An account of Sri Lanka after the 26-year ethnic war glosses over many inconvenient truths

A new book on the armed conflict in Sri Lanka misses the mark

Business Standard

The murder of Avijit Roy, whom The Guardian described as a "prominent American blogger of Bangladeshi origin ...  founder of the Mukto-Mona (Free Mind) blog site - which champions liberal secular writing", last week is yet more evidence of how dialectical voices are under threat from fundamentalist forces all over the world. But the subcontinent is under particular threat. The site of the murder is the historic Teacher-Student Centre of Dhaka University, host to a number of important meetings during the liberation movement of 1971. Besides calling into question the security provisions on campus, the incident also highlights how universities as sanctuaries of dissent and debate are on the retreat in the region.A history of another leading education institution of the subcontinent - Jawaharhal Nehru University (JNU) - is perhaps a timely reminder of the lofty ideals that once governed institutions in neighbouring nations. JNU: The Making of a University by Rakesh Batabyal, a former stude

JNU in minutiae

Describing the rising water of the Thames and London sinking a foot a century, Diane Ackerman comments: 'It needs not so much Knights Templar as Knights Temperature'

Sunny side up, the fury of Gaia

The home page of the website for Make in India - the principle project of the newly elected National Democratic Alliance government to attract foreign investment - displays its logo: the silhouette of a lion, with mechanical wheels within it. An introductory text asserts: "There's never been a better time to make in India." During its election campaign, the Bharatiya Janata Party had promised to open the floodgates for foreign investors. Make in India is an effort to make good the promise, and the initial response from the global community has been positive.The heady euphoria should, however, be tempered with a look at the country's not-so-fortunate history with foreign investment. And nothing could serve as a more sobering reminder than the 30th anniversary of the Bhopal gas leak.On the night of December 2 and early morning of December 3, 1984, the leak of the fatal methyl isocyanate from Union Carbide's factory in Bhopal claimed more than 5,000 lives. According to experts, more than

Lessons from a cold night of death

Turkish ambassador to India Burak Akçapar's book People's Mission to the Ottoman Empire opens: "It was an era where sides had to be taken and lines were drawn in people's minds." He might as well have been talking of our troubled times.Merely a few hours after the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the Jacobin made a point that would find wide circulation in the following days: killing journalists is heinous but the Parisian publication was racist. Hook-nosed caricatures of Arab jihadists have been ubiquitous in the pages Charlie Hebdo, as have been irreverent depictions of Jews and Christians. However, the weekly's depiction of Muslims and the Prophet has earned it the most criticism and violent attacks, including a fire-bombing of its offices in 2006.Mr Akçapar's book addresses some of the central issues of this debate, albeit through the lens of an almost forgotten chapter of India's engagement with pan-Islamism.Oxford Islamic Studies defines pan-Islamism on its website as "i

An Indian tryst with pan-Islamism

For cancer to develop, the p53 gene has to malfunction or its activity has to be suppressed. Till 1989, the gene was supposed to be the cause of the disease

A cold, hard look at the metaphor for death

JNU: The Making of A University by Rakesh Batabyal was launched at Press Club of India, on Saturday.Batabyal, the history of media teacher at the Centre for Media Studies, is the author of books such as Communalism in Bengal: From Famine to Noakhali (1943-47) and The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Speeches. His latest book, published by HarperCollins, traces the history of the central university (where Batabyal was also once a student) from its inception in 1964 to 1989."The reason for writing this book was very specific," said Batabyal at the launch. "I wanted to find out why so many people want to be associated with the university and why an equal number are derisive about it."A visit of delegates from Yale University, who could not stop waxing eloquent about JNU's academic standards, a few years ago prompted Batabyal to study his alma mater's attractions. At the same time, he found himself defending the university from barbs of colleagues at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Sh

Book on history of JNU launched

In the 2010 film Social Network - a drama on the founding of Facebook - Harvard University President Larry Summers tells the Winklevoss twins, who accused Mark Zuckerberg of stealing the idea of the popular start-up from them, that "Harvard undergraduates believe that inventing a job is better than finding a job." Indians seems to have taken this idea to heart in recent times, venturing into the promising pastures of Start-up Land, with its unchallenged capital at Bengaluru.In Start-up City, the authors track 10 success stories from the capital of Karnataka. In the Preface, they claim: "This book is... an ode to this new romantic notion of entrepreneurship, as also to the software industry... It is also a paean to Bangalore..." True to their word, they wax eloquent about the entrepreneurial ventures that have struck gold. But those looking for a parallel history of the city will be disappointed.Contemporary urban histories of India are ubiquitous, with historian Gyan Prakash's Mumbai F

Uttaran Das Gupta