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- Top 75 Book Recommendations on Social Science
Top 75 Book Recommendations on Social Science
The world around us and the society we live in is often more complex than we believe it to be. Yet, our understanding of it is crucial to the way we will reimagine and reshape our lives. Our top 75 book recommendations on humanities and the social sciences will help bridge the gap between our perception and the ground reality:
In a time of bewildering and often thoughtless change, A Sense of Home: Abujhmad and a Childhood Village offers a glimpse of another lifestyle, one more bare and closer to nature, but perhaps more complete in its pace and aspirations. A sequel to the acclaimed Bastar Dispatches, it reflects on the life of the Abujhmadia as also that of the people in Ramala, the village of author Narendra’s childhood — their shared rhythms and concerns, and the flow of everyday activity. This book is a gentle but strong reminder of the value of what we might be missing in our lives.
The Pink Line The by Mark Gevisser
The Pink Line tells the story of how ‘LGBT Rights’ became one of the world’s new human rights frontiers in the second decade of the twenty-first century. From refugees in South Africa to activists in Egypt, transgender women in Russia and pen manaam konda aan (women’s hearts in men’s bodies) in Tamil Nadu, this book folds intimate and deeply affecting stories of individuals, families and communities into a definitive account of how the world has changed, so dramatically, in just a decade.
In Why Men Rape, Tara Kaushal sets out to understand the reasons through a detailed investigation which includes meetings with nine men who have an inclination to commit acts of sexual violence. The men interviewed for the book belong to all sections of society: a doctor who raped his twelve-year-old patient; an unemployed youth who decided to kill his former lover; a youth who gang raped; a serial gang rapist who doesn’t believe rape exists. Alongside, the author gives insights from myriad survivors; world-famous experts; a jail inmate who observes and provides us with a commentary on the worldview of rape convicts inside a prison; and many more. At a time when sexual violence is crippling our society, this book marks an important contribution towards making us aware of the problem, and finding a way to stop it.
The Death Script by Ashutosh Bhardwaj
From 2011 to 2015, Ashutosh Bhardwaj lived in India’s ‘red corridor’, and made several trips thereafter, reporting on the Maoists, on the state’s atrocities, and on lives caught in the crossfire. In The Death Script, he writes of his time there, of the various men and women he meets from both sides of the conflict, bringing home with astonishing power the human cost of such a battle. Narrated in multiple voices, the book is a creative biography of Dandakaranya that combines the rigour of journalism, the intimacy of a diary, the musings of a travelogue, and the craft of a novel. Through the prism of the Maoist insurgency, Bhardwaj meditates on larger questions of violence and betrayal, sin and redemption, and what it means to live through and write about such experiences — making this book one of the most significant works of non-fiction to be published in recent times.
For a Moment of Taste by Poorva Joshipura
For a Moment of Taste is the first ever in-depth expose of what happens to animals commonly used for meat, eggs and dairy foods in India for what is, after all, a fleeting moment of taste. It gives a historical account of how today’s meat, eggs and dairy production systems came to be; the current state of these industries in India; and the consequences of where they are headed if dietary habits and current trends do not change. Poorva Joshipura, a senior member of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), draws on her personal observations of the treatment of animals and uncovers shocking industry practices not commonly known in India. She also explores the larger philosophical question of whether humans are meant to consume meat, eggs or dairy foods, provides anthropological evidence to the contrary, and also lays out the human health and environmental impacts of the production and consumption of animal-based products. This eye-opening book will lead many readers to examine and modify their eating habits.
The Hans Foundation by Hans Kramers
This insightful account documents the work towards creating an equitable society with the aim of enhancing the quality of life for all through the empowerment of marginalized and underprivileged communities in India.
Word, Sounds. Images by Amit Khanna
Ambitious and encyclopaedic in scope, this is a first-of-its-kind book that presents the history of media and entertainment in India — from the times of the Indus Valley Civilization right up to the twenty-first century. The book starts with an examination of the origins, looking at a wide array of aspects such as: the state of entertainment during Harappan and Vedic times, including details from the Natyashastra; the early drama, music and dance of Kalidasa; the development of ragas; musical instruments and early folk traditions; the genesis of classical dance forms; developments through the ages, including in the Mughal period, in the southern kingdoms, in the north-east, and under the Marathas and the British. Independence onwards, the book takes a decade-wise look at the evolution of newspapers, cinema, music, television, dance, theatre and radio. The author, himself a film producer, director and lyricist who has worked in the entertainment industry all his life, brings his unique perspective to bear on the subject. This pioneering work is a must-read not just for the students and practitioners of the arts and media but also for their lay consumers.
In this classic, Khushwant Singh presents a concise history of the followers of one of the world’s youngest religions. Beginning with the life and times of the founder, Guru Nanak (1469-1539), he moves on to describe the vital contribution made by the following nine gurus in shaping and developing the Sikh religion; and the significance of the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, and its centrality to the religion. He examines the setting up of the Singh Sabha and the accompanying social reform, the impact of the Ghadr rebellion and the Akali agitation for control of various Sikh shrines. The new Afterword by his son, journalist Rahul Singh, brings the story of the Sikhs up to date. Authoritative yet accessible, this is one of the most concise and readable accounts of the Sikhs and their faith.
Japan Made Easy by Sandeep Goyal
For the average Indian, Japan is the land of the bullet train, zippy cars, and geisha girls, as also hard to understand. However, what appears to be opaque and insular to the world outside turns out to be a society that is friendly, intimate, and closely knit together when you get to know it better. In Japan Made Easy, Sandeep Goyal, an old hand at explaining the country, takes us on a joyous roller coaster ride through Japanese aesthetics, business, culture, food, philosophy, spirituality, and much else, to make this land of mystery and mystique familiar to us. With India’s rising number of tourists to Japan and Olympics 2020 on the horizon, this book is the best guide to a complex, nuanced and utterly loveable country.
Religious Tolerance by Arvind Sharma
Religion has become a vital element in identity politics globally after the terror attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States of America. And so the question of how religious tolerance may be secured in the modern world can no longer be avoided. Can religious tolerance be placed on a firmer footing by finding grounds for it within the different faiths themselves? This book addresses that question. In Religious Tolerance: A History, Arvind Sharma examines Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Daoism and Shinto – whose followers together cover over two-thirds of the globe – to identify instances of tolerance in the history of each of these to help the discussion proceed on the basis of historical facts. This is a timely book – the first of its kind in scope and ambition.
When you see how power has shaped the idea of race, then you can start to understand its meaning. For millennia, dominant societies have had the habit of believing their own people to be the best, deep down: the more powerful they become, the more power begins to be framed as natural, as well as cultural. In the twenty-first century, we like to believe that we have moved beyond scientific racism, that most people accept race as a social construct, not a biological one. But race science is experiencing a revival, fuelled by the misuse of science by certain political groups. Even well-intentioned scientists, through their use of racial categories in genetics and medicine, betray their suspicion that race has some basis in biology. In truth, it is no more real than it was hundreds of years ago, when our racial hierarchies were devised by those in power. In Superior, award-winning author Angela Saini explores the concept of race, from its origins to the present day. Engaging with geneticists, anthropologists, historians and social scientists from across the globe, Superior is a rigorous, much-needed examination of the insidious and destructive nature of race science.
