi - 110070. edited by Clay Chandler and Adil Zainulbhai for McKinsey & Company Printed at Archana Advertising Pvt. Ltd., C 78 Okhla Industrial Area, 19 Ecology Economy: Quest for a Socially Informed Connection Kaveri Gill Phase 1, New Delhi - 110 020 by Felix Padel, Ajay Dandekar amd Jeemol Unni Editor: Rukmini Bhaya Nair 20 The Almond Tree by Michelle Cohen Corasanti Githa Hariharan All rights reserved. Reproduction in any manner without the permission 21 Helium by Jaspreet Singh Stuti Khanna of the publisher is prohibited. RNI No. 65560/96 22 ‘A New Taj Mahal’ – a short story from Savage Harvest: Stories of ISSN No. 0971-8982 Partition by Mohinder Singh Sarna; translated by Navtej Sarna. An extract The views expressed by the contributors are their own and do 24 Filomena’s Journeys: A portrait of a marriage, a family & a culture Shashi Deshpande not reflect the editorial policy of by Maria Aurora Couto Biblio: A Review of Books 25 Servants: A Downstairs View of Twentieth-Century Britain Proteeti Banerjee by Lucy Lethbridge Forthcoming in Biblio 26 Nony Singh: The Archivist. Text by Sabeena Gadihoke and Aveek Sen Trisha Gupta Fiction: 28 Unnatural Creatures. Stories chosen by Neil Gaiman Anita Roy Beloved Strangers by Maria Chaudhuri 29 The Hundred Names of Darkness by Nilanjana Roy Shalini Mukarji One Part Woman by Perumal Murugan 31 The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone Nishant Shah Idris: Keeper of the Light 33 City Adrift: a short biography of Bombay by Naresh Fernandes Karishma Attari by Anita Nair Mirror City by Chitrita Banerji 34 Namdeo Dhasal (1949 - 2014): In Memoriam Kumar Ketkar Cities: COVER: ‘Protecting Democracy?’, Khirki Village, Delhi. Photograph by DINESH KHANNA. Capital by Rana Dasgupta Grand Delusions: a short biography of Calcutta by Indrajit Hazra Transforming Our Cities by read biblio online at www.biblio-india.org Isher Judge Ahluwalia The Destruction of Hyderabad by AG Noorani ● 1 year Individual online subscription: Rs 400 / USD 10 Non Fiction: ● Transforming India 2 year Individual online subscription: Rs 600 / USD 15 by Sumantra Bose Homeless on Google Earth ● 3 year Individual online subscription: Rs 700 / USD 20 by Mukul Keshavan Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of ● 1 year Institutional online subscription: Rs 1500 / USD 50 Indenture by Gaiutra Bahadur A Comma in a Sentence ● Subscription to the Biblio Archives: Rs 6000 / USD 500 by R. Gopalakrishnan A Life in Three Octaves: The Musical Journey of Gangubai Join us on Facebook Hangal by Deepa Ganesh www.facebook.com/web.biblio B I B L I O : J A N U A R Y - F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 4 3 C O N T R I B U T O R S KARISHMA ATTARI is a novelist based in Mumbai. She is the founder of The Super Readers Club, an initiative to get children reading. PROTEETI BANERJEE is a senior editor in academic publishing based in Kolkata. ANIRUDH DESHPANDE is Associate Professor at the Department of History, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Delhi. SHASHI DESHPANDE is the author of eight novels, three crime novels, a number of short story collections, as well as a collection of essays. Her latest novel is Shadow Play (Aleph, 2013). VIPUL DUTTA is a doctoral student at King’s College London. SHOHINI GHOSH is Sajjad Zaheer Professor at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia. KAVERI GILL is a development economist based in New Delhi. MOHAN GURUSWAMY is a Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation and the Forum for Strategic Initiatives, New Delhi; and heads the Centre for Policy Alternatives, New Delhi, an independent and privately funded think-tank. He is the author of several books on policy issues, the latest being Chasing the Dragon: Will India Catch-up with China? TRISHA GUPTA is freelance writer and critic. Her published writing – on books, art photography, cinema and the city – is archived on her blog Chhotahazri (www.trishagupta.blogspot.com). She lives in Delhi. GITHA HARIHARAN is the author of several novels, including In Times of Siege and Fugitive Histories. A collection of essays on Palestine edited by her, entitled From India to Palestine: Essays in Solidarity, has just been published by LeftWord Books. She is a member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee in India and one of the convenors of the Indian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. PREM SHANKAR JHA is the author of Twilight of the Nation State: Globalisation, Chaos and War, published by Sage, with an Introduction by Eric Hobsbawm. KUMAR KETKAR is a political analyst and former editor of Loksatta. STUTI KHANNA is Assistant Professor at the Department Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. HARISH KHARE is a veteran commentator and political analyst, and former media adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He is currently a Fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund. SHALINI MUKERJI is an independent writer, researcher and editor. DEB MUKHARJI was a member of the Indian Foreign Service (1964-2001). He served in Islamabad (1968-1971) and Dhaka (1977-1980 and 1995-2000). ELLORA PURI teaches in the Department of Political Science, University of Jammu. She works on South Asia, political violence, and gender. ANITA ROY publishes books for children and young adults under the Young Zubaan imprint. MOHINDER SINGH SARNA (1923-2001) was a much acclaimed writer and poet and recipient of many awards. He produced several volumes of poetry, short stories and novels, many of which have been translated into other Indian languages and made into tele-films. NAVTEJ SARNA is an Indian diplomat. He is the author of the novels The Exile and We Weren’t Lovers Like That; the short story collection Winter Evenings; the non- fiction works The Book of Nanak and Folk Tales of Poland; and a translation of Guru Gobind Singh’s Zafarnama. MANISHA SETHI is a Fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. NISHANT SHAH is the Director-Research at the Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore. JOIN THE CIRCLE OF REASON SUBSCRIBE TO BIBLIO: A REVIEW OF BOOKS 1 YEAR SUBSCRIPTION — Rupees Six Hundred A REVIEW OF BOOKS 2 YEAR SUBSCRIPTION — Rupees Eight Hundred 3 YEAR SUBSCRIPTION — Rupees One Thousand Mail the coupon to: 1 YEAR INSTITUTIONAL RATE — Rupees Nine Hundred SEAPIA BOOKS 2204 Sector D 2 1 YEAR FOREIGN SUBSCRIPTION (INDIVIDUAL) — US Dollars Seventy Five (or the equivalent in other currencies) Vasant Kunj 1 YEAR FOREIGN SUBSCRIPTION (INSTITUTIONAL) — US Dollars One Hundred and Sixty New Delhi - 110 070 Please allow 28 days for delivery. 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