If you steal 55,000 crores then you get to stay in a 40-foot cell which has four split units, internet, fax, mobile phones and a staff of 10 to clean your shoes and cook your food (in case it is not being delivered from Hyatt that particular day).’They say that prison can be a great leveler – but does this apply if you are a VIP inmate in an Indian prison? Maybe not.Based on extensive first-hand interviews with some of India’s most well-known inmates, award-winning journalist Sunetra Choudhury gives you a peek into the VIP prison life. It includes some interesting anecdotes about the lives of the rich and powerful prisoners: What does Peter Mukherjea do all day in his 4 x 4 cell in Arthur Road Jail? How does a 70-year-old Doon school alumnus who has spent more than 7 years in jail find a will to continue petitioning the state and fight his cases? Who came to visit Amar Singh during those 4 fateful days and why this scarred him and his wife for life, determining his future friends and allies?Apart from certain depictions in popular culture or the occasional news reports, there is little information about how rules are bent and law takes a backseat when it comes to people like Sanjeev Nanda, Vikas and Vishal Yadav, Anca Varma and Manu Sharma, who were given special benefits and often sent out on parole and furlough for their good behaviour.For the first time, India’s most famous prisoners share their own stories – from terror tales of ‘bladebaaz’ to torture chambers, from air conditioners in cells to food from five-star hotels, from cushy beds to private parties – and how they negotiate life in prison or the so-called ‘jail-ashram’.With unbelievable details of the life inside prison and the sorry state of hundreds of undertrials languishing in jails, this book questions the primary purpose of imprisonment – is it actually reform, punishment or just misusing the system we are a part of?

    But that is only half the saying; the full expression is: India grows at night... when the government sleeps, suggesting that the nation may be rising despite the state. Indias is a tale of private success and public failure. Prosperity is, indeed, spreading across the country even as governance failure pervades public life. But how could a nation become one of the worlds fastest-growing economies when its governed by a weak, ineffective state? And wouldnt it be wonderful if India also grew during the dayin other words, if public policy supported private enterprise? What India needs, Gurcharan Das says, is a strong liberal state. Such a state would have the authority to take quick, decisive action; it would have the rule of law to ensure those actions are legitimate; and finally, it would be accountable to the people. But achieving this will not be easy, says Das, because India has historically had a weak state and a strong society.

    Yet discussions of Asia seem fixated on economic indicators--gross national product, per capita income, share of global trade. Makers of Modern Asia reorients our understanding of contemporary Asia by highlighting the political leaders, not billionaire businessmen, who helped launch the Asian Century.The nationalists who crafted modern Asia were as much thinkers as activists, men and women who theorized and organized anticolonial movements, strategized and directed military campaigns, and designed and implemented political systems. The eleven thinker-politicians whose portraits are presented here were a mix of communists, capitalists, liberals, authoritarians, and proto-theocrats--a group as diverse as the countries they represent.From China, the world's most populous country, come four: Mao Zedong, leader of the Communist Revolution; Zhou Enlai, his close confidant; Deng Xiaoping, purged by Mao but rehabilitated to play a critical role in Chinese politics in later years; and Chiang Kai-shek, whose Kuomintang party formed the basis of modern Taiwan. From India, the world's largest democracy, come three: Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Indira Gandhi, all of whom played crucial roles in guiding India toward independence and prosperity. Other exemplary nationalists include Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh, Indonesia's Sukarno, Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, and Pakistan's Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. With contributions from leading scholars, Makers of Modern Asia illuminates the intellectual and ideological foundations of Asia's spectacular rise to global prominence.

