:::The Desi Flavor:::

Orange Prize for fiction...

The Orange List is out. Rupa Bajwa, Monica Ali and Jhumpa Lahiri are among the 20 authors featured, in case you're wondering how the subcontinent made out. Monica Ali is nominated for her Eastend novel - Brick Lane, Rupa Bajwa for The Sari Shop and Jhumpa Lahiri for The Namesake.

South Asia in the World

South Asia in the World: Problem Solving Perspectives on Security, Sustainable Development, and Good Governance - Book written by Ramesh Thakur and Oddny Wiggen. Here is a short description of the book:

The problems of South Asia, and the numbers of people affected, are so huge that they pose a defining challenge to the United Nations in its role as the global arena for problem solving. South Asian issues requiring UN involvement include economic development, environmental protection, food and water security, democratic governance and human rights, nuclear war and peace, interstate and internal conflicts, and new security issues such as AIDS and international terrorism.

This book presents issues of particular relevance to the region and explores the potential for improvement in domestic and international efforts to alleviate the problems of South Asia.

Caliphs and Sultans

Caliphs and Sultans is a book about how Islam emerged as a religio-political tool in the world. Shashi Sharma, the author also takes a look at the ideological compulsions that made the medieval Muslim sultants use religion in the administration of India. Here is a review of the book:

This book studies the parameters Islamic political practice. It examines the emergence of Islam as a conjoint religio-political world view, wherein the establishment of an Islamic state is considered as important for salvific purposes as the performance of prayer and pilgrimage.

Since Islamic law defines non-Muslims in a peculiar manner, a Muslim state relates to the infidel community under conditions of inequality. Muslim jurists over the ages have consistently reiterated the essentiality of the Umma's political vision and the teleological goals of the Islamic state. Religion must control politics for the good principle to prevail.

The author has endeavoured to study the juridical compulsions under which medieval Muslim sultans laboured to apply these norms in their administrative routine in India. This books seeks to foreground the ideological imperative that encourages Muslim leadership to project its religious identity through political idioms and to see that identiy is often in conflict with the right of other communities.

India's First Science Fiction/Fantasy - The Simoqin Prophecies

Touted as India's first SFF - that's science fiction / fantasy for the unacquainted, this is the debut novel of young Samit Basu, hailed as a promising new voice of Indian fiction.

The book draws from a variety of sources, ranging from Greek and Indian epics to spy novels, fairy tales, even Alice in Wonderland. Described as Monty Python meets the Ramayana, Alice meets The Lord of the Rings, Robin Hood meets The Arabian Nights - this is ride with scantily clad centauresses, flying carpetsm pink trolls, belly dancers and homicidal rabbits.

Here is another short preview of the book. The author has also won an online sci-fi writing contest of 1,000 words.

The Culture of Kashmir

Parwez Dewan - civil servant turned writer and now a "Kashmirologist" has written Kashmir - a book that chronicles, refresingly the culture and not the conflict of Kashmir. The book is all about the Valley - it's people and places, myths and mores, arts and crafts.

The book reveals some interesting facts - Prophet Moses and Jesus have visited the Kashmir Valley, Jews have lived there and also Aishwariya Rai has her roots in Kashmir e.t.c. Review from the Daily Times:

Dewan has carried forward Sir Walter Lawrence’s classic compilation, ‘The Valley of Kashmir’ written in the late 19th century. The book deals with travel, culture, history wildlife and much more.

Delving on the origins of Kashmiri castes, communities and their migration to other parts, Dewan has traced the origins of Aishwarya Rai, who was declared the most attractive woman in the world recently by the online edition of Hello! Magazine. He found that Sarswati Brahmanis (Aishwarya’s caste) of Kerala, Goa and Maharashtra have migrated from Kashmir around the turn of the previous millennium.

“The very Kashmiri complexion and light dove eyes of former Miss World are sharp indicators of her Kashmiri ancestry,” says Dewan. He has, however, reserved the challenge for future researchers to study the family trees of Aishwarya’s community to trace her roots to a particular village in Kashmir.

He has also broken the myth that Kashmiris are a homogeneous community or belong to the same ethnic group. There is a substantial group of Kashmiris having those sharp ‘Jewish’ facial features, especially noses. Indeed, there are some Hebrew words in the Kashmiri language. Some Jewish customs, food habits and beliefs, too, are found in Kashmir.

“There can be no doubt that Jews used to visit ancient pre-Islamic Kashmir at the rate of one or two visitors a year. They were particularly honoured guests. This explains their stamp on some aspects of Kashmiri life. Some of them must have settled in Kashmir and accepted Hinduism (and later Islam). That explains why some Kashmiris have the ‘prominent noses’ that have intrigued European travellers so much,” writes Dewan.

About the presence of Prophet Moses and Jesus in Kashmir, Dewan refers to the manuscripts of the Bhavishya Maha Puran, Mullah Nadiri’s Tareekh-e-Kashmir and an ancient manuscript in the revered Buddhist Hemis caves in Ladakh. “If these documents have not been tampered with, then there can be no doubt but that Lord Jesus had lived for at least a while in Kashmir and Ladakh,” he maintains.

