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Ananya: A Portrait of India
S. N. Sridhar and Nirmal K. Mattoo (eds)
New York: The Association of Indians in America, 1997
ISBN 0-9659771-1-0
This is a massive work-forty essays and over 900 pages of text-and there can be little doubt that such bulk is both justified and intentional. The editors and contributors have taken as their project the summation of all of Indian history and culture in one volume, and the result is a well-organised, attractive, and thematic book-part reference work and part descriptive narrative-which is designed to appeal not to the specialist in South Asia but to the generally interested and curious reader. Like many edited collections, the quality of the essays varies considerably, but this is not my main point of concern. What I find not a little disconcerting is that this book is designed generally as an Indian nationalist text, and that the undeniably dominant and normative image offered of 'India' in this book is an India that is Sanskritic and Hindu.
The Sanskrit word ananya, which...