CROSSETTE IN SO CLOSE TO HEAVER:
THE VANISHING BUDDHIST KINGDOMS
OF THE HIMALAYAS
Citing documents that have not been seen by any other writer, the book analyses law and politics with masterly skill to recreate the Sikkim saga against the backdrop of a twentieth-century Great Game involving India and China.
Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim didn't just make history. It is history.
Datta-Ray's fifty-five years in journalism spanned England, India, the US and Singapore. Educated in Calcutta and at the Victoria University of Manchester, where he read Economics, he abandoned Chartered Accountancy to start his career as a reporter with a small-town weekly in the north of England when he was twenty. He was elected Visiting Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 2001-02, and appointed Senior Research Fellow at Singapore's Institute of South-East Asian Studies.
Before taking up a teaching assignment at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, he was Editorial Consultant to the Straits Times group of publications in Singapore, Editor-in-Residence at the East-West Center, Honolulu, Editor of The Statesman (Kolkata and Delhi) and on the Board of Directors of United News of India. For many years, he was the South Asia correspondent of The Observer, London, a regular columnist in the International Herald Tribune and an essayist in Time magazine. He also wrote for Le Monde Diplomatique and The Canberra Times.
His columns now appear in the Telegraph, Business Standard, Asian Age, Deccan Chronicle and Free Press Journal. In 1990, he was awarded the Freedom of Information Award in New Delhi. His other books include Looking East to Look West: Lee Kuan Yew's Mission India, which won the Vodafone Crossword Award for non-fiction in 2009, Bihar Shows the Way and Waiting for America: India and the US in the New Millennium.
A ban would have been clumsy. As it happened, Gurbachan Singh, the last political officer in Gangtok and Sikkim's de facto overlord, filed a defamation suit against me demanding enormous damages. Normally, defamation has to be proved before the courts take any action. Proving can take months, even years. In my case, the Delhi High Court issued an order at the first hearing, forbidding sale of the book until the case had been settled. A contempt charge was piled on that when Gurbachan Singh produced a cash memo from a shop in some small town which had sold a copy. The matter was resolved only when the eminent jurist, Soli Sorabjee, representing me in a generous act of friendship, persuaded the prosecuting lawyers to accept an out-of-court settlement entailing an apology (Appendix A) but no money. The sales ban was lifted but the publisher claimed he had no copies left to sell. He wasn't interested in reprinting either.
Hindu (935)
Agriculture (118)
Ancient (1086)
Archaeology (753)
Architecture (563)
Art & Culture (910)
Biography (702)
Buddhist (544)
Cookery (167)
Emperor & Queen (565)
Islam (242)
Jainism (307)
Literary (896)
Mahatma Gandhi (372)
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Manage Wishlist