But You Don’t Look Like a Muslim by Rakhshanda Jalil
What does it mean to be Muslim in India? What does it mean to look like one’s religion? Does one’s faith determine how one is perceived? Is there a secular ideal one is supposed to live up to? Can people of different faiths have a shared culture, a shared identity? India has, since time immemorial, been plural, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual, where various streams have fed into and strengthened each other, and where dissimilarities have always been a cause for rejoicing rather than strife. These writings, on and about being Muslim in India, by Rakhshanda Jalil – one of the country’s foremost literary historians and cultural commentators – excavate memories, interrogate dilemmas, and rediscover and celebrate a nation and its syncretic culture. But You Don’t Look Like a Muslim is a book that every thinking Indian must read.
What do straight, married female revelers at an all-women’s sex club in LA have in common with nomadic pastoralists in Namibia who bear children by men not their husbands? Like women worldwide, they crave sexual variety, novelty, and excitement. In ancient Greek tragedies, Netflix series, tabloids and pop songs, we’ve long portrayed such cheating women as dangerous and damaged. We love to hate women who are untrue. But who are they really? And why, in this age of female empowerment, do we continue to judge them so harshly? In Untrue, Wednesday Martin takes us on a bold, fascinating journey to reveal the unexpected evolutionary legacy and social realities that drive female faithlessness, while laying bare our motivations to contain women who step out. Blending accessible social science and interviews with sex researchers, anthropologists, and real women from all walks of life, Untrue will change the way you think about women and sex forever.
Peerless Minds by Pritish Nandy
Peerless Minds brings together the finest minds that sustain India as a riveting and relentless idea. The exceptional life stories featured in this book reaffirm the truth that the luckiest of nations are the ones that continue to be rebuilt and reimagined by peerless minds.’S. PRASANNARAJAN, Editor, Open magazine Three Nobel Prize winners. Two Bharat Ratnas. Three Knights of the British Empire. A Pulitzer Prize winner. A two-time Best of the Bookers winner. An Abel Prize winner. A Pritzker Prize winner. A Fields Medallist. Two Fukuoka Prize winners. A Turner Prize winner. Two Praemium Imperiale recipients. A double Academy Award winner. Many Padma Vibhushans and Padma Bhushans. But that is not why these people are really here. They are here because they, as Indians and people of Indian origin, have had extraordinary achievements and have inspired, each in their own way, a generation of Indians. Here you will find, among others, economist Amartya Sen; authors V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie; mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik; philanthropist Azim Premji; mathematician Manjul Bhargava; from the world of music, Annapurna Devi, Lata Mangeshkar and Zubin Mehta; industrialist Ratan Tata; sculptor Anish Kapoor; architect Balkrishna Doshi; spymaster A.S. Dulat; historian Irfan Habib; Michelin-starred chef Vikas Khanna; poet Javed Akhtar; and stand-up comic Hasan Minhaj. In conversation with them are authors and journalists such as James Astill, Prannoy Roy, Vir Sanghvi, Aatish Taseer, Shereen Bhan, Karan Mahajan, Rajdeep Sardesai, Khalid Mohamed, Priya Khanchandani, Indu Bhan and Anil Dharker.
Godmen and Godwomen of India by Khushwant Singh
In this vibrant volume, Khushwant, in his inimitable style, tackles all issues related to religion, faith, blind faith, new cults, and new movements in other words, he charges like a raging bull to attack the epidemic of gods and godmen that has swept the nation in recent years. Khushwant Singh quotes liberally and with perfect ease from the Adi Granth, Adi Shankaracharya, Upanishads, Koran and other holy books to buttress his arguments.
Gurgaon by Veena Talwar Oldenburg
For the aspirational migrant, rich or poor, Gurgaon is the Millennium City, with its sleek malls, sky-scraping condominiums, safe and gracious gated colonies, tenement housing, and life-changing jobs. For corporations, it is the Mecca of opportunity, as countless Fortune 500 companies have flocked to its business towers and parks, at once spacious, elegant and convenient for doing business. For its older residents, a more intriguing fate could not have befallen their small town. For the media it is the city that makes headlines, often for the wrong reasons — brawls in pubs, crimes against women, dubious real estate transactions, mega traffic jams. But Gurgaon’s existence began as an obscure hamlet, and it has had several hoary incarnations before it acquired its present density, industry, wealth and civic fabric. It is this tangled tale, more thematic than chronological, that this book tells. Veena Talwar Oldenburg has been witness to Gurgaon’s astonishing evolution for over twenty years. This volume is the first ever rigorously researched narrative of the city’s making that speaks to readers of modern history, audiences compelled by Gurgaon’s bewildering growth and the very people who made it their home – now and for generations to come.
Khushwant Singh tells the story of the land and its people from the earliest time to the present day. He covers the upheavals of the subcontinent over five millennia, and how they have come to mould the India of today. He also offers perceptive insights into India’s ethnic diversity, its religions, customs, philosophy, art and culture, political currents, and the galaxy of men and women who have helped shape the nation. Khushwant Singh’s fascination with India and its fabric is evident on every page. India: An Introduction is mandatory reading for anyone who has an interest in the country. And for the traveller, it is that rare companion: erudite and entertaining.
Abujhmad in the deep interiors of Bastar is inhabited by the Abujhmadias, a primitive hunter-gatherer tribe whom Verrier Elwin has called the Hill Murias. Abujhmad stands today as one of the few mirrors left the world over wherein modernity can view itself – its calamities and collapses. Abujhmad asks no questions of itself nor provides answers; neither are there searches, quests or creation of utopias, ideas and ideologies, elaborate languages, agricultures, technologies and endeavours.Based on the author’s over thirty years of association with Abujhmad (he is probably the first outsider to live there) and its contiguous areas in the Bastar division of Chhattisgarh, Bastar Dispatches brings out how forests and the wilds, humans and animals, distances, spaces and the skies, the knowns and unknowns together make up societies and intimacies. There is a nebulousness, an ‘undefined’ to Abujhmad’s ways. Written in what may be called the Adivasi sensibility of nurturing the tentative, the book provides a compelling narrative of a people at peace with themselves and nature, their dialect, their festivities, their delightful interactions.
Between the Great Divide by Anam Zakaria
Seventy years ago, as India and Pakistan gained their independence, the region of Jammu & Kashmir also found itself divided, with parts of the territory administered by Pakistan ever since. Located by the volatile Line of Control and caught in the middle of artillery barrages from both ends, Pakistan-administered Kashmir was until over a decade ago one of the most closed-off territories of the world. In a first book of its kind, award-winning Pakistani writer Anam Zakaria travels through Pakistan-administered Kashmir to hear its people – their sufferings, hopes and aspirations. She talks to women and children living near the Line of Control, bearing the brunt of ceasefire violations; journalists and writers braving all odds to document events in remote areas; political and military representatives championing the cause of Kashmir; former militants still committed to the cause; nationalists struggling for a united independent Kashmir; and refugees yearning to reunite with their families on the other side. In the process, Zakaria breaks the silence surrounding a people who are often ignored in discussions on the present and future of Jammu & Kashmir even though they are important stakeholders in what happens in the region. What she unearths during her deeply empathetic journeys is critical to understanding the Kashmir conflict and will surprise and enlighten Indians and Pakistanis alike.
Does He Know A Mother’s Heart? By Arun Shourie
How can extreme suffering be so commonplace if there is a God who knows everything, who is all-powerful and also compassionate? How do the scriptures of our religions explain the existence of suffering? Do these explanations stand up to examination? Does our experience testify to a God? Or do the two demons – time and chance – explain all that we have to go through? In a devastating dissection of the scriptures – laced with accounts of the suffering and pain that he has seen at first-hand – Arun Shourie tells us why he has eventually gravitated to the teachings of the Buddha. And what lessons these teachings hold for our daily lives.
