Many days ago, Associated News of India interviewed me about the contribution of Sikh authors to Indian culture. I spoke about Bhai Kahan Singh Nabha, Bhai Vir Singh, Khushwant Singh, Patwant Singh and also a new author, Ravinder Pal Singh. I had no idea about when the interview would be telecast.

Some days ago, I received a mail from Ravinder Pal Singh and he told me that the interview had been broadcast and was also available on the Net. He also corrected me –he was born in Kolkata and brought up in Orissa (and not Bihar). He also understands Bihari. I had reviewed Ravinder’s book I too had a Love Story, which has since become a bestseller.

You may like to read my earlier article on Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha or my tribute to Patwant Singh. I had also reviewed Rahul Singh’s book on his father, Khushwant Singh

by Roopinder Singh

SO much more intimate than a laptop, and so much more capable than a smart phone – Steve Jobs’ description of the latest offering by Apple defines it quite well. Now that the hype over the much-anticipated iPad has decreased, we can have a look at the device and what it will mean to computer users.

The physical description of iPad is simple enough: It measures 9.56 inches, is 7.47 inches wide and just half an inch in height. At 680 grams for the Wi-Fi model (seven grams more for 3G), it is light and sleek. A 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip makes it powerful, and the 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen multi-touch display provides a rich visual experience. I have not used one, but the description as a “bigger iPhone” is enough. The iPhone has really changed the way smart phones are perceived, used and sold. The elegance of Apple’s operating system is beguiling – there is nothing like it in any other computing universe.

It is interesting that the iPad’s screen is slightly larger than that of the Macintosh, the first Apple that I owned in 1985. It was the first commercially successful personal computer (PC) to use images, rather than text, to interface with the user, and was way more elegant and user-friendly than comparable PCs, like the IBM PC AT that operated on the Microsoft’s archaic MS-DOS 3.0.

It was simply a walkover. The Mac was fun, and the MS-DOS didn’t even know the word! The screen was black and white, you could not customise anything, but everything you needed, the hardware as well as the software was available out of the box.

Computers and the mouse had existed before Apple took Xerox’s GUI, tweaked it and made computing far more approachable to the normal user. It was not innovation, but implementation that set Apple apart. In fact, Apple normally uses various things that are already available, and puts them together in such a way that not only do they work well together – they also provide an experience that makes users pay a premium.

iPad is getting rave reviews already from the few who have used it. It is a tablet computer, which simply means that it is a slate shaped computer device that has a touch screen and is mobile. The multi-touch screen, which we have seen on iPhone and iPod Touch too, responds not only to touch, but also to gestures. It has access to literally over lakh applications, some free.

All this sets it apart from an ordinary tablet PC or e-reader. The iPad will let you use content – see it, hear it and read it – and also input content through the virtual keyboard on the screen will allow you to do so, say in case you want to answer your e-mails or write something. For many, the announcement that iPad has a keyboard dock is significant, as virtual typing has its limitations, especially when one is typing long documents.

Your digital photos will be displayed and organised in various ways, and you can see movies, or play games. The organiser has a great look and feel, and there are also good word processing, spreadsheet and presentation programmes.

The New York Times was the first paper to come on board the iPad. With a motion sensor, you get the landscape mode, and thus you can read your paper, magazines, etc., on the go. They will come with advertisements, a point which scores over Kindle and enhances the Apple appeal for publishers. Macmillan, HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon & Schuster and Hachette have already come aboard the iPad — you can buy their latest books online.

As of now, Apple store sells books at a higher price than Amazon’s Kindle. There is much speculation that iPad’s media-rich platform will soon have books that just won’t just be words…they will have sound and video, too. Apple has also inked a deal with ScrollMotion, a content technology company based in New York, to handle textbooks for iPad. Will this be the end of the heavy school bag? Not yet, and certainly not here, since iBooks is initially only for the US, but a beginning is being made.

Incidentally, both Kindle and its competitor Nook, brought out by the Barnes and Noble bookstore, use a technology called iInk, which is better for reading long texts, since the screen is not back-lit and thus does not cause eyes to strain.

