But Britain’s partitioning of Afghanistan will rank asthe greatest crime of the nineteenth century. That arbitrary line which Mortimer Durand drewin 1893 on a small piece of paper continues to bleed Afghanistan and hound the world. Alas,this story remained untold until now.Written in an inimitable style, Durand’s Curse is the result of deep research. Fascinating detailsfrom long-buried archives of history reveal for the first time a tale of intrigue and deceit againstAfghanistan. First the British and then Pakistan had taken away territory that originally belongedto Afghanistan. But the divided Pathan families refuse to accept this division even now and for thelast century and over, there has been a struggle to rub out the cursed line drawn across the sand.Rajiv Dogra brings alive the wars, the tragedies and the Afghan anger against injustice in thisheart-wrenching account of Afghanistan’s misfortunes. This is an absolutely riveting story of theIndian sub-continent's history told by an important writer of our generation.

    In this magisterial book, Saran discerns the threads that tie together his experiences as a diplomat.In his book, part memoir and part thesis on India’s international relations since Independence, Shyam Saran discerns the threads that tie together his experiences as a diplomat. Using the prism of Kautilya’s Arthashastra and other ancient treatises on statecraft, Saran shows the historical sources of India’s worldview. He looks at India’s neighbourhood and the changing wider world through this lens and arrives at fascinating conclusions — the claims that the world is hurtling towards Chinese unipolarity are overblown; international borders are becoming irrelevant as climate change and cyber terror bypass them; and India shouldn’t hold its breath for a resolution to its border disputes with China and Pakistan in the foreseeable future. The book also takes the reader behind the closed doors — from Barack Obama popping by a tense developing-country strategy meeting at the Copenhagen climate change summit to the private celebratory dinner thrown by then US President George W. Bush for then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the success of the nuclear deal.Praise For The Book - ‘Part history, part memoir, How India Sees the World is an illuminating and at times controversial insight into the thinking of one of India’s great diplomats and civil servants. A vigorous defender of India’s national interests, Shyam Saran offers us a unique and candid view of policy deliberations at the highest levels of the Indian government. He rightly argues for a deeper understanding of China and the historic factors which inform and shape its strategic behaviour today. Moreover, Ambassador Saran provides a timely overview of the contemporary challenges facing global politics, including but not limited to cyberspace, climate change and outer space. This is a strong contribution from a fine strategic thinker’ – *Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia*‘As an insightful, acute and erudite description of the well-springs of Indian foreign policy, Shyam Saran’s How India Sees the World is unmatched. Drawing on his deep experience in crucial positions and his undoubted intellectual gifts, this book is required reading for anyone interested in India’s role in the world, and the future of Asia and the world. His familiarity with traditional Indian statecraft, and his focus on China - a country he is familiar with and has studied for over forty years - makes for fascinating and thought-provoking reading. A must read and an essential addition to any library on modern India’ – *Shivshankar Menon, former national security advisor of India*

    But, as it turns out, 'time immemorial' may not have been all that long ago. To tell us the story of our ancestry, journalist Tony Joseph goes 65,000 years into the past—when a band of modern humans, or Homo sapiens, first made their way from Africa into the Indian subcontinent. Citing recent DNA evidence, he traces the subsequent large migrations of modern humans into India—of agriculturalists from Iran between 7000 and 3000 BCE and pastoralists from the Central Asian Steppe between 2000 and 1000 BCE, among others. As Joseph unravels our history using the results of genetic and other research, he takes head-on some of the most controversial and uncomfortable questions of Indian history: Who were the Harappans? Did the 'Aryans' really migrate to India? Are North Indians genetically different from South Indians? And are the various castes genetically distinct groups? This book relies heavily on path-breaking DNA research of recent years. But it also presents earlier archaeological and linguistic evidence—all in an entertaining and highly readable manner. A hugely significant book, Early Indians authoritatively and bravely puts to rest several ugly debates on the ancestry of modern Indians. It not only shows us how the modern Indian population came to be composed as it is, but also reveals an undeniable and important truth about who we are: we are all migrants. And we are all mixed.

    

    He opposed the exploitation and marginalisation of the non-Brahmin indigenous Dravidian peoples of South India and the imposition of, what he considered, Indo-Aryan India. His work has greatly revolutionised Tamil society and has significantly removed caste-based discrimination. He is also responsible for bringing new changes to the Tamil alphabet. The citation awarded by the UNESCO described Periyar as "the prophet of the new age, the Socrates of South East Asia, father of social reform movement and arch enemy of ignorance, superstitions, meaningless customs and base manners"

    Pillai narrates the story of the Deccan from the close of the thirteenth century to the dawn of the eighteenth. We witness the dramatic rise and fall of the Vijayanagar empire, even as we negotiate intrigues at the courts of the Bahmani kings and the Rebel Sultans who overthrew them.

