Reading this book tells Ambedkar was a great scholar.It all describes about how dalits , called lower caste people are treated. It tells about the how india showing two faces towards this community . Inside still these peoples kept separate and treated badly outside it try to create an image as enough and more benefits are given to this society

History, political history in particular is a chronology of rule. Who ruled and who were ruled? History is written by the historians but nevertheless, rulers strongly influence the historical writings. This is especially true in India where a minuscule minority ruled over the majority for centuries. Majority of the people were strictly barred from the opportunity of education till 150 years ago. Injustice has been done to the untouchables while writing the history of the independence of India. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's name is often omitted or finds only a terse mention in the books of history. He alone fought to get human rights for the Indian masses comprising backward classes , scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. He awakened the masses , made them aware of their pathetic conditions , infused the spirit of self respect and social equality. As the chief architect of the Indian constitution , has been singularly responsible for the firm establishment of modern political and social values in India. Dr. Ambedkar's followership is has surpassed that of Gandhi and Nehru. This is evident on his birth and death anniversary. Yet, this is not reflected even today in the historical or contemporary writings. This is a glaring anomaly in the writing of modern Indian history. The book 'Dalits and the Democratic Revolution : Dr. Ambedkar and the Dalit Movement in Colonial India' by Gail Omvedt is exceptional in this respect. This book brings out several veritable socio-political facts hitherto unknown to the intellectuals as well as to the common citizens. This book clearly highlights the fact enunciated by Dr. B.R.Ambedkar that the untouchability was basically a political problem rather than a social stigma. The role of Dalit movement under the leadership of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar as the harbinger of the new social order based on liberty, equality and fraternity in modern has been brought in light like never before . It was a fight against the advocates of the old social order of the caste based inequality as well as the relative reluctance of British to promote social reforms. The author has a holistic understanding of the historical conflict of Bramhnical and non Bramhnical ideologies. This has enabled her to present the entire subject in a proper perspective. This book is a must for the students of Indian sociology and Indian polity. Above average intellectual lay persons will find this book useful in analyzing perplexities of the contemporary politics as the genealogy of the current political problems can be traced in the failure of National political parties in honoring the political aspirations of the Dalits raised by Dr. B.R.Ambedkar.

Wonderful and powerful book. Even if you had never been to Darjeeling, or to India, for that matter, it gives you an unexplained sensation of melancholy, as if the place belonged to your ancestry. It even made me run for the Internet to know more about Darjeeling and the tea business. A real lesson in geography and tea-tasting!

Apart from the obvious mastery of the language in descriptions, the story is an ode to self-growth and sufficiency, both for men and women. As in reality, love is not a bed of roses. Instead, real love is the ability to love oneself first, then the other. This can be seen when Aloka simulates being Parveen; she fell in love with her first, then discovered that she loved Jahar just as well.

It is a book I greatly recommend for all those who enjoy an intricate story without the classical happy ending.

This is a thoroughly captivating and insightful book that takes the reader to the beautiful mountain town of Darjeeling and to an intriguing family that owns a tea plantation. There are issues of love, displacement,and self-renewal all told through a lyrical voice. The story and the characters stay with you. This is Kirchner's best work by far.

Disclaimer: Yasmeen and Mihail Lari are related to my wife. Regardless, I am going to provide as objective a review as I can.

I throughly enjoyed what I have read in this book so far! The maps, the illustrations, the descriptions, make this book come alive in a way that makes it simply a joy to read. Particularly if you have lived in Karachi for any length of time.

I have often seen that the inhabitants of a city - any city - are often the least knowledgeable of the history of their locale. This is not very surprising, I suppose, because there is a tendency to assume that "I already know my home town"! I find this book (and other history books that relate to my country!) opens up new revelations and provides knowledge that I simply did not have about Karachi.

I throughly recommend this book to everybody, particularly if you have any acquaintance with the region or the city. The book covers details that are not found elsewhere.

This is a must read for anyone interested in Karachi and its history. I highly reccomend this book.

Whelan is the sort of scholar rarely found in this age of academic narcissism. Not kowtowing to fashionability, Whelan presents examples Burke's writings on India in a balanced, considered manner, without including the tempting digressions that could make this a western - non-western multicultural ax grind. Every Burke enthusiast will benefit from this latest excursion into Burke's lesser known works.

