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Equally significant is the attention paid to themes that blur the boundary between the international and the domestic. Issues of citizenship, migration, inequality, gender, and information are no longer confined within national borders. Books on law, human security, media, and social movements reveal how global processes are refracted through local institutions and everyday lives.
Questions of social justice that coalesce around caste, gender, class and marginalization are another thematic focus. Counting Caste, Elusive Democracy, Democracy and Impunity, A Woman’s Job, “New” Women, Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us and Boats in a Storm explore how power operates through social hierarchies and everyday governance. Finally, several essays further blur the boundary between disciplines, high politics, and daily life.
In conclusion, we should engage with the world, but smartly. Instead, we have seen a closing of the Indian mind and a lack of engagement over the last decade: We have abstained or stayed mum on every important international issue recently (the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the slaughter in Gaza, the bombing of Iran, the raid on Venezuela, etc.); we walked away from regional integration in South Asia (SAARC) and Southeast Asia (RCEP);
This pattern extends across security, diplomacy, and energy policy. Gloger and Mascolo demonstrate how military cooperation formats and confidence-building measures with Russia persisted long after Moscow’s authoritarian consolidation and rearmament were evident. Even more consequential was Germany’s deepening energy dependency. The expansion of Nord Stream and the systematic dismissal of Eastern European concerns revealed a strategic culture that equated economic interdependence with political moderation.
He suggests that with the decline of the West, other non-Western nations will be more important in the future world order, and that it will be marked by cultural and political diversity. His preferred description of the coming world order is that it will be akin to a multiplex, with multiple shows on offer, giving the audience a choice of plots, actors, directors and so on.
India built Afghanistan’s Parliament building. The author recalls Hamid Karzai calling him to a meeting to his Presidential office and telling him that his Cabinet colleagues and he felt that it would be only appropriate for India, the world’s largest democracy, to build Afghanistan’s Parliament House. India built the Zaranj-Dilaram Highway and brought electricity from across the Hindu Kush mountains to Kabul through power transmission lines.
(The Vedas echoing in his blood,/ the azan illuminating his forehead/ and the cross swaying upon his breast). This veneration for Nehru’s secularism seems ironic, considering the fact that scholars like Mushirul Hasan and Ayesha Jalal have argued that Nehru’s secularism prevented him from addressing the specific insecurities and marginalization of Muslims after Partition.
It was not just top-down reform or policy. Rather, the transformation took place in the lively debates and unpredictable collaborations among writers and intellectuals, the energy of voluntary reading circles, and periodicals that crisscrossed borders. These were spaces of possibility where new literary collections took shape and where different visions of the nation’s future could be imagined,
Notwithstanding the Agreement, clarity on status of the territories of Hunza, Chilas, Koh Ghizar, Iskoman and Yasin to be part of Gilgit Agency continued to elude the British. They wanted to retain the frontier for maintaining direct control over all the areas. Finally, in 1941 the Government of Jammu & Kashmir referred the matter to a Court of Arbitration, to reinforce their claim over these territories. The author herein has given a very detailed account of the report prepared by Ram Chander Kak, Chief Secretary of Jammu & Kashmir, and the opinion of the Resident of Kashmir, Lt. Col S M Fraser.
Nepal witnessed long spates of Maoist insurgency, and later, there were insurmountable challenges in assimilating the insurgent constituencies in the mainstream politics. In this context, the first chapter discusses the inception of the Communist movement in Nepal—founded early in 1949 upholding socialist slogans and agendas concerning universal civil liberty. The promulgation of the Constitution was significant in reinforcing the status of Communist politics in Nepal as combatants were mainstreamed and inducted in security forces, thereby legitimizing their agenda of equality and inclusion
The Second World War generated one of the largest and most diverse populations of prisoners of war (POWs) in modern history, with an estimated 35 million individuals experiencing some form of military captivity between 1939 and 1945 (Cohen 2012). Governed nominally by the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War—ratified by most,…
The intention, and the effort was to highlight how India was still not ready for self-rule, given the deplorable condition of its women. This of course, offered the needed moral umbrage, where the white man was on a ‘civilizing mission’—out there to save the brown woman, from the brown man (Spivak 1983). Interestingly, the nationalist discourse too deployed the narrative of ‘Mother India’,
In West Pakistan, the Bengali officers were neither declared ‘enemy’ nor POWs but were treated as ‘war necessities’ while harsher treatment was reserved for the soldiers (p. 63). Details of internees and their interaction with their fellow Punjabi course mates and friends given by Chattha reveal how affinity for fellow officers overtook the impending division of the country. Documentation of individual correspondence reveals the humane side of the relationship. Pakistan struggled to arrange the safe upkeep of the Bengali detainees to prevent them escaping
But, to get there, the author, as the navy’s first ever chief appointed from an area command, had to do a lot to improve the navy in every sphere. He points out certain weak areas when he took over as the SLN Chief: absence of basic facilities, uniforms, accommodation, insufficient fighting capabilities, lack of leadership and confidence in the senior officers on the part of junior officers and sailors
Also notable in Ramnath’s work is an acknowledgement of the imposition of Western knowledge systems on a region that did not feature in the West’s intellectual consideration. Colonial law did not account for subcontinental practices, and by inheriting fundamental frameworks from colonialism, the new nation-state’s law alienated the people it was meant to serve. For example, people were classified as per borrowed administrative definitions like citizen, stateless, immigrant, refugee, etc., while in reality,
Internally, India’s neighbourhood policy suffers from sluggish execution, bureaucratic delays, and limited financial resources compared to China. Refugee inflows, internal security spillovers, and unfulfilled trade potential have compounded these challenges whereby India has not been able to leverage enough the people-to-people ties with countries like Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and so on.
