This India (An Old and Rare Book)

This book was published to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Indian Republic. Communication with the young readers is achieved through visual materials familiar to the Indian eye. The main thrust of the content is Indian culture and the Indian way of life. Traditional motifs child. As such the original design and format of the pages is an integral part of the author's intention.

The present volume is therefore a reprint rather then a revised edition. At the same time there, are minor factual changes relating to population and development which will be helpful to the child who is reading the book today more than twenty years after it first appeared.

This book is intended for children who are beginning to ask adult questions about India. Since this stage of questioning might come before or after the age of twelve, no specific age is being mentioned. To children who accept and do yet ask, this book offers an opportunity to understand their involvement with India. It tries to say in easy and simple language what India is, where it is going and what it might now mean to the rest of the world. The book describes the efforts of India during the last forty-eighty years, and discusses how the quality of the changed in this country since we become independent.

What is the Indian way of life that we are always talking about? What is the meaning to the Youngster of today of such terms as faith, heroism hard work and social transformation, which he comes across again and again? If economic progress is the most important consideration for a country as it something appears to be why should any young Indian want to stay here if he has an option to go elsewhere? Is the culture of which so much is heard still there? If so how does manifest itself? What is Indian-ness the link which we all have with the remotest villager and with the Indian of a Thousand years ago? Developments in the economic political and sociological spheres are considered in trying to answers these and related questions.

The present volume is intended to be a companion to the Children's History of India, where no dates have been used in the narrative. Here too the emphasis rather than on mere facts and figures.

The design of the book is of special interest. Communication is achieved through visual materials familiar to the Indian eye. Traditional motifs from classical tribal folk and modern art blend comfortably with contemporary black-and-white photographs to project and interpret each theme. It is hoped that the picture and the world will endure together in the young reader's mind and that the child's memory will refer to them with increasingly significant recognition.

In the sense this is a book that may grow along with the child.