The Killer Instinct – Major General O P Sabharwal November 16, 2009

The Killer Instinct Book Description

Timely and thought provoking book, which merits study by professional, by those entrusted with responsibility of formulating policy, and, for its topically and readability by the lay reader too.

Anita Mazumdar Desai November 15, 2009

Anita Mazumdar Desai (born June 24, 1937) is an Indian novelist and Emeritus John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been shortlisted for the Booker prize three times. Her daughter, the author Kiran Desai, won the 2006 Booker prize.

Selected works

• The Zigzag Way (2004)
• Diamond Dust and Other Stories (2000)
• Fasting, Feasting (1999)
• Journey to Ithaca (1995)
• Baumgartner’s Bombay (1988)
• In Custody (1984)
• The Village By The Sea (1982)
• Clear Light of Day (1980)
• Games at Twilight (1978)
• Fire on the Mountain (1977)
• Cry, The Peacock (1963)
• The village by the sea (1982)

Amitav Ghosh November 15, 2009

Amitav Ghosh (born 1956), is an Indian-Bengali author known for his work in the English language.

Ghosh’s latest work of fiction is Sea of Poppies (2008) an epic saga, set just before the Opium Wars which encapsulates the colonial history of the East. His other novels are The Circle of Reason (1986), The Shadow Lines (1990), The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), The Glass Palace (2000) and The Hungry Tide (2004). The Shadow Lines won the Sahitya Akademi Award, India’s most prestigious literary award.^[2] TheCalcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for 1997.^[3] Sea of Poppies was shortlisted for the 2008 Booker Prize^[4]. Ghosh’s fiction is characterised by strong themes that may be somewhat identified withpostcolonialism but could be labelled as historical novels. His topics are unique and personal; some of his appeal lies in his ability to weave “Indo-nostalgic” elements into more serious themes.

Ghosh has also written In an Antique Land (1992), Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma (1998), Countdown (1999), and The Imam and the Indian (2002, a large collection of essays on different themes such asfundamentalism, history of the novel, Egyptian culture, and literature). In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government.

NIRALA November 15, 2009

SURYA KANT TRIPATHI ‘NIRALA‘ (21.2.1897 – 15.10.1961)

‘Nirala’, a ‘Chhayawadi’ Poet, was born in Madinipur district of West Bengal. Thereon he shifted to Lucknow and then to Village Gadhakola of District Unnao, to which his father originally belonged.
He was well versed in Hindi, Bangla, English & Sanskrit and was greatly inspired by Ram Krishna Paramhans, Swami Vivekanand & Ravindra Nath Tagore. His wrote strongly against social injustice & exploitation in the society. It will not be wrong to say that he was well ahead of his time in his work.

There is a Park(Nirala Uddyan), an Auditorium (Nirala Prekshagrah) and a Degree College (Mahapran Nirala Degree College) in the district after his name.

Publications

‘Janmbhumi’, ‘Parimal’, ‘Geetika’, ‘Anamika’ , ‘Tulsidas’, ‘Kukurmutta’, ‘Adima’, ‘Bela’, ‘Nai Pattey’, ‘Archana’,
‘Aradhana’, ‘Geet Gunj’, ‘Sandya Kakli’ ( All Poetry)

‘Apsara’, ‘Alka’, ‘Prabhawati’, ‘Nirupama’, ‘Kulli Bhat’, ‘Billesur Bakriha’, ‘Choti ki Pakar’, ‘Kale Karname’ (All Novels)

‘Lily’, ‘Sakhi’, ‘Sukul ki Bibi’, ‘Devi’, ‘Chaturi Chamaar’ (All Story books)

‘Bangbhasha ka Uchcharan’, ‘Ravindra-Kavita-Kannan’, ‘Prabandh-Padya’, ‘Prabandh-Pratima’, ‘Chabuk’, ‘Chayan’, ‘Sangrah’ (All Essays)

‘Mahabharat’ (Epic Katha)

‘Anand Math’, ‘Vish-Vriksh’, ‘Krishna kant ka Vil’, ‘Kapal Kundala’, ‘Durgesh Nandini’, ‘Raj Singh’, ‘Raj Rani’, ‘Devi Chaudharani’, ‘Yuglanguliya’, ‘Chandrasekhar’, ‘Rajni’, ‘Sri Ramkrishna Vachnamrit’,'Bhatrat Main Vivekanand’, ‘Rajyog’ (All Translations)

Animal’s People November 10, 2009

Animal’s People is a novel by Indra Sinha. It was shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize and is the Winner of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’s Prize:Best Book From Europe & South Asia. Sinha’s narrator is a 19-year-old orphan of Khaufpur, born a few days before the 1984 Bhopal disaster, whose spine has become so twisted that he must walk on all fours. Ever since he can remember, he has gone on all fours. Known to every-one simply as Animal, he rejects sympathy, spouts profanity and obsesses about sex. He lives with a crazy old French nun called Ma Franci, and his dog Jara. Also, he falls in love with a local musician’s daughter, Nisha.

“I used to be human once. So I’m told. I don’t remember it myself, but people who knew me when I was small say I walked on two feet just like a human being…”

The story was recorded in Hindi on a series of tapes by Animal himself and it has been translated to English as well. The author uses Animal’s odd mixture of Hindi, French and Indianised English such as “kampani”(company),”jarnalis”(journalist) and “jamisbonding”(spying, like James Bond.

Books written by Nehru November 5, 2009

Books written by Nehru

• Nehru’s letters to his daughter Indira during successive periods of imprisonment in 1930-1934 were later compiled into a book called Glimpses of World History.
• His 1942-1945 incarceration produced The Discovery of India, a history of India with digressions.
• Subsequently, he wrote An Autobiography (ISBN 014303104X), which was aNew York Times best seller.

Arun Shourie November 4, 2009

Arun Shourie writings have gained him a considerable following around the country, as well as several national and international honours. Among these are the Padma Bhushan, the Magsaysay Award, the Dadabhai Naoroji Award, the Astor Award, the K.S. Hegde Award and the International Editor of the Year Award and The Freedom to Publish Award.

• In his book Worshipping False Gods, Shourie criticized B.R. Ambedkar, the leader of Dalits for alleged complicity with the British and lust for power and wealth.

• In A Secular Agenda (1997, ISBN 81-900199-3-7), Shourie discusses various problems faced by India due to minority appeasement and pseudo-secularism practiced by the Indian politicians.^[7] The book starts with a discourse on the definition of a nation. He cites examples of other nations in Europe to counter the arguments of people who do not consider India as one nation due to its different lanuguages and religions. He argues for a Common Civil Code in the book^[7] and the abolition of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. He also discusses the problem related to infiltration from Bangladesh and the inability of the Indian government to solve it.

• Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998, ISBN 81-900199-8-8) discusses the NCERT controversy in Indian politics and attacks Marxist historiography. Arun Shourie asserts that Marxist historians have controlled and misused important institutions like the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), the National Council of Educational Research Training (NCERT) and a large part of academia and the media. He criticizes well-known historians like Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib. Shourie argues that Marxist historians have white-washed the records of rulers like Mahmud of Ghazni andAurangzeb. Shourie presents examples to further his argument of how many of these text books describe in great detail foreign personalities like Karl Marx or Stalin, while they often barely mention important figures of India or of the Indian states. Shourie writes that this is in contrast to Russian Marxist text books. The standard Soviet work “A History of India” (1973) is according to Shourie much more objective and truthful than the history books written by the Indian Marxists.