From the temples of Angkor Wat and Borobudur to images of Ganesh and references to the Ramayana, anyone who visits Southeast Asia cannot fail to be struck by the influence of centuries-old Indian culture, an influence that seems more profound and deeply rooted than that of China. Yet in today’s Southeast Asia, the situation is…
In Maria, Just Maria, a woman born in the dense humidity of Kerala, with talking pets and petty saints as her friends, finds herself in a psychiatric hospital. The novel steps backwards, beginning with Maria as a recently divorced woman searching her memories for clues that might explain why she ended up in a hospital….
While not exactly lost to history, Mughal Princess Gulbadan (with an extensive Wikipedia page and a biography by the prolific Rumer Godden), is not nearly as well-known as her father Babur, (half) brother Humayun and nephew Akbar nor even Nur Jahan, the subject of self-styled feminist historian Ruby Lal’s previous book. But Gulbadan, uniquely among Mughal…
The annual Jaipur Literature Festival is styled as “the greatest literary show on Earth”. For first-timers, the upbeat experience is akin to that of being at the Oscars (had one been at the Oscars), starstruck readers up close and personal with a veritable who’s who of the Indian and Anglophone publishing industry. For readers who…
When Mark Twain interviewed the leader of the Mormon Church, Brigham Young, in 1861, he found the religious patriarch mightily preoccupied with the problems of equal treatment for his 56 wives. Young told Twain of gifting a handkerchief or a fan to one woman; before long, all the other wives clamored for similar attentions. Polygamy’s…
In an interview with Pierre Andre Boutang in 1989, Satyajit Ray, the Academy Award winning director, declared that India has “a fairly backward audience” adding that this “unsophisticated audience” is largely “exposed to the commercial Hindi cinema, more than anything else.” In Rays’ account, the exposure to commercial Hindi cinema is the cause of Indian audiences’…
Who are the Bene Israel Jews of India? Where did they come from? How did they survive in India? Sweet Malida is a moving, multi-layered, richly sensory and informative collection of poems and short prose inspired by this ancient community to which the poet herself belongs.
Kashmir has always been the point of connection between South Asia, Central Asia and Xinjiang. Winding their way through the mighty Himalaya, Pamir and Karakoram Mountain ranges, traders, travelers and officials created a series of close historic economic, cultural and political ties that have bound the region together.
The East India Company was a unique entity in world history: More than just a commercial enterprise, the Company tried to act as its own government. Not many at the time–whether legislators or company officials in London, and certainly not Indian people—though this was a great idea.
One of the objectives of the historians of the formerly colonized world is to rewrite history from the perspective of the colonized. Yet, such historians have arguably created a historiographic tradition that is lopsided. These are at best works that expose the unfair and oppressive means through which the European powers came to power and…
This large photobook offers a detailed visual portrayal of the ecology, history, and cultural diversity of the largest of India’s seven North Eastern states. Mountains of Dawn: A Portrait of Arunachal Pradesh was originally published in 2009; this updated 2023 edition includes over 100 photos. The visual portrayal of the land, “a belt of green…
Nepal’s tumultuous political history is the focus of Lok Raj Baral’s latest book, Nepal: From Monarchy to Republic, which charts the country’s journey from its political unification in 1769 to its present status as a federal democratic republic. The veteran author and political scientist charts the seismic shifts that have fundamentally changed Nepal’s politics, society…
“Perhaps you could call it a stroke of karmic good fortune that I was able to experience a once-in-a-century flood only three and a half months after moving to Chennai.” So opens Yūka Ishii’s The Mud of a Century, winner of the 2017 Akutagawa Prize. The novella’s narrator, a Japanese woman in her mid-late twenties,…
In December 1992, Hindu nationalists seize the Babri Masjid mosque and tear it down, proclaiming their wish to build a Hindu temple in its stead. The brazen act of destruction sparks riots throughout the country, particularly in Mumbai, where Muslims and Hindus clash in the streets. An estimated nine hundred people, both Muslim and Hindu,…
Ayurveda enjoys a growing global appeal, and is often touted as ‘true’ and ‘time-tested’ by contemporary political actors, governments, social groups, practitioners and NGOs in India. With “indigenous” healing systems enjoying increasing state support today, an examination of the socio-political aspects of medicine, in particular Ayurveda, and its role in nation-building is critically important.