Indian Realities in Bits and Pieces by Lal, Sham -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Book Information Copyright Contents Introduction I — ANCIENT INDIA: HISTORY, ART AND THOUGHT

A Fresh Look at India's Past Piecing Together the Past Mythologising History Ancient Indian Art Art as Aid to Contemplation The Ajanta Frescoes The Three Mahabharatas Appropriating an Epic? Pop Goes the Epic Can Kalidasa be Made to Speak English? On the Side of Angels When Every Man Was an Artist The Hindu Mind The Buddha's Smile When the Twain Meet Vain Search for the Ultimate Object

II — THE YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE AND THE COLONIAL LEGACY

Untidy Balance Sheet Remembering Gandhi The Nehruvian Legacy Human, All Too Human Indira Gandhi in Retrospect Is the Emergency Over? From Rajiv Gandhi to Narasimha Rao Five Years of Vajpayee's Stewardship Secularism Under Attack Limited Foreign Policy Options Dread Inheritance Interrogating the Situation The Past and the Present Where the Congress Went Wrong Five Hundred Thousand Utopias No Escape from Ambiguity The System, Not the Stars

III — POLITICAL PLURALISM RUN RIOT: DECAY OF INSTITUTIONS

Diagnosing a Sick Polity A Troubled History Diversity in Unity Packaging India The Small is Not Always Beautiful Cry, the Beloved Country A Radicalism Gone Sour When Haziness is All Unequal Encounters A New Mythology of No Avail Constitutional Reform: Two Faces When Factionalism Makes Sense What Keeps Some States So Poor Dilemmas are Here to Stay No Hard Options Either An American Looks at India's Heart

IV — SOCIAL CHANGE AND WESTERNISATION

Too Many Distress Signals A View from the Inside Wages of Inequality Ideologies and Intellectuals Swimming in Full Stream Have We Skipped Modernity? No Room for Make-Believe A Spur and a Brake No Escape from Alien Ways Drenched with Innocence Unsettling Experience The Local and the Global Decolonising the Mind Bread and Circus The Changing Media Scene The Pathology of Everyday Life Looking Back in Anger Does Language Matter? Slums of the Mind

V — THE LEFT'S DODGES AND SUBTERFUGES

Ideological Illiteracy Much Talk and Little to Say Mistaking Hegemony for Dictatorship Why Naxalites Came a Cropper Look Forward in Anger Bhiku Parekh Chases a Phantom

VI — PAINFUL TRANSITION TO A MARKET ECONOMY

Transition to a Liberal Economy Between Hope and Despair More Questions than Answers An Economist's Dilemmas A Problem to Every Solution A Touch of Moral Passion Limitations of Social Science Research In a Political Vacuum

VII — SOME WRITERS, AN AUTEUR AND AN ARTIST

Reflections on Rabindranath Tagore Nirad Babu Goes to England Naipaul's Third Look at India A Mad, Mad World Rushdie's Second Birth Life in Malgudi The Mark of Zero Like a Drowsy Syrup Gristle in the Soup A Mush of Memories Remembering Prem Chand The Third Moment A Novel of Rural Bihar Word and Memory The Sad Music of Nirmal's Stories Village Life in the Raw How Modern are We? New Voices in Hindi Poetry In a Maze of Words Not by Silence Crossing Language Borders A Split Psyche on His Sleeve A First Viewing of Pather Panchali Ram Kumar's Art: Between Being and Nothingness

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