Lalgarh and the Legend of Kishanji by Snigdhendu Bhattacharya
‘India is an unbroken chain of broken promises.’ In 2009, Lalgarh in West Bengal exploded on to the national consciousness. A tribal upsurge against police atrocities escalated into fierce, full-fledged guerrilla warfare against the Indian state. Kishanji, the Maoist leader, who had successfully led the movement in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Bihar, was in charge. He masterminded military offensives that shook the state, supervised ‘alternative development activities’ and repeatedly escaped security dragnets. But what truly confounded the state were his telephonic interviews with the media, often on live television, and the frequent press conferences. Kishanji was indeed the face of the Maoist movement in India – until the tables turned. Snigdhendu Bhattacharya was on the ground in Lalgarh, meeting Kishanji, speaking to Maoists and reporting on one of the bloodiest Naxal uprisings as it unfolded, right up to its sudden, chilling end. This is an epic tale of war not only between the state and the Maoists but also between a callous state and its desperate citizens.
Once Upon a Hill by Kalpish Ratna
Exploring the world is easy today, all one needs is the internet. Getting to know the ground beneath one’s feet is quite another story. I began to look for the island on which I live, and, it wasn’t there. So began my quest. Why was it difficult to read the landscape? All its past had been viewed from ships at sea, or from libraries in lands I had never been to. All its history was hearsay and all its storytellers were dead. I was an alchemist at the edge of discovery. Andheri is where I stood, and Andheri is geology on speed. Hills explode, rocks shudder and slide, rivers slouch in culverts, the sea is dismissed, and the land sweats people at every pore. Andheri is protean with mad caprice. A lake in the industrial district memorializes lost fields, a milestone marks a vanished road, a blind alley recalls a king, and our memorials are jailed in wire-mesh with dire warnings in three languages. We’re going underground, we’re up in the air, we’ll do the metro wriggle, the skywalk or trapeze, we’ll do the right green thing on a prayer and a concrete wing, we’ll flatten the hills, push back the sea, and we’ll make even more room for the builder and me. The idea of Andheri is shaped from the land it is built upon. Who will uncover that for me? How do you find something hidden in plain sight? Begin in a village named for an epidemic, witness an exorcism, and enter a labyrinth. Emerge with a mirage and meet a curious cartographer. Journey 60 million years with a turtle and a frog. Then, finally, find Gilbert Hill. Once Upon A Hill is a plea from Kalpish Ratna to their city of Bombay. Gilbert Hill is where our past and future are gathered. Shall we revere this still point, or as seems inexorable, destroy it with our dance ?
How different is Pakistan’s culture from that of India? Exploring various aspects of the arts, literature and heritage of Pakistan, Raza Rumi argues that culture in Pakistan is not particularly unique to the nation, but rather a part of the cultural identities shared by South Asians. From the songs of Kabir and the ballads of Bulleh Shah to the cult of the feminine in the Sindh region, Rumi takes a kaleidoscopic view of the deep-set cultural mores that tie India and Pakistan together. Going further, he examines aspects of the visual arts, poetry, music and literature of Pakistan that impact global cultural narratives. Finally, he introduces readers to contemporary Pakistani writers and artists and the milieu in which they express their creativity, giving us a fascinating glimpse into cultural productions in Pakistan today. Being Pakistani is a riveting account of artistic traditions and their significance in present-day Pakistan, presenting an alternative view of the country, beyond the usual headlines that focus on political instability and terrorism.
Note by Note by Bhardwaj& S. Singh
The story of India, over the past seven decades, has been one of development and social and political change, which has often been forgotten, pushed to the recesses of our memories. Ankur, Seema and Sushant refresh those memories in Note by Note, linking the events of each year to a significant film song. For in a country that has a song for every season, every emotion, nothing qualifies as much as the film song to be a metaphor for the nation. The Hindi film song has uncannily encapsulated the sentiment of its era, reflecting, as well as forming, the consciousness of the country’s identity and mood. From the afsana the country was articulating in ‘Afsana likh rahee hoon’, even as Jawaharlal Nehru gave voice to India’s tryst with destiny, to the mood of socialist India in ‘Awara hoon’, to the political and social unrest of the 1970s as reflected in ‘Zindagi kaisi yeh paheli hai’, to the dreams of a new and young India, it is all here. A tribute to India and the exceptional republic that it has been, Note by Note captures the rhythm of modern Indian history — to the beat of popular film music.
Digitization is accelerating globalization tenfold. Social networks have gone mobile: telephone, television and towns have gone ‘smart’. How did China manage to create clones of Google, Facebook and YouTube, and build its own censored version of the Internet? How do Arab countries use social networks for their revolutions? Why is there no minister for communications in the US, and why does no one regulate the Internet there? From Silicon Valley to Tokyo, from South Africa to southern India, and all the way to Cuba and Gaza, this unprecedented investigation in the field covers the whole battle of the Internet and its future. Drawing on hundreds of interviews in about fifty countries, Frederic Martel examines the different ‘Internets’ on five continents. In so doing, he reveals that we are moving not only into a connected, globalized world, but also a territorialized one. Smart shows that the Internet has never been truly global, and that it will become increasingly local.
Na Nar, Na Naari, Phir Bhi Narayan by Devdutt Pattanaik& Jerry Johnson
In 2015, a historic panel discussion took place at the global Festival of Theology held in Sweden. Its objective was to examine what the sacred texts of the Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – had to say about human sexuality. By bringing in perspectives from the Karmic faiths of Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and Hinduism, which together represent the beliefs of almost a third of the world’s population, Na Nar, Na Naari, Phir Bhi Narayan, the Hindi translation of I am Divine, So Are You, expands this conversation between world religions and human sexuality to a truly global level. The theology of Karmic faiths is revealed at the intersection of scripture, culture, rituals and lived realities. And hence they are dynamic and amenable to a multiplicity of perspectives. They lend themselves more easily to a recognition and acceptance of fluidity in human sexuality. This is a landmark book as it recasts religion – especially Karmic faiths – as an ally and not an adversary of queer emancipation and thus significantly informs the secular and legal movements for LGBTQ rights around the world.
Living Without the Dead by Piers Vitebsky
Living Without the Dead lays bare today’s crisis of indigenous religions and shows how historical reform can bring new fulfillments – but also new torments and uncertainties. Vitebsky explores the loss of the Sora tradition as one for greater humanity: just as we have been losing our wildernesses, so we have been losing cultural and spiritual possibilities, tribe by tribe. From the award-winning author of The Reindeer People, this is a heartbreaking story of the extinction of an irreplaceable world, even while new religious forms come into being.
Dress by Vogue India
To commemorate Vogue India’s tenth anniversary, writers interpret through fiction, non-fiction, illustrated essays and poetry the art of dressing and even undressing. Style, fashion, fabric and clothes, merge with nostalgia, economics, love and sex in this collection of short works. From tracing the origins of the humble undershirt, the ‘banyan’, in India to Frida Kahlo claiming agency through the femininity of Tehuana costuming, or the complex politics of the burka alongside the plight of cotton farmers in times of fast fashion – the anthology stitches together a rich fabric to remind us that a dress is more than just a dress. Bringing together some of the finest voices of our generation, from both India and elsewhere, this is a must have collector’s edition.