Browsing on the Web, indeed downloading newspapers and magazines will be significantly impaired by the fact that like there is no support for Adobe Flash, which has become a standard in displaying interactive graphics, animations, etc., while browsing.

The lack of multitasking support is as inexplicable as that of a camera, or for that matter a USB port to enable easier exchange of data. Some of these are things that will probably get sorted out soon, some may never be, and if so, will impact the user experience. Gaming on iPad will probably find many users, but the real aficionados will want (even) more power, and many games run on Flash and Java, both of which are not supported by iPad.

The iTunes store has sold millions of songs and redefined the way people access music online. Over a lakh of applications have been developed for the iPhone, and can be used on the iPad, many are being optimised for this task right now..

iPhone may not be an e-book reader to beat Kindle or Nook, both of which are easier on the eyes in the long run and have a longer battery life; it may not be like the regular Net-books, which have real keyboards and can fold into the pocket; it may not even be a communication device that can replace your smart phone. The iPad is a product of its own kind and how it evolves will depend on what use its owners put it for. Apple has a history of making devices that sell well and shape the future, because they already have a foot in it.

This article was published on the OpEd page of The Tribune on February 6, 2010

by Roopinder Singh

Billy Arjan Singh with Tara. Photo courtesy: Shaminder Boparai

He was born as a royalty, spent his childhood in palaces and died in the wilderness that he so loved. Billy Arjan Singh, passed away on January 1 night, after a brief illness. He was 93. He lived at Tiger Haven, his home near the Dudhwa National Park, the sanctuary that he put on the wildlife map of the nation, about 250 km from Lucknow.
Great-grandson of Maharaja Randhir Singh, the ruler of Kapurthala, Billy was born on August 15, 1917, at Gorakhpur, in what was then the United Provinces. His father, Raja Sir Harnam Singh, was a Member of the Panjab Legislative Council, a Member of the Kapurthala Council of State and an Honorary Fellow of Panjab University.
Billy studied in Lucknow and was commissioned in the British Indian Army in 1940. Later, in 1945, he settled down at Palia. The farm brought him in touch with nature, and also the way in which wild animals were being threatened by human encroachment of their natural habitat, and the commercial exploitation of the forests which were rich in sal and teak trees. Hunting expeditions, mounted during the Raj, depleted the population of natural predators like tigers and leopards.
“Billy started as a hunter, and turned conservationist with a tremendous passion. In this he found support from even the then Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi, who herself had a great interest in wildlife,” says Shaminder Boparai, who has just finished an illustrated book on Billy.
Palia was his home; it was where he spent his life with his beloved Tara, Harriet, Juliette and Eelie, all of whom are buried near his final resting place.
The Padma Bhushan was conferred upon Billy Arjan Singh for his conservation efforts in 2006. He had received the Padma Shri in 1975. In 2004, he was a joint winner of the J. Paul Getty Award for Conservation Leadership which is administered by World Wildlife Fund, and he was the first Asian to do so.
Billy, who never married, wrote prolifically about his adopted children—the predators like leopards and tigers who were his family. His books include The Legend of the Maneaters, Prince of Cats and A Tiger’s Story.
The Tiger of Dudwa, Billy Arjan Singh had a larger-than-life image which was the subject of many articles, books and also of television series. He lived a life that he wanted to, on his own terms, in his beloved forests, in the company of animals that he loved. His dogged determination, achievements and courage made him a legendary figure in his lifetime.

This tribute was published in The Tribune on January 3, 2010.

UNOBTRUSIVELY the little black box added music to our life. When my wife came back from school one day, it was there; waiting for her, and the little startled smile that came on her face was reward enough.

Worldspace

Our mornings started with Asa Di Var, and kirtan. Later in the day, we would be humming to some old songs on Farishta, or the more contemporary film music on Jhankar.

Jansher enjoyed the latest English songs on Spin and Top 40, which we also liked, after a fashion, but then we had our own little refuge in Amore, that played mushy ol’e songs and spun its own magic.

