They like lager (in huge quantities), the Queen, football clubs (especially Manchester United), and themselves. Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe, and England's soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities. Now Bill Buford, editor of the prestigious journal Granta, enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of a George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of a Hunter Thompson.

    Between Em, the mother, driven frequently to hospital after her failed suicide attempts, and The Big Hoom, the father, trying to hold things together as best he could, they tried to be a family.

    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.

    Drawing upon the previously unexplored records of the Supreme Court of India, A People's Constitution upends this narrative and shows how the Constitution actually transformed the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways. This remarkable legal process was led by individuals on the margins of society, and Rohit De looks at how drinkers, smugglers, petty vendors, butchers, and prostitutes--all despised minorities--shaped the constitutional culture.The Constitution came alive in the popular imagination so much that ordinary people attributed meaning to its existence, took recourse to it, and argued with it. Focusing on the use of constitutional remedies by citizens against new state regulations seeking to reshape the society and economy, De illustrates how laws and policies were frequently undone or renegotiated from below using the state's own procedures. De examines four important cases that set legal precedents: a Parsi journalist's contestation of new alcohol prohibition laws, Marwari petty traders' challenge to the system of commodity control, Muslim butchers' petition against cow protection laws, and sex workers' battle to protect their right to practice prostitution.Exploring how the Indian Constitution of 1950 enfranchised the largest population in the world, A People's Constitution considers the ways that ordinary citizens produced, through litigation, alternative ethical models of citizenship.

    Deep Halder is one of them.' - Amitava Kumar In 1978, around 1.5 lakh Hindu refugees, mostly belonging to the lower castes, settled in Marichjhapi an island in the Sundarbans, in West Bengal. By May 1979, the island was cleared of all refugees by Jyoti Basu's Left Front government. Most of the refugees were sent back to the central India camps they came from, but there were many deaths: of diseases, malnutrition resulting from an economic blockade, as well as from violence unleashed by the police on the orders of the government. Some of the refugees who survived Marichjhapi say the number of those who lost their lives could be as high as 10,000, while the-then government officials maintain that there were less than ten victims. How does an entire island population disappear? How does one unearth the truth and the details of one of the worst atrocities of post-Independent India? Journalist Deep Halder reconstructs the buried history of the 1979 massacres through his interviews with survivors, erstwhile reporters, government officials and activists with a rare combination of courage, conscientiousness and empathy.

    It discusses recent Constitutional Amendments, socio-economic changes and educational experiments.About the AuthorR C Majumdar - Former Vice-Chancellor, Dacca University. H C Raychaudhauri - Former Carmichael Professor of Ancient Indian History and Culture, Calcutta University. Kalikinkar Datta - Former Vice-Chancellor Patna University.Table of Contents Part I: Ancient India Part II: Medieval India. Book I: The Muslim Conquest and the Delhi Sultanate. Book II: The Mughul Empire Part III: Modern India. Book I: The Rise and Growth of the British Power. Book II: Modern India Appendices Genealogical Tables to Part III Bibliography to Part III List of Governors-Generals, List of Prime Ministers and Presidents Chronology Index

    She died as she had lived, surrounded by men, yet isolated. It was a violent end to a life of epic drama. Here is the first popular biography of one of the world's most influential leaders, India's third prime minister. Brought up during an era that saw the rise of Indian nationalism, Indira was raised to be what her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, called "a child of revolution" - destined to play a political role in the creation and governing of an independent India. Despite her early reluctance to embrace this role, Indira eventually presided over a huge, complex, religiously riven, and male-dominated country. She was born to a wealthy, westernized family, but she had a gift for connecting with the poor of the countryside and the urban slums, the illiterate, the dispossessed - so much so that "Indira is India" became a familiar slogan. Throughout childhood, love, marriage, imprisonment, motherhood, and a sequence of personal and family tragedies, her personal hopes and desires were continually subsumed by the historical and political imperatives of her country. In this beautifully written book, the acclaimed biographer Katherine Frank draws on unpublished sources and more than a hundred interviews to create a rich, balanced portrait. INDIRA captures in full color the personal and political fate of the leader of the world's largest democracy - the woman who played a dominant role in the history of the twentieth century and who, when it ended, was voted Woman of the Millennium by the BBC.