I Am Divine. So Are You by Jerry Johnson
In 2015, a historic panel discussion took place at the global Festival of Theology held in Sweden. Its objective was to examine what the sacred texts of the Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – had to say about human sexuality. By bringing in perspectives from the Karmic faiths of Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and Hinduism, which together represent the beliefs of almost a third of the world’s population, I Am Divine. So Are You expands this conversation between world religions and human sexuality to a truly global level. The theology of Karmic faiths is revealed at the intersection of scripture, culture, rituals and lived realities. And hence they are dynamic and amenable to a multiplicity of perspectives. They lend themselves more easily to a recognition and acceptance of fluidity in human sexuality. This is a landmark book as it recasts religion – especially Karmic faiths – as an ally and not an adversary of queer emancipation and thus significantly informs the secular and legal movements for LGBTQ rights around the world.
Ants Among Elephants by Sujatha Gidla
In Ants Among Elephants, she tells their story. Gidla’s mother, Manjula, and uncles Satyam and Carey were born in the last days of British rule. They grew up in a world marked by poverty and injustice, but also full of possibility. In the slums of Elwin Peta in Kakinada, where they lived, everyone had a political bent; and rallies, agitations, and arrests were commonplace. The Independence movement offered promises of freedom from foreign rule, from want, and from social oppression. Yet, for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. Satyam, the eldest, switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Gidla recounts his incredible transformation from student and labor organizer to famous poet and co-founder of the People’s War Group, the most notorious and successful Naxalite party. Gidla also charts her mother’s battles with caste and women’s oppression. Page by page, she takes us into a complicated, close-knit family as they desperately strive for a decent life and a more just society. A moving portrait of love, hardship, and struggle, Ants Among Elephants is also that rare thing: a personal history of modern India told from the bottom up.
Extreme Turbulence by Upendra Kachru
Extreme Turbulence: India at the Crossroads provides an overview of where the world is at this inflection point in history, in respect of trade, technology, energy, resources, population and the environment, among other things. More important, it looks at how India is placed in these areas, and how it can benefit from the transformed global scenario in the coming years, if it is to move up to a place in the super league. There is already a belief, in middle-class India, that the country is on its way to becoming an economic superpower in the near future.
At Home in Mumbai by Chandrima Pal
Mumbai is place you can call home and yet remain homeless. Friendly and hostile, generous and ruthless, no other city captures your imagination with such fierceness. And no other city obsesses as much over space with such passion. The boy who calls a square on the pavement his ‘ghar’ or the globetrotting fashion entrepreneur at her Cumballa Hill home, a star waving out to his fans from his Bandra terrace, to the migrant who struggles to find acceptance in the city teeming with ‘outsiders’, every person in this city has a story of negotiating the idea of space.This is an attempt to tell some of these stories, to understand what being ‘at home’ really means to those who have been part of the incredible narrative that is Mumbai.
Remnants of a Separation by Aanchal Malhotra
Remnants of a Separation is a unique attempt to revisit the Partition through objects that refugees carried with them across the border. These belongings absorbed the memory of a time and place, remaining latent and undisturbed for generations. They now speak of their owner’s pasts as they emerge as testaments to the struggle, sacrifice, pain and belonging at an unparalleled moment in history. A string of pearls gifted by a maharaja, carried from Dalhousie to Lahore, reveals the grandeur of a life that once was. A notebook of poems, brought from Lahore to Kalyan, shows one woman’s determination to pursue the written word despite the turmoil around her. A refugee certificate created in Calcutta evokes in a daughter the feelings of displacement her father had experienced upon leaving Mymensingh zila, now in Bangladesh. Written as a crossover between history and anthropology, Remnants of a Separation is the product of years of passionate research. It is an alternative history of the Partition — the first and only one told through material memory that makes the event tangible even seven decades later.
The People Next Door by C.A. Raghavan
This book tracks seventy years of the India-Pakistan interface. Events, anecdotes and personalities drive its narrative to illustrate the cocktail of hostility, nationalism and nostalgia that defines every facet of the relationship. It looks at the main events through the eyes and words of actual players and contemporary observers to illustrates how, both in India and in Pakistan, these past events are seen through radically different prisms, how history keeps resurfacing and has a resonance that cannot be avoided to this day. Apart from political, military and security issues, The People Next Door evokes other perspectives: divided families, peacemakers, war mongers, contrarian thinkers, intellectual and cultural associations, unwavering friendships, the footprint of Bollywood, cricket and literature: all of which are intrinsic parts of this most tangled of relationships.
You Cannot Miss This Flight by G R Gopinath
Captain G.R. Gopinath is an unusual industry leader. Whether it was setting up Air Deccan to get train travellers in the air or jumping into the fray of Indian politics, Gopinath does not merely put his money where his mouth is – he takes his mouth to the scene of action. Unsurprisingly then, he has been an active and provocative columnist down the years. Nothing is off the table for him, not business rivals, nor political bosses. He meditates on yoga and farming, on caste and religion, he tears down the flaws in Indian aviation policy and he snipes at politicians who play Indians for their votes. He is honest about corruption, he is angry at the system and he is a believer in the power of entrepreneurship. Gopinath’s is a brave and important voice in Indian business and media. You Cannot Miss This Flight is a selection of his writings in the past decade and a bit. As thought-provoking as they are delightful, these essays capture the breadth of Captain Gopinath’s interests and the depth of his commitment.
Changing Landscapes by Erach Bharucha
Sumant Moolgaokar was a visionary and innovator. Dr Erach Bharucha, a long-time friend of his, attempts to set the record straight with this celebration of two unknown facets of Moolgaokar’s life – his excellence in the field of photography and his environmental concerns. He writes of how Moolgaokar’s experiments with managing land, water and living ecosystems were far ahead of his time. Tribal folk across the country are photographed with a rare sensitivity and with a desire to record their fast disappearing lifestyles and the landscape they lived in. Changing Landscapes is about the unappreciated wealth of our cultural heterogeneity.
How do myths and stories influence culture? What is the difference between one culture and another, and how did these differences come to be? Are cultures fixed or do they change over time? Devdutt Pattanaik, India’s leading mythologist, breaks down the complex maze of stories, symbols and rituals to examine how they shape cultures. He investigates how stories influence perception and construct truths, the cultural roots of the notion of evil and reveals the need for mythology through a telling of various Indian and Western myths. In doing so, he shows how myths reflect the culture they emerge from while simultaneously reinforcing the source. Culture is a groundbreaking work that contextualizes mythology and proposes that myths are alive, dynamic, shaped by perception and the times one lives in.
The Ruler’s Gaze by Arvind Sharma
Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) is a seminal work in the field of postcolonial culture studies. It critiqued Western scholarship about the Eastern world for its patronizing attitude and tendency to view it as exotic, backward and uncivilized. Arvind Sharma, longstanding professor of comparative religion at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, now takes up the Palestinian academic’s groundbreaking ideas – originally put forth predominantly in a Middle Eastern context – and tests them against Indian material. He explores in an Indian context Said’s contention that the relationship between knowledge and power is central to the way the West depicts the non-West. Scholarly and accessible, The Ruler’s Gaze throws fresh light on Indian colonial history through a Saidian lens.
Shiva to Shankara by Devdutt Pattanaik
We live in times where people have extreme views. On the one hand, there are scholars who describe Shiva’s linga literally as a phallus, and see all metaphoric meaning as embarrassed apology of the uneducated. On the other hand, we have puritanical Hindus who want to strip the Shiva linga of all sexual meaning and sanitize Shiva’s lore. In both cases, a symbol is being reduced to a sign. In Shiva to Shankara, Devdutt Pattanaik, India’s leading mythologist, seeks to bridge the gap. As he explores the layers of meanings embedded in Shiva’s linga, we discover why and how the Goddess transforms Shiva, the hermit, into Shankara, the householder.
