But that is not the only truth about the city that Amitava Kumar explores in this vivid, entertaining account of his hometown. We accompany him through many Patnas, the myriad cities locked within the city—the shabby reality of the present-day capital of Bihar; Pataliputra, the storied city of emperors; the dreamlike embodiment of the city in the minds and hearts of those who have escaped contemporary Patna's confines. Full of fascinating observations and impressions, A Matter of Rats reveals a challenging and enduring city that exerts a lasting pull on all those who drift into its orbit.Kumar's ruminations on one of the world's oldest cities, the capital of India's poorest province, are also a meditation on how to write about place. His memory is partial. All he has going for him is his attentiveness. He carefully observes everything that surrounds him in Patna: rats and poets, artists and politicians, a girl's picture in a historian's study, and a sheet of paper on his mother's desk. The result is this unique book, as cutting as it is honest.

    Both are in ample evidence in this book.' - India TodayIn this incisive commentary, Arun Shourie documents the ways in which our history textbooks have been doctored by leftist historians. Thoroughly researched and riveting, this study brings to light the techniques and frauds that a cabal of some of our best-known academicians has used to promote themselves, and to acquire control over institutions. And then to put these supposedly academic institutions to use.Shourie shows how, in the process, this cabal has perverted India's historical narrative, and thereby vitiated the country's public discourse. Two new chapters bring to light recent developments in the field: how, with their holy scriptures having been repudiated in their holy cities, these 'historians' strive to retain their perches by dominating niche domains; how these efforts are bound to fail; but how their trajectory holds vital lessons for those who seek to replace them.

    A man with a rare vision, Dr Kurien has devoted a lifetime to realizing his dream - empowering the farmers of India. He has engineered the milk cooperative movement in India. It was a sheer quirk of fate that landed him in Anand where a small group of farmers were forming a cooperative, Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers'Union Limited (better known as Amul), to sell their milk. Intrigued by the integrity and commitment of their leader, Tribhuvandas Patel, Dr Kurien joined them. Since then there has been no looking back. The 'Anand pattern of cooperatives'were so successful that, at the request of the Government of India, he set up the National Dairy Development Board to replicate it across India. He also established the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation to market its products. In these memoirs, Dr Verghese Kurien, popularly known as the 'father of the white revolution', recounts, with customary candour, the story of his life and how he shaped the dairy industry. Profoundly inspiring, these memoirs help up comprehend the magnitude of his contributions and his multifaceted personality.

    In the centuries before the British Raj, when the Mughals were the preeminent power in the subcontinent, a wide array of migrants known as ‘firangis’ made India their home. In this book, Jonathan Gil Harris, a twenty-first-century firangi, tells their stories. These gripping accounts are of healers, soldiers, artists, ascetics, thieves, pirates and courtesans who were not powerful or privileged. Often they were escaping poverty or religious persecution; many were brought here as slaves; others simply followed their spirit of adventure. Some of these migrants were absorbed into the military. Others fell in with religious communities—the Catholics of Rachol, the underground Jews of Goa, the fakirs of Ajmer, the Sufis of Delhi. Healers from Portugal and Italy adapted their medical practice in accordance with local traditions. Gifted artisans from Europe joined Akbar’s and Jahangir’s royal ateliers, and helped create enduring works of art. And though almost invisible within the archival record, some migrant women such as the Armenian Bibi Juliana and the Portuguese Juliana Dias da Costa found a home in royal Mughal harems. Jonathan Gil Harris uses his own experience of becoming Indian through the process of acclimatizing to the country’s culture, customs, weather, food, clothes and customs to bring the stories of these shadowy figures to vivid life.

    -Faiz Ahmed FaizIn the two decades since the early 1990s, when India confirmed its allegiance to the Free Market, more of its citizens have become marginalized than ever before, and society has become more sharply riven than ever.In 'Looking Away', Harsh Mander ranges wide to record and analyse the many different fault lines which crisscross Indian society today.There is increasing prosperity among the middle classes, but also a corresponding intolerance for the less fortunate. Poverty and homelessness are also on the rise-both in urban and rural settings- but not only has the state abandoned its responsibility to provide for those afflicted, the middle class, too, now avoids even the basic impulses of sharing. And with the sharp Rightward turn in politics, minority communities are under serious threat-their very status as citizens in question-as a belligerent, monolithic idea of the nation takes the place of an inclusive, tolerant one.However, as Harsh Mander points out, what most stains society today is the erosion in the imperative for sympathy, both at the state and individual levels, a crumbling that is principally at the base of the vast inequities which afflict India. Exhaustive in its scope, impassioned in its arguments, and rigorous in its scholarship, 'Looking Away' is a sobering checklist of all the things we must collectively get right if India is to become the country that was promised, in equal measure, to all its citizens.