    It begins at Anand Bhavan, the Nehru mansion in Allahabad, and FerozeGandhi’s relationship with the Nehrus – particularly Kamala and Indira. This gives the background to an understanding of Sanjay’s volatile personality as it developed through his early years and his obsession with cars that led to the establishment of the Maruti factory. Writing in a style that is both compelling and honest, Vinod Mehta sifts the facts from the rumours and gets to the core of Sanjay’s dramatic emergence after the declaration of the Emergency. His capturing of the Youth Congress and the excesses of the sterilization campaign (which he thought would ensure his place in history) are brought out in telling detail, as is the use of the media to build the cult of Sanjay.With a new introduction, The Sanjay Story allows readers to look with the benefit of hindsight on the rise and fall of one of independent India’s most controversial figures. What emerges from the text is not only an understanding of Sanjay and his times, but an understanding of India’s current political scenario. Vinod Mehta confirms the truth of history writing – that to engage intelligently with the present, you must come to terms with the past, even a past as inglorious and bewildering as the Emergency.

    Sir Michael had become increasingly alarmed at the effect Gandhi was having on his province, as well as recent demonstrations, strikes, and shows of Hindu-Muslim unity. All these things, to Sir Michael, were a precursor to a second Indian revolt. What happened next shocked the world. An unauthorized gathering in the Jallianwallah Bagh in Amritsar in April 1919 became the focal point for Sir Michael’s law enforcers. Dyer marched his soldiers into the walled garden, blocking the only exit. Then, without issuing any order to disperse, he instructed his men to open fire, turning their guns on the thickest parts of the crowd, filled with over a thousand unarmed men, women, and children. For ten minutes, the soldiers continued firing, stopping only when they ran out of ammunition. According to legend, eighteen-year-old Sikh orphan Udham Singh was injured in the attack, and remained surrounded by the dead and dying until he was able to move the next morning. Then, he supposedly picked up a handful of blood-soaked earth, smeared it across his forehead, and vowed to kill the men responsible. The truth, as the author has discovered, is more complex—but no less dramatic. Award-winning journalist Anita Anand traced Singh’s journey through Africa, the United States, and across Europe until, in March 1940, he finally arrived in front of O’Dwyer himself in a London hall ready to shoot him down. The Patient Assassin shines a devastating light on one of history’s most horrific events, but it reads like a taut thriller and reveals the incredible but true story behind a legend that still endures today.

    Here, for the first time and in detail, Zimbardo tells the full story of the Stanford Prison Experiment, the landmark study in which a group of college-student volunteers was randomly divided into “guards” and “inmates” and then placed in a mock prison environment. Within a week, the study was abandoned, as ordinary college students were transformed into either brutal, sadistic guards or emotionally broken prisoners. By illuminating the psychological causes behind such disturbing metamorphoses, Zimbardo enables us to better understand a variety of harrowing phenomena, from corporate malfeasance to organized genocide to how once upstanding American soldiers came to abuse and torture Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. He replaces the long-held notion of the “bad apple” with that of the “bad barrel”—the idea that the social setting and the system contaminate the individual, rather than the other way around.

    A riveting first draft of modern Indian history, Anticipating India interprets everything from the successes and failings of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh to the ascent of Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal, from the forces that have deepened Indian federalism and constitutionalism to the public mood that keeps a check on excesses in the use of political power.Each chapter in Anticipating India, in its questioning of power, its use and abuse, carries within it ideas of India that challenge conventional wisdom, shatter stereotypes and, in the end, question our long-held assumptions of who we are as a nation and a people.

