While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of twenty-six. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary—and yet how typical—her family history truly was. Her mother, Manjula, and uncles Satyam and Carey were born in the last days of British colonial rule. They grew up in a world marked by poverty and injustice, but also full of possibility. In the slums where they lived, everyone had a political side, and rallies, agitations, and arrests were commonplace. The Independence movement promised freedom. Yet for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. Satyam, the eldest, switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Gidla recounts his incredible life—how he became a famous poet, student, labor organizer, and founder of a left-wing guerrilla movement. And Gidla charts her mother’s battles with caste and women’s oppression. Page by page, Gidla takes us into a complicated, close-knit family as they desperately strive for a decent life and a more just society.A moving portrait of love, hardship, and struggle, Ants Among Elephants is also that rare thing: a personal history of modern India told from the bottom up.

    The men who killed Gandhi is a spellbinding Non fictional recreation of the events which led to India’s Partition, the eventual assassination of Gandhi, and the prosecution of those who were involved in Gandhian murder. This historical reenactment is set against the tumultuous backdrop of the British Raj. Malgonkar’s book is a result of painstaking research and from also having privileged access to many important documents and photographs related to the assassination. There is no doubt that Mahatma Gandhi played a leading role in obtaining independence from the British. But the problems that ensued afterwards, such as the structural rebuilding of the country and the Partition, led to many riots, massive migrations, and deep racial and cultural divides. Not everyone agreed with Gandhi and his ideals. As a result, a plot to assassinate Gandhi was devised by six individuals named, Narayan apte, Gopal God se, Madanlal pahwa, Digambar badge, and Nathan God se. This was eventually carried out in New Delhi, on the 30th of January, 1948. Eventually, these six individuals were tried and convicted. Four of them received life sentences while two of them received the death penalty. The first publication of the men who killed Gandhi occurred in 1978, during the emergency years. As a result, malgonkar omitted many vital facts including Dr. Ambedkar role in minimizing Savarkar’s criminal conviction. This 11th edition of the text contains these omitted facts as well as rare documents, and photographs obtained from National archives. After the four individuals who were convicted for Gandhi’s murder completed their life sentences, they were interviewed by malgonkar. These individuals revealed many details to him which were never known before. The author also received access to the Kapur Commission from his friend Mr. Nayar, who was in the Indian police service. As a result, the men who killed Gandhi is considered the most historically accurate account of Gandhian assassination plot.

    

    A hard-working bank clerk, Gustad Noble is a devoted family man who gradually sees his modest life unravelling. His young daughter falls ill; his promising son defies his father’s ambitions for him. He is the one reasonable voice amidst the ongoing dramas of his neighbours. One day, he receives a letter from an old friend, asking him to help in what at first seems like an heroic mission. But he soon finds himself unwittingly drawn into a dangerous network of deception. Compassionate, and rich in details of character and place, this unforgettable novel charts the journey of a moral heart in a turbulent world of change.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    Should we care? In this well-argued book, Romila Thapar and others tell us why we should. Thapar begins by defining the critical role that such individuals play in our societies today. Collectively, they are the objective, fearless, constructive voice that asks the awkward questions when government, industry, religious leaders and other bulwarks of society stray from their roles of ensuring the proper functioning of a country whose hallmarks are (or should be) social and economic equality, justice for all, and the liberty to say, think and profess the fundamental requirements of good citizenship. Through the lens of history, philosophy, science, and politics, she shows us the key role enlightened thinkers and activists have played in India, Europe and elsewhere. Today, as the liberal space in India is threatened by religious fundamentalism, big business, and, worryingly, a government that appears to be tacitly (and sometimes overtly) encouraging the attack on freedom of expression, secular values and rational readings of history, there could be no book as timely as this one. With contributions from writers and scholars in the fields of philosophy, science, history, journalism and social activism, The Public Intellectual in India shows us why it is important to have independent voices to protect the underprivileged, ensure human rights and social justice, and watch over the smooth functioning of our liberal, secular democracy.

    Jugnu and Chanda have disappeared. Like thousands of people all over England, they were lovers and living together out of wedlock. To Chanda’s family, however, the disgrace was unforgivable. Perhaps enough so as to warrant murder.As he explores the disappearance and its aftermath through the eyes of Jugnu’s worldly older brother, Shamas, and his devout wife, Kaukab, Nadeem Aslam creates a closely observed and affecting portrait of people whose traditions threaten to bury them alive. The result is a tour de force, intimate, affecting, tragic and suspenseful.

    Ananthamurthy is a timely reading of, and creative response to, the rise of Hindutva nationalism in India. Juxtaposing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh founder V.D. Savarkar's idea of Hindutva with M.K. Gandhi's concept of Hind Swaraj, the book examines two directions that were open to India at the time of Independence. Born out of a meditation of the idea of the nation state and nationalism, and what the new power structures and centres mean for the very idea of India, the essay uses shifting tones and styles to make a deep, elegant and heartfelt point about the human cost of radicalization.