    They were born worlds apart: Winston Churchill to Britain's most glamorous aristocratic family, Mohandas Gandhi to a pious middle-class household in a provincial town in India. Yet Arthur Herman reveals how their lives and careers became intertwined as the twentieth century unfolded. Both men would go on to lead their nations through harrowing trials and two world wars--and become locked in a fierce contest of wills that would decide the fate of countries, continents, and ultimately an empire. Gandhi & Churchill reveals how both men were more alike than different, and yet became bitter enemies over the future of India, a land of 250 million people with 147 languages and dialects and 15 distinct religions--the jewel in the crown of Britain's overseas empire for 200 years. Over the course of a long career, Churchill would do whatever was necessary to ensure that India remain British--including a fateful redrawing of the entire map of the Middle East and even risking his alliance with the United States during World War Two. Mohandas Gandhi, by contrast, would dedicate his life to India's liberation, defy death and imprisonment, and create an entirely new kind of political movement: satyagraha, or civil disobedience. His campaigns of nonviolence in defiance of Churchill and the British, including his famous Salt March, would become the blueprint not only for the independence of India but for the civilrights movement in the U.S. and struggles for freedom across the world. Now master storyteller Arthur Herman cuts through the legends and myths about these two powerful, charismatic figures and reveals their flaws as well as their strengths. The result is a sweeping epic of empire and insurrection, war and political intrigue, with a fascinating supporting cast, including General Kitchener, Rabindranath Tagore, Franklin Roosevelt, Lord Mountbatten, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. It is also a brilliant narrative parable of two men whose great successes were always haunted by personal failure, and whose final moments of triumph were overshadowed by the loss of what they held most dear.

    The dam burst the night JKLF boys were freed in exchange for the release of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then Union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. As Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah had predicted, the government's caving in emboldened many Kashmiris into thinking that azaadi was possible. 'The price we will have to pay,' were Farooq's prophetic words. Killings were almost a daily occurrence. Bombs and firings occurred not far from the chief minister's residence in the most secure zone. Gun-toting youth in trucks were seen close to the cantonment. Kashmiris believed that they were on the verge of liberation. It was prime time for Pakistan spies; not just militants but reputed businessmen, doctors, engineers and government officials were meeting their handlers in Delhi, Kathmandu, Lahore and Rawalpindi. No one trusted anyone else. A.S. Dulat was posted there at the time. Soon he saw Intelligence Bureau colleagues being picked off one by one. It was a long, slow haul to regaining control. From then to today, though he is now retired, he has had a continuous engagement with Kashmir. The initiatives launched by the Vajpayee government between 1998 and 2004 were the high point of this constant effort to keep things in balance in a delicate state. As Vajpayee said, Kashmir was a problem that had to be solved. In this extraordinary memoir that reads like a thriller, Dulat gives a sweeping dramatic account of the difficulties, success and near triumphs in this effort, showing the players, the politics, the strategies and the intent and sheer ruthlessness of the meddlers from across the border. Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years paints an unforgettable portrait of politics in India's most beautiful but troubled state.

    He opposed the exploitation and marginalisation of the non-Brahmin indigenous Dravidian peoples of South India and the imposition of, what he considered, Indo-Aryan India. His work has greatly revolutionised Tamil society and has significantly removed caste-based discrimination. He is also responsible for bringing new changes to the Tamil alphabet. The citation awarded by the UNESCO described Periyar as "the prophet of the new age, the Socrates of South East Asia, father of social reform movement and arch enemy of ignorance, superstitions, meaningless customs and base manners"

    The Naxalbari Movement is gathering strength in Bengal. Young men and women have left their homes, picked up arms to free land from the clutches of feudal landlords and the state, and return them to oppressed landless farmers. They are being arrested en masse and thrown into high-security jails. In one such jail, five Naxals are meticulously planning a jailbreak. They must free themselves if the revolution is to continue. But petty thief Bhagoban, much too happy to serve frequent terms for free food and shelter, has been planted by Jailor Bireshwar Mukherjee among them as a mole. Only, Bhagoban seems to be warming up to them. There’s Gunpowder in the Air is a searing investigation into what deprivation and isolation can do to human idealism. And Manoranjan Byapari is perhaps the most refreshing voice to emerge from Bengal in recent times.

