The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset


Philippa Levine - 2007
    By contrast, this book examines the effects of the empire on men, women and children across the globe: both those under imperial rule and those who implemented it. Looking beyond politics and diplomacy, Philippa Levine combines a traditional approach to colonial history with an investigation of the experience of living within the empire.Spanning the period from Cromwell's rule to decolonization in the late twentieth century, and including an extensive chronology for ease of reference, Levine considers the impact of British rule for people in Africa, India and Australia, as well as for the English rulers, and for the Welsh, Scots and Irish who were subject to 'internal colonialism' under the English yoke. Imperialism often led to serious unrest; Levine examines the cruel side of imperialism's purportedly 'civilizing' mission unflinchingly.

The Glass Palace


Amitav Ghosh - 2000
    When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her. The struggles that have made Burma, India, and Malaya the places they are today are illuminated in this wonderful novel by the writer Chitra Divakaruni calls “a master storyteller.”

Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World


Kumari Jayawardena - 1982
    Jayawardena presents a feminism that didn’t originate as an ideology of the West to be adopted by women in the Third World, but that instead erupted from the specific needs and struggles of women fighting against colonial power, for education or the vote, for safety, and against poverty and inequality. This readable and well-researched survey highlights the role of women in the national liberation and revolutionary movements of these countries.From the Trade Paperback edition.

In the Light of What We Know


Zia Haider Rahman - 2014
    Confronting the disheveled figure of a South Asian male carrying a backpack, the banker recognizes a long-lost college friend, a mathematics prodigy who disappeared many years earlier under mysterious circumstances. The friend has resurfaced with a confession of unsettling power.Zia Haider Rahman takes us on a journey of exhilarating scope, ranging over Kabul, London, New York, Islamabad, Oxford, and Princeton and dealing with love, belonging, finance, science, and war. Its framework is an age-old story: the friendship of two men and the betrayal of one by the other, both of them desperate in their different ways to climb clear of their wrong beginnings. Set against the breaking of nations and beneath the clouds of economic recession, the novel chronicles the lives of people carrying unshakable legacies of class, culture, and faith as they struggle to tame their futures. In the Light of What We Know is by turns tender, intimate, and panoramic, telescoping the great upheavals of our young century into a first novel of rare ambition and profundity.

The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century


Gerald Horne - 2020
    Yet in the 1520s, the Spanish, from their imperial perch in Santo Domingo, had already brought enslaved Africans to what was to become South Carolina. The enslaved people here quickly defected to local Indigenous populations and compelled their captors to flee.The Dawning of the Apocalypse is a riveting revision of the “creation myth” of settler colonialism and how the United States was formed. Here, Gerald Horne argues forcefully that, in order to understand the arrival of colonists from the British Isles in the early 17th century, one must first understand the “long 16th century”—from 1492 until the arrival of settlers in Virginia in 1607.During this prolonged century, Horne contends, “whiteness” morphed into “white supremacy.” That allowed England to co-opt not only religious minorities but also various nationalities throughout Europe, forging a muscular bloc that was needed to confront rambunctious Indigenes and Africans.In retelling the bloodthirsty story of the invasion of the Americas, Horne recounts how the fierce resistance by Africans and their Indigenous allies weakened Spain and enabled London to dispatch settlers to Virginia in 1607. These settlers laid the groundwork for the British Empire and its "revolting spawn" that became the United States of America.

Liberty or Death: India's Journey to Independence and Division


Patrick French - 1997
    The greatest mass migration in history began, as Muslims fled north and Hindus fled south, over a million being massacred on the way. Britain's role as world power came to an end and the course of Asia's future was irrevocably set. Patrick French offers a reinterpretation of the events surrounding India's independence and partition, including the disastrous mistakes made by politicians and the bizarre reasoning behind many of their decisions. Exploring the interplay between characters such as Churchill, Mountbatten and Gandhi, it reveals a tale of idealism and manipulation, hope and tragedy. With sources ranging from newly declassified secret documents to the memories of refugees, Patrick French gives an account of an epic debacle, the impact of which reverberates across Asia to this day.

Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750 - 1850


Maya Jasanoff - 2005
    Jasanoff delves beneath the grand narratives of power, exploitation, and resistance to look at the British Empire through the eyes of the people caught up in it.Written and researched on four continents, Edge of Empire enters a world where people lived, loved, mingled, and identified with one another in ways richer and more complex than previous accounts have led us to believe were possible. And as this book demonstrates, traces of that world remain tangible—and topical—today. An innovative, persuasive, and provocative work of history.

If I Am Assassinated


Zulfikar Ali Bhutto - 1979
    Under trial for authorizing the murder of a political opponent, Bhutto writes a scathing denunciation of military dictatorship, rebuts the allegations against his government made in General Zia-ul-Haq's White Paper, and writes of his achievements.Bhutto predicts that, should his murder be permitted, the rivers of the Indus Valley will turn red with blood. Smuggled out of prison and published in neighbouring India, If I Am Assassinated continues to be the most controversial piece of political literature to have been written in Pakistan.

Black Skin, White Masks


Frantz Fanon - 1952
    Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today.

The Punjab Story


K.P.S. Gill - 2005
    Called Operation Bluestar, the historic and unprecedented event ended the growing spectre of terrorism perpetrated by the extremist Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers once and for all. But it left in its wake unsolved political questions that continued to threaten Punjab???s stability for years to come. How, in a brief span of three years, did India???s dynamic frontier state become a national problem? Who was to blame: the Central Government for allowing the crisis to drift despite warnings, or the long-drawn-out Akali agitation, or the notorious gang of militants who transformed a holy shrine into a sanctuary for terrorists?First published two months after Operation Bluestar, The Punjab Story pieces together the complex Punjab jigsaw through the eyes of some of India???s most eminent public figures and journalists. Writing with the passion and conviction of those who were involved with the drama, they present a wide-ranging perspective on the past, present and future of the Punjab tangle, and the truth of many of their conclusions having been borne out by time.