The selection was great. Sound quality was crystal clear, except for the occasional day when clouds eclipsed a service that lit up our life at home.

It was the gadget aficionado A.J. Philip who had introduced me to Worldspace and its wonders. Typically, the receiver he had was not available in India, and thus we are relegated to using ones especially made by BPL for the service. Then Sunil got his Worldspace and started singing its praises… and then Shastri…

The thrifty logic in me, however, just could not warm up to the idea of paying for something that was free on the airwaves, and has been so ever since the inception of the radio. Let’s not get into details like licence fees, which have thankfully died a natural and least lamented death.

My father always listened to the radio, and normally by the time I woke up he had twisted the knobs of his trusty old Philips receiver and was au-fair with the latest events. Then it was time for music, which would continue all day, and sometimes into the night, providing a background to his reading and writing. So it was not that there was no music in the house, and to top it all, it was free and FM too was fairly good, becoming better by the day, or so it seemed.

All this was fine, till I realised that Jaspreet was pining for Worldspace, and that was reason enough to change my stance on free airwaves. I joined the gang, and realised what I had been missing all these years. Now it was an integral part of our lives. Yet there were clouds, and we are not talking of atmospheric disturbances.

Now that it has been announced that the New York-based Worldspace Corp has filed for bankruptcy protection, the last day of this year will be the end of service of this remarkable satellite radio that enriched our lives. We will still have music in our lives, Thank God for the free airwaves and the wonderful variety of music that comes through them.

This middle was published in The Tribune on December 29, 2009

I had written about how TV and FM radio in India are turning base in an earlier article.

Pankaj Singh of the Browser, Mrs Baljit Gandhi, Brig Gobindar Singh and Mrs Inderjit Kaur at the book launch of Darpan

“Darpan”, means a mirror. The book is written in Punjabi, is a first person account of the life experience of the author. “The soldiers fought for the freedom of others in World War I. When they came back, they saw the need for freedom in their country, and as such many who had been loyal warriors of the British Raj and became prisoners in British jails,” said Mrs Inderjit Kaur, former Vice-Chancellor of Punjabi University Patiala and former Chairperson, Staff Selection Commission, New Delhi, who released the book at Lounge, Browser’s-8, Chandigarh, on Saturday, December 19,2008.

Brig Gobindar Singh and Mrs Inderjit Kaur and Mr Pankaj Singh of the Browser at the book launch of Darpan

As she punctuated her talk by quoting extensively from the book, she brought alive the book and its author for the audience. An unkindly reference to his uncle, the well-known freedom fighter, Baba Kharak Singh, by his senior prompted Risaldar Sahib to leave the British Army and in time, join the movement to free Gurdwaras from the control of the hereditary mahants, and also to free India from the British Rule. In over three hundred pages, the author narrates his experiences on the French and Mesopotamian fronts. He especially mentions Basra in Iraq and Kurdish areas.

Brig Gobindar Singh looks as Mrs Inderjit Kaur addresses the audience

The author’s narrative of active participation in the freedom struggle during the Akali movement of the early 1920s is noteworthy. Among the distinguished guest present today were Brig Gobindar Singh, nephew of and Mrs Baljit Gandhi, grand-daughter of the author. Mrs Devi Gobinder Singh read from the manuscript.

The chapter on Baba Kharak Singh, who had the distinction of having been the President of the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabhandak Committee, Amritsar, as also the president of the Pradesh Congress, Punjab, is especially noteworthy for the human face it gives a legendary historical figure..

“The book is also an honest account of the out sensitivities in human relations and tragedies that he faced as in individual faced in his life, said Mrs Inderjit Kaur, who spoke in Punjabi, “it is an absorbing read.”

Mr Pankaj Singh, the owner of The Browser, said that the book had come alive after Mrs Inderjit Kaur’s talk, which aroused interest for reading the volume among all who were present at the book release function.

Punjabi Tribune. Please click on the image for a bigger picture

The event was well covered in the local media, including, the Lifestyle section of The Tribune, the HT Live section of Hindustan Times and the Punjabi Tribune.