Whelan has done a marvelous job at interpreting Burke's political philosophy through the window of Burke's writings on India, Empire, and in particular, the Warren Hastings trial.

"Eminent Historians: Their Techniques, Their Line, Their Fraud" is arguably the most important book published in India since 1947. Arun Shourie is the author of 14 other books, several of them brilliant exposé of the Indian Communist party's long-standing anti-national policies, the foreign Christian missionaries' covert activities in India, and the Congress party's corruption and pseudo-secular policies that culminated in the massacre of thousands of innocent Sikhs in Delhi in 1984.

His writings have won him major awards including the International Editor of the Year.
"Eminent Historians," the ironic title of his latest book comes from the self-description a group of Marxist historians, most of them academics, arrogated for themselves while signing a newspaper petition during the Ayodhya controversy. The Marxist party line is to project Hindus as exploitative feudalists and Muslims as liberators!

Arun Shourie's major thesis: During the past fifty years, "this bunch of Marxist historians have been suppressing facts, inventing lies, perverting discourse, and derailing public policy" by seizing control of institutions such as the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), the National Council of Educational Research Training (NCERT), large parts of Indian academia, and nearly all of the English-media newspapers and publishing houses.

Included as principals in this group of Marxist historians are Romila Thapar, Satish Chandra, K.M. Shrimali, K.M.Pannikar, R.S. Sharma, D. N. Jha, Gyanendra Pandey, and Irfan Habib. This group has, Shourie charges, "worked a diabolic inversion: the inclusive religion [Hinduism], the pluralist spiritual search of our people and land, they have projected as intolerant, narrow-minded, obscurantist; and the exclusivist, totalitarian, revelatory religions and ideologies -- Islam, Christianity, Marxism-Leninism-- they have made out to be the epitome of tolerance, open-mindedness, democracy, secularism!" By promoting each other's publications and puffing up their reputations, this group has long been "determining what is politically correct." One measure of the insidious control these "verbal terrorists" have been exercising over the English-medium publishing industry in India is that Arun Shourie, despite his huge readership, had to self-publish his books.

For several decades, these "eminent historians" have striven hard to continually denigrate Hindu cultural history, the oldest surviving civilization in the world, by "blackening the Hindu period and whitewashing the Islamic period." Indeed, Shourie should have challenged them to refute American historian Will Durant's assertion in his 'The Story of Civilization": "The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within." Or that of French historian Alain Danielou's statement, in his Histoire de l' Inde : "From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoilations, destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of 'a holy war' of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilisations, wiped out entire races."

As the book's subtitle promises, Shourie succeeds in unmasking these self-proclaimed eminents of "their technology, their line, their fraud" by focusing on specifics as exemplified below: his own television debates with some of these "eminent historians"; their failures to respond to published challenges by historians and scholars of persuasions other than Marxist; their documented efforts at distorting established historical evidence.

In July 1998, Manoj Raghuvanshi, host of a popular ZEE TV program called Aap ki Adalat, Aap ka Faisla (Your Court, You Judge) invited Arun Shourie and one of the "eminents," K. L. Shrimali. Raghuvanshi posed the question first to Shrimali whether Aurangzeb was a religious bigot. Despite Raghuvanshi's repeating the question, Shrimali gave no clear answer, only asserting that Aurangzeb's court had many Hindu nobles. Shourie countered this by pointing out that there were many Indians among the persons honored by the British with titles - - and both for the same reason. In Shourie's words: "How does this wipe away the destruction of Hindu temples by Aurangzeb? Aurangzeb had entertained no doubt about the fact that his primary impluse was the religious one. And that he faithfully implemented an essential element of his religion, Islam, that is to destroy the places of worship of other religions." As evidence, Shourie read out several passages from Sita Ram Goel's book Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them, The Islamic Evidence. All Shrimali could mumble was that it was a "questionable source." When Shourie pressed the point that the source was the Akhbarat (Newsletter) of the Court of Aurangzeb himself written on the very day the news reached the court, the "eminent" historian merely repeated "questionable source." Shourie comments: "So, when an 'eminent' historian says that the sources were questionable, they must be questionable" - - this is their technology when cornered."