Pathways to Greatness by P.J. Abdul Kalam
What makes a nation great? Is it simply economic prosperity and military strength — or something more? What is it that we as a nation require to make that last-mile journey to what all the plans, investments and projects are meant to lead up to? It is only a matter of time before India is termed economically developed. But a nation has to learn to survive in tough times too. And for that what is most important is national character, born out of the value systems that exist in our families, what schools teach students, and the culture of the nation. In Pathways to Greatness, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam shifts focus from the economic development of India by 2020 to the development of our strengths, offering key lessons that will help India withstand the forces of change. He identifies what makes a nation great and also compares the standards of living of other nations with India’s. He draws on his travels and his interactions with people. He evolves unique oaths for citizens from all walks of life to ensure that a better life becomes possible for everyone. In the book he completed just a few months before he passed away in 2015, one of India’s best-known icons writes how our nation can become a leader on the pathways to greatness.
The Ethical Doctor by Kamal Kumar Mahawar
In November 2014, eleven women died in a sterilization camp in Bilaspur. In June 2016, a seventy-five-year-old man from Kolkata was left to die because he could not afford a bribe of Rs 50 at a government hospital. That same month, a gang that duped women into selling their eggs for surrogacy was busted in Pune. The medical profession in India is plagued by scams and malpractices: poor health care, commissions from needless treatments and tests, exploitative drug companies. How then do patients trust doctors, hospitals or medications? And how does a doctor work effectively and honestly in a deeply troubled system? Dr Kamal Kumar Mahawar examines the roles of the government and the judiciary, and policy-making in medicine. He explores how the Indian Medical Association’s code of ethics are out of sync with modern times. Analysing the connections between power and knowledge and exposing the dangerous ways in which they play out in medicine, the book asks an all-important question: is it possible to be an ethical doctor today?
A Feast of Vultures by Josy Joseph
This book is a sneak preview of those searches, the middlemen who do those jobs, and the many opportunities that the fast-growing economy offers.’ Josy Joseph draws upon two decades as an investigative journalist to expose a problem so pervasive that we do not have the words to speak of it. The story is big: that of treacherous business rivalries, of how some industrial houses practically own the country, of the shadowy men who run the nation’s politics. The story is small: a village needs a road and a hospital, a graveyard needs a wall, people need toilets. A Feast of Vultures is an unprecedented, multiple-level inquiry into modern India, and the picture it reveals is both explosive and frightening. Within these covers is unimpeachable evidence against some of the country’s biggest business houses and political figures, and the reopening of major scandals that have shaped its political narratives. Through hard-nosed investigations and the meticulous gathering of documentary evidence, Joseph clinically examines and irrefutably documents the non-reportable. It is a troubling narrative, but also a call to action and a cry for change. A tour de force through the wildly beating heart of post-socialist India, the book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the large, unwieldy truth about this nation.
The Good Indian’s Guide to Queue-Jumping by Raghunathan
A wise man once said that half of life is showing up — and the other half is waiting in line. In a nation of a billion people, there’s no escaping queues. We find ourselves in one every day — whether to board a flight, for a darshan at Tirupati or, if we are less fortunate, to fetch water from municipal taps. We no longer wait for years for a Fiat car or a rotary-dial phone, but there are still queues that may last days, like those for school admissions. And then there are the virtual ones at call centres in which there’s no knowing when we will make contact with a human. So if you can’t escape ’em, can you beat ’em? Mercifully, yes. And, if so, how can you jump queues better? Which excuse works like a charm? How should you backtrack if someone objects? Does it help to make eye contact? Are we generally accommodating of queue-jumpers and why? More importantly, what does queue-jumping say about us as a people? Does it mean we lack a sense of fairness and basic concern for others? These are questions of everyday survival that bestselling author V. Raghunathan first threw up in Games Indians Play and now takes up at length in The Good Indian’s Guide to Queue-Jumping.
More News Is Good News by NDTV
In 1995, it aired India’s first-ever private news broadcast, with Prannoy Roy’s announcement – ‘It’s eight o’clock and this is The News Tonight coming to you live’ – marking a paradigm shift in news media in the country. It then went on to become an independent broadcaster in 2003.For over twenty-five years, the name NDTV has been synonymous with news and credible reporting in India. It is a pioneer in Indian TV journalism, breaking new ground and creating a whole industry. More News Is Good News records this phenomenal journey through the experiences of reporters, anchors, editors, camerapersons and producers, many of whom are now household names, including Prannoy Roy, Vikram Chandra, Ravish Kumar, Barkha Dutt, Sonia Singh, Sreenivasan Jain, Vishnu Som, Nidhi Razdan, Maya Mirchandani, Rajdeep Sardesai and Shekhar Gupta, among others. In the process, it provides a ringside view of the unshackling of the economy and the media, the dilemmas involved in reporting wars and natural disasters, the frontlines and the fault lines that defined the country, news coverage that morphed into nationwide public campaigns and altered the way we respond to the world around us.In the telling of these stories which reflect the countless realities of a changing nation, More News Is Good News also charts the fascinating evolution of news television in independent India over a quarter century.
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Theatres of Democracy by Chandan Gowda
Unburdened by partisanship or political correctness, these essays by Shiv Visvanathan, one of India’s foremost public intellectuals, chronicle the democratic ferment and political upheavals in contemporary India. Written over the last twenty years, they engage with issues as diverse as the new dimensions of violence, the value of dissent, the creativity in popular culture and the pathologies of nationalism and religious fundamentalism. Always alert to nuance, Visvanathan offers novel portraits of politicians, intellectuals, and sport and film personalities. Combining wit, irony and analytical brilliance, the writings collected in Theatres of Democracy show a commitment to thinking creatively about India.
There are many legends around the founding of Ahmedabad. One has it that some time in 1411 AD, a dog was looking for easy prey on the banks of the Sabarmati when a hare attacked him and drove him away. Sultan Ahmed Shah witnessed the scene and, impressed by the hare’s spirit, decided to build a city right there. Now, six hundred years later, Ahmedabad is a city at the intersection of the old and the new. Centuries-old dargahs and havelis stand alongside high-rises and glitzy shopping malls. Once known for its textile mills, it is now one of the world’s fastest developing cities. But while the fortifications of the walled city crumbled long ago, divisions between its varied groups have come to the fore, pulling them apart. Esther David, a member of Ahmedabad’s small Bene Israel Jewish community, is a storehouse of city stories. In Ahmedabad: City with a Past, she takes the reader on an intimate rickshaw ride through a city full of life and wondrous contradictions.
#NotAllMen are the problem. #NotAllWomen are victims. But there’s enough of both to warrant this book. Most women today are opting for careers over jobs, even if it requires them to play multiple roles with superhuman abilities. Meanwhile, men, at home and at work, struggle to come to terms with their changing priorities. And therein lies the chasm between male expectations and female ambition. As Dame Julia Walsh says in the television miniseries The Honourable Woman, ‘In a room full of pussies, I’m the only one with a vagina.’ Own It tells women’s stories: the ugly, the happy, the rarely discussed, the unacknowledged, the whispered, the denied. Close to two hundred Indian women leaders across industries discuss the challenges they face in the Indian workplace and at home. Heads of companies, human resource directors and senior managers talk about issues like pay parity, harassment, promotion and maternity policies. Why is the workplace agenda skewed against women and what are their own demons that keep them from breaking the glass ceiling? Thought-provoking and controversial, Own It takes the challenges that confront women in the workplace head-on – without discounting the complexities of being a woman in an Indian home.