Please click here to see the Doordarshan documentary on Mrs Inderjit Kaur.

Please click here to read about another book release by Mrs Inderjit Kaur.

Please click here to read my article about Baba Kharak Singh

SHE has worked hard to make history interesting-when she found that her lectures reached only a few who attended her classes at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. She reached out to a wider audience by writing a book, and another, and more, including one specifically to make history interesting to children, Mysteries of the Past: Archaeological Sites in India (National Book Trust, 2002). Upinder Singh, the co-winner of the Infosys Prize in Social Sciences: History, is indeed an outstanding historian of ancient and early medieval India. She was selected by a jury headed by the Nobel Laureate Prof. Amartya Sen.

The prize has been launched by the software giant to honour “outstanding researchers who will make a difference to India’s future”, and the annual award for each category is Rs 50 lakh, which in this case will be shared between her and her co-laureate, Prof. Abhijit Banerjee, Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA, who won it for the category of Social Sciences: Economics.

Upinder Singh’s first book, Kings, Brahmanas, and Temples in Orissa: An Epigraphic Study (AD 300-1147) published by Munshiram Manoharlal, 1994, was based on her doctoral thesis which she had earned at McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

A volume, Ancient Delhi (Oxford University Press) followed in 1999. Her recent books include The Discovery of Ancient India: Early Archaeologists and the Beginnings of Archaeology (Permanent Black, 2004); Delhi: Ancient History, edited by her, (Social Science Press, 2006), A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: from the Stone Age to the 12th century (Pearson Longman, 2008).

As the citation of the Infosys Prize says: “Professor Upinder Singh is being recognised for her rich contributions as an outstanding historian of ancient and early medieval India. Depth and breadth of her scholarly research are matched by a rare ability to communicate her findings to a broad audience of students and intellectually curious non-specialists.”

A student of History Honours at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, Upinder Singh did two postgraduate degrees, an M.A. in History and an M.Phil. in History, both from the University of Delhi. She completed her Ph.D at McGill University and came back to teach at St Stephen’s College, before joining Delhi University.

She is a recipient of the prestigious Daniel Ingalls Fellowship at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University (2005). In 1999 she was awarded the Ancient India and Iran Trust/Wallace India Visiting Fellowship to pursue research in Cambridge and London. During this period, she was also a Visiting Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. In 1985 she was awarded the Netherlands Government Reciprocal Fellowship to pursue research at the Instituut Kern, Leiden. She is the National Co-ordinator for History at the Institute of Life Long Learning at the University of Delhi, which aims at creating a large corpus of high quality and exciting e-learning material for undergraduate students all over the country.

Her many students testify that she has “inspired and trained a younger generation of historians to adopt innovative methods in the study of early Indian history. A wonderfully creative historian, Singh is a key figure in rejuvenating the study of early history and archaeology in India.”

This article was published in The Tribune on December 8, 2009. Please click here to read an earlier account of the release of her book A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India, which Jaspreet and I attended, and here to read a 2004 interview with her following the release of her book, The Discovery of Ancient India: Early Archaeologists and the Beginnings of Archaeology.

There will be a significant presence from by class—Gurpreet Bhattal, Rajbirinder Chahal, Tina and Sunil Jain, Birinder Gill, all live in Chandigarh and are keen golfers. No wonder, there will be an inter-house golf competition on Saturday morning at the Chandigarh Golf Club, where Birinder is the President. I can’t swing a club to save my life, and will happily join the gang in the evening.

Nostalgically, we remember those no longer with us—Satbir Virk, Narendra Singh and Winendra Kaleka, all of whom left us years ago. They were good people, but we were not destined to spend more time with their memories rather than them.

The other day, when our class-fellow, Ramjit Kaur visited us from the US, Gupi Bhattal dug up this old photograph that he had carefully preserved and showed it around. I have posted it online so that we can share it even more widely. Please click on it for a bigger picture.

I have also uploaded a Hi-Res picture which is a 5MB file. You can see each face if you enlarge it, you can also download it on to your computers!

