Author: Nirad C Chaudhuri
Publisher: Jaico
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 350
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8172240384
Description
Originally published as The Continent of Circe, this book is the result of author’s life-time effort to understand the nature of things. It describes the human situation in India after Independence. The author resorts to the historical method, and surprisingly encounters not staticity, but a continuing dynamic and even explosive process within which history and geography have worked to create dissimilar communities and endless conflicts. In the process of research he works exhaustively with Indian ethnic communities.
The account has the kaleidoscopic quality of a motion picture, liking all historic events from Aryan migration upto Nehru’s death in a coherent, thought shifting perspective, which also reveals that the grip of established tradition on all communities has not relaxed. Yet, the highlight of this book is undoubtedly the author’s imaginative interpretation of the Hindu personality based on original sources. Chaudhuri’s language is forceful and expressive, and his arguments are well defined and lucid. The Heart of India is without doubt, one of this controversial author’s most compelling and authoritative works - a landmark in Indian history.
REVIEW
“Nirad Chaudhuri has been, throughout his long life, an erudite contrary, and mischievious presence.”
- Salman Rushdie
Contents
Introduction
The World’s Knowledge of India Since 1947
CHAPTER ONE
From the Word to the Eye
CHAPTER TWO
The Desposits of Time
CHAPTER THREE
The Children of Circe
CHAPTER FOUR
On Understanding the Hindus
CHAPTER FIVE
Janus and his Two Faces
CHAPTER SIX
The Victims of Circe
CHAPTER SEVEN
Nostalgia for the Forgotten Home
CHAPTER EIGHT
Auld Lang Syne
CHAPTER NINE
The Defiance
CHAPTER TEN
The Anodyne
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Hindu Acedia
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Least of the Minorities
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Half-Caste Minorities – Genetic and Cultural
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Dominant Minority
Appendix I Anglicized Hindu Manners
Appendix II Coercive Power of Hindu Traditions
Epilogue
Circe’s Triumph