Novel set in 3rd and 4th century India

    In this fascinating account, Bipan Chandra traces the events that led up to this moment and makes some startling revelations. He finds that there was a real danger of the JP movement turning fascist, given the fuzzy ideology of Total Revolution, its confused leadership and dependence on the RSS for its organization. At the same time, despite the authoritarianism inherent in the Emergency, particularly with the rising power of Sanjay Gandhi and his Youth Congress brigade, Indira Gandhi did end it and call for elections.Finely argued, incisive and original, this book offers significant insight into those turbulent years and joins the ever-relevant debate on the acceptable limits of popular protest in a democracy.

    The issue of Kashmir still is a crucial issue discussed across forums in the global arena and is one of the major hindrances in improving relationship with India’s neighbour and kin of one time. Much has been written about Kashmir and the separatist movement in Kashmir. But the beautifully scripted account of the brutality with which the separatist movement is carried on till date has no precedence. The book, Curfewed Nights, gives an honest, crude, and truthful account of what goes on in the paradise of India which is under the spell of the separatist movement.The author of the book, Basharat Peer, being a Kashmiri himself has related to each and every detail provided in the book from the first hand experiences gathered by him. Since independence of India, many Kashmiri youths have been mesmerised by the terrorism to the extent that they want to join the terrorist organisations even without thinking about their families or themselves. They have illusioned godfathers in the leaders of such terrorist outfits. In fact, the author was sent out of Kashmir by his family, just to keep him away from these painful romances with the militants.The book, Curfewed Night, has a lot of heart-rending accounts of how a mother watches her son who is forced to hold an exploding bomb or how a poet discovers his religion when his entire family is killed or how the politicians are tortured inside the refurbished torture chambers or how villages have been rigged with landmines which kills innocent civilians, and how temples have converted into army bunkers while ancient Sufi shrines have been decapitated in bomb blasts.

    The Argumentative Indian is "a bracing sweep through aspects of Indian history and culture, and a tempered analysis of the highly charged disputes surrounding these subjects--the nature of Hindu traditions, Indian identity, the country's huge social and economic disparities, and its current place in the world" (Sunil Khilnani, Financial Times, U.K.).

    With him ride his wives, his sisters, his daughters, his aunts and his distant female relatives. Unhindered by a relatively recent conversion to Islam, these women will help found a culture of such magnificence and beauty that it will become a by-word for opulence in the world. These Mughal women of Hindustan—unmarried daughters, eccentric sisters, fiery milk-mothers and beautiful wives, will contribute to the great syncretic culture of the Mughals by writing biographies, building monuments, engaging in diplomacy, and patronizing the arts. And even as the zenana changes from the earlier nomadic, tented spaces to the later more sequestered grandeur within the high stone walls of mighty qilas, the influence of the women remains visible and unquestioned. This book looks at the lives of these Mughal women, and the enigma of their disappearance, except as objects of curiosity, from our collective memory.

    The hostage-takers threaten to shoot pilgrims every day, unless the incumbent Government accedes to their demands. With the popular Hindu festival of Diwali just around the corner and elections less than six months away, the Government at the center is under immense pressure to act. What will the Government do? The army? The intelligence agencies? The common man? No terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Who are these men? Is there a larger plot? Faced with such unprecedented events, will the country descend into unimaginable anarchy or will it rise above the issues of collective apathy and greed that have plagued it since Independence?

    Manekshaw rose to become the 8th Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army in 1969 and under his command, Indian forces conducted victorious campaigns against Pakistan in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 that led to the liberation of Bangladesh in December 1971.

    It arrived in India by multiple routes—in the south, in the eighth and ninth centuries CE, with traders from Arabia, and in the north, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, with invaders, rulers, and mystics, largely from Central Asia. Once it was established in India, it morphed and evolved through the centuries until it took on the distinctive contours of the religion that is practised here at present. The author takes a clear-eyed look at every aspect of Islam in India today. She examines the factors that have stalled the socio-economic and intellectual growth of Indian Muslims and attributes both internal factors—such as a disproportionate reliance on the ulema—as well as external ones that have contributed to the backwardness of the community. She shows at length, and with great empathy and understanding, what it is like to live as a Muslim in India and offers suggestions on how their lot might be improved. Weaving together personal memoir, history, reportage, scholarship, and interviews with a wide variety of people, the author highlights how an apathetic and sometimes hostile government attitude and prejudice at all levels of society have contributed to Muslim vulnerability and insecurity.Born a Muslim goes beyond stereotypes and news headlines to present an extraordinarily compelling and illuminating portrait of one of the largest and most diverse communities in India.

