He chronologically maps how Pakistan's spiritual soul has been trampled upon in its quest to gain acceptance as an 'ideological state'.'End of the Past' is written not so much as a nostalgic memoir as an analysis in the form of a narrative and a means of explaining the enigma that is Pakistan.Paracha looks at Pakistan's political, sporting and cultural pasts, hoping that future generations will learn from them and chart a brand new beginning for a country that he loves passionately. He pleads for a decisive end of the past so that a new and less tumultuous future can be envisioned and built.

    It examines areas like agricultural production and technology; trade in agricultural produce, conditions of the peasantry; zamindars; revenue grants and assignments; and the agrarian crisis of the Mughal Empire. The volume also provides information on land measurements; weights; coinages; revenue statistics; price movements; and the village community. Including a comprehensive bibliography, descriptive index, illustrations, and maps, this book is a compulsory read for students, teachers, and scholars of medieval India particularly those interested in agrarian systems.

    Defence, internal security and terrorism are important yet closely guarded issues. Even as outrage over safety of women and rising terror take centrestage, there continues to be limited access to information on the subjects of national defence and security - especially in a language that a layman can understand. Raghu Raman, an expert on security and terrorism, presents issues of defence, strategy and national security in an engaging narrative, with historical and contemporary examples. He recalibrates the great ‘India rising’ story with its real and present dangers and the role of a regular citizen in this everyman’s war.

    Singh has been a formidable civil servant, an empathetic politician, a keen chronicler of India’s socioeconomic history and the quintessential academic that academia never got. His life’s work, as chronicled in this book has indeed been intertwined with the progress India has made. In many such cases, Singh has been not just an active contributor but has also given shape to those many momentous decisions—whether through the use of diplomacy or the rigours of understanding the mechanism of the levers of power or, for that matter, by consensus building.Portraits of Power is not just an autobiography of a man, who for several decades has played an active role in India’s march towards becoming a formidable economy; it is indeed, on multiple levels, a book that profiles myriad institutions that work in harmony to make things happen. And in everything that N.K. Singh has done, so in this book too, there is both incisive clarity and insightful anecdotal heft.This book helps readers navigate the vast complexities of India but in a way that is stark and yet elegant.From personal happenings to national movements, Portraits of Power covers it all.

    Equally, she is remembered as the terrible dictator who imposed the Emergency and tried to destroy institutions ranging from her own party to the judiciary; she is seen as the source of many of the problems that afflict Indian democracy today. Even so, for politicians Indira is the very definition of a strong leader, and a role model on both sides of the aisle.In this spellbinding story of her life, journalist Sagarika Ghose has excavated not just Indira the iron lady and political leader but also the flesh-and-blood woman. Born in 1917, Indira soon found her life swept up by Gandhi’s call for freedom and swadeshi. Her family home became a hub of the national movement and Indira marinated in a political environment from an early age. But she also saw politics of another kind. Her sickly mother and she were the target of unkind attacks from her aunts. And her celebrated father, who had no patience for illness, was desperate to sculpt his daughter into his version of perfection – but Indira simply couldn’t keep up with his expectations. Despite Nehru’s disappointment and dismissiveness, Indira rose to become the unquestioned high command of the Congress and, indeed, the most powerful prime minister India has ever had.This no-holds-barred biographical portrait looks for answers to lingering issues: from why Indira revoked the Emergency to her son Sanjay’s curious grip over her; and from her bad marriage and love affairs to her dangerous religious politics. This is the only book you need to read about Indira Gandhi.

    This book tells gripping stories of death-defying operations and daring surgical strikes, the intense training soldiers have to undergo to become battle-fit, what life is really like on the LoC and the lives of the young men who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Page-turning, thrilling and heart-breaking, you will see the Indian Army and our soldiers close up, like you have never seen them before.

    The life and times of Pakistan's first military ruler, Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, told in his own voice, from his early days through his tenure as Commander-in-Chief, then as the author of the 'Revolution' in 1958, until his victory in the presidential elections of 1965.

    The book explains that the river, its very existence, and its course have been discussed and speculated over for years. The magnificence of the Sarasvati has been detailed in scriptures like the Rig Veda. Historians and archaeologists could not understand how it mysteriously ceased to exist. Some of the even deem the river a myth.This book attempts the deduce facts from fable and makes a strong case for the existence of the river. It goes over the upheavals that the Indian subcontinent went through thousands of years ago, explaining the dry weather, erosion, and tectonic events that changed the terrain, altered river courses, and may have made the Sarasvati disappear. The book then chronicles explorations into the river started, which began around the early nineteenth century, when it was rediscovered by British officials doing topographic explorations.The book also explains the culture around that time, shedding light on the Indus valley civilisation and the rich and flourishing culture of Harappa. The book goes on the show the results of explorations into the river’s origins and course using modern technology like satellite imagery and isotope analysis. The author has also used his proof of the existence of the river to bolster his theory that Aryans were indigenous to India and not foreign invaders.The Lost River was published in 2010 by Penguin India and is available in paperback.Key Features: The book presents evidence for the existence and information about the course and demise of the Sarasvati from various fields of investigation. It contains an extensive appendix with further information and a vast number of footnotes.

    By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannons, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalized racism, and caused millions to die from starvation. British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial "gift" - from the railways to the rule of law - was designed in Britain's interests alone. He goes on to show how Britain's Industrial Revolution was founded on India's deindustrialization and the destruction of its textile industry. In this bold and incisive reassessment of colonialism, Tharoor exposes to devastating effect the inglorious reality of Britain's stained Indian legacy.