    It identifies its author by the names 'Kauṭilya' and 'Vishnugupta', both names that are traditionally identified with Chanakya (c. 350–283 BC), who was a scholar at Takshashila and the teacher and guardian of Emperor Chandragupta Maurya, founder of the Mauryan Empire. The text was influential until the 12th century, when it disappeared. It was rediscovered in 1904 by R. Shamasastry, who published it in 1909. The first English translation was published in 1915.Roger Boesche describes the Arthaśāstra as "a book of political realism, a book analysing how the political world does work and not very often stating how it ought to work, a book that frequently discloses to a king what calculating and sometimes brutal measures he must carry out to preserve the state and the common good."Centrally, Arthaśāstra argues how in an autocracy an efficient and solid economy can be managed. It discusses the ethics of economics and the duties and obligations of a king. The scope of Arthaśāstra is, however, far wider than statecraft, and it offers an outline of the entire legal and bureaucratic framework for administering a kingdom, with a wealth of descriptive cultural detail on topics such as mineralogy, mining and metals, agriculture, animal husbandry, medicine and the use of wildlife. The Arthaśāstra also focuses on issues of welfare (for instance, redistribution of wealth during a famine) and the collective ethics that hold a society together.

    Narang. Badshah Khan was the leader of the Khudai Khidmatgar (also known as the Red Shirts) in NWFP.

    Back then he was seen just as a founder-editor of the news satire website with no special interest in politics or ideology.The first time Rahul Roushan was called a Sanghi, he felt deeply offended. After all, he held a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Patna University, a post-graduate diploma in journalism from IIMC in New Delhi, an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and was a self-made media entrepreneur.Sanghi literally means someone who is a member of the right-wing RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) or its affiliates, but the ‘liberals’ use the term liberally to deride those who differ with their political and ideological stand, or those who wear Hinduism on their sleeves. This book analyses why Hindutva as an ideology is no longer anathema and what brought about this change. Why did a country that was ruled for decades by people espousing Nehruvian secularism suddenly began to align with the ‘communal politics’ of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)?The book is the story of this transformation. This is not an autobiography, though it could read like one in parts. It is not even a collection of intellectual essays, though it could read like one in parts. It is the retelling of some historical events and how those events impacted the journey of Rahul Roushan and countless people like him. The book looks at factors like education, media, technology and obviously, electoral politics, which played a key role in this transformation. The book also touches upon some of the personal experiences of the author, both as a media entrepreneur and a journalist.In author's words, ‘This book will be of special interest to readers who just want to badmouth me and the book, but I really hope the same people make an earnest effort to also understand what changed India and all those Sanghis who never went to any shakha.’

    In his insider account, author RVS Mani discloses how the country’s internal security establishment functioned in the period of 2004-2014 when India faced some of the bloodiest terrorist carnages. This former Home Ministry official posted in the Internal Security Division between 2006-2010 also poses several questions that the nation should seek answers to.

    Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat, came to the young nation to investigate the functioning of American democracy & the social, political & economic life of its citizens, publishing his observations in 1835 & 1840. Brilliantly written, vividly illustrated with vignettes & portraits, Democracy in America is far more than a trenchant analysis of one society at a particular point in time. What will most intrigue modern readers is how many of the observations still hold true: on the mixed advantages of a free press, the strained relations among the races & the threats posed to democracies by consumerism & corruption. So uncanny is Tocqueville’s insight & so accurate are his predictions, that it seems as tho he were not merely describing the American identity but actually helping to create it.

    Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi’s protégé and the political leader of India, believed Indians were an inherently nonviolent, peaceful people. Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was a secular lawyer, not a firebrand. But in August 1946, exactly a year before Independence, Calcutta erupted in riots. A cycle of street-fighting — targeting Hindus, then Muslims, then Sikhs — spun out of control. As the summer of 1947 approached, all three groups were heavily armed and on edge, and the British rushed to leave. Hell let loose. Trains carried Muslims west and Hindus east to their slaughter. Some of the most brutal and widespread ethnic cleansing in modern history erupted on both sides of the new border, searing a divide between India and Pakistan that remains a root cause of many evils. From jihadi terrorism to nuclear proliferation, the searing tale told in Midnight’s Furies explains all too many of the headlines we read today.

    Moments later, Rajiv Gandhi was dead, blown up by suicide bomber Dhanu, irrevocably changing the course of Indian politics, as Neena Gopal, just yards behind him, watched in horror. In this gripping, definitive book, Gopal reconstructs the chain of events in India and at the LTTE�s headquarters in Sri Lanka where the assassination plot was hatched, and follows the trail of investigation that led to the assassins being brought to justice. Drawing on extensive interviews, research and her own vast experience as a journalist, she deftly establishes the background�the shortsightedness of India�s Sri Lanka policy; the friction between the intelligence agencies and between the agencies and the external affairs ministry; the many warnings that went unheeded; and the implacable hatred that LTTE supremo Prabhakaran felt for Rajiv Gandhi. Bringing all these complex threads together, Gopal takes us step by step to Sriperumbudur as Rajiv Gandhi walked inexorably to his death on that tragic May evening twenty-five years ago.

    It maps a wide and often complicated terrain of historical happenings, their main players in groups and as individuals, and contexts that enable us to see the formation of a nation through documents of resistance and struggle, assimilation and rejection.

    Austin's magnum opus tells the very human story of how the social, political, and day-to-day realities of the Indian people have been reflected in and directed the course of constitutional reforms since 1950.