कोलंबस भारत नहीं आ सका, लेकिन उसके चक्कर में आलू आ गया और उस आलू ने हमारी आबादी को जिस रफ़्तार से बढ़ाया कि दुनिया देखती रह गई। ईसाई पादरी ‘क्रिसमस नहीं मनाएँगे’, कहते रह गए मगर बाज़ार ने उसे दुनिया का त्योहार बना डाला। कभी हीर और रांझे की प्रेम कहानी ने बासमती को अमेरिका की संपत्ति बनने से बचा लिया, तो कहीं परंपरा के नाम पर महिलाओं का पोषण ही रोक दिया गया। कभी एक फ़ास्टफ़ूड कंपनी ने कहा कि फ़ेमिनिस्ट होने का मतलब है खाना न पकाना, तो कभी केलों के व्यापार ने सरकारों को तानाशाह बना दिया। अगर अब्राहम लिंकन की वजह से बंबई को उसकी पावभाजी मिली, तो कोला कंपनियों ने खेल को धर्म और खिलाड़ियों को भगवान बनाया। रोटियों से क्रांति करने और नमक से सत्ता गिराने वाले देश में इतिहास की थाली इन तमाम घटनाओं के साथ-साथ, बिरयानी से लेकर 1947 के बँटवारे तक को एक नई नज़र से देखने की क्षमता देती है। क्योंकि हमारे हर निवाले में स्वाद के साथ-साथ इतिहास, व्यापार, संस्कृति, पहचान और साज़िशों की पूरी दुनिया छिपी होती होती है।
Catagory: History
The Land and the Shadows
Cinema, for Perumal Murugan, was never just flickering images on a screen. It was a field of experience, a gathering ground, a mirror held up to the land itself. In The Land and the Shadows, he returns to the theatres of his youth and to the decades when Tamil cinema became inseparable from the life of the people—the 1950s through the 1970s.
Here, he recalls his boyhood labour in a small-town cinema hall, the thrill of posters and projectors, the songs carried on village winds. From those vivid fragments, Murugan opens out a portrait of Tamil society in transition, where poverty and caste met desire and aspiration in the common darkness of the theatre. The screen was both escape and education, its heroes and heroines shaping speech, gesture and imagination across class and community.
Part memoir, part ethnography, this is a record of a world that has almost vanished—those public spaces where lives once overlapped, where cinema forged unlikely intimacies and collective dreams. Murugan’s voice, at once personal and self-effacing, turns memory into history, and history into story.
Translated with fidelity and grace by Gita Subramanian, The Land and the Shadows brings us Perumal Murugan in a new key: as witness to cinema’s place in the making of modern Tamil Nadu, and as chronicler of a society learning to see itself in the play of light and shadow.
India’s Forests
India’s Forests aims to explore the history of Indian forests in a new way. It is a result of several years of deliberations on how to think about the Indian forests from a historical perspective. It revisits more than the question of the role of forests in India’s long history. It seeks to bring to light new insights on how changes in society, culture, and polity have reshaped forests and continue to do so.
Forests mean not one but many things to different people. While seen as ecologically crucial in many ways, they are also a storehouse of resources in more than one way. They have also been the arena and subject of critical social movements, among whom Chipko gained special prominence in India almost half a century ago. They are also sites of social, political, scientific and cultural contestation.
Forests are battlegrounds for more than just timber and land. Forests are contested not only as a resource but also in ideational terms. What constitutes a forest, for whom, when, and where can it be, is often a contentious issue.
General Brasstacks
In 1986, as Indian and Chinese troops faced off at Sumdorong Chu in Arunachal Pradesh, a standoff ensued. An Indian general airlifted a brigade to occupy difficult heights, putting the pressure on the Chinese who were on the lower heights. The audacious General Krishnaswamy Sundarji had swung the momentum decisively in India’s favour, forcing the Chinese to backpedal in the Himalayas.
The next year, the same army chief planned Operation Brasstacks, one of the largest military exercises in the world after World War II. The move threatened Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions which unnerved General Zia, and he reached out to New Delhi for a rapprochement.
No other decade has matched the 1980s for its headlined procession of grand events, turns of history, tragic events that includes the assassinations of two Indian Prime Ministers. Besides Brasstacks, General Sundarji oversaw two of the most controversial events: Operation Bluestar, against Sikh militants inside the Golden Temple Complex, and Operation Pawan, the Indian Peacekeeping Force against Tamil militants in Sri Lanka. Sundarji was involved in the acquisition of Bofors and the controversy that followed, leading to the fall of the government.
The Indian army was called in to fight militants inside a religious complex, fought on Siachen for the first time; in the deserts of Rajasthan, the plains of Punjab, hills of Arunachal, the swamps of the northeast, jungles of Jaffna and the island country of Maldives. All of these campaigns had the imprint and bore the legacy of Sundarji.
But who was Krishnaswamy Sundarji? How did his predilection for bold decisions, often termed as brash, arise? Was he too ambitious? Was he ahead of his time in dreaming of advanced technology in wars or was he behind time as the decade witnessed insurgencies that warranted a bootstrapped approach? This definitive biography by bestselling author Probal Dasgupta will detail the life and times of one of India’s most charismatic, yet forgotten, army chiefs.
Sundarji straddled the timeline of the first six decades of a free India, his career often echoing the trajectory of India’s political choices in these years. He is the only military general who influenced the political dispensation and policy choices within India’s democracy. His brisk 820-day stint got the country battles, wars, standoffs, a modern fighting machine, victories, setbacks, controversies, praises and criticism alike – and by the end of it all, prompted two kinds of views about him. Either people loved him or hated him.
