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| The slow but steady rise of India’s global appeal is an interesting trend that is here to stay. Whether it is our ‘creative economy’, the crux of which lies in innovation, our immense potential as a knowledge warehouse or our significant political say in world affairs – the voices are being heard, the impact is being felt and the changes are being seen.
As India finds a renewed and rejuvenated workforce to move ahead and become the top player in the coming years, we interacted with some stalwart writers in the western world on their fascination with our country. Their years of research, learning and dedication to the subject, intrigue and inspire. That’s what made us bring John Keay, Ruth Padel and Geraldine Forbes to Oxford Bookstores in New Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata recently to discuss their books on India with us.
We present an exclusive feature with their views on contemporary India – interspersed with unknown historical facts and thought-provoking predictions for the future.
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John Keay is one of the best-known contemporary British historians. He was educated at Ampleforth College, York and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was a scholar in Modern History. In his formative years, historian A J P Taylor and the playwright Alan Bennet tutored him. He first visited India in 1965 and has been returning to the country about every two years ever since. After working as a political correspondent with The Economist for a short while, he assisted in the |
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revision of the last edition of John Murray's Handbook to India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (1975) and wrote Into India, his first book. John Keay has written about 20 books, all factual, mostly historical, and largely on Asia, exploration or Scotland.
Where do you see India 25 years from now?
India 25 years from now will be India in 2030. It did not become ‘the Japan of the ‘80s’ as commentators in the ‘70s used to suppose. Nor will it, I hope, become ‘the China of the 21st century’ as now suggested. Forget these alien and quite unsuitable economic models, I say, these geo-political labels. None is applicable and most are pretty undesirable. Let India be India. And let the world take it as its own evaluation… more
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Ruth Padel is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Chair of the UK Poetry Society, and the great great grand-daughter of Charles Darwin. She wrote a PhD on Greek tragedy at Oxford University and taught Greek at Oxford, Cambridge and Birkbeck College, London (and opera in Princeton Modern Greek Department). She is a Fellow of the London Zoological Society and Member of the Bombay Natural history Society and Royal Geographical Society. She was also the Resident Poet for the 2002 Henry Wood Promenade Concerts and was a Judge for the 2005 Aventis Science Prize administered by the Royal Society. She has now become a freelance writer on fiction, poetry, music and wildlife. She contributes for many newspapers including The Independent, The Times, Financial Times and New York Times and also broadcasts for BBC Radio 3 and 4.
Any striking observation on nature and wildlife in India - Please comment.
Wildlife management should be taken away from the forest service and set up as an independent service run by trained biologists. The aim of forest management is making money. The aim of wildlife management is the long-term safety of wild animals. There are many brilliant people in India who know a great deal about wildlife. I have met them and admire them more than I can say. But the majority of forest officers do not. There are rare exceptions, but most forest officers know nothing about biology or real science, want… more
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One of most respected scholars on the history and life of Indian women, Geraldine Forbes's areas of study include History of Colonial and Modern India, Women's History as well as Gender and Colonial Medicine, and
Photography and History. Her publications include Women in Modern India, The memoirs of Dr. Haimabati Sen, An Historian's Perspective: Indian Women and the Freedom
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Movement, Women in Colonial India: Essays on Medicine, Politics, and History, as well as several articles. In 1995, she received Central New York NOW 'Unsung Heroine Award' for Leadership in International Women's Studies.
How do you see today’s Indian woman?
It is impossible to generalize since the term Indian women include about 500 million people. On the one hand, I am appalled, as are most people, by the statistics about sex selective abortion, maternal mortality rates, and violence against women. There is obviously much to be done but there is also progress. India is not one piece, and one can point to areas where some real changes are being made: educational attainments for females in Kerala, efforts to remove 100,000 girls from cotton fields in Andhra and put them in schools, and gains in maternal and infant health in Tamil Nadu. What impresses me is the energy and dedication of Indian feminists to change the world… more
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Interviewed by Satarupa Ray
Designed by Subhadip Mukherjee |
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