Modi’s Governance Triumph

Desires, Dreams and Powers is a fascinating saga of the life and times of Tathagata Roy. Not many people may have traipsed into so many fields of life as Roy has. He has been a civil engineer, an encyclopaedic, a university teacher, a researcher, a contract lawyer, a politician, an author in two languages, an intrepid traveller and, lately, a history buff.

By writing about his times than his life, Roy covers truly eventful eight decades of a nation in transition, during which British rule transmogrified into the partitions of India and Bengal, the world around him transformed from writing with a quill pen to taming the personal computer and toying with AI, and politics from optimism to Naxalism to hope. His native West Bengal, the crucible of left ideology, finally exorcised the ghost of Marxism by overthrowing the Left Front united in 2011 after 34 years of unbroken communist rule. Through it all, he pranced into high school, segued into engineering college, got his first job with the Indian railways, taught at Jadavpur University, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party and capped it all up by becoming the governor of three north-eastern states of India.

The book is as much about the trajectory of a nation on the move as it is about Roy’s life. The parallel is unmissable.

Little known in his own country, Sri Aurobindo was nevertheless one of the more significant personalities of twenty century-India. After studying humanities in England, he embarked on a political struggle to challenge Britain’s colonial domination over India. In 1906, he founded the newspaper Bande Mataram, laying the groundwork of India’s future independence, notably through Passive Resistance, which was later adopted by Gandhi. But far from Gandhi’s pacifism, Sri Aurobindo was convinced that freedom could only be achieved via action, and even via armed struggle.

Absorbed by India’s century-old wisdom, his commitment to his country was doubled by an unremitting inner spiritual quest.

In 1910, Sri Aurobindo began another life in Pondicherry. In his written works, notably The Life Divine, published in 1920, he propounded an “Integral Yoga” describing the conditions of the “The Great Passage”, meant to lead to the next evolution of mankind.

His work influenced and attracted disciples from around the world to his ashram, founded in 1926 with his companion Mira Alfassa, and later to the Auroville community, a few kilometres from Pondicherry.

Through this biography, Luc Venet reveals the unfolding of Sri Aurobindo’s exceptional force and opens up the path to a new evolution of humanity.

Evocatively titled, Of Newtons and Apples: Insights into 50 Great Minds in Human History does exactly what it promises. It gives us a glimpse into the professional and personal lives of 50 great personalities whose names, in some cases, are a part of everyday conversation, while in others, they are familiar names about whom we know little.

Just the way the falling of an apple led to major discoveries by Newton, this work tries to identify sources of the genius of the personalities across human history. These men and women were either creators or those who redefined the course of history in their field of work. Interestingly, each article focuses on a major achievement and one aspect of their personal lives. Such sharpness makes the articles short, engaging and, in many cases, poetic.

The classification of personalities into Building, Doing and Thinking gives us new eyes to look at them once again and debate within ourselves, the fuzzy boundaries that exist between these three primary human activities.

This book is a significant addition to the growing body of literature on Sri Aurobindo. Dr. Singh delves deep into the works of Sri Aurobindo to present a compelling and fascinating collage of the philosopher’s multifaceted and multidimensional genius: Sri Aurobindo as seer and mystic, as visionary and poet, as writer, translator, linguist and critic, and as India’s first spiritual nationalist. Sri Aurobindo, as this book declares, a true fountainhead of India’s literary renaissance, needs to be discovered and better appreciated not just in India, but globally, and Dr Singh has given an incredible tribute to the saint with this exceptional book.

The Collector’s Mother is a story of grit and perseverance. An ‘unwanted’ woman from an underprivileged background is attacked and, along with her husband, dragged on the village road and humiliated, and the family’s land grabbed by a local land mafia. In the godforsaken village deep into the hinterland, such excesses are not uncommon, but her steely resolve makes her stand out. How she weathers through such soul-sapping encounters to beat all odds and inspires his son to become a collector is at the heart of this extraordinary story set against the backdrop of abject caste oppression, absence of rule of law, persistent traditional power structure, pitiable education system, food insecurity, drought, famine, lack of health care and communication, hatred and domination by fellow villagers.