Its greatest strength lies in its comparative and class-based approach. Vakulabharanam is successful in using comparative political economy frameworks while managing to avoid the problems associated with Methodological nationalisms. By placing class at the centre of his analysis, he effectively questions mainstream economic theories that reduce inequality to mere income or consumption gaps. The integration of global capitalist forces into national inequality trends contribute significantly to his analysis, as well as to the broader literature. In terms of structure, clear chapterization, periodization, and the use of both primary and secondary data enhance the flow of arguments as well as the credibility of the author’s findings.
Structurally, the book adopts an unusual and effective format. After an introductory chapter that offers a concise overview of Myanmar’s military since 1962 for the benefit of unfamiliar readers, the volume consists of fifteen chapters presented as personal narratives by five different voices. In addition to the two authors, three Mizzima associates contribute their accounts.
The two sides came to a patrolling agreement in October 2024 for Depsang and Demchok areas in Ladakh. As per the Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, ‘(India and China) reached an agreement on patrolling, and with that we have gone back to where the situation was in 2020 and we can say … the disengagement process with China has been completed.’
This is one of the motifs they use to comment on the decay and failure of Western approaches to the business of war-fighting and peace making. The book also finds that 21st century wars take place in already unstable geopolitical conditions. The backdrop of global disorder, evolving multipolarity, Western decline, and diminishing reliability of alliances have several negative—and some potentially advantageous—ramifications.
Towards the 1980s, Gaza emerged as the fulcrum of Palestinian resistance and in 1987, the first Palestinian Intifada started here. In 1994, the Palestinian Authority (PA) established its first headquarters in the Strip. From the beginning of the 21st century, Gaza’s politics of resilience underwent a fathomable transformation with the advent of political Islam which later overpowered Arab and Palestinian nationalisms
After conquering South Asia in the 19th century, the British decided to retain precolonial personnel, like qazis, while designing structures to meet their requirements. In 1864, however, Act XI abolished the position of qazi, as they were considered superfluous. This led to operational difficulties in Muslim legal practices and the British were forced to re-establish this position a decade later.
This was the case in many of the newly independent countries of that time, including India, but it became a bigger issue in Pakistan. Of the six major nationalities within Pakistan during its initial phase—the Pashtun, Punjabi, Baloch, Sindhi, Bengali and Mohajir, all others except one (the Punjabi) have raised questions over the national identity (Pakistani) vis-à-vis their linguistic and ethnic identities during the last seven decades. While the Bengali identity assertion resulted in the partition of Pakistan in 1971, the Sindhis
Hamid, however, has a tough time explaining away continued American military, diplomatic support and arms supplies to Israel which have resulted in the current bombing of Gaza and indiscriminate killing of women and children. Israel’s bombing of Gaza has led to over 67,000 deaths of which more than 20,000 were children and close to 170,000 injuries. To his credit, he does anticipate that the American support to Israel in the Gaza war ‘will stand as the strongest objection to the arguments in this book’. When Hamid argues that America
As the world fractures into rival blocs, many countries like India will resist becoming a part of this rivalry between the US and China, especially as they cannot determine its outcome (p. 60). However, it will be difficult for these countries to avoid picking a side and they will be forced by their economic, financial, cultural and political ties to align with one side or the other (p. 64). He argues that India is likely to align with the US, based on the fact that the US is India’s largest export market, invests much more in India than China
Since none of the South Asian states have signed the 1951 Convention, they never legally recognize having refugees. On the contrary, they have sought to deal with such challenges through numerous national legal frameworks. The patterns of national interest decide state responses. The European Union (EU) today is deeply divided on how to cope with the influx of people from West Asia, which is testing the principle of solidarity and making the Union look heartless and ineffective, pitting member states against each other, thereby infusing populism and anti-Islamic sentiments.
