India Social

As a novelist, Arundhati Roy is known for her lush language and intricate structure. As a political essayist, her prose is searching and fierce. All of these qualities shine through in the interviews collected here by David Barsamian. This newly reissued and expanded edition, featuring interviews from 2001 to 2022 and a moving foreword by Naomi Klein, explores Roy's evolving political thought and commitments across the tumultuous twenty-first entry.

No Indian spymaster has, until now, written a memoir. A.S. Dulat is the first to do so, and in A Life in the Shadows he does it with considerable elan. He is one of India's most successful spymasters, his name synonymous with the Kashmir issue. His methods of engagement and accommodation with all people and perspectives from India's most conflicted state are legendary.

The public intellectual in India is an endangered species. 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.

Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark are internationally renowned investigative journalists. In Deception, they reveal the decades-long story of Pakistan's nuclear program - and how the United States has been complicit in the spread of nuclear arms. Based on hundreds of interviews from around the world, this work will force Americans to reexamine national priorities.

Is zero odd or even? Find out how India drove around the problem on this episode of Now I Know. Zero is an even number. Let’s get that out of the way. But if that gave you pause, you’re not alone – it can be a little hard to internalize. That’s why Wikipedia has a surprisingly long entry discussing the subject and why, according to a study from the 1990s (as explained by the BBC), “people are 10% slower at deciding whether zero is odd or even than other numbers.”

In the next decade and a half, China and India will become two of the world's indispensable powers - whether they rise peacefully or not. During that time, Asia will surpass the combined strength of North America and Europe in economic might, population size, and military spending. Both India and China will have vetoes over many international decisions, from climate change to global trade, human rights, and business standards.

A pioneering exploration of four cities where East meets West and past becomes future: St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai. Every month, five million people move from the past to the future. Pouring into developing-world “instant cities” like Dubai and Shenzhen, these urban newcomers confront a modern world cobbled together from fragments of a West they have never seen. Do these fantastical boomtowns, where blueprints spring to life overnight on virgin land, represent the dawning of a brave new world? Or is their vaunted newness a mirage?

Published to coincide with Pope Francis' Year of Mercy and the Vatican's canonization of Mother Teresa, this new book of unpublished material by a humble yet remarkable woman of faith whose influence is felt as deeply today as it was when she was alive offers Mother Teresa's profound yet accessible wisdom on how we can show mercy and compassion in our day-to-day lives.

Through a lyrical narrative of her journey to Tibet in 2007, activist Canyon Sam contemplates modern history from the perspective of Tibetan women. Traveling on China's new "Sky Train", she celebrates Tibetan New Year with the Lhasa family whom she'd befriended decades earlier and concludes an oral-history project with women elders.

India’s fundamentals are, no doubt, stronger now than ever before, but the country also faces several old and new challenges in the areas of politics, economics, and governance. India Ahead: 2025 and Beyond highlights the immediate priorities that need to be tackled. The primary focus of this book is to promote the country’s national interest in the long run, irrespective of any party-specific political agenda - be it the right, the left, or the in-between.

In this explosive book, best-selling author Shashi Tharoor reveals with acuity, impeccable research, and trademark wit, just how disastrous British rule was for India. Besides examining the many ways in which the colonizers exploited India, he demolishes the arguments of Western and Indian apologists for Empire on the supposed benefits of British rule.

This is the story of three terrible famines. The first is an Gorta Mór, the great hunger of Ireland, which began in 1846. The second is the deadly famine that struck Bengal in 1943. The third is the Ethiopian famine, which first sprung up in lethal form in the 1970s under Emperor Haile Selassie and then reappeared under the brutal dictator Mengistu in the 1980s.

In The Sex Book, award-winning sex educator Leeza Mangaldas provides scientifically accurate, judgement-free answers to even your most seemingly awkward questions about sex and the body.

In this concluding volume of the Savarkar series, exploring a vast range of original archival documents from across India and outside it, in English and several Indian languages, historian Vikram Sampath brings to light the life and works of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, one of the most contentious political thinkers and leaders of the twentieth century.

Everybody Loves a Good Drought is the established classic on rural poverty in India. Twenty years after publication, it remains unsurpassed in the scope and depth of reportage, providing an intimate view of the daily struggles of the poor and the efforts, often ludicrous, made to uplift them. An illuminating introduction accompanying this 20-anniversary edition reveals, alarmingly, how a large section of India continues to suffer in the name of development so that a small percentage may prosper.

For a brief moment on December 27, 2007, life came to a standstill in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, the country's former prime minister and the first woman ever to lead a Muslim country, had been assassinated at a political rally just outside Islamabad. Back in Karachi--Bhutto's birthplace and Pakistan's other great metropolis--Rafia Zakaria's family was suffering through a crisis of its own: her uncle Sohail, the man who had brought shame upon the family, was near death.

In a village somewhere in the Thar desert, in mid-nineteenth century India, the revered Thakur Ram Singh has just died. He will be laid to rest according to traditional Hindu rites. But will he be the only one who will be cremated on the funeral pyre that day? Meanwhile, a Church dignitary and a band of British soldiers from the nearby cantonment casually observe the proceedings as they unfold—until they are joined by a young, spirited seminarian. His name is Brother Jack and he has chosen to interfere. His spontaneous action will result in certain death, a revolt against the Crown, or a ...

We begin with a man off balance: one in one thousand, the only child in town whose polio leads to partial paralysis. We meet his future wife, chanting Hai Rams for Gandhiji and choosing education over marriage. On one side of the line that divides this book, we follow them as their homeland splits in two and they are drawn together, moving to Canada and raising their children in mining towns and in crowded city apartments.

The story of the birth of India's states is the story of the birth and continuing rebirth of India, the nation. It is a story that everyone in India must know, from young to old. This rigorously researched book lays out the fascinating political and historical circumstances of the birth of India's states and union territories.

Begin learning about the History of India and Indian Mythology today!