The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures


Bill Ashcroft - 1989
    This diverse and powerful body of literature has established a specific practice of post-colonial writing in cultures as various as India, Australia, the West Indies and Canada, and has challenged both the traditional canon and dominant ideas of literature and culture.The Empire Writes Back was the first major theoretical account of a wide range of post-colonial texts and their relation to the larger issues of post-colonial culture, and remains one of the most significant works published in this field. The authors, three leading figures in post-colonial studies, open up debates about the interrelationships of post-colonial literatures, investigate the powerful forces acting on language in the post-colonial text, and show how these texts constitute a radical critique of Eurocentric notions of literature and language.This book is brilliant not only for its incisive analysis, but for its accessibility for readers new to the field. Now with an additional chapter and an updated bibliography, The Empire Writes Back is essential for contemporary post-colonial studies.

The Making of Exile: Sindhi Hindus and the Partition of India


Nandita Bhavnani - 2014
    The Making of Exile hopes to redress this, by turning a spotlight on the specific narratives of the Sindhi Hindu community. Post-Partition, Sindh was relatively free of the inter-communal violence witnessed in Punjab, Bengal and other parts of north India. Consequently, in the first few months of Pakistan's early life, Sindhi Hindus did not migrate and remained the most significant minority in West Pakistan. Starting with the announcement of the Partition of India, The Making of Exile firmly traces the experiences of the community - that went from being a small but powerful minority to becoming the target of communal discrimination, practiced by both the state as well as sections of Pakistani society. This climate of communal antipathy threw into sharp relief the help and sympathy extended to Sindhi Hindus by other Pakistani Muslims, both Sindhi and muhajir. Finally, it was when they became victims of the Karachi pogrom of January 1948 that Sindhi Hindus felt compelled to migrate to India.The second segment of the book examines the resettlement of the community in India - their first brush with squalid refugee camps, their struggle to make sense of rapidly changing governmental policies and the spirit of determination and enterprise with which they rehabilitated themselves in their new homeland. Yet, not all Sindhi Hindus chose to migrate and the specific challenges of those who stayed on in Sindh, as well as the difficulties faced by Sindhi Muslims after the formation of Pakistan, have been sensitively documented in the final chapters. Weaving in a variety of narratives - diary entries and memoirs, press reportage, letters to editors and, advertisements, legends and poetry, dozens of interviews and a wealth of academic literature - Nandita Bhavnani's The Making of Exile is one of the most comprehensive and multifaceted studies of the Sindhi experience of Partition.

City of Sin and Splendour: Writings on Lahore


Bapsi Sidhwa - 2005
    It is also the city of poets, the city of love, longing, sin and splendour. This anthology brings together verse and prose: essays, stories, chronicles and profiles by people who have shared a relationship with Lahore. From the mystical poems of Madho Lal Hussain and Bulleh Shah to Iqbal’s ode and Faiz’s lament, from Maclagan and Aijazuddin’s historical treatises and Kipling’s ‘chronicles’ to Samina Quraeshi’s intricate portraits of the Old City and Irfan Husain’s delightful account of Lahori cuisine, City of Sin and Splendour is a marriage of the sacred and profane.While Pran Nevile paints a vivid sketch of Lahore’s Hira Mandi, Shahnaz Kureshy brings alive the legend of Anarkali and Khalid Hasan pays a tribute to the late ‘melody queen’ Nur Jehan. Mohsin Hamid’s essay on exile, Bina Shah’s account of the Karachi vs Lahore debate and Emma Duncan’s piece on elections are essential to the understanding of modern-day Lahore.But the city is also about Lahore remembered. Ved Mehta and Krishen Khanna write about ‘going back’ as Khushwant Singh writes about his pre-Partition years in Lahore. Sara Suleri’s memories of her hometown, the landscapes of Bapsi Sidhwa’s fiction, Khaled Ahmed’s homage to Intezar Hussain and Urvashi Butalia’s Ranamama are tributes to memory as much as they are tributes to remarkable lives and unforgettable places.Including fiction old and new—from Manto and Chughtai to Ashfaq Ahmed and Zulfikar Ghose; Saad Ashraf and Sorayya Khan to Mohsin Hamid and Rukhsana Ahmad, City of Sin and Splendour is a sumptuous collection that reflects the city it celebrates.

Hind Swaraj and Other Writings


Mahatma Gandhi - 1997
    This volume presents for the first time the original 1910 edition of this work, including Gandhi's Preface and Foreword, not found in other editions. This is the first fully annotated edition of the work, and the volume also includes Gandhi's correspondence with Tolstoy, Nehru and others. Anthony Parel's introduction sets the work in its historical and intellectual contexts. Short bibliographical notes on prominent figures mentioned in the text and a chronology of important events are also included as aids to the reader.

आज भी खरे हैं तालाब


Anupam Mishra - 1993
    The book focuses on how to save the ancient water resources which have been neglected for quite a long time in India. This book holds a place in the list of best thirty books that have been published so far. This book has been translated in almost all Indian languages and quite a few foreign languages as well. There also exists a Braille version of this book. When it got published, it attracted the attention of a huge chunk of people and around two lac copies of books are known to have reached people across various places. The book, basically a report based book talks about how every household in arid regions could have their own water harvesting facility, a technique that has been in place for centuries. His approach towards life was something we do not find easily in the modern times. Moreover, this book has no copyright and can be reprinted and republished as and when one wants to. It is intriguing as to how this book could have had such an impact on the public, and on the society as a whole.