The book is full of perceptive insights like the discussion of the different terms used in Indian languages for the terms ‘nation’ and ‘state’—desam and arasu in Tamil, jati and rashtra in Bengali, and the implications of that (p. 17); an analysis of the stability of India’s federal democracy if the ‘Hindu ethnic group’ (80% of the population) is mobilized, or alternatively, if the ‘Hindi ethnic group’ (slightly less than 40% of the population) is focused on as the largest linguistic group (p. 288). There is also a fascinating discussion on the difference between an understanding of the norm as the empirical average or as the normative.
As the book progresses, what does emerge from the analysis is the way in which the larger structure of the nation-state in both the US and India impinged adversely on the Dalits in India and Blacks in the US. This resulted in greater adverse encounters with the repressive apparatus of the state, leading to more frequent police detentions and prolonged incarceration. Blacks in the US and Dalits in India are thus more likely to be found serving prison sentences
The paratexts also become an essential means of understanding the Mahabharata’s transnational connections. Christopher D Bahl and Abdallah Soufan read Wadi-al-Bustani’s introduction of his Arabic translation of the Mahabharata, ‘Understanding Global Intellectual Exchanges through Paratexts: Wadi-al-Bustani’s introduction of his Arabic translation of the Mahabharata’. Paratexts, such as an introduction, offer crucial insights into the text in the new language.
As a psychological curiosity, I wonder not just what makes the poor remain poor, or the forces of over-consumption in this capitalist living and what ‘deprivations’ is this really fulfilling but also would have appreciated an enquiry into what draws the rich to writings on the poor. Many books written, much research done—what is the impact of this work on the subjects? I understand better why the authors may want to write about these areas—these may come from lived experiences, as does in the case of Manu Joseph, along with the need to put out their anger, share experiences and ensure the experiences of the marginalized; not just remain on the margins.
Ramachandran further documents that the authorities conducting inquiries did not merely question the rescued women, but also ‘counselled’ and censured them to lead a ‘dignified life’ and tried to extract the ‘truth’ from them by emphasizing their identities as wives, mothers, sisters and daughters.
Another major grouping of chapters focuses on public culture. The ability to access the public after figuring out where one can inhabit space emerges very well in Patrick Eisenlohr’s contribution on Twelver Shia Muslims and their engagements especially in media publics. The chapter by Raminder Kaur and Faisal Syed Mohammed looks at the Ganpati festival, a major Hindu festival which has become synonymous with the city. While it builds on earlier work, it provides a fascinating view of how festivals can often provide spaces of participation across religious boundaries
G Sreekumar’s essay deals with gold as a factor in money laundering which means cleaning the proceeds of crime. He says, in a heroic assumption of causality, that the high demand for gold in India leads to crimes in other countries. One must assume China, too, is responsible here because since 2009 its gold demand has exceeded that of India.
Women’s entry into the world of paid work is a theme tackled in chapters two and three. Islam highlights two crucial resources, using the respective tropes of ‘Madam’ and ‘Fast-Forward’, required by the women to gain access to, not without struggle of course, the new, globalized economic system; one the English language, and two, mobility. The former is contextually deployed to maintain the separate ethos and distinction between work and non-work place, while the latter is skilfully managed, lest its pace disturbs the work-leisure-home balance.
Mount’s study uncovers the bitter truth that though the emergence and visibility of the trans woman may translate as an increased acceptance of GNC people in India, it is at the cost of further discrediting, marginalizing and othering of the hijras. The rise of the trans woman has perhaps meant the decline of the traditional guru-chela dynamics of the hijra tradition, a further stigmatization of the sex work hijras are associated with,
he book asserts that anticolonial struggle also focused on the socio-economic aspects of national life, which give prominence to the idea of centralization. Gandhi’s alternative developmentalism had a fatal weakness because he hoped to create a decentralized polity on the basis of an anticolonial movement which had a strong centralizing feature. The author also presents a critique of other aspects of postcolonial economic changes:
Yet, the book’s celebration of participatory constitutionalism occasionally risks romanticizing the democratic impulse. While De and Shani acknowledge that many public demands were unheeded, their treatment of exclusion remains understated. The book might have further examined the gendered hierarchies within these publics, or the tensions between caste solidarity and universal equality.
The next set of chapters move seamlessly from pure constitutional discourse to institutions of civil society, judiciary and federalism in India. Chapter four reiterates the liberal individualism that led to the preference for rule of law, a centralized state, rejection of localism, rejection of separate electorates and a preference for individual representation than the group.
The question is: Can Indian democracy survive the series of assaults on it, from Indira Gandhi’s Emergency in the mid-70s to the present decade, when such assaults have been exacerbated? According to Diego Maiorano, Manor’s optimism about the regenerative qualities of Indian democracy in the post-Emergency period is somewhat misplaced in today’s context. Maiorano sees the cumulative damage inflicted on Indian democracy as leaving permanent scars on its institutions.