THEY were a bunch of restive boys, whose visit to Chandigarh had begun with a pilgrimage to the Govt Museum and Art Gallery in Sector 10. They were tired after travelling back from the Queen of the Hills. A few had been sick, since they were not used to hill roads, but they perked up when their Principal told them the three-foot sculpture they were looking at was Buddha’s foot—“the other foot is in Lahore”.

Fakir Syed Aijazuddin, OBE, is uniquely qualified to talk about the two museums, and the treasures that they hold. He is chairman, Executive Committee of the Lahore Museum, and has been visiting Chandigarh since the mid-1950 when the museum was set up under the leadership of Dr M S Randhawa. Aijazuddin and his wife Shahnaz have fond memories of Dr Randhawa’s hospitality.

Aijazuddin wears many a cap — chartered accountant, with experience in automotive, fertiliser, oil and gas, insurance and investment banking sectors. He is also an author with many books to his credit, and now head of his alma mater, Aitchison College, Lahore, where many of the scions of the most-noted families of the region studied. He had come to India, leading a party of young students who had to join in the celebrations of another fine old institution, Bishop Cotton School, Shimla, as it celebrated its sesquicentennial this year.

My alma mater, Yadavindra Public School, Patiala, however, traces its lineage back to Aitcheson College because after Partition, the Maharaja of Patiala founded YPS around a nucleus of Aitchisonians — teachers and students — who had been displaced from Lahore. As a Yadavindrian, my friend Gurpreet Bhattal had asked me to join a delegation that met these Aitchisonians in Chandigarh, something I had gladly done.

“One-third of the Lahore museum came to Chandigarh,” Aijazuddin told his students, as he was escorted by the director, NPS Randhawa, who took them around, showing miniatures and sculptures of a heritage that preceded the international border. As Aijazuddin took diverse strands and wove them into a tapestry of artistic history of the region, he reminded one of Chandigarh’s own Prof B N Goswamy, interacting with whom is an education. No wonder the two families have strong ties.

“If we expect them to respect our culture, we must do the same,” he gently chided his boys, as they broke into giggles over some of the pictures, even as he explained the relationship between various gods and goddesses to them. Aijazuddin has studied pahari paintings as an art historian and I was reminded of the first time that I met Aijazuddin, at a seminar on “The Arts of Punjab” held at Punjabi University, Patiala, in 2006, where he gently supplied a detail that enhanced my caption during my presentation on the Murals of GuruHarsahai.  Aijazuddin  had earlier taken the audience on an impassioned trip of Lahore down the ages through painting and sketches.

Aijazuddin laments that young Indians and Pakistanis are not aware of each other’s cultural heritage these days. As the visiting children were told to go to Sector 17 for shopping and recreation for a few hours, their Principal said he wanted more exchanges between people who have not visited each other’s countries, not just those who have the nostalgia for the land that was once there.

Gurpreet Bhattal and Fakir Syed Aijazuddin, OBE

One reads of a Lahore in the grip of violence practically every day. The students of the elite institution and their principal represent the other side of our old cultural capital. Many of us like my friend Gurpreet and I, who live in Corbusier’s modern city, have never visited Pakistan, but we have a foot in Lahore and quite like the Buddha statue, our ties transcend the physical divide.

A shorter version of this article was published in The Tribune on December 3, 2009

LIFE, the iconic American magazine, gained a new life after over 1,860 issues, covering the years 1936 to 1972, were digitised and put online. Computers and the Internet together have created an atmosphere where we expect knowledge and entertainment at our fingertips, not by turning pages, but by tapping at the keyboard. Increasingly, we see that this trend is impacting something that we have taken for granted for centuries – books, the traditional repositories of wisdom, and more.

Books … we love the content, the feel of the paper they are printed on, what they convey to us and how they enrich us. Yet, books in classical form have limitations imposed by the very factors that make them so alluring – they can get damaged, cost money to print and distribute and have to be physically taken from one person to another, etc.

A page grab of the Google Books home page

E-books, or electronic books, promise to transform the content into bits and bytes that can be freely transmitted to all the corners of the connected earth, and beyond, for that matter. You can read what you want, when you want to, and where, provided you have an e-book reader, computer or even a mobile phone handy. A universal e-book library seems within reach.

