The concluding volume of the Partition Quartet Screenplays of Ritwik Ghatak, Subarnarekha is a devastating critique of the fallout of the partition. Set in post-partition Bengal, it chronicles the journey of refugee families as they attempt to settle down in a new land after surviving the worst bloodbath witnessed in the history of the subcontinent and the mass migration that followed. Ghatak’s cinematic narrative, in the ‘critical melodramatic’ form, acquires tremendous resonance through the use of music, myth, archetypes and allegory to articulate a critique of modern civilization’s destructive potential.

The book explores the events leading to the current genocide in Gaza and far-right Jewish settler onslaught in the occupied West Bank. Beginning with the historical background to the establishment of Israel as a settler colonial state, it examines key historical events post-1948, including the 1967 war, the Oslo Accords, the rise of Hamas, and internal Palestinian divisions in the 1990s. The book also critiques the international community’s failure to hold Israel accountable for war crimes and highlights the role of U.S. administrations in obstructing a two-state solution.

This book of three essays by Sitaram Yechury, introduced by Prabhat Patnaik is the first in the series titled ‘Contemporary Themes’. The basic theme running through the essays included here is: reason versus unreason. The fomenting of hatred by Hindutva forces in India against religious minorities is advanced on the basis of a perception of history based on an invoking of unreason. As against this, these essays promote inclusive nationalism founded on a reading of our history that relies on evidence and reason. Yechury states that India’s anti-colonial nationalism sought to unite all segments of society in a common struggle, on the basis of a vision which ultimately got enshrined in the Constitution: the vision of a secular democracy committed to social justice and federalism. As against this, the Hindutva vision of a Hindu Rashtra is not just against the Constitution, not just majoritarian, but in openly advocating a second-class status for the minorities, indubitably ‘fascistic’.

Consisting of invited contributions from scholars, this book celebrates two outstanding economists and public intellectuals in contemporary India, Professor Utsa Patnaik and Professor Prabhat Patnaik, who have been very well-known for their contributions to social sciences from political economy perspectives. Their theoretical and empirical contributions, with respect to a whole range of diverse themes, especially about India’s economic transformation, are widely recognized, nationally and internationally; often these have been seminal in setting the terms of discourses and debates over the last few decades.

This volume brings together essays written in honour and memory of Anil Bhatti, Professor Emeritus of the Centre of German Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. His interventions in cultural theory resonated deeply with Germanists and literary critics. The contributions in this volume engage with a range of scholarly issues that were central to Anil Bhatti’s research interests. Many of the essays in this collection explore the Similarity paradigm, which Bhatti most recently articulated in collaboration with Dorothee Kimmich, Professor, Modern German Literature, University of Tübingen. Others respond to his disquiet and critical engagement with hegemonizing cultural impulses and their far-reaching repercussions.