Synopsis This is an infuriating and yet thoroughly admirable book that will give the Indian reader a confidence about what our languages need most- a sense of piety towards our own cultural environments. That is what the author wants everyone to do.at least paradoxically, a search fro an alternate tradition which opens within ourselves, preserving even now the history, orality, living traditions and folklore. Desivad naturally negates any imagined apace that oppresses the real and aggressively asserts what was otherwise relegated, during the dark phase of colonialism, to one’s native cultural heritage. A Landmark in Indian critical theory, discussed all over the country from 1980, desivad aspires to be a nationwide movement to counterbalance the homogenizing and hegemonizing effects of a few cultures of nationalism, globalization, internationalism and so on. The four lectures delivered at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study have caused an intellectual stimulation of a rare sort and a whole new approach to literary criticism.