The Internet giant Google has been in news recently because it is engaged in litigation defending its right to digitise books, following an agreement it penned in 2004 with a number of top university libraries to scan their collections. Over one crore books have been scanned by Google Books and this has made it the owner of the largest collection of titles in an electronic format.

This very ownership has raised the hackles of communities that are defending the rights of authors and copyright holders, as a result of which Google has given full access only to those books whose copyright has expired, or those whose copyright it has bought.

Many books are out of print, but have valid copyrights, which are sometimes difficult to establish. Such books are called “orphans”. Google has made an agreement through which Book Search users can read, download and print out-of-copyright books, freely.

Those books that aren’t actively being published or sold, but are within the copyright period, would, under the latest agreement, be digitised and become available online for preview and purchase.

The income would be shared between various parties. Right now, Google has almost come out of a long and complicated legal battle. Its doggedness is about to pay it rich dividends, since no one can compare with Google Books in the sheer number of titles that they have online, whether in limited view or otherwise.

However, Google is not the first mover in this field, nor is it the only player. Long before Google came up with the idea, other digitisation endeavours were underway, including the Library of Congress’s American Memory project, Project Gutenberg, the Million Book Project and the Universal Library.

Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitise and archive cultural works and to “encourage the creation and distribution of e-books.” It was started by Michael S. Hart in 1971 and is considered the oldest digital library. Effort is made to provide these texts in standard, long-lasting, open formats that can be used on almost any device – computer, Kindle, Sony Reader, or iPhone. Although pioneering, the project has just over 30,000 free e-books to read.

Microsoft has been an also-ran in this endeavour. It started Live Search Books, a project similar to Google Books, in late 2006, but abandoned it in May 2008. All was not lost, since the scanned books are now available on Internet Archive, a non-profit organisation.

The Europeans digitised over 30 lakh objects, including video, photos, paintings, audio, maps, manuscripts, printed books, and newspapers from the past 2,000 years of European history from over 1,000 archives in the European Union. The French National Library’s Gallica links to about eight lakh digitised books, newspapers, manuscripts, maps and drawings, etc.

Lakhs of books to read, and how many readers? Well, lakhs, even crores. Just a day before this article was written, Project Guttenberg showed that 1,01,122 books were downloaded. And the most popular authors? No surprise there: In the last month, the top five downloads were Charles Dickens (48,591), Mark Twain (40,703), Jane Austen (30,929), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (29,907) and William Shakespeare (28,163). Google, after digitising the Life magazine, has added many others to it its repertoire, and it is a pleasure to browse through them.

Amazon’s Kindle2 has triggered new interest in e-books and it has competitors like Sony nipping at its heels. What exactly is Kindle? Well, this e-book reader is lighter than an average paperback, while being as thin as a magazine. A wireless network connects it in over 100 countries. It can store over a thousand books and the new text-to-speech features reads out to you. As of now, 2,30,000 books and many newspapers and magazines are available. Incidentally, Kindle is also a software program that allows you to download book on to your computers or mobile phones.

Sony has its own readers which compete with Kindle. Sony has a good library also. Its readers have some special features that make them attractive. Other competitors include the iLiad, the Cybook Gen3, the Barnes & Noble nook and the Readius device from Polymer Vision.

Many people use personal digital assistants like Palm TX for downloading and reading e-books, but the main distinction that e-books have is the e-ink screen, a kind of electronic paper based on research started at the MIT Media Lab. The ultra-low power consumption screen is black and white and you can read without glare, even in bright sunlight. The image is stable, unlike computer or phone screens, it does not need to be refreshed constantly. It reflects ambient light rather than emitting its own light. Thus, it is much superior to other displays.

As we see a profusion of e-books and readers, the manufacturers will have to move towards universalisation of standards in technology and in ensuring that copyright violations do not take place. The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown’s latest book, can be downloaded free and publishers are up in arms against the distribution of pirated books through the Net.