Woodsmoke and Leafcups by Madhu Ramnath
Madhu Ramnath spent thirty years with the Durwa peoples in Bastar. What began as impulsive travel to a swathe of land that had no roads criss-crossing it soon turned into a homecoming: each stint in the forest compelled him to return and, finally, to stay. Over the years he became a student of Durwa life, living in the forest, tending cattle, working a hill-slope in the village. He immersed himself in the Durwa world while indulging his passion for devising a botanical classification that would be accessible to a layperson. Woodsmoke and Leafcups is a first-hand account of life in Bastar: the routines of communal life and the interactions of the Durwas with the State machinery. He writes of a culture where energy and laughter are currency, although of no value to anyone else. He draws a portrait of friends and teachers, threats and ways of eliding them, and the lure of politics for those long indifferent to it. At a time when ‘there are few places in which to lose oneself’, Ramnath writes of a people and a place that exist outside, sometimes counter to, known narratives.
Advantage India by Srijan Pal Singh
On the way from Delhi to Jaunpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh is the dusty town of Badshahpur. Even in this nondescript settlement, people receive money via mobile transfer from family members working in distant cities. There are computer training centres offering diploma courses in Bhojpuri, Hindi and English. Here is an example of India’s numerous remote towns that have skipped the stage of basic learning and landed straight into digital literacy as they strive to keep up with the times. In his last book, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, writing with Srijan Pal Singh, draws upon examples ranging from entrepreneurship in places like Badshahpur to a sophisticated missile programme like Agni to show how it can be ‘Advantage India’ in the final lap of the journey to 2020–the landmark year by which he had envisioned the country could transform into an economic power. How can the new initiatives–such as Make in India, Swachh Bharat, smart cities and skill development for the youth–be used to unleash the country’s vast potential? Advantage India offers the answer–a movement driven by every home and school to educate the new generation and give a fresh meaning to citizenship.
Susan Sontag, one of the most internationally renowned and controversial intellectuals of the latter half of the twentieth century, still provokes. In 1978 Jonathan Cott, a founding contributing editor of Rolling Stone magazine, interviewed Sontag first in Paris and later in New York. Only a third of their twelve hours of discussion ever made it to print. Now, more than three decades later, Yale University Press is proud to publish the entire transcript of Sontag’s remarkable conversation, accompanied by Cott’s preface and recollections. Sontag’s musings and observations reveal the passionate engagement and breadth of her critical intelligence and curiosities at a moment when she was at the peak of her powers. Nearly a decade after her death, these hours of conversation offer a revelatory and indispensable look at the self-described ‘besotted aesthete’ and ‘obsessed moralist’.
Chillies and Porridge by Mita Kapur
Essential. Evocative. Addictive. The experience of food can mean many things to many people. Whether it’s carrying a chilli around to dinner parties in the UK or finding out what it really means to be a vegetarian in a carnivorous world, whether it’s exploring the junk food revolution in India or discovering the art of slow cooking, this full-bodied collection of food writing will take you back to the kitchens of your childhood, and far out to realms of imagined flavours and sensory excitement. A joyous mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar, the home-grown and the street-born, Chillies and Porridge is a celebration of that most vital ingredient of life: food.Features essays by Anita Nair, Avtar Singh, Bachi Karkaria, Bulbul Sharma, Chitrita Banerji, Sumana-Jayaditya-Bikramjit, Floyd Cardoz, Janice Pariat, Jerome Marrel, Jhampan Mookerjee, Kai Friese, Karthika Nair, Naintara M. Oberoi, Niloufer Ichaporia King, Mamang Dai, Manu Chandra, Nilanjana S. Roy, Rocky and Mayur, Saleem Kidwai, Sidin Vadukut, Srinath Perur, Tara Deshpande and Wendell Rodricks.
Beyond the Call of Duty by Raghunathan
The 200-year British presence in India left behind a mixed legacy. We think of the colonial rulers as people who plundered and impoverished our land. Lost in that narrative is the work of the scores of well-intentioned individuals who played a part in shaping modern India. Did you know, for instance, that as far back as the 1850s, a British engineer had chalked out a plan to link all the major rivers of India? Or that tea did not grow in Darjeeling until an English surgeon planted a smuggled Chinese plant in his backyard in the hills? Or that there was an East India Company polyglot who mastered Sanskrit, translated Kalidasa’s works into English and then set up the Asiatic Society? Beyond the Call of Duty celebrates a dozen of these British gentlemen who far exceeded their job descriptions, devoting their lives to the greater good of an adopted country — men whose work continues to benefit India. They may not have had history books eulogizing them, but they exemplify a work ethic that is rare and relevant today. And therein lies the need to revive these stories — so that we may draw lessons from every quarter of our past to sculpt a better future.
Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India by Akshaya Mukul
In the early 1920s, Jaydayal Goyandka and Hanuman Prasad Poddar, two Marwari businessmen-turned-spiritualists, set up the Gita Press and Kalyan magazine. As of early 2014, Gita Press had sold close to 72 million copies of the Gita, 70 million copies of Tulsidas’s works and 19 million copies of scriptures like the Puranas and Upanishads. And while most other journals of the period, whether religious, literary or political, survive only in press archives, Kalyan now has a circulation of over 200,000, and its English counterpart, Kalyana-Kalpataru, of over 100,000.Gita Press created an empire that spoke in a militant Hindu nationalist voice and imagined a quantifiable, reward-based piety. Almost every notable leader and prominent voice, including Mahatma Gandhi, was roped in to speak for the cause. Cow slaughter, Hindi as national language and the rejection of Hindustani, the Hindu Code Bill, the creation of Pakistan, India’s secular Constitution: Kalyan and Kalyana-Kalpataru were the spokespersons of the Hindu position on these and other matters. The ideas articulated by Gita Press and its publications played a critical role in the formation of a Hindu political consciousness, indeed a Hindu public sphere. This history provides new insights into the complicated and contested rise to political pre-eminence of the Hindu Right. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India is an original, eminently readable and deeply researched account of one of the most influential publishing enterprises in the history of modern India. Featuring an extraordinary cast of characters – buccaneering entrepreneurs and hustling editors, nationalist ideologues and religious fanatics – this is essential (and exciting) reading for our times.
Himalaya Bound by Michael Benanav
For forty-four days, Michael Benanav, an American writer and freelance photographer for The New York Times, lived and travelled with the Van Gujjars, a forest-dwelling tribe of nomadic buffalo herders in northern India, on their annual spring migration to the Himalayas. He went to document their traditional way of life, but there was trouble on the trail: the Uttarakhand forest department threatened to block nomadic families, whose ancestral summer meadows are within Govind National Park, from the pastures they rely on for the survival of their herds. A fascinating account of life on the road with nomads, this book tells the story of one family’s quest to save its buffaloes, and itself. More than a rare glimpse into the hidden world of a tribe of vegetarian Muslims who risk their lives for their animals, this is an intimate picture of the hopes, fears, hardships and joys of people who wonder if there’s still a place for them on this planet. It’s an important exploration of the relationship between humankind and wild lands – and a tale of friendship that bridges two very different cultures.
Naturally: Tread Softly on the Planet is a survival guide for life on Earth. It is about what we are and how we got here, about what we have been doing and where do we go from here. Naturally articulates a living scheme based on the way nature works without any waste. It sets the direction by placing human interventions in the matrix of life on Earth and looks for enlightened solutions on the ground that are not injurious to our world. Drawing examples from far and near, it gathers wisdom to walk in symbiosis with the planet.
