Yogesh Gogwekar's Blog

REVIEW OF BOOK -NEIGHBOURS IN ARMS: AN AMERICAN SENATOR'S QUEST FOR DISARMAMENT IN A NUCLEAR SUBCONTINENT WRITTEN BY LARRY PRESSLER. Mr. Larry Lee Pressler is a soft spoken and non- confrontational American who has been elected to the US senate in 1979 and very much famous for "Pressler Amendment" which is nothing but banned on economic and military assistance to the countries that were acquiring or transferring nuclear reprocessing technology or explodes or transfer nuclear devices. Due this amendment, President of United State of America had to certify on annual basis before providing any economic and military assistance that the country to whom USA is providing economic and military assistance does not possess nuclear weapons. This is mostly to restrict for providing economic and military assistances to one country i.e.   Pakistan. To understand this story, one should read the autobiographical work of Larry Lee Pressler, “Neighbours in Arms: An American Senator’...

Remembering Kalpana Datta a revolutionaries. Nearly nine years back , I had watched Hindi feature film Khelein Hum Jee Jan Se directed by Ashutosh   Gowariker   in which Abhishek Bachchan ,  Deepika Padukone  and  Sikander Kher  had played  the lead roles. This film is based on a historical book " Do and Die" written by Manini Chatterjee   and  film depicts the events of the Chittagong Amory Raid took place on 18 th April 1930. After seeing this classic film, I started collecting the materials based on these events and found that there were also contributions of females as revolutionaries who had joined the group of Surya Sen a school teacher and an activist for Indian freedom. His group was having revolutionaries like Ganesh Ghosh , Lokenath Bal , Nirmal Sen, Ambika Chakraborty , Ananta S ingh , Pritilata Waddedar and above all, Kalpana Datta . In the film, Deepika Padukone has played role of Kalpana Datta . *...

Yuganta, fabulous book on Mahabharata written by Iravati Karve Yuganta, a fabulous book written by an anthropologist Iravati Karve in Marathi language about Mahabharata. Mahabharata teaches us, there are neither perfectly good people nor perfectly bad people.  To understand it in proper way, one must read book Yuganta, The End of an Epoch. Form Yogesh Gogwekar   Iravati Karve was student of sociology & anthropology. This book is nothing but critical study of characters of Mahabharata. Through this books , she treats these characters as historical figures rather than mythical characters and interpreted many events of Mahabharata in social political way. She dissects each protagonists after understanding their strengths & their weaknesses. She started from Bhishma who tried his best to save the war but Mahabharata offers nothing  to him after the terrible vow of Chastity. In father & son chapter, she talks about Yudhister & V...