This biography seeks to highlight Sundarji’s role in building the modern Indian Army and explores his key role in the turbulent political decade of eighties in India. Krishnaswamy Sundarji is arguably the most important military leader in India’s history. A towering presence, his legacy remains profound, disputed and unresolved because of the seminal impact, political volatility, controversies and his own unrivalled ambition.
Speaking of History
Speaking of History brings India’s past into sharp, urgent focus. In these wide-ranging conversations, Romila Thapar, the distinguished historian, joins Namit Arora, incisive writer and social critic, to explore how history is written, remembered and fought over.
Together, they pull back the curtain on the historian’s craft: how evidence is weighed, how interpretations are made, and why the past has become a battleground of politics and identity. From caste and gender to religion, mythology and nationalism, they revisit much contested terrain and ask the vital questions—what can we really know about our past, and why does it matter so much today?
The result is both erudite and refreshingly accessible: a book that challenges distortion and mythmaking, while celebrating history as an act of curiosity, argument and critical inquiry. At a time when the discipline is under siege, Speaking of History is both a defence of rigorous scholarship and a lively reminder that to engage with history in all its complexity is to undertake a profound journey—an inquiry not just into the past, but into ourselves.
The Tata Group Beyond Business | A Tribute to Vision, Leadership, and Legacy by Sandeep Murarka
The Tata Group Beyond Business: Impact, Encomiums, and Accolades offers a compelling tribute to Ratan Tata and the extraordinary leaders who have shaped the Group’s 150+ years of history.
Through rare photographs, inspiring anecdotes, and meticulous research, this book captures the entrepreneurial spirit, governance excellence, and bold strategic moves that have placed the Tata Group at the forefront of global business. Beyond boardrooms, it reveals the Group’s enduring contributions to communities, education, sports, and culture.
The Tata Group Beyond Business is both a valuable reference and a source of inspiration. Whether you are a business professional, student, historian, or admirer of the TATA legacy, this book will deepen your understanding of a corporate giant that continues to shape India’s destiny and inspire generations.
BSF and Meghalaya: Through the Lens of a Borderman | A Poetic and Visual Journey Through One of India’s Most Breathtaking Frontiers
Meghalaya, the land of cloud-kissed plateaus, cascading valleys, and vibrant traditions, is more than just a frontier. It is a meeting ground of nature, culture, and resilience, where the Border Security Force (BSF) stands steadfast in its duty while also becoming part of the fabric of the land.
In this evocative coffee table book, Shri Harbax Singh Dhillon invites readers on a journey that is at once visual, historical, and deeply personal. Through photographs, sketches, and poetry, the book mirrors the many faces of Meghalaya, its breathtaking landscapes, its diverse communities, and the timeless rhythm of life along its borders. Interwoven is the story of the BSF, guardians of sovereignty who, beyond patrolling, also share bonds of trust and kinship with the people they serve among.
Both a tribute and a record, this volume celebrates the spirit of Meghalaya and the BSF, offering readers a work of beauty, memory, and belonging.
Stories from a Kargili Kitchen
The untold story of Kargil—told not through war, but through food
Tucked between some of the most forbidding folds of the Himalayas, Kargil is a land too often seen only through the lens of war—yet its valleys hold a tenderness, resilience and faith that endure through food.
Born from years of travel, cooking and friendships, foodways researcher Yash Saxena gathers voices from mountain kitchens and firesides—of shepherds, monks, farmers and mothers who feed a world shaped by both faith and frost. From slow-simmering broths to shifting borderlines, from ancient Bon rituals to the echoes of Bofor gunfire, each story reveals how a community sustains itself through ritual, memory and the quiet grace of everyday cooking.
Blending memoir, travelogue and cultural history, this is part food book, part love letter and part act of remembrance—a tender, sensory journey through Kargili kitchens, whose flames fight to keep centuries of wisdom alive against the winds of change.
The Battle of Narnaul
The Battle of Narnaul was one of the fiercest battles of 1857, marked by heavy loss of life and forgotten heroes. Among them was the valiant Rao Tula Ram, a man whose story remains largely unknown.
Rao Tula Ram was not just a warrior but also a strategist. For years, he gathered resources, built secret alliances with Rajputana kingdoms, and later sought support from Persia, Afghanistan, and Russia to fight the British. His efforts are an overlooked chapter of India’s struggle.
Through meticulous research and thorough analysis, Kulpreet Yadav and Madhur Rao revive these narratives, detailing the valour and sacrifices of these unsung warriors while providing a vivid, detailed account of the conflict and the relentless six-year resistance that followed.
Clear, deeply researched, and compelling, The Battle of Narnaul is a gripping retelling of a forgotten fight for freedom, a book for both history lovers and general readers.
The Dawn of Life
Prabhudas Gandhi was born in 1901 in Porbandar to Chhaganlal Gandhi and Kashiben and like many members of his family, spent his childhood in South Africa at the Phoenix Ashram.
The memoir, Jeevan nu Parodh in Gujarati was serialized in a hand-written journal called Madhpudo (The Beehive) that Prabhudas edited at Sabaramati Ashram and published as a book in 1948 in the bloodied aftermath of independence. Awarded the Narmad Suvarna Chandak award, The Dawn of Life is an engaging and elaborate account of Gandhi’s imagination of swaraj, both personal and collective. It flows from the memory of a young Prabhudas who migrated to Phoenix Settlement in 1905 to join his father and uncle Maganlal Gandhi. It has a ring of innocence, which is as refreshing as it is deceptive, for the author forces the reader to look within and confront her fears, prejudices and violent impulses. Being made available to English readership after more than a century since its original inscription, the book pleads for the recovery of a dawn that has remained shrouded far too long in the pitch-dark of communalism, casteism and chauvinisms of various kinds.
Translated by Hemang Ashwinkumar, this memoir is an unique witness to the history of India and of the subcontinent.