Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy by Christophe Jaffrelot, Princeton University Press 2021; First Indian Edition by Context, Westland Publications; pp 639, `899.
Dhirubhai Sheth’s intellectual quest was to reinvent social and political theory based on innovations coming from India. The test for a theory of Indian politics was a sustained dialogue between academics and activists—evidenced in his co-founding of Lokayan and Lokniti. Democracy was at the centre of all he thought and wrote about. All pretenders to it were his enemies.
Although the death toll of the 1918–19 Spanish flu in India was immense, it received little critical attention at the time by either the British authorities or Indian nationalists, or later by historians of Indian politics. Strangely, this was also the case with Mohandas Gandhi who had a penchant for making health-related statements and working as a carer of the sick. His reaction to the illness and death around him has been characterised as one of disinterest. His letters and utterances at this time give some clues as to why he may have been numb to what was transpiring around him.
Ideology and Identity: The Changing Party Systems of India by Pradeep K Chhibber and Rahul Verma, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018; pp xii + 320, ₹ 895.