    A hijacking, several nuclear explosions and a religious experience ... just some of the ingredients in the latest tour de force from the bestselling author of the Carpet Wars. In the searing summer of 2004, Christopher Kremmer returns to India, a country in the grip of enormous and sometimes violent change. As a young reporter in the 1990s, he first encountered this ancient and complex civilisation. Now, embarking on a yatra, or pilgrimage, he travels the dangerous frontier where religion and politics face off. tracking down the players in a decisive decade, he takes us inside the enigmatic Gandhi dynasty, and introduces an operatic cast of political Brahmins, 'cyber coolies', low-caste messiahs and wrestling priests. A sprawling portrait of India at the crossroads, Inhaling the Mahatma is also an intensely personal story about coming to terms with a dazzlingly different culture, as the author's fate is entwined with a cosmopolitan Hindu family of Old Delhi, and a guru who might just change his life.

    and, erm, super difficult to read? - But isn’t the stuff it talks about way too complex for regular folks to understand? Prepare to besurprised. Roopa Pai's spirited, one-of-a-kind retelling of the epic conversation between Pandava prince Arjuna and his mentor and friendKrishna busts these and other such myths about the Bhagavad Gita. Lucid, thought-provoking and brimming with fun trivia, this book will staywith you long after you have turned the last page. Why haven't you read it yet?

    It is the story of notorious gangsters like Haji Mastan, Karim Lala, Varadarajan Mudaliar, Chhota Rajan, Abu Salem, but above all, it is the story of a young man who went astray despite having a father in the police force. Dawood Ibrahim was initiated into crime as a pawn in the hands of the Mumbai police and went on to wipe out the competition and eventually became the Mumbai police’s own nemesis.The narrative encompasses several milestones in the history of crime in India, from the rise of the Pathans, formation of the Dawood gang, the first ever supari, mafia’s nefarious role in Bollywood, Dawood’s move to Karachi, and Pakistan’s subsequent alleged role in sheltering one of the most wanted persons in the world. This story is primarily about how a boy from Dongri became a don in Dubai, and captures his bravado, focus, ambition, and lust for power in a gripping narrative. The meticulously researched book provides an in-depth and comprehensive account of the mafia’s games of supremacy and internecine warfare.

    He doesn’t attribute any genius to his skills as a writer and convinces his readers that the stories flowed even as he minded his daughters or tossed a salad. Equally, Manto treats his tryst with Bollywood with disdain and unmasks the cardboard lives of tinsel town when a horse is painted to double up for a zebra or multiple fans rotate to create a deluge. Two of Manto’s favourite and recurring themes — Women and Partition—find special mention.For the first time ever, this unique collection of non-fiction writing from the subcontinent’s greatest writer, translated by well known author and journalist, Aakar Patel showcases Saadat Hasan Manto’s brilliance while dealing with life’s most mundane things — graveyards, bummingcigarettes, a film crew with motley characters from mythology — and a sharp dissection of what ails the subcontinent even after 6 decades —Hindi or Urdu, vile politicians and the hopelessness of living under the shadow of fear.

    This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding. Essential, and still eye-opening, Orientalism remains one of the most important books written about our divided world.

    As a result, East Asian thought is “holistic”—drawn to the perceptual field as a whole and to relations among objects and events within that field. By contrast, Westerners focus on salient objects or people, use attributes to assign them to categories, and apply rules of formal logic to understand their behavior. From feng shui to metaphysics, from comparative linguistics to economic history, a gulf separates the children of Aristotle from the descendants of Confucius. At a moment in history when the need for cross-cultural understanding and collaboration have never been more important, The Geography of Thought offers both a map to that gulf and a blueprint for a bridge that will span it.