    Anand Teltumbde identifies the watershed moments of its journey: from the adoption of a flawed Constitution to the Green Revolution, the OBC upsurge, the rise of regional parties, and up to the nexus of neoliberalism and hindutva in the present day. Joining the dots between a wide range of events on the ground and the prevailing structure of power, he debunks the pieties of state and Constitution, political parties and identitarian rhetoric, to reveal the pernicious energies they have unleashed and their dire impact on India’s most marginalised people, the dalits.The exclusion and disempowerment of dalits emerges as intrinsic to India’s republican system, whether expressed through state policies on education, agriculture and land ownership, or the tacit encouragement of caste embedded in both law and political practice. Here, the carrot of reservations comes with the stick of atrocities. As a politics of symbolism exploits the fissile nature of caste to devitalise India’s poorest whilst appropriating their votes, Teltumbde’s damning analysis also shows progressive politics a way out of the present impasse.Anand Teltumbde is a civil rights activist and a columnist with the Economic & Political Weekly. Among his many books are Dalits: Past, Present and Future, Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt and The Persistence of Caste: The Khairlanji Murders and India’s Hidden Apartheid. He teaches at the Goa Institute of Management.

    Vinay Sitapati's Jugalbandi provides this backstory to his current dominance in Indian politics. It begins with the creation of Hindu nationalism as a response to British-induced elections in the 1920s, moves on to the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1980, and ends with its first national government, from 1998 to 2004. And it follows this journey through the entangled lives of its founding jugalbandi: Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani.Over their six-decade-long relationship, Vajpayee and Advani worked as a team despite differences in personality and beliefs. What kept them together was fraternal love and professional synergy, of course, but also, above all, an ideology that stressed on unity. Their partnership explains what the BJP before Modi was, and why it won.In supporting roles are a cast of characters-from the warden's wife who made room for Vajpayee in her family to the billionaire grandson of Pakistan's founder who happened to be a major early funder of the BJP. Based on private papers, party documents, newspapers and over two hundred interviews, this is a must-read for those interested in the ideology that now rules 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.

    To understand how millions of people have moved-from, to and within India-the book embarks on a journey laced with evidence, argument and wit, providing insights into topics like the slave trade and migration of workers, travelling business communities such as the Marwaris, Gujaratis and Chettiars, refugee crises and the roots of contemporary mass migration from Bihar and Kerala, covering terrain that often includes diverse items such as mangoes, dosas and pressure cookers.India Moving shows the scale and variety of Indian migration and argues that greater mobility is a prerequisite for maintaining the country's pluralistic traditions.

    . . anyone who wants to understand Indian politics or think they do should read it’ -Indian Express‘Delightfully written . . . he has a sharp eye for details, especially the actions of political leaders’ -India Today‘Captures the drama of 2014 and the men who powered it’-Open‘Holds you to your seat, often on the edge . . . A procession of India’s colourful political characters—Lalu Yadav, Amit Shah, Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi and many more come intimately close through the author’s accounts’ -The Hindu‘Candid and forthright . . . and deliciously indiscreet’ -Hindustan Times‘A racy narrative that goes beyond recording immediate political history’ -TehelkaThe 2014 Indian general elections has been regarded as the most important elections in Indian history since 1977. It saw the decimation of the ruling Congress party, a spectacular victory for the BJP and a new style of campaigning that broke every rule in the political game. But how and why? In his riveting book, Rajdeep Sardesai tracks the story of this pivotal election through all the key players and the big news stories. Beginning with 2012, when Narendra Modi won the state elections in Gujarat for a third time but set his sights on a bigger prize, to the scandals that crippled Manmohan Singh and UPA-II, and moving to the back-room strategies of Team Modi, the extraordinary missteps of Rahul Gandhi and the political dramas of election year, he draws a panoramic picture of the year that changed India.

    Book contains the original statement given by Nathuram Godse (Assassin of Mahatma Gandhi).Writer is real brother of Nathuram Godse himself and narrates his accounts of all the events and takes us through the day of assassination till the day Nathuram Godse was hanged.Writer also puts forward crucial accounts of public and political opinions and reactions which were stirred up by assassination itself and also by Nathuram Godse's official statement to court.