The View from Kollam by C Balagopal
In his debut book, On a Clear Day You Can See India, C. Balagopal gave an anecdotal account of his early years as a young IAS officer in Manipur. While the stories were about ordinary people, often amusing and sometimes sombre, they also dealt with the underlying issues of identity in the North East. In The View from Kollam, Balagopal continues to regale us with his skills as a raconteur, with his ability to see a story even in the most mundane occurrences in a small district office. He recounts stories that dwell on the events that defined his work as a district official in Kollam, Kerala, in the early 1980s. Amid the rough and tumble of daily work, there are engrossing tales that illustrate the skill, dexterity and sincerity that a district official needs to overcome hurdles and keep the administration moving.What shines through in this worm’s-eye view of administration is Balagopal’s earnest belief that given the space for original thought and action, it is the district that holds the key to improving governance in a large and diverse country like India.
Cold War in the Islamic World by Dilip Hiro
For four decades Saudi Arabia and Iran have vied for influence in the Muslim world. At the heart of this ongoing Cold War between Riyadh and Tehran lie the Sunni-Shia divide, and the two countries’ intertwined histories. Saudis see this as a conflict between Sunnis and Shia; Iran’s ruling clerics view it as one between their own Islamic Republic and an illegitimate monarchy. This foundational schism has played out in a geopolitical competition for dominance in the region: Iran has expanded its influence in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, while Saudi Arabia’s hyperactive crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, has intervened in Yemen, isolated Qatar and destabilized Lebanon. Dilip Hiro examines the toxic rivalry between the two countries, tracing its roots and asking whether this Islamic Cold War is likely to end any time soon.
Bharat Vikhandan by Rajiv Malhotra
This book examines the origins of the famous Dravidian movement that shaped the vast culture of our nation, while also focusing on the Dalit Identity and its current situation. It has been also noted that the book predominantly concentrates on the subordination, surveillance and subversion of Independent India. Bharat Vikhandan makes for a powerful read while closely observing the changing trends in modern India and questioning the reasons behind its growth and eventual dilution. It makes for an eye-opener and is a wakeup call to the nation as whole, forcing to rethink our priorities and allegiances. It has been praised for its historiographical and confrontational content while refusing to shy away from hard truths that need to be discussed. This book was published by Harper Hindi in 2014 and is available in paperback.
In a State of Violent Peace by Meera Khanna
Literature on Kashmir tends to focus on politics, the army, border skirmishes, on India and Pakistan. The very real human beings – whose lives the alternately raging and simmering conflict has an inexorable hold on – are often relegated to the background. In a State of Violent Peace is an attempt to humanize the conflict through lived experience and it provides an insight into the complex situation in Jammu and Kashmir. There are the stories of Surayya Ali Mattoo and Khaleda Begum, the daughters of Sheikh Abdullah; Krishna Misri, who was literally hounded out of Kashmir by militants; writer and academic Neerja Mattoo, who chose to stay on in Kashmir despite the dangers; Bilal, a former militant; Asmat, the wife of a militant; Brig. Sher Jung Bahadur of the Battle of Skardu; Naseer Ahmed Shah and Girija Dhar who braved threats and attempts on their lives by militants, and several others. These are tales of compassion, courage, and faith in Kashmiriyat to counter the broader focus of conflict reportage. The shifting perspectives and contradictory facts in these histories assert that there is no singular narrative for the people of Kashmir.
Baby Makers by Gita Aravamudan
The baby makers are many. The couples who supply the genetic material, the embryologists who create test-tube babies, the gynaecologists who insert embryos into wombs and deliver the babies and, most importantly, the surrogates themselves. Then there are the agents who source the surrogates, organize fertility tourism packages and even arrange for babies to be ordered over the Internet using frozen genetic material supplied by the intending parents. Eggs, sperm and viable embryos can be bought and sold like any commodity. The terrain is complex, there are thorny ethical issues involved and very delicate emotional ones too. This is a book about surrogacy in India and how it transformed itself from a marginalized and socially unacceptable procedure into a multimillion-dollar industry. It is a non-judgemental, open-minded inquiry into surrogacy laws (rather, the lack of them) and the many cogs in the process. Baby Makers uses rigorous journalistic research and compelling personal narratives to paint a picture that is as fascinating as it is frightening.
Indians in a Globalizing World by Dilip Hiro
Ever since the dramatic airlifting of all 67 tonnes of India’s gold from the Reserve Bank of India to the vaults of British and Swiss banks in May 1991 as collateral for a $2.2 billion emergency loan, India has never been the same. The New Economic Policy (NEP), which followed two months later and has been pursued with varying degrees of commitment by later governments, heralded a new chapter in India’s history. In Indians in a Globalizing World, acclaimed journalist and historian Dilip Hiro shows that the redistribution of the extra wealth created by the spurt in growth caused by economic liberalization has been skewed, grossly favouring those who are already well off. The author of Inside India Today – a modern classic described as ‘the best book on India’ by the Guardian – Hiro seamlessly combines research with grassroots reporting. In his riveting narrative, he moves from glitzy office tower blocks and prohibitively expensive apartments in the gated enclaves of Gurgaon – the Poster City of New India – to the embattled Maoist stronghold of Dantewada in Chhattisgarh. He is as much at ease narrating the tales of the great and good in California’s Silicon Valley as he is in outlining the lifestyle of the residents of Delhi’s New Seelampur or Dehradun’s Bindal River slum. Above all, he shows how life in rural India, home to seven out of ten Indians, has been affected by globalization. Only a tiny minority of villages near urban centres have prospered because of rapid urbanization while the vast majority have stagnated or fallen behind. Finally, Indians in a Globalizing World explains how accelerated urbanization and financial globalization have led to an explosive growth in corruption which emerged as the primary concern of voters in the 2014 general election.
The New Indian Middle Class by Pavan K. Varma
In the era of the global middle class revolution, will the Indian counterpart emerge as a credible game changer? Does it have a wide and inclusive agenda, strong organization, effective leadership and an alternative vision that shows up political discrimination? Or will it be mere cannon fodder for calculating, manipulative, cynical politicians? In this important and timely book, Pavan K. Varma – the most respected analyst of the middle class in India – looks at the 2014 elections as a watershed in the evolution of this class. Crucially, he argues that what the middle class does now and the choices it makes will shape the future of India, for better or for worse.
Byculla to Bangkok by Hussain Zaidi
The underworld has new faces, working for and against Dawood Ibrahim, the shadowy, manipulative figure who pulls its strings. Dawood’s own deputy-turned-arch rival Chhota Rajan, thug-turned-politician Arun Gawli, Amar (Raavan) Naik and his engineer brother Ashwin Naik, and a host of other characters, big and small, walk the pages of this compelling history of the Maharashtrian mobsters who were once dubbed ‘amchi muley'(our boys) by former Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray. Also included in this gripping read are fascinating stories of the famous — and infamous — policemen and ‘encounter specialists’ who took on the gangs with great success and not many scruples.
Sudhakar Ram, head of IT firm Mastek, talks about how to run companies better, make our personal lives more fulfilling and transform the planet into a happier place We live in an era of global warming, unsustainable lifestyles and profit-driven corporate behemoths that don’t care to engage with their employees. Sudhakar Ram, himself the captain of a multinational IT firm, identifies these as products of the Industrial Age. The only way out of this mess is what he envisions as the ‘Connected Age’. Here, ‘connected’ is used not in the sense of telecommunication but in the sense of governments being more in touch with the people and the ecology, and people in turn being more in touch with their own selves and each other. Drawing on the ideas of several modern thinkers – including path-breaking architects, environmentalists, management gurus and futurists – Sudhakar Ram calls for dramatic changes in the way we run our lives, our companies and our planet itself so we can leave behind a better world for future generations.
