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HOME TO INDIA by tha  Kirkus Star

HOME TO INDIA

By

Pub Date: May 23rd, 1945
Publisher: Harper

A disarming, intimate picture of an Indian girl who returns to her native land to find herself a ""foreigner"" because of her ten years' absence and English education. Here is an interesting picture of the difficulties of conforming to a new status, of a observation and decisions that covered two years' viewing of her homeland with fresh eyes. The author and her sister are confronted with problems of mastering traditional techniques that are demanded by their family, even their enlightened mother; they face the delicate issues of Anglo-Indian relations in social and governmental life; they encounter the custom of the country on women's smoking, clothes, domestic affairs, matrimonial questions, metics; they become embroiled in the constant concern with politics and the complex standards of caste and religion; they are forced to decide where they will take their stand and what compromises they will have to make. They live in Bombay, New Delhi; they vacation in Kashmir they meet Nehru, hear Gandhi, visit Tagore. Premila joins a magazine staff, inter works with a documentary film unit; and the author goes to America to continue her studies...Absorbing detail and interesting conflicts; superficial phases of the problems underline the position of the foreign-educated in their own land. Not -- perhaps -- important as an analysis of the Indian problem, but a very human approach to it.