    Convinced about the urgent need for an objective understanding about India’s past, before the onslaught of colonial rule, he decided to embark on an exploration of British-Indian archival material, based on documents emanating from commissioned surveys of the East India Company, lodged in various depositories spread over the British Isles. His pioneering historical research, conducted intensively over a decade, led to the publication of works that have since become classics in the field of Indian studies. This major work entitled "The Beautiful Tree" provides evidence from extensive early British administrators’ reports of the widespread prevalence of educational institutions in the Bengal and Madras Presidencies as well as in the Punjab, teaching a sophisticated curriculum, with daily school attendance by about 30% of children aged 6–15, where those belonging to communities who were classed as Shudras or even lower constituted a good number of students, and in some areas, for instance in Kerala, where Muslim girls were quite well represented.

    Following in the method of previous murders of rationalists M.M. Kalburgi, Govind Pansare and Narendra Dabholkar, Lankesh’s murder chilled the nation, sparking off protests across India. Even as the police unravels the plot behind her murder and connects it to the others, the larger forces that killed these four activists continue to grow. A fierce critic of the burgeoning Hindutva faction in Karnataka and elsewhere in India, and a strident supporter of separate-religion status for Lingayats, Lankesh’s activism had made her many foes. Fluent in Kannada and English, she was a particular threat to her ideological enemies – able to reach the influencers through a language of power and a wider audience at the grassroots through her mother tongue. In this personal-is-political narrative, senior journalist and analyst Chidanand Rajghatta examines the lives of two people against the volatile backdrop of an increasingly fractious and intolerant India. The two strands come together in the gutting death of a courageous woman who took on these forces and fought for a more equitable society, a better India.

    Jad Adams offers a concise account of Gandhi's life: from his birth and upbringing in a small princely state in Gujarat during the high noon of the British Raj, to his assassination at the hands of a Hindu extremist in 1948 only months after the birth of the independent India which he himself had done so much to bring about.

    Sheikh Mujibur Rehman in East Pakistan has just won an electoral mandate to become the prime minister of Pakistan. Accustomed to treating the eastern wing of the country as a colony, the ruling disposition in West Pakistan is not pleased, and launches a genocide against the residents of East Pakistan, flooding India with lakhs of refugees. With the violence in East Pakistan reaching a crescendo, the Indian government is faced with a difficult option: remain a mute spectator to the savagery on its eastern borders, or take action and go to war against its western neighbour. Thus was born Naval Commando Operation (X) - comprising Indian navy officers and divers, eight deserters from a Pakistani submarine and a ragtag bunch of Bengali youth fleeing the genocide - one of India's largest clandestine operations, meant to destabilize the West Pakistani efforts to bring East Pakistan to its knees. Revealed for the very first time, here is the explosive authentic account of the guerrilla operation that went for the maritime jugular of Pakistan, and facilitated the birth of Bangladesh.

    The birth of two nations.Seventy years ago, at midnight on August 14, 1947, the Union Jack began its final journey down the flagstaff of Viceroy’s House, New Delhi. A fifth of humanity claimed their independence from the greatest empire history has ever seen—but the price of freedom was high, as a nation erupted into riots and bloodshed, partition and war.Freedom at Midnight is the true story of the events surrounding Indian independence, beginning with the appointment of Lord Mountbatten of Burma as the last Viceroy of British India, and ending with the assassination and funeral of Mahatma Gandhi. The book was an international bestseller and achieved enormous acclaim in the United States, Italy, Spain, and France.“There is no single passage in this profoundly researched book that one could actually fault. Having been there most of the time in question and having assisted at most of the encounters, I can vouch for the accuracy of its general mood. It is a work of scholarship, of investigation, research and of significance.”—James Cameron, The New York Sunday Times“Freedom at Midnight is a panoramic spectacular of a book that reads more like sensational fiction than like history, even though it is all true….. The narrative is as lively, as informative and as richly detailed as a maharaja’s palace.”—Judson Hand, The New York Daily News“Outrageously and endlessly fascinating is my awestruck reaction to Freedom at Midnight. The new sure-to-be bestseller by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. It is all here: maharajas and tigers, filth and squalor, extravagance and macabre sex, massacres, smells, starvation, cruelty and heroism. Collins and Lapierre have made human history breathtaking and heartbreaking.”—Margaret Manning, The Boston Globe“No subject, I thought, as I picked up Freedom at Midnight, could be of less interest to me than a story of how Independence came to India after three centuries of British rule. I opened the book and began to flip through the photographs: here was a picture of Gandhi dressed in his loincloth going to have tea with the King of England; there was a picture of a maharaja being measured against his weight in gold; and another of thousands of vultures devouring corpses in the street. I began to read, fascinated. Here was the whole chronicle illustrated with anecdotes and masterful character sketches of how the British had come to India, how they had ruled it and how, finally, compelled by the force of economics and history, they had been forced to leave it divided…… Collins and Lapierre are such good writers that their books are so interesting that they are impossible to put down.”—J.M. Sanchez, The Houston Chronicle

    As time passed, railways were built and newspapers appeared, isolated villages like vilakkudi were exposed to social and cultural change. It is this transition that the author, Ranganathans great -great-great grandson, tries to trace through the story of his family.