This, however, is an old battle, albeit in a new form. Pirated editions of the book are available in Mumbai, Delhi and Chandigarh off the roadside stalls, in the conventional form. Technology is a tool, which can be used positively, or negatively.

As we move towards making books more accessible through digitisation, the idea of a universal library does not seem so utopian. The sheer reach of the electronic medium is staggering, and the written word continues to carry weight, whether it is printed on paper or read on screen.

This article was printed in The Tribune on November 27, 2009

Indian Persuasions: 50 years of Seminar: Selected Writings

Ed. Rudrangshu Mukherjee.

Roli Books. Pages 544. Rs 695.

Reviewed by Roopinder Singh

TO judge a book by its cover would be a transgression for whom only the written world matters. Yet, this cover comprises letters that when read together become the names of some of the finest minds in India, collectively representing a formidable intellectual legacy. Their coming together on the same page, so to say, shows the vision of the people who brought them together.

Indian Persuasions: 50 years of Seminar: Selected Writings

 Seminar is a magazine only in a strictly technical sense. It is far removed from the glossies that populate newsstands and purvey what purports to be opinion and information. Seminar, ever since its inception, has been a periodical that devoted itself only to one issue every month and encouraged experts to write on different aspects and express their views freely and frankly.

Raj and Romesh Thappar, the founders, brought out the first issue in September 1959, and kept it going till they both died in 1987. Romesh Thapar dallied with the Left in the 1940’s and 1950’s, and after spending some time in Bombay, where he was involved in films and art, he settled down in Delhi. His wife was his partner in every sense, and together with some friends, every month they brought out a new issue that provided fresh food for thought.

After their death, their daughter Malvika and her husband Tejbir Singh have kept the flame alive by continuing the legacy. Seminar provided a platform for new ideas, and it attracted the best—Nirad Chaudhuri, K.N. Raj, Amartya Sen, Nirmal Kumar Bose, and Beteille, have all contributed to it.

Rudrangshu Mukherjee, the historian who is editor with the Telegraph, has put together a collection of 60 articles divided into five sections:

1. Maximizing the Possibilities: Personalities, Parties and Politics
2.  Does the Centre Hold? Trends in Indian Politics
3.  Growing Out of Planning: Problems of Economic Development
4. Education the Nation: History
5. Other Themes; and Culture, Art, Identity.

India’s finest intellectuals find the space here to discuss various problems and issues. As we read them, we see how these articles are still as pertinent as they were the day they were written.

Perusing the volume, we find ourselves nodding our heads as the late Ravi Dayal describes Delhi as “a collection of villages, each with its own ways and mannerism, and altogether more provincial than stylish, integrated city of not so long ago”.

Krishna Kumar rightly focuses on the anti-rural bias in the Indian education system and points out that the rural school’s timetable is totally out of tune with the socio-economic routine of village life throughout the country. Robin Jeffery gives us a perceptive insight into Indian language newspapers. In India and History, Romesh Thappar gives an account of Indira Gandhi and her 19 years of rule as only someone who knew her well could have.

Reading the book, the reviewer often found himself looking at the end of each article to find out which issue it had originally been printed in. How Seminar brought out such insightful issues on relevant topics was something that one often wondered about as a student in Delhi when one was introduced to the magazine, became a reader and a collector. At first one only bought of immediate interest, then one started picking up those which could be of interest later, and soon all. For those who missed out issues, or are new converts, the magazine has an online presence and is now available in a digital format, as CDs.

One does not read such compendiums cover-to-cover in a linear fashion. One started at the beginning, which set the tone of the tome, but also dipped, skipped and jumped backwards and forward. The distinctive cover is typographical, echoing the technique used for the magazine since its inception—this book can thus be judged by its cover, since it reflects the content, while establishing a connection with the original magazine. The editor and the publishers deserve to be congratulated on putting together such a fine and relevant collection of essays. Indeed, this is a rich fare, to be savoured, mulled over, ruminated upon and revisited, much as people who have issues of Seminar tucked away in their shelves have been doing for over 50 years.

This review was published in The Tribune on Sunday, November 22, 2009.