Why I Supported the Emergency:
Essays and profiles by Khushwant Singh
compiled and edited by Sheela Reddy
Penguin/Viking, 2009
This compilation is Khushwant Singh at his iconoclastic best. Irreverent, straight from the gut, the grand old man of Indian journalism is still going strong at 94. His essays on the travails of the aged, kissing, death and dying, rub shoulders with scathing comments on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and sting operations. Strangely, a comment on the anti-Muslim carnage in Gujarat in 2002 is conspicuously absent, though. Witty portraits of Nehru, Sir Vidia, Amrita Sher-gil, Jinnah, Aveek Sarkar and Protima Bedi reveal poignant vulnerabilities of high-profile newsmakers. No punches are pulled, even about icons of our times. Khushwant Singh calls Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore "a mere songwriter" and overrated as a writer, and claims that no one dared to say so because Bengalis immediately took umbrage. And in "*&^% All Editors", the legendary columnist and editor sums up the four F's of the modern media landscape: films, fashion, food and fuck editors. If the title essay is unconvincing – and Singh's legendry support for the Emergency has been long forgotten, save in certain circles – his candour and disarming revelations about that 'obscenity' in Indian democracy more than make up. (Laxmi Murthy)
Hindu Kingship, Ethnic Revival, and Maoist Rebellion in Nepal
by Marie Lecomte-Tilouine
Oxford, 2009
Ever since Nepal's Maoists promised the right of self-determination to ethnic groups as an incentive to enlist their support for armed insurgency, the country has been wracked by a million mutinies. Communities across the country are asserting their distinctiveness through rediscovered markers and invented traditions. Marie Lecomte-Tilouine has observed this process of identity-formation in the midhills of western Nepal for years, and her anthropological observations, rigorous analyses and deep insights have now been collected in book form.