Book picks similar to
Chandragupta Maurya and his times by Radhakumud Mookerji
history
indic
indian-history
india
The Lion and the Tiger: The Rise and Fall of the British Raj, 1600-1947
Denis Judd - 2004
This period, and the century and a half that followed, saw two powerful cultures locked in an often bloody battle over political control, land, trade and a way of life. In The Lion and the Tiger, Denis Judd tells the fascinating story of the British impact upon India, capturing the essence of what the Raj really meant both for the British and their Indian subjects. Judd examines virtually every aspect of this long and controversial relationship, from the first tentative contacts between East and West, the foundation of the East India Company in 1600, the Victorian Raj in all its pomp and splendor, Gandhi's revolutionary tactics to overthrow the Raj and restore India to the Indians, and Lord Mountbatten's swift surgery of partition in 1947, creating the independent Commonwealth states of India and Pakistan. Against this epic backdrop, and using many revealing contemporary accounts, Judd explores the consequences of British rule for both rulers and ruled. Were the British intent on development or exploitation? Were they the civilizing force they claimed? What were Britain's greatest legacies--democracy and the rule of law, or cricket and an efficient railway system? Vividly written, based on extensive research, with many new and colorful documentary extracts and literary sources to illustrate the story, The Lion and the Tiger provides an engaging account of a key moment in British Imperial history.
Trekking in the Nepal Himalaya
Stan Armington - 1979
In this guide, he provides trekkers of all standards with up-to-date and reliable information on the region, including health and safety advice, notes on eco-tourism and detailed route descriptions.
Mistress of the Throne
Ruchir Gupta - 2014
The Empress of India Mumtaz Mahal has died. Yet, rather than anoint one of his several other wives to take her place as Empress of India, Mughal King Shah Jahan anoints his seventeen-year-old daughter Jahanara as the next Queen of India. Bearing an almost identical resemblance to her mother, Jahanara is the first ever daughter of a sitting Mughal King to be anointed queen. She is reluctant to accept this title, but does so in hopes of averting the storm approaching her family and Mughal India. Her younger siblings harbor extreme personalities from a liberal multiculturalist (who views religion as an agent of evil) to an orthodox Muslim (who views razing non-Muslim buildings as divine will).Meanwhile, Jahanara struggles to come to terms with her own dark reality: as the daughter of a sitting King, she is forbidden to marry. Thus, while she lives in the shadow of her parents unflinching love story, she is devastated by the harsh reality that she is forbidden to share such a romance with another. Mistress of the Throne narrates the powerful story of one of Indias most opulent and turbulent times through the eyes of an unsuspecting character: a Muslim queen. It uses actual historical figures to illuminate the complexity of an era that has often been called Indias Golden Age.
A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India
Josy Joseph - 2016
If they search in the right places and offer the appropriate price, there is always a facilitator who can get the job done. This book is a sneak preview of those searches, the middlemen who do those jobs, and the many opportunities that the fast-growing economy offers.'Josy Joseph draws upon two decades as an investigative journalist to expose a problem so pervasive that we do not have the words to speak of it. The story is big: that of treacherous business rivalries, of how some industrial houses practically own the country, of the shadowy men who run the nation's politics. The story is small: a village needs a road and a hospital, a graveyard needs a wall, people need toilets.A Feast of Vultures is an unprecedented, multiple-level inquiry into modern India, and the picture it reveals is both explosive and frightening. Within these covers is unimpeachable evidence against some of the country's biggest business houses and political figures, and the reopening of major scandals that have shaped its political narratives. Through hard-nosed investigations and the meticulous gathering of documentary evidence, Joseph clinically examines and irrefutably documents the non-reportable. It is a troubling narrative, but also a call to action and a cry for change. A tour de force through the wildly beating heart of post-socialist India, the book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the large, unwieldy truth about this nation.