Satish Chandra's Medieval History, a textbook for Class XI students, asserts that "sometimes Sufi saints also played a role although they were generally unconcerned with conversions." Shourie comments: "If this eminent historian were to read the accounts of these Sufis, he would learn how they acted as the advance scouts of the armies of Islam!" In NCERT sponsored books, notes Shourie, "Two sentences from the Koran: 'To you your religion, to me mine,' and 'There is no compulsion in religion' which are flatly over-run by the text itself, to say nothing of the entire history of Islamic rule over 1400 years, those two sentences are flaunted as proof-positive of Islam being not just committed to peace and tolerance, they are proof that it is The Religion of Peace and Tolerance!"

Unfortunately, it will take a long time for undoing the harm done by the pseudo-secular historians to the Indian psyche: "they have used these institutions to sow in the minds of our people [the Hindus] the seeds of self-hatred."

For anyone interested in contemporary India, this is a must-read book.

Arun Shourie is once more at his cutting best in this exposé of the devious ways in which the cabal of "Eminent Historians" manipulate, massage, and murder History with all their undertones of Marxist ideology, masquerading a shabby brand of secularism.

Here you will find the excesses of such "eminences" as Romila Thappar, Satish Chandra, Irfaan Habib, R S Sharma, and an assortment of fellow travellers. A veritable brood who have cornered the writing of History as seen though their own warped, pinko tinted spectacles. And for this "service" to scholarship, the brood has lost no opportunity to monopolise state largess, siphon off grants for various projects without delivering. The few times this pretend-busy brood has deigned to deliver, then the output of any "research" has been so immersed in the ideology prescribed by some foreign, totalitarian, failed Party and State, that it defies the description of scholarship.

No wonder that none of the eminences or their intellectual offspring have had the guts to respond to the issues that Shourie raises here. They deploy the same strategy as they do in their historical "researches" - first ignore it, then decry it as petty, from an amateur, hurl personal insults, falsify facts.

Remember: these "eminences" have made a career out of claiming that Aurangzeb was a just ruler, that the Caste System was the sole reason for India's problems, that Islam brought equality, that the systematic destruction of countless temples was an economic exercise and had absolutely nothing to do with the hatred and contempt that the Islamic invaders had for Indian culture and traditions.

For "eminences" who deny the history as written by the chroniclers themselves of the invasions, of pillage, of destruction, of the rape that they carried out in honour of their iconoclasm, it is easy to falsify even recent history like the events around partition; like the Ramjanambhoomi dispute; like Secularism and minority rights.

Shourie's book is an excellent antidote to the .... from these eminences that still passes off as "academic research". It is shameful that the likes of Thappar still warrant respect in the academic community. But, the good news is that their time is nigh! Shourie and others like him are making sure of it.

This is a truly excellent account of ethnic mobilization in south India. Through the detailed and absorbing examination of a case, the author explores the nuances of ethnic identity and mobilization and the sustained importance (contrary to the dominant view) of populist politics in today's world. This is an important contribution to understanding Indian democracy, which shows the limits of most contemporary accounts. By drawing on strands in political science, sociology and historical anthropology, the book provides an innovative approach to theorizing in the social sciences.

Subramanian's text is the definitive work on Dravidian politics. Tightly woven and finely nuanced, "Ethnicity and Populist Mobilization" is a vital addition to the Indian social science canon. The text shall be of immense value to historians, social scientists, students, and professionals working in the field of Indian politics or seeking a thorough introduction to it.

Everything you need to get started. The kit includes moong dal and masoor dal (Indian legumes), Basmati rice, cheesecloth , and skewers. The seven spices are: Garam Masala, Coriander, Fenu-greek seed, Kalonji, Turmeric, Brown Mustard, and Cayenne.

This was so much fun, I bought it for myself and now I'm getting one for each of my married siblings.

I love the little spice set and the easy step-by-step instructions. My house smell mah-vel-us while I cooked my heart out.

The most meaningful travel is when one arrives at a destination and "makes camp", rather than doing the quick "5 cities in 5 days" route! But many of us can't manage that much time away. Traveling to India is a world away from the life that most Americans lead, and getting there is often beyond our budgets and time constraints. The book,Travels in India, allows the reader to visit India in all her vastness, cultural richness, and amazing diversity of every day life in one community for the small price of the book, and to experience a year there with Ms. Trembour and her family. We are transported to a community life similar to our own in its concerns and cause for celebration, and yet worlds apart. One may also gain an appreciation of the value of taking one's children out of the country for awhile to get another point of view. Read this book if you can't arrange to get to India to experience her for yourself, or read it to be inspired to go! (Or try, if you can, to get your kid to read it for a book report assignment, and give them a taste of another culture!)

