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Bangladesh was once East Pakistan, the Muslim nation carved out of the Indian Subcontinent when it gained independence from Britain in 1947. As religion alone could not keep East Pakistan and West Pakistan together, Bengali-speaking East Pakistan fought for and achieved liberation in 1971. Coups and assassinations followed, and two decades later it completed its long, tumultuous transition to parliamentary government. Its history is complex and tragic—one of war, natural disaster, starvation, corruption, and political instability. First published in India by the Aleph Book Company, Salil Tripathi’s lyrical, beautifully wrought tale of the difficult birth and conflict-ridden politics of this haunted land has received international critical acclaim, and his reporting has been honored with a Mumbai Press Club Red Ink Award for Excellence in Journalism. The Colonel Who Would Not Repent is an insightful study of a nation struggling to survive and define itself.
"Indian nationalists have a great project in hand. Their work-in-progress is the recovery of India's proud past and it's rightful place at the centre of human civilization. In pursuit of this, history must be rewritten regardless of the facts and they will make sure the world acknowledges India's pre-eminence by direct action at home and abroad." "Claiming to take a leaf out of the Islamic book, they are no longer prepared to suffer insult, denigration or offence, past and present, in silence. And offence is found everywhere - in art galleries, schools and universities, books, films, music and online. Hindu nationalists have targeted all these, attacking art galleries and driving artists into exile, tearing down posters they consider obscene, demanding bans on books that don't conform to their version of history, vandalizing research institutes and threatening its academics, forcing film studios to change scripts or musicians to alter lyrics, destroying mosques and abusing Muslims. In the process,they have plunged India into chaos and alienated many sectors of this multicultural society. Most seriously, they threaten the secular India of its founding fathers." --Book Jacket.
When Salil Tripathi began writing a travel column for a well known newspaper, he consciously decided to veer off the beaten track and not showcase the food and drink or the fabulous hotels and world class restaurants of a country. Instead, it was his insights into a place that defined a country and its people when viewed from the prism of history, culture and literature. Culled from his extensive travel writings, Detours: Songs of the Open Road is split into three parts, the first section called, War & After is a riveting account of places that were shattered due to terrible wars or human rights violations; the second titled, Words & Images, about places he visualised better because certain writers or artists made those places fascinating; and the third called Loss & Remembrance, is a wonderful personal journey about countries he visited with his wife who died in 2006 and which he later revisited with his sons as remembrance to a beloved. Detours: Songs of the Open Road is a remarkable travel diary of a man who holds your hand and takes you through fascinating journeys which you make your own by the end of his travel.
Racism, extremism, anti-democratic sentiment – our increasingly polarized world is dominated by a type of thinking that doubts others’ positions but never its own. In a powerful challenge to fundamentalism in all its forms, Carolin Emcke, one of Germany’s leading intellectuals, argues that we can only preserve individual freedom and protect people’s rights by cherishing and celebrating diversity. If we want to safeguard democracy, we must have the courage to challenge hatred and the will to fight for and defend plurality in our societies. Emcke rises to the challenge that identitarian dogmas and populist narratives pose, exposing the way in which they simplify and distort our perception of the world. Against Hate is an impassioned call to fight intolerance and defend liberal ideals. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned about the darkening politics of our time and searching for ways forward.
Indian culture and spiritualism have exerted a strong hold over the world’s greatest intellectuals—from psychologists like Carl Jung to poets like T.S. Eliot, from orators like Swami Vivekananda to philosophers like Sri Aurobindo, from statesmen like Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to writers like H.G. Wells. Compiled by Salil Gewali, Great Minds on India is a remarkable collection of the thoughts and views of these world-renowned opinion-makers on India’s cultural inheritance and glorious legacy.
The country's first and only publication devoted to narrative journalism, The Caravan occupies a singular position among Indian magazines. It is a new kind of magazine for a new kind of reader, one who demands both style and substance. Since its relaunch in January 2010, the magazine has earned a reputation as one of the country's most sophisticated publications-a showcase for the region's finest writers and a distinctive blend of rigorous reporting, incisive criticism and commentary, stunning photo essays, and gripping new fiction and poetry. Its commitment to great storytelling has earned it the respect of readers from around the world. "India's best English language magazine", The Guardian, London "For those with an interest in India, it has become an absolute must-read", The New Republic, Washington The Caravan fills a niche in the Indian media that has remained vacant for far too long, catering to the intellectually curious and aesthetically refined reader, who seeks a magazine of exceptional quality.
The Myth of the Lazy Native is Syed Hussein Alatas’ widely acknowledged critique of the colonial construction of Malay, Filipino and Javanese natives from the 16th to the 20th century. Drawing on the work of Karl Mannheim and the sociology of knowledge, Alatas analyses the origins and functions of such myths in the creation and reinforcement of colonial ideology and capitalism. The book constitutes in his own words: ‘an effort to correct a one-sided colonial view of the Asian native and his society’ and will be of interest to students and scholars of colonialism, post-colonialism, sociology and South East Asian Studies.
The Caravan is India’s most respected and admired magazine on politics, art and culture. With a strong literary flair, the magazine presents the best of reportage and commentary on politics, policy, economy, art and culture from within South Asia. It has become an essential read for anyone interested in understanding the political and social environment of the country.
Focuses on how dharma provides the foundation for a new republic—Bibek Debroy Intensely researched argument about an alternative idea of India—Salman Khurshid The year 2014 was a consequential one for the Bharatiya Janata Party and for India. Will 2024 also be so? Is this election about stopping the rise of Narendra Modi and his alleged distortion of the ‘idea of India’ as conceived by its founders, or the beginning of a dharma-inspired ‘second republic?’ In 2014, the BJP, under the leadership of Modi, won a clear majority in the Lok Sabha elections. The National Democratic Alliance’s triumph ended a nearly two-and-a-half-decade run of mostly messy coalition governments. In 201...
A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our sense of his achievements and disappointments—his success in seizing India’s imagination and shaping its independence struggle as a mass movement, his recognition late in life that few of his followers paid more than lip service to his ambitious goals of social justice for the country’s minorities, outcasts, and rural poor. Pulitzer Prize–winner Joseph Lelyveld shows in vivid, unmatched detail how Gandhi’s sense of mission, social values, and philosophy of nonviolent resistance were shaped on another subcontinent—during two decades in South Africa—and then tested by an India that quickly learned to revere him a...