Chimera
Vivek Ahuja - 2012
A violent uprising has been instigated all across Tibet as Beijing moves to establish control while the Dalai Lama’s health deteriorates further and questions on the future of the Tibetan leadership are raised. As Beijing pursues the rebels and their benefactors within India, both nations are plunged into a spiraling descent to war. Now each side must navigate their widely different paths to victory as vast armies on both sides wage all-out war in their bid to become the dominant power in Asia… Book Edition: II
INDIA ADVENTURE STORIES VOLUME ONE
Patrick Griffith - 2013
This does not include scavenging. Although human beings can be attacked by many kinds of animals, man-eaters are those that have incorporated human flesh into their usual diet. Most reported cases of man-eaters have involved tigers, leopards, lions and crocodiles. However, they are by no means the only predators that will attack humans if given the chance; a wide variety of species have also been known to take humans as prey. ATTACKED BY A KING COBRA.ALADDIN'S CAVE.THE TERROR OF HUNSUR.THE TERROR OF HUNSUR II.AN ADVENTURE WITH A BOA.THE ONE EYED MAN EATER.A MAN EATING WOLF BOY.SEEALL, THE WOLF BOY.THE WHITE TIGER.THE FATE OF THE AHNAY PAYEE.THE BANDYPORE MAN EATER.THE KODERMA MAN EATER.TRAPPING A MAN EATER.THE MAN EATER OF BELKHERA.A NOTORIOUS MAN EATER.TUG OF-WAR WITH A LEOPARD.MISSED BY AN INCH.A FIGHTING TIGER.A NIGHT FRIGHT.CARRIED OFF BY A TIGER.
PAPA Hemingway in Key West
James McLendon - 1972
From his first days on the island he came to know and love fishing and the sea. For the next twelve years the famed author called the island his home. His years in Key West became the most crucial and prolific years of his life. During that period he wrote Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa, numerous important short stories, To Have and Have Not, and began For Whom the Bell Tolls. He also created and became his own living legend, self-consciously constructing the swaggering image known to the world as Papa.In the early 1970s journalist James McLendon seized the opportunity to interview Ernest Hemingway’s Key West friends who remained alive. A Key West resident himself, McLendon wrote this book by combining his knowledge of the island with his conversations and with the extensive Hemingway-related material held by the Monroe County Public Library. McLendon recreates the slow-paced, sub-tropical setting, the island’s Depression years, and the people and places that infused and inspired Hemingway. These were the years that saw his love affair with Martha Gellhorn and the crumbling of his marriage to Pauline Pfeiffer. Beyond letters and legal documents, too little of the Hemingway era in Key West is found in biographical studies. Because this book was first published in 1974, much of what exists in those studies today is derived from this manuscript. This book gives us a penetrating look at the significance of the Key West era in Hemingway’s career. James McLendon was a columnist for the Key West Citizen, a creative writing instructor and a freelance writer. His dispatches and articles appeared in various U.S. newspapers and magazines, including UPI wire services, the Christian Science Monitor and Writers Digest.
Army and Nation
Steven I. Wilkinson - 2014
They also saw the structure of the army, with its recruitment on the basis of caste and religion, as incompatible with their hopes for a new secular nation.India has successfully preserved its democracy, however, unlike many other colonial states that inherited imperial "divide and rule" armies, and unlike its neighbor Pakistan, which inherited part of the same Indian army in 1947. As Steven I. Wilkinson shows, the puzzle of how this happened is even more surprising when we realize that the Indian Army has kept, and even expanded, many of its traditional "martial class" units, despite promising at independence to gradually phase them out.Army and Nation draws on uniquely comprehensive data to explore how and why India has succeeded in keeping the military out of politics, when so many other countries have failed. It uncovers the command and control strategies, the careful ethnic balancing, and the political, foreign policy, and strategic decisions that have made the army safe for Indian democracy. Wilkinson goes further to ask whether, in a rapidly changing society, these structures will survive the current national conflicts over caste and regional representation in New Delhi, as well as India's external and strategic challenges.