    A lifetime ago. Before the murder of her father. Before she became Kota Rani, the wise regent who rules over Kashmir with a firm hand.As invaders and immigrants disturb the tranquillity of her land, Kota must find a way to protect her people. But at what personal cost? Can she weather the political intrigues and power-play of the court? Will she succeed in preserving the splendour and diversity of her society? Will social hypocrisy and notions of what a woman should be keep Kota from being the sovereign she knows she is?Set in fourteenth-century Kashmir, The Last Queen of Kashmir is the sweeping saga of a civilization in peril. It is also the tale of one of the greatest queens of the land - one that will speak to the men and women of today.

    The present Sixth edition updates the book to February 18, 2002. It deals not only with the Pokhran Nuclear Test and Kargil war and the events leading to the Vajpayee-Musharraf Summit but also with the ever-increasing dimensions of international terrorism which resulted in the destruction of the World Trade Center and attack on the Indian Parliament.

    And none has been subjected to as much fact-finding, especially under the monitoring of the Supreme Court. Sifting through the wealth of official material, this book contends that the fact-finding - riddled as it was with ambiguities and deceptions, gaps and contradictions - glossed over crucial pieces of evidence and thereby shielded the powers that be.Scrupulously researched, The Fiction of Fact-finding exposes a range of unasked questions which helped Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi procure a clean chit. The book is written by Manoj Mitta, a senior journalist who has been tracking legal and human rights issues over 25 years.

    Chronicling the Indian struggle for freedom and independence from Great Britain, Tharoor directs his hilarious satire as much against Indian foibles as the bumbling of the British rulers.

    60–80 % of the so-called Indus Valley Civilisation sites which have been discovered are not on the banks of the Indus but on the course of the Sarasvati. The drying-out of the river is the most significant factor in the history and migrations of the ancient Indians. With new evidence, the time has come for a significant paradigm shift in Indology. This book breaks new ground to lay the foundation for an authentic Indian history.

    On 29 March 1849, the ten-year-old Maharajah of the Punjab was ushered into the magnificent Mirrored Hall at the centre of the great Fort in Lahore. There, in a public ceremony, the frightened but dignified child handed over to the British East India Company in a formal Act of Submission to Queen Victoria not only swathes of the richest land in India, but also arguably the single most valuable object in the subcontinent: the celebrated Koh-i Noor diamond. The Mountain of Light. The history of the Koh-i-Noor that was then commissioned by the British may have been one woven together from gossip of Delhi Bazaars, but it was to be become the accepted version. Only now is it finally challenged, freeing the diamond from the fog of mythology which has clung to it for so long. The resulting history is one of greed, murder, torture, colonialism and appropriation through an impressive slice of south and central Asian history. It ends with the jewel in its current controversial setting: in the crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Masterly, powerful and erudite, this is history at its most compelling and invigorating.

    The story of how firmly they were bound in fetters of family, caste and society, and how fiercely they fought to escape, needs to be told. In Lady Doctors, Kavitha Rao unearths the extraordinary stories of six women from the 1860s to the 1930s, who defied the idea that they were unfit for medicine by virtue of their gender. From Anandibai Joshi, who broke caste rules by crossing an ocean, to Rukhmabai Raut, who escaped a child marriage, divorced her husband and studied to be a doctor; from Kadambini Ganguly, who took care of eight children while she worked, to child widow Haimabati Sen, who overcame poverty and hardship—these women had a profound and lasting impact. And in their forgotten lives lie many lessons for modern women.In truth, the compelling stories of these radical women have been erased from our textbooks and memories, because histories have mostly been written by men, about men. In an immensely readable narrative, and with impeccable research, Lady Doctors rectifies this omission.