NIXON, INDIRA AND INDIA: Politics and Beyond
book-reviews, books, international-affairs, politics, uncategorized
At a time when India is seen, rightly or wrongly, as intensely engaged in an effort to get closer and closer to United States, it is useful read this book by the well- known journalist and author Kalyani Shankar. The principal theme is how Indira Gandhi was crafty enough to outwit Richard Nixon ,himself a superb practitioner of the wicked art of real politik, in the context of the 1971 war between India and Pakistan bringing into being Bangladesh. Those of us who are old enough do have an idea of how Indira Gandhi did it. But Shankar by accessing the declassified US material and using her contacts with some of the major actors, including Henry Kissinger, has given us a reasonably comprehensive account of what happened and why it happened the way it happened.
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book-reviews, books, international-affairs, politics, uncategorized
A clash of prejudices
As I finished reading the book, I thought of two other books — Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations. All three authors look for the big picture. Unlike the other two, however, the book under review is free from any trace of civilisational ego-centricism. Both Fukuyama and Huntington assume without providing much corroborating evidence the essential, inherent superiority of the western civilisation over others. Ambassador Talmiz Ahmed, currently posted to Saudi Arabia, is refreshingly free from such an ego-centric predicament, as historian Toynbee put it. Why is it that Ahmed is free and the other two are not? The answer is fairly simple. In addition to being an industrious scholar, the author has spent most of his 35-year career in West Asia. He has had the advantage of talking to a wide spectrum of people there, observing their behaviour and the interaction between the West and Islam.
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Book Review: CHILDREN OF ABRAHAM AT WAR
Children of Abraham at War – The Clash of Messianic Militarisms by Talmiz Ahmad Aakar Books, Delhi, 2010 475 pages; Rs 1,250
November 10th, 2010 | category:book-reviews, books, international-affairs, politics, uncategorized |
book-reviews, books, international-affairs, politics, uncategorized
Apologia for a war
Given that 92,000 copies were sold in the first four days, Tony Blair has felled a large number of trees to argue a case that is seriously flawed.
By sheer coincidence, as soon as the reviewer finished the book, the new Labour Party leader Ed Miliband came out with a categorical statement that the Iraq war was “wrong, wrong, wrong”. I had always thought that Tony Blair was really Tory Blair. I felt vindicated after reading the book written in the style of Christian apologetics to defend a position, not primarily to narrate what happened, how and why.
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Book Review: A JOURNEY
A Journey by Tony Blair Hutchison, London, 2010 Pages 718, Rs. 999
November 10th, 2010 | category:book-reviews, books, international-affairs, politics, uncategorized |
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