The Hindus: An Alternative History
Wendy Doniger - 2009
Hinduism does not lend itself easily to a strictly chronological account: many of its central texts cannot be reliably dated even within a century; its central tenets—karma, dharma, to name just two—arise at particular moments in Indian history and differ in each era, between genders, and caste to caste; and what is shared among Hindus is overwhelmingly outnumbered by the things that are unique to one group or another. Yet the greatness of Hinduism—its vitality, its earthiness, its vividness—lies precisely in many of those idiosyncratic qualities that continue to inspire debate today. Wendy Doniger is one of the foremost scholars of Hinduism in the world. With her inimitable insight and expertise Doniger illuminates those moments within the tradition that resist forces that would standardize or establish a canon. Without reversing or misrepresenting the historical hierarchies, she reveals how Sanskrit and vernacular sources are rich in knowledge of and compassion toward women and lower castes; how they debate tensions surrounding religion, violence, and tolerance; and how animals are the key to important shifts in attitudes toward different social classes.The Hindus brings a fascinating multiplicity of actors and stories to the stage to show how brilliant and creative thinkers—many of them far removed from Brahmin authors of Sanskrit texts—have kept Hinduism alive in ways that other scholars have not fully explored. In this unique and authoritative account, debates about Hindu traditions become platforms from which to consider the ironies, and overlooked epiphanies, of history.
लूज़र कहीं का! / Loser Kahin Ka!
Pankaj Dubey - 2013
In Delhi, he meets three guys who join his dramatic journey—they all want to change the country. They all aspire to become IAS officers. They all want to take the ‘never-seen-before-types dowry’! As expected, they mess up with a very proper college professor. There begins a chase, funnier than Tom and Jerry… Will the professor find them? Will their dreams ever come true? Find out in this laughathon full of clichés straight from the cow belt of India!Note: This book is in the Hindi language and has been made available for the Kindle, Kindle Fire HD, Kindle Paperwhite, iPhone and iPad, and for iOS, Windows Phone and Android devices.
Pakistan: The Formative Phase, 1857-1948
Khalid B. Sayeed - 1968
In addition to the basic theme of the Muslim nationalist movement, Khalid Sayeed has also focused on the workingand development of the British vice-regal system, and argues that the vice-regal system that Pakistan inherited from the British sustained Pakistan through the on-going political and cultural tensions that it has faced ever since its establishment.
The Indian Conservative : A History of Indian Right-Wing Thought
Jaithirth Rao - 2019
In this riveting book, jaithirth Rao traces its history, explores its philosophical underpinnings and different manifestations, and defines it as conservatism – a philosophy that rejects radical, reactionary and utopian positions and argues for change that evolves gradually and peacefully, preserves features of the past that are constructive and worth cherishing, and believes in a minimalist state that protects individual liberties even as it promotes policies that work on the ground. Hindu nationalism and the Bharatiya Janata Party are among the many offshoots of this tradition. Focusing on five areas – The economy, politics, culture, society and aesthetics – Rao examines the rich contribution that Indian conservatism could make in each of these fields in contemporary India. Lively, eloquent and provocative, this is a book that will stimulate much thought, discussion and debate as it challenges the dogmas of the left and the extreme right and raises the key issues that engage India today.
From Tryst to Tendulkar: The History of Independent India
Balaji Viswanathan - 2014
It covers a range of items from the political integration of India to the making of Indian constitution, the history of Indian sports, economy, movies, science, among other topics. Through this exciting train journey we will meet the various historic characters - Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar, Tendulkar, VP Menon, Kalam, Homi Bhaba, Narasimha Rao. The first 9 chapters of this 18 chapter book focus on the darker side of the history - wars, accidents, disasters and deaths. The second 9 chapters focus on the brighter side of the history - the various achievements India has made in foreign policy, economics, science and art. We will start with the distant past history that led to 1947 and we will end with the recipes for the future.
Björk: Wow and Flutter
Mark Pytlik - 2000
Contains a detailed songbook and over 30 exclusive interviews with Björk's associates, family members, and industry professionals.
Indira: India’s Most Powerful Prime Minister
Sagarika Ghose - 2017
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.