As the mother of the author, I can truly say that although I had read this book as its email installments crossed my computer screen, when it arrived in the mail I couldn't put it down. It is full of delightful tales, some scary, many funny.

The adventures of this family in India provide a primer for any family on how to adapt to new surroundings and strange experiences quickly and well. If you are planning a trip to a developing country, this book should be in your luggage.

This is a great Indian cookbook- the recipes are detailed and authentic, there is also a a good introduction about the history and traditions of Indian cooking, and an overview of the cuisines typical of different regions in India, including the influence of the British and other colonial powers on Indian cuisine. Recipes include favourites like butter chicken- highly recommended!, and various indian breads, chutneys, fried snacks, soups, and an assortment of vegetable/lentil, meat and seafood dishes. One thing I especially liked was the glossary of spices and the recipes for different spice mixes like garam masala, chaat masala and more. The recipes were taken from many different parts of India, such as dosai from the south, and Tandoori from the Punjab. Well illustrated, and overall, a great book.

These recipes are simply excellent. There is some effort involved in the preparation of most dishes (lots and lots of dried spices), but the reward is worth it. There are many lovely pictures (oddly some of the dishes photographed cannot be found in the cookbook) and nice preambles. Food for vegetarians (chick peas and eggplant) and meat eaters (creamy chicken curries and spicy Goan pork). Lots of yogurt, coconut milk and fresh green chilis. I have yet to come across a bad dish (one exception, the chapati, although I made it too thick...my fault).

Most of what we in the West read and hear about the Indian subcontinent comes from the British perspective. Humayun Mirza, son of Pakistan's first president and descendant of the royal Nawab Nazims of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, brings a thoroughly researched, enlightened, and deeply honest perspective to his family's story, and by extension the history of India and Pakistan from the 1700s to the present time. Because of his unique insider's perspective, Mirza makes his historical figures come alive.

Although he is talking about his own family--even his own father--Mirza shows a principled unwillingness to tamper with the truth, even when the truth is not flattering to people he clearly admires. The rich human complexity of these powerful personalities, warts and all, is one of the things that make this book so exciting.

If you're interested in the history and politics of the region, this is a must read. If you just like to learn interesting history, it's also a treat. I'm waiting for the update covering the current situation in the region!

From Plassey to Pakistan chronicles the lineage of Humuyan Mirza, the author and only son of the first President of Pakistan. The book provides personal and well-researched historical insight into the ruling class of India, of which the author is a direct descendant.

The author's father, and principal subject of the latter part of the book, is Iskander Mirza, a highly educated and respected citizen of India worked for the British Government of India. Upon the end of British rule in 1947, the country of Pakistan was formed and Iskander Mirza emerged to become a leading public figure ("the strong man") and eventually the first President of Pakistan.

The author offers excellent insight into his father's rise to the presidency and the subsequent challenge to bring order and democracy to the newly formed country, one fraught with political corruption at the governmental and military level combined with a high level of illiteracy within the population. Despite Iskander Mirza's well intentioned efforts, instituting the type of democratic government he envisioned would prove too difficult in this environment. His presidency was usurped by a military coup in 1958. Military control has presided over Pakistan for many of the subsequent years and remains in power today.

The author goes on to revisit his own life as a descendant of India's ruling and princely class as the son of the first president of Pakistan. Like his father Isakander, the author was educated at prestigious schools while growing up, ultimately attending the Harvard School of Business and subsequently working in various capacities for the World Bank. The author currently lives in the United States.

Toward the end of the book, the author offers thoughtful suggestions that address Pakistan's current political and economic situation. Above all, the author believes a very strong leader of Pakistan is crucial to help unite the country and its divisive factions. He truly desires prosperity for Pakistan.

The book is insightful and well written. I highly recommend the book for histroy readers and those interested in current events. Given the recent tumultuous events taking place in and around Pakistan, this book is even more relevant.