Archives: Authors

Hilal Ahmed is Associate Professor at Centre for the study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi. He works on political Islam, Indian democracy, and politics of symbols in South Asia. He is associated with the Lokniti programme of the CSDS.

He is the author of Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India: Monuments, Memory, Contestation (Routledge 2014), Allah Naam ki Siyasat (Hindi, Setu Prakashan, 2023), Siyasi Muslims: A Story of Political Islam in India (Penguin-Random House, New Delhi, 2019) and Democratic Accommodations: Minorities in contemporary India (With Peter R deSouza, and Sanjeer Alam, Bloomsbury, 2019). He has also edited Companion to Indian Democracy: Resilience, Fragility, Ambivalence (With Peter R deSouza, and Sanjeer Alam, Routledge, 2021), Rethinking Muslim Personal Law: Issues, Debates and Reforms (with R. K. Mishra & K. N. Jehangir, Routledge, 2022) and Sudipta Kaviraj: A Reader (Hindi, Setu Prakashan, 2023). Ahmed is the Associate Editor, South Asian Studies, journal of the British Association of South Asian Studies. He is also part of the editorial team of CSDS’s Hindi journal Pratiman.

Ahmed writes for academic journals, newspapers, and websites in English and Hindi. He has produced two documentaries, Encountering the Political Jama Masjid (English, 2006) and Qutub: Ek Adhura Afsana (Qutub: an unfinished story, Hindi with English subtitles, 2016). Ahmed has also conceptualized and developed an academic mobile app SHARC-DILLI, an app on the Partitioned City of Delhi, (with Deborah Sutton, Lancaster University).

Ahmed was awarded the Rajya Sabha Fellowship (2015-2016), the Asia Fellow Award (2008/2010), the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies Fellowship (2009), the Ford Foundation-IFP Fellowship (2002), the ATRI-Charities Aid Foundation Fellowship (2001), and UGC Senior Research Fellowship (1999) and the UGC Junior Research Fellowship (1997).

A film Beacons of Hope (2008) documents Ahmed’s life story.

Kulpreet Yadav (Author)
Kulpreet Yadav, a graduate of the Naval Officers’ Academy, served in the Indian Coast Guard for two decades, during which he successfully commanded three ships. Retiring as a Commandant in 2014, he transitioned into writing, authoring numerous books across diverse genres, including military history, espionage, and true crime. His military history books, The Battle of Rezang La (Penguin, 2021) and The Battle of Haji Pir (Penguin, 2024), have garnered widespread recognition. Beyond writing, Kulpreet is also an actor, filmmaker, and entrepreneur.

Madhur Rao (Author)
Madhur Rao is a dedicated historian with a deep passion for the culture, heritage, and history of Ahirwal, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Western Uttar Pradesh. A proud alumnus of the prestigious Sherwood College, Madhur now divides his time between Kotputli, Rajasthan, where he runs a renowned school, and Jaipur and Gurgaon, where he oversees various business ventures. He is also deeply involved in restoring old furniture and heritage buildings, driven by a commitment to preserving the cultural legacy of his homeland.

Gurmehar Kaur is an Indian student activist and the ambassador for Postcards for Peace, a charitable organization that works towards eliminating discrimination. She is also the co-founder of Citizens for Public Leadership, an independent and nonpartisan movement focused on advocating progressive public policy in India. In October 2017, she was listed by TIME magazine as a global ‘Next Generation Leader’. Small Acts of Freedom is her first book.

Sushant Singh: A film and television actor, Sushant Singh hosted the crime-based reality show Savdhaan India for almost seven years. He is the honorary general secretary of the Cine & TV Artistes’ Association. This is his first book.

Kulpreet Yadav: A bestselling author and motivational speaker, Kulpreet Yadav retired voluntarily from the armed forces to pursue a career in writing in 2014. He was the winner of the Best Fiction Writer for 2018 award at the Gurgaon Literature Festival. He lives in New Delhi.

Amit Chaudhuri is the author of seven previous novels, one work of nonfiction, and a number of books of literary criticism. His many honors include the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; most recently, he became the first recipient of the Infosys Prize for Humanities-Literary Studies. A contributor to the London Review of Books, Granta, and The Times Literary Supplement, he is currently professor of contemporary literature at the University of East Anglia and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is also an internationally acclaimed musician, and lives in Calcutta, India, and Norwich, England.

Keya Ghosh retired early as an English teacher at a girls’ school in the hills. Tired of confiscating trashy romance novels from the girls, which ‘did nothing for either their idea of adult relationships or their ability to write English’, she decided to take up the challenge of reinventing the chick-lit novel. She is working on a trio of novels in the calm environs of the Velliangiri mountains. Her early retirement also allows her to pursue her hobby of tracing the lost works of the early female Bhakti poets. Terror@Twelve, her collection of urban ghost stories, was published by Juggernaut.

NASEERUDDIN SHAH is an iconic stage
and film actor who has won major
national and international awards.
He was awarded the Padma Bhushan
in 2008.

Sonia Singh has been a journalist for the last 27 years and is currently the Editorial Director of NDTV.
A graduate of St Stephens College in English Literature, reading is her passion with an unexplained fondness for Irish romantic novelists
She divides her time between Delhi and Padrauna in Eastern Uttar Pradesh. She is the full-time mother of 3 daughters, which is ‘the most difficult and rewarding job in the world’, as she puts it.

Sanjeev Sanyal is the principal economic adviser to the Government of India and an internationally acclaimed economist and urban theorist. He lives in New Delhi and writes on a wide array of topics, ranging from economics to history. A Rhodes Scholar and an Eisenhower Fellow, Sanjeev spent two decades working in international financial markets and was named Young Global Leader in 2010 by the World Economic Forum. He is the author of the bestselling books The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History (2016), Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India’s Geography (2012) and The Indian Renaissance: India’s Rise After a Thousand Years of Decline (2008), published by Penguin. This book is an adaptation of the second.Sowmya Rajendran has written several books for children, from picture books for toddlers to young adult fiction. She won the Sahitya Akademi’s Bal Sahitya Puraskar in 2015 for her children’s novel Mayil Will Not Be Quiet, co-authored with Niveditha Subramaniam. Sowmya works as a journalist for a news publication and writes on gender, culture and cinema. She lives in Pune.

Anirban Bhattacharyya is the author of India’s Money Heist, The Deadly Dozen and other books, two of which are soon to be adapted for the screen. He is also a stand-up comedian, actor, director and producer.