AN ONLINE REVIEW OF BOOKS ON SOUTH ASIA
A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia by Manan Ahmed Asif Harvard University Press, 272 pp., 2016. ‘The stories we tell have consequences.’ The last line of Manan Ahmed Asif’s A Book of Conquest gestures in multiple ways to the work of reimagining history contained within its pages. In his […]
MoreDo We Care?: India’s Health System by K. Sujatha Rao Oxford University Press, 479 pp., 2017. For an administration of such scale, retired Indian bureaucrats reveal remarkably little about their experiences of how policies are made and implemented. Memoirs tend to come from prime ministerial circles, offering a seductive blend of office gossip and the […]
MorePolitical Violence in Ancient India by Upinder Singh Harvard University Press, 616 pp., 2017. Shortly after independence, India’s first government, led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, designated a graphic representation of the lion capital of the Sarnath pillar as the official emblem of India. The pillar was one of many erected by the Mauryan […]
MoreAnts Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India by Sujatha Gidla Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 306 pp., 2017. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the political bar these days is pretty low: patrician and civil forms of prejudice find ways of continuing to thrive as extreme right-wing ideologies […]
MoreOur Time has Come: How India is Making its Place in the World by Alyssa Ayres Oxford University Press, 360 pp., 2018. In a February 2018 article for War On the Rocks, political scientist Paul Staniland warned US policymakers against “excessive optimism about India’s ability”. “India is a hard-pressed power,” Staniland continued, “facing deep domestic […]
MoreRemnants of a Separation: A History of Partition through Material Memory by Aanchal Malhotra Harper Collins India, 386 pp., 2017. The Academy Award winning film The Reader (2008) based on the eponymous novel by Bernhard Schlink (1995) serves as a poignant reminder about the enduring relationship that objects share with grief, longing and loss. Set […]
MoreThe Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India by Jon Wilson Public Affairs, 584 pp., 2016. Divided into fifteen chapters, covering a lengthy timeline from 17th to mid-20th century India, The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India, is an ambitious historical project. Jon Wilson presents a […]
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