    This book will appeal not only to admirers of Khushwant Singhs writing but also to anyone Interested in the history, politics and socio economic scenario of twentieth century India.People profiled in this book include Jawaharlal Nehru, Krishna Menon, Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, Amrita Sher Gil, Begum Para, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, M. S. Golwalkar, Mother Teresa, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Dhirendra Brahmachari, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, General Tikka Khan, Phoolan Devi, Giani Zail Singh and Bhagat Puran Singh.About the AuthorKhushwant singh is one of Indias best known and most widely read authors and columnists. He was founder-editor of Yojana and editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, National Heraldand the Hindustan Times. His first book, The Mark of Vishnu and Other Stories, was published in 1950 and he has published several acclaimed and bestselling books of fiction and non-fiction in the six decades since. He has also translated the work of major Punjabi and Urdu poets and writers, as well as the Japji and the Rehras: The Morning and Evening Prayers of the Sikhs.

    The mob has always been a faceless, unidimensional machine. But the act of turning around and looking at individuals from that crowd changes everything. If we see the mob as amorphous and their hate as shifting, given to complex personal motivations and vulnerabilities, we are much closer to understanding it—and to opening up conversations that can lead to change.Revati Laul’s unforgettable narrative, built on a decade’s worth of research and interviews, is the very first account of the perpetrators of 2002—and a crucial new addition to the literature on violence. ‘Choice, however, is a vexing word. What part of choice applies when a tidal wave of anger tears through a state? What part of it is the moment, the madness, the collective, and what part individual, personal history?’

    Despite polarizingGujarat and India in more ways than one, Modibrilliantly does what it takes to survive in ademocracy: win elections.Written by veteran journalist and writer, NilanjanMukhopadhyay, after several indepth interviews,meticulous research and extensive travel throughGujarat, this book reveals hitherto unknownaspects of Narendra Modis psyche: as a sixyearold boy selling tea to help out his fatherand distributing badges and raising slogans atthe behest of a local political leader; abandoninghis family and wife in search of his definition oftruth; initiation into the RSS as a fledgling who ranerrands for his seniors; his idea of Gujarati prideand Indianness; and finally, his meteoric risewhich gave him a distinct identity post the 2002Godhra riots.Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times is a definitivebiography of a man who may have challenged thebasic principles of a sovereign secular nation butemerged as an undisputed and largerthanlifeleader. About The Author: Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay is the author of TheDemolition: India at the Crossroads, andhas written for several newspapers and magazinesincluding The Economic Times, Hindustan Times,Outlook and The Statesman. He currently also presents a weekly show Page From History on LokSabha TV which showcases historical debates.

    

    He was brought up in India in the apparently vigorous but dying Raj and was sent by his family in the 1930s to Berlin -- though he could not speak a word of German -- to study medicine and dentistry. It was here, before he migrated to Britain, that Shanti's path first crossed that of his future wife. Helga Gerda Caro, known to everyone as "Henny" was also born in 1908, in Berlin, to a Jewish family -- cultured, patriotic, and intensely German. When the family decided to take Shanti as a lodger, Henny's first reaction was, "Don't take the black man!" But a friendship flowered, and when Henny fled Hitler's Germany for England just one month before war broke out, she was met at Victoria Station by the only person in the country she knew: Shanti. Vikram Seth has woven together their astonishing story, which recounts the arrival into this childless couple's lives of their great-nephew from India -- the teenage student Vikram Seth. The result is an extraordinary tapestry of India, the Third Reich and the Second World War, Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine, postwar Germany and 1970s Britain. Two Lives is both a history of a violent century seen through the eyes of two survivors and an intimate portrait of their friendship, marriage, and abiding yet complex love. Part biography, part memoir, part meditation on our times, this is the true tale of two remarkable lives -- a masterful telling from one of our greatest living writers.

    David Malone identifies relevant aspects of Indian history, examines the role of domestic politics and internal and external security challenges, and of domestic and international economic factors.He analyzes the specifics of India's policy within its South Asian neighborhood, and with respect to China, the USA, West Asia, East Asia, Europe, and Russia as well as multilateral diplomacy. The book also touches on Indian ties to Africa and Latin America, and the Caribbean.India's 'soft power', the role of migration in its policy, and other cross-cutting issues are analyzed, as is the role and approach of several categories of foreign policy actors in India. Substantive conclusions touch on policies India may want or need to adjust in its quest for internationalstature.This book will appeal to both scholars and students of international relations as well as policymakers, diplomats, journalists, strategic affairs experts, and informed readers.