    The Western Hemisphere lies front and center, while the Indian Ocean region is relegated to the edges, split up along the maps’ outer reaches. This convention reveals the geopolitical focus of the now-departed twentieth century, for it was in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters that the great wars of that era were lost and won. Thus, many Americans are barely aware of the Indian Ocean at all.But in the twenty-first century this will fundamentally change. In Monsoon, a pivotal examination of the Indian Ocean region and the countries known as “Monsoon Asia,” bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan deftly shows how crucial this dynamic area has become to American power in the twenty-first century. Like the monsoon itself, a cyclical weather system that is both destructive and essential for growth and prosperity, the rise of these countries (including India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Burma, Oman, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Tanzania) represents a shift in the global balance that cannot be ignored. The Indian Ocean area will be the true nexus of world power and conflict in the coming years. It is here that the fight for democracy, energy independence, and religious freedom will be lost or won, and it is here that American foreign policy must concentrate if America is to remain dominant in an ever-changing world. From the Horn of Africa to the Indonesian archipelago and beyond, Monsoon explores the multilayered world behind the headlines. Kaplan offers riveting insights into the economic and naval strategies of China and India and how they will affect U.S. interests. He provides an on-the-ground perspective on the more volatile countries in the region, plagued by weak infrastructures and young populations tempted by extremism. This, in one of the most nuclearized areas of the world, is a dangerous mix.The map of this fascinating region contains multitudes: Here lies the entire arc of Islam, from the Sahara Desert to the Indonesian archipelago, and it is here that the political future of Islam will most likely be determined. Here is where the five-hundred-year reign of Western power is slowly being replaced by the influence of indigenous nations, especially India and China, and where a tense dialogue is taking place between Islam and the United States.  With Kaplan’s incisive mix of policy analysis, travel reportage, sharp historical perspective, and fluid writing, Monsoon offers a thought-provoking exploration of the Indian Ocean as a strategic and demographic hub and an in-depth look at the issues that are most pressing for American interests both at home and abroad. Exposing the effects of explosive population growth, climate change, and extremist politics on this unstable region—and how they will affect our own interests—Monsoon is a brilliant, important work about an area of the world Americans can no longer afford to ignore.

    The body of the prime suspect—the family servant, Hemraj—was discovered a day later. Who had committed the double murders, and why? Within weeks, Aarushi’s parents, the Talwars, were accused; four years later, they went on trial and were convicted. But did they do it?Avirook Sen attended the trial, accessed important documents and interviewed all the players—from Aarushi’s friends to Hemraj’s old boss, from the investigators to the forensic scientists—to write a meticulous and chilling book that reads like a thriller but also tells a story that is horrifyingly true. Aarushi is the definitive account of a sensational crime, and the investigation and trial that followed.

    Not one answer, but many. Not a single history, but multiple tales cutting across laws and boundaries.’ In Bhakti poetry, Radha and Krishna disregard marital fidelity, age, time and gender for erotic love. In Sufi dargahs, pirs (spiritual guides) who were married to women are buried alongside their male disciples, as lovers are. Vatsyayana, author of the world’s most famous manual of sex, insists that he did not compose it ‘for the sake of passion’, and remained celibate through the writing of it. Long hair is widely seen as a symbol of sexuality; and yet, shaved off in a temple, it is a sacred offering. Even as the country has a draconian law to punish homosexuality, heterosexual men share the same bed without comment. Hijras are increasingly marginalized; yet gender has historically been understood as fluid rather than fixed. Menon navigates centuries, geographies, personal and public histories, schools of philosophy, literary and cinematic works, as she examines the many—and often surprising—faces of desire in the Indian subcontinent. Her study ranges from the erotic sculptures of Khajuraho to the shrine of the celibate god Ayyappan; from army barracks to public parks; from Empress Nur Jahan’s paan to home-made kohl; from cross-dressing mystics to androgynous gods. It shows us the connections between grammar and sex, between hair and war, between abstinence and pleasure, between love and death. Gloriously subversive, full of extraordinary analyses and insights, this is a book you will read to be enlightened and entertained for years.About the AuthorMadhavi Menon is professor of English at Ashoka University, and writes on desire and queer theory. She is the author of Wanton Words: Rhetoric and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama; Unhistorical Shakespeare: Queer Theory in Shakespearean Literature and Film; and Indifference to Difference: On Queer Universalism. She is also the editor of Shakesqueer: A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

    The establishment and running of businesses tap into caste networks, both in terms of arranging finance and providing access to a ready workforce.By and large, caste has only been studied from a religious, social and political angle. Though it is widely accepted that caste has economic ramifications, any study of this aspect has been limited to looking at caste groups in terms of their per capita income, their representation in various professions, and other statistical details.Caste as Social Capital examines the workings of caste through the lens of business, economics and entrepreneurship. It interrogates the role caste plays in the economic sphere in terms of facilitating the nuts and bolts of business and entrepreneurship: finance, markets and workforce. Through this qualitative view of caste, an entirely new picture emerges of caste which forces one to view this age-old institution in new light.