    S. Naipaul." Second only to China in the magnitude of its economic miracle and second to none in its potential to shape the new century, India is fast undergoing one of the most momentous transformations the world has ever seen. In this dazzlingly panoramic book, Patrick French chronicles that epic change, telling human stories to explain a larger national narrative. Melding on-the-ground reports with a deep knowledge of history, French exposes the cultural foundations of India's political, economic and social complexities. He reveals how a nation identified with some of the most wretched poverty on earth has simultaneously developed an envied culture of entrepreneurship (here are stories like that of C. K. Ranganathan, who trudged the streets of Cuddalore in the 1980s selling sample packets of shampoo and now employs more than one thousand people). And even more remarkably, French shows how, despite the ancient and persistent traditions of caste, as well as a mind-boggling number of ethnicities and languages, India has nevertheless managed to cohere, evolving into the world's largest democracy, largely fulfilling Jawaharlal Nehru's dream of a secular liberal order. French's inquiry goes to the heart of all the puzzlements that modern India presents: Is this country actually rich or poor? Why has its Muslim population, the second largest on earth, resisted radicalization to such a considerable extent? Why do so many children of Indians who have succeeded in the West want to return "home," despite never having lived in India? Will India become a natural ally of the West, a geostrategic counterweight to the illiberal rising powers China and Russia? To find the answers, French seeks out an astonishing range of characters: from Maoist revolutionaries to Mafia dons, from chained quarry laborers to self-made billionaires. And he delves into the personal lives of the political elite, including the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, one of the most powerful women in the world. With a familiarity and insight few Westerners could approach, Patrick French provides a vital corrective to the many outdated notions about a uniquely dynamic and consequential nation. His "India" is a thrilling revelation.

    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.

    A study of the characters and public careers of Englishmen who founded and developed British rule in India from 1600 to 1947.

    The phenomenon of prostitution coupled with music and dance performances had ancient roots in South Asia. Regardless of the stigma attached to prostitution, it has given birth for centuries to many well known performing artists. The book paints a more realistic picture of the phenomenon through the stories of the people living there: the musicians, the prostitutes, and their pimps, managers and customers.

    After rallying non-Urdu speaking leaders around him, Jinnah imposed a unitary definition of the new nation state that obliterated linguistic diversity. This centralisation - 'justified' by the Indian threat - fostered centrifugal forces that resulted in Bengali secessionism in 1971 and Baloch, as well as Mohajir, separatisms today. Concentration of power in the hands of the establishment remained the norm, and while authoritarianism peaked under military rule, democracy failed to usher in reform, and the rule of law remained fragile at best under Zulfikar Bhutto and later Nawaz Sharif. While Jinnah and Ayub Khan regarded religion as a cultural marker, since their time the Islamists have gradually prevailed. They benefited from the support of General Zia, while others, including sectarian groups, cashed in on their struggle against the establishment to woo the disenfranchised. Today, Pakistan faces existential challenges ranging from ethnic strife to Islamism, two sources of instability which hark back to elite domination. But the resilience of the country and its people, the resolve of the judiciary and hints of reform in the army may open a new and more stable chapter in its history.

    In Rashid's opium room the air is thick and potent. A beautiful young woman leans to hold a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her dark eyes. Around her, men sprawl and mutter in the gloom, each one drifting with his own tide. Here, people say that you introduce only your worst enemy to opium.Outside, stray dogs lope in packs. Street vendors hustle. Hookers call for custom through the bars of their cages as their pimps slouch in doorways in the half-light. There is an underworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose victims are the nameless, invisible poor. There are too many of them to count in this broken city.Narcopolis is a rich, chaotic, hallucinatory dream of a novel that captures the Bombay of the 1970s in all its compelling squalor. With a cast of pimps, pushers, poets, gangsters and eunuchs, it is a journey into a sprawling underworld written in electric and utterly original prose.

    The author has tried to bridge the gap between historical research and popular perception of this controversial phase in Indian history.

    Here, lives intertwine and unravel. A widower struggles with his love for an unmarried cousin. Bakul, a motherless daughter, runs wild with Mukunda, an orphan of unknown caste adopted by the family. Confined in a room at the top of the house, a matriarch goes slowly mad; her husband searches for its cause as he shapes and reshapes his garden. As Mukunda and Bakul grow, their intense closeness matures into something else, and Mukunda is banished to Calcutta. He prospers in the turbulent years after Partition, but his thoughts stay with his home, with Bakul, with all that he has lost—and he knows that he must return.