Mridula Nath Chakraborty

For a book that began as a tweet, Shashi Tharoor’s Inglorious Empire: What the British did to India has had a remarkable journey, taking its best-selling author on a world tour, both to the centre of Empire in the United Kingdom, and its outpost in Australia. A career diplomat who retired as under-secretary general at the ...

Continuously inhabited since at least the sixth century, Delhi is fabled to be the city that was built seven times and razed to the ground seven times. Some believe the word Delhi comes from dehali or threshold, and the city is seen as the gateway to the Great Indian Gangetic plains. In 1912 the British moved their colonial seat of power from Calcutta to New Delhi, which also became the capital of independent India and celebrates its hundredth anniversary this year. It seems apt, then, in 2012, to read about the older Delhi that lies and lurks behind the shining veneer of India’s National Capital Territory, a Delhi that the rising Asian power seems eager to forget and obliterate.

Special issues are difficult and delicate, given the burden of representation. Editor David Brooks confesses to providing only a glimpse of the rich field that might constitute Indian–Australian literary relations. He offers ‘that very Australian thing – a showbag, a sampler, full of enticements to explore further’. Given the slow but steady realisation in Australia that India should be a focus of attention for its scholars and students, this is a timely attempt.