An extraordinary account of ordinary people in troubled times In 2001, a calamitous earthquake struck Gujarat. A year later came the kind of communal carnage the nation had not seen since the Partition. For Robin David, then an assistant editor with the Times of India, the two events engendered a tectonic shift in his own life. The earthquake left deep cracks in his ancestral home, while the riots undermined all the certainties of life, making it impossible to walk through hitherto familiar neighborhoods. A decade later, the wounds have not healed. At a time when the memory of the riots has already faded in the minds of many, City of Fear documents the varied forms of fear that people in Gujarat experienced during that period, especially those of the author’s own Indian Jewish Bene Israeli family.
ISIS by Jessica & Berger Stern
ISIS: The State of Terror delves into the ‘ghoulish pornography’ of pro-jihadi videos, the seductive appeal of ‘jihadi chic’ and the startling effectiveness of the Islamic State’s use of social media as a means of luring and recruiting citizens from countries such as the United States, Great Britain, and France—using recent examples such as Douglas McCain, the American citizen from Minnesota who joined ISIS and died in combat fighting on the side of the Islamic State. Although the picture Stern and Berger paint is bleak, ‘State of Terror’ also offers well-informed thoughts on potential government responses to ISIS – most importantly, emphasizing that we must alter our present conceptions of terrorism and react to the rapidly changing jihadi landscape, both online and off, as quickly as the terrorists do. ISIS: The State of Terror’is not only a compelling account of the evolution of a terrorist organization but also a necessary book that attempts to answer the question of what our next move – as a country, as a government, as the world – should be.
Farewell Kabul by Christina Lamb
Farewell Kabul tells how success was turned into defeat in the longest war fought by the United States in its history and by Britain since the Hundred Years War. It has been a fiasco which has left Afghanistan still one of the poorest nations on earth, the Taliban undefeated, and nuclear-armed Pakistan perhaps the most dangerous place on earth. With unparalleled access to all key decision-makers in Afghanistan, Pakistan, London and Washington, from heads of state and generals as well as soldiers on the ground, Farewell Kabul tells how this happened.
From Russia With Blood by Heidi Blake
In From Russia With Blood, multi-award-winning investigative journalist Heidi Blake unflinchingly documents the growing web of Russian-linked deaths on British and American soil, tracking the men who lived and died in the Kremlin’s crosshairs from London’s high-end night clubs to Miami’s million-dollar hideouts, and following a trail of increasingly savage attacks onto the streets of Salisbury, where the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned with a deadly nerve agent in 2018. Working with bags of crime scene evidence, hundreds of thousands of pages of exclusive documents, surveillance footage, classified intelligence briefings, forensically restored phones and computers, and hundreds of insider interviews, Blake bravely exposes how Russia’s killing campaign fits into Putin’s pursuit of global dominance – and why Western governments have failed time and again to stop the bloodshed.
For The Record by David Cameron
What was it like to lead the Conservative Party back to power and form a coalition government? How does a Prime Minister turn around an economy, handle a migration crisis and respond to a rapidly changing Europe? Why call a referendum on Britain’s EU membership? To find out…
A Matter Of Trust by Meenakshi Ahamed
In A Matter of Trust, author Meenakshi Ahamed reveals the personal prejudices and insecurities of the leaders, and the political imperatives, that so often cast a shadow over their relationship. The cycle began with India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who viewed Americans as naive and insular, but it was under Indira Gandhi that India entered the darkest phase of its relations with the US. President Truman decided Nehru was a communist, and the White House tapes reveal Nixon’s hatred towards Mrs Gandhi and Indians. It was only after India undertook major economic reforms in the 1990s that the relationship improved. The transformation occurred when President George W. Bush signed the historic nuclear deal in 2008 with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Meenakshi Ahamed draws on a unique trove of presidential papers, newly declassified documents, memoirs and interviews with officials directly involved in events on both sides to put together this illuminating account of their relationship that has far-reaching implications for the changing global political landscape.
The Ultimate Goal by Vikram Sood
In The Ultimate Goal, Vikram Sood, former chief of India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), explains ‘the narrative’ and how a country’s ability to construct, sustain and control narratives, at home and abroad, enhances its strength and position. Intelligence agencies invariably play a critical role in this, an often-indispensable tool of statecraft. A ‘narrative’ may not necessarily be based on truth, but it does need to be plausible, have a meaning and create a desired perception. During most of the twentieth century, intelligence agencies helped shape narratives favourable to their countries’ agendas through literature, history, drama, art, music and cinema. Today, social media has become crucial to manipulating, countering or disrupting narratives, with its ability to spread fake news disinformation, and provoke reactions.
Inside the Tablighi Jamaat by Ziya Us Salam
Not much is known about what is arguably the world’s, and certainly India’s, largest Islamic organization — the Tablighi Jamaat. From poverty-stricken peasants of Bihar to dairy farmers of Mewat, its members attend three-day retreats in local mosques, and at times, the Markaz in Delhi. They come of their own free will, at their own expense. The Tabligh tells its members to look within, that life is about internal cleansing with regular prayer that paves the path to spiritual uplift. Unlike other Islamic organizations that balance the here and the hereafter, the Tabligh is concerned only about ‘matters beyond the sky and under the earth’. Its steadfast refusal to take a political stand has stood it in good stead. It is the ‘ideal Muslim organization’ for some — focused solely on introspection in isolation.
Now, for the first time, author Ziya Us Salam provides an inside view of the organization that unwittingly became a ‘hotspot’ during the novel coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
In 2019, a high-voltage political drama unfolded over thirty-five days between the declaration of the Maharashtra assembly election results and the formation of the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress government in the state. The startling events that had the entire country glued to television screens culminated in the swearing in of Uddhav Thackeray as chief minister on 28 November 2019. This book is a blow-by-blow account of the ups and downs that took place during those thirty-five days that baffled even hardcore political pundits. The goings-on unmasked almost all parties and politicians of the state and changed Maharashtra’s politics forever. With exclusive reportage and interviews from close observers of the whole drama, 35 Days goes behind the scenes to reconstruct what took place during the Maharashtra elections 2019.
The Gated Republic by Shankkar Aiyar
Seventy years since it became a republic, India has come a long way. But it is still failing on some key fronts. Piped drinking water for all continues to be a pipe dream; homes and businesses are haunted by power outages; the lack of proper primary health care renders the poorest more vulnerable; millions of children coming out of schools lack rudimentary skills; and the security of lives and enterprises, a source of great anxiety, depends on private contractors. Indians are seceding from dependence on the government for these most basic of services and are investing in the pay-and-plug economy. They have internalized the incapacity of the state to deliver these and are opting for private providers despite the costs. But can India sustain private republics amidst public failures in a landscape scarred by social and economic fault lines? What are the possible solutions? Can government reinvent itself? Find out in…
China Ascendant by Harsh V. Pant
China is on the cusp of becoming a superpower. The transformation of Beijing’s regional and global position over the last three and a half decades has received extensive attention from experts and opinion- and decision-makers across the world. The responses of the states in the Indo-Pacific and beyond to China’s rise is currently a mixture of trepidation, confrontation and cooperation. China Ascendant is an eclectic collection of articles by some of the finest minds in India and seeks to capture the pattern and complexities of Beijing’s engagement with the world and the states around its rim-land. In these essays are insightful analyses on several facets of Chinese power — economic, military, technological and political — and they provide a peroration on China’s societal trends, environmental profile, energy needs, media strategy and cultural influences.
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