Geographies do matter [Review of: S. Raju, M.S. Kumar (2006) Colonial and post-colonial geographies of India]

The publication of this book has to be heartily welcomed for its significant contribution to critical geographical work on India. The collection of 15 essays draws on contributions of scholars situated in India, western Europe, and the US. These essays are on different topics and may look very diverse, without a common base. However, the authors have woven a persuasive tapestry around concerns of emergent socio-politico-economic formations in national, urban and rural settings that underlies the connectedness between global and local. The geographically embedded treatment of historical as well as contemporary themes reasserts the reconfigured territorialities and spaces in a (presumably) borderless globalising world. The chapters are as varied as ‘Idioms, Symbolism and Divisions: Black and White Towns in Madras, 1652-1850’ to a discussion of ‘Carbon Colonies, from Local Use Value to Global Exchange in Climatic Forestry’. Each study has a quality and standing of its own. Anyone who is interested in India’s historical and contemporary developments - in India or abroad - will find the approaches interesting and informative.