Overall, Yechury’s analysis offers one of the most comprehensive examinations of the predicaments facing the Indian Republic from the benches of Indian political opposition. His Marxist training, academic background, and decades of experience as a senior CPI(M) politician have given his arguments analytical rigour and clarity. However, a significant lacuna remains regarding the question of ‘What is to be done?’.
Ujjwal Kumar Singh and Anupama Roy focus on the Emergency laws of the era. They trace back the emergence of such laws right from the Law Commission report that led to the enactment of the Indian Penal Code, all the way through colonial and postcolonial laws, till MISA and how it was implemented during the Emergency.
The book is embedded in and anchored on the copious exchange of letters among political actors from different parts of the country bringing to the fore the flux of events and imperfections with which they were tackled and reconfigured by political actors, particularly Nehru. It was Nehru, the man of great fortitude and partial failures, whose hands shaped the destiny of India.
Hashmi’s logical submission is that even if buildings were designed by Turkish or Iranian architects, they were all built by local masons. The masons embellished these sacred sites according to their own acquired understanding of aesthetic piety.
These can be understood by how the masons, for example, thought that the hemisphere of the dome, even if it represented the idea of the heavens in the Central Asian imagination, looked aesthetically incomplete, which in turn they adorned with a lotus on top of the dome.
What does the book find? First, the book shows that employing the existing populism model—which posits that populists are defined by ‘the people’ and subsequently identify ‘the other’—is akin to putting the cart before the horse. Ayyangar argues that in India, boundary setting occurs first: the ‘enemy’ is identified upfront, and the idea of the people is ‘capaciously’ constructed from those who do not constitute the enemy.
He further notes that in the history of Indian politics, the ability of the political actors and stakeholders ‘to mediate between diverse interests exemplified the essence of coalition politics. Coalitions go beyond managing electoral arithmetic to focusing on governance in diverse polity based on negotiation.’ He emphasizes on the ‘spirit of coalition-building’ that is essential to accommodate the divergent
The first case study presents an overview of Parliamentary Debates on the deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka to show ‘how foreign policy was crafted in a federal structure’ (p. 52). Debates in Parliament over the deployment compelled the Government to reconsider its course, creating a precedent for India’s regional strategy rooted in respect for sovereignty and mutual sensitivities.
The period from 2004 to 2014 witnessed the consolidation of several women-centric policies. Schemes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) played a particularly significant role by guaranteeing equal wages for men and women and ensuring a substantial female workforce.
This reading experience is akin to a guided walk through the alleys of the virtual world behind our screens. Depending on your tendencies to doomscroll and your screen time, some spots will be familiar, some a surprise, and if the content and spaces under discussion don’t intrigue you much, the commentary and observations are alone worth staying for. Despite the complete absence of an advisory tone but much like a good description, the book slowly nudges you to rethink the time spent on the internet. The author does not judge at all and in fact admits to the strange follies of human nature. That is precisely what makes the introspection easier.
The attention economy is built on the fact that attention is infinite and unlimited. Only time is the limit. Algorithms are made in such a way that a specific amount of time and attention is given to the social media marketplace. Bhandari draws from the Marxist concepts of attention and alienation, along with the works of Christian Fuchs and Jenny Odell, to explain what she means by the international political economy of attention.
Minister of Home Affairs, P Chidambaram, in his speech in the Lok Sabha delivered on 7 May 2010 tried explaining how ‘caste-wise enumeration may affect the accuracy of headcount and the integrity of the census’ (p. 103). The veteran political leaders of socialist background who consistently raised the issues of social justice in the Indian Parliament namely Lalu Prasad, Mulayam Singh and Sharad Yadav sensed a conspiracy on the part of Chidambaram and hence forced the adjournment of the Lok Sabha immediately after the latter’s the speech.
Moving from academic to the media which also represents the dominant caste groups’ interests as the nation’s interests, the book critiques the way elections and their outcomes are articulated and portrayed largely as a ‘zero sum game’ or ‘a winner takes it all’ ignoring the dynamic, aspirational and normative motives of the electorate. The theatricality and the triumphalist nature of the reporting of electoral outcomes or simply put, results which include political analysts, psephologists and other ‘political pundits’, set the narrative and deliberate in such a manner that completely ignores the interests of the Dalits in the country.
Lee’s work begins by highlighting the stark contradiction of impunity prevailing over democracy: despite being a democracy, nearly half of its elected representatives face criminal charges, exemplifying the deep-rooted nature of impunity within its political system. Each chapter then dissects a dimension of this problem—from systemic underfunding to bureaucratic centralization, elite manipulation of postings,