His other works include: Parvez Dewan's Jammu-Kashmir-Ladakh: Travel, Trekking, Art, Culture and Society

: Art and Culture in Ancient Kashmir

: Kashmiri Cultural Heritage Click here for a brief introduction.

Buddhists in India today

Buddhists in India Today - German sociologist's innovative study on Buddhism in contemporary India. Kantowsky's opinions on conversions and the Ambedkar movement along with photos and documents he came across on his journey among Buddhists. Click here for the review of the book from the Journal of Buddhist Ethics.

Prophets Facing Backward...

Jay Gohil

A review of Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India by Robert Nola. Hat-tip: Political Theory.

Here is a profile of the author: Meera Nanda

DR MEERA NANDA is a teacher, researcher and philosopher of science currently working in US. She was trained as a biologist and has worked with the people's science movement and as a science correspondent in India.

She has also written the following books:
: Breaking the Spell of Dharma and other Essays

This book of three celebrated and controversial essays connects religious fundamentalism with fascism and examines the link between Hindutva and reactionary modernism.

: Postmodernism and Religious Fundamentalism

The secularization of science-the hard-won freedom of science from churches, brahmans and mullahs-is under threat. This work sees hope in the ideas of Ambedkar, the dalit movement and neo-Buddhism.

Andrew Sullivan reviews Trouble with Islam

Jay Gohil

Andrew Sullivan's insights are worth reading and recently he reviewed Irshad Manji's book - The Trouble with Islam. Here are some interesting paragraphs:

Her basic argument is that the Koran is a complex, contradictory, human book. Its proscriptions are many and conflicting. Abandoning the role of a thinking person is not something that should be required of any religious individual. Reason and faith, Manji wants to believe, are not in conflict. And yet, as Islam is frequently practiced, reason is deplored as something that should defer in every instance not simply to the Koran but to the political authoritarians who reserve to themselves the sole right to interpret it.

What Manji discovered in the madrasa was a symptom of what she sees as a broader and deeper problem: that Muslims have stopped thinking, that their faith has been hijacked by tyrants and bullies, and that it has become infested with all kinds of hatred -- of Jews, of women, of gays, of the West. And instead of confronting these issues directly and openly, most Western Muslims -- perhaps the only group of Muslims with the actual freedom to question, criticize and debate -- have decided to retreat into victimology and appeasement. Aided and abetted by the moral nihilism of academic postmodernism, these people have surrendered to the new fascists of the Arab world.

....

Her answer to her own question is guilelessly to challenge certain givens. The Koran mandates the veiling of the wives of the Prophet. So why are all women now required to be covered from head to foot? In the distant past, Islam integrated and celebrated human diversity, and honored Christian and Jewish culture. So why has Islam degenerated into a maelstrom of the most virulent anti-Semitism? ''Let there be no compulsion in religion,'' says Chapter 2 of the Koran. So why do many Arab Muslim states persecute or ostracize nonbelievers?

Irshad Manji's - Trouble with Islam

Jay Gohil

Source: Muslim Refusenik

Irshad Manji's thoughts are interesting. But can she really create reform in Islam? She is a Canadian Muslim lesbian who has written a book entitled "The Trouble with Islam," which is her attempt to open an international dialogue regarding much-needed Muslim reform, especially with regard to the treatment of women, Jew bashing and the virtual imprisonment of those living under Islamic rule. From her website:

I remain a hugely ambivalent Muslim because of what's happening "on the ground" -- massive human rights violations, particularly against women and religious minorities -- in the name of Allah.

Liberal Muslims say that what I'm describing isn't "true" Islam. But these Muslims should own up to something: Prophet Muhammad himself said that religion is the way we conduct ourselves toward others. By that standard, how Muslims actually behave is Islam, and to sweep that reality under the rug of theory is to absolve ourselves of any responsibility for our fellow human beings.

...

I'm asking Muslims in the West a very basic question: Will we remain spiritually infantile, caving to cultural pressures to clam up and conform, or will we mature into full-fledged citizens, defending the very pluralism that allows us to be in this part of the world in the first place?

My question for non-Muslims is equally basic: Will you succumb to the intimidation of being called "racists," or will you finally challenge us Muslims to take responsibility for our role in what ails Islam?

For her efforts, Manji has been called "self-hating," "irrelevant," "a Muslim sellout" and a "blasphemer." She is accused of both "denigrating Islam" and dehumanizing Muslims. Manji's predicament is unfortunately all too typical of what courageous, moderate, modern Muslims face when they speak out against the scourge of militant Islam. Her experience echoes the threats against the lives of such writers as Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen.

Her website - Muslim Refusenik provides tonnes of information regarding her opinions and books.

National Critic's Award Nomination for Monica Ali

Jay Gohil

Source: Amazon

Monica Ali's "Brick Lane" (Scribner) will vie for National Book Critics Circle honors this year against fiction by Edward P. Jones ("The Known World," Amistad/HarperCollins), Caryl Phillips ("A Distant Shore," Alfred A. Knopf), Richard Powers ("The Time of Our Singing," Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and Tobias Wolff ("Old School," Knopf).

Via New York Times.

Related articles:

: Where I'm coming from by Monica Ali

: The Guardian interviews Monica Ali

: Review of Brick Lane by Mary Whipple