In 1949, Dr Karan Singh had just turned eighteen when he was appointed regent of Jammu and Kashmir, two years after his father, Maharaja Hari Singh, signed the Instrument of Accession merging the then independent state with India. Under the mentorship of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr Singh was at the helm of affairs in the state for eighteen years, successively as regent, Sadar-i-Riyasat and governor.
This carefully conceived selection of over 200 letters exchanged between Dr Singh and Pandit Nehru sheds light on significant issues and events, including the teething problems of a fledgling country and a newly grafted state, the emerging conflicts between Pakistan and India, and the Chinese aggression of 1962. In addition to valuable insights into the political situation of the period, these letters also provide rare glimpses into the personal lives and thoughts of Pandit Nehru and Dr Singh. The memorandum submitted by Maharaja Hari Singh to President Rajendra Prasad in August 1952 is published in full, revealing how the identity and future of Kashmir were shaped.
A rare collection, Jammu and Kashmir offers an unmatched ringside view of the momentous events in Kashmir and the rest of India after Independence.
Catagory: History
Fateful Triangle
A key question today is whether India and the United States can or should develop ever-closer ties as a way of countering China’s desire to be the dominant power in the broader Asian region. In Fateful Triangle, Tanvi Madan argues that history shows that such a partnership is neither inevitable nor impossible.
Drawing on documents from India and the US, Fateful Triangle contends that China’s influence on the US-India relationship is not a recent phenomenon. It demonstrates that US and Indian perceptions of and their policies towards China shaped US-India relations in three crucial decades, from 1949 to 1979, in significant and complex ways.
Fateful Triangle updates our understanding of the diplomatic history of US-India relations, highlighting China’s central role in it, reassesses the origins and practice of Indian foreign policy and non-alignment, and provides historical context to the interactions between the three countries.
The Story of Yoga
How did an ancient Indian spiritual discipline turn into a GBP 20 billion-a-year mainstay of the global wellness industry?
This comprehensive history sets yoga in its global cultural context for the first time. From arcane religious rituals and medieval body-magic, through muscular Christianity and the British Raj, to the Indian nationalist movement and the arrival of yoga in the twentieth-century West, we discover how the practice reached its present-day ubiquity and how it became embedded in powerful social currents shaping the world’s future, such as digital media, celebrity culture, the stress pandemic and the quest for an authentic identity in the face of unprecedented change.
The Raj At War
Two and a half million Indians volunteered in the Second World War. Their stories had been lost and silenced, until now.
Award-winning historian Yasmin Khan marshals interviews, newspaper reports and unseen archival material to tell the forgotten story of India’s role in the Second World War. We meet soldiers, sailors and non-combatants prostitutes, nurses, cooks, peasants—whose lives were upended by a war far, far away. From a small Muslim boy arrested for singing anti-recruitment songs, to cooks preparing chapattis on army boats, to a family listening to illicit German radio broadcasts, and a love letter from the first Indian soldier to receive the Victoria Cross, Khan makes us feel and hear the lost voices of a people involved in a war that wasn’t of their choosing.
Dramatizing a cataclysm that transformed the subcontinent and led to its independence, The Raj at War undeniably inserts South Asia back into WWII history and confirms that the Empire—and all its subjects—formed both the heart and limbs of Britain’s war effort and eventual victory.
Revenge And Reconciliation
In this remarkable study, well-known biographer Rajmohan Gandhi, underscoring the prominence in the Mahabharata of the revenge impulse, follows its trajectory in South Asian history. Side by side, he traces the role played by reconcilers up to present times, beginning with the Buddha, Mahavira and Asoka. His explanation of the 1947 division of India identifies the role of the 1857 Rebellion in shaping Gandhi’s thinking and strategy, and reflects on the wounds of Partition. The survey of post-Independence India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka also touches upon the tragic bereavements of six of their women leaders.
Besieged
Debt
Must we always repay our debts?
Wasn’t money invented to replace ancient barter systems?
Apparently not, according to Yale-bred anthropologist David Graeber.
In a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom, Graeber radically challenges our understanding of debt. He illustrates how, for more than 5000 years—long before the invention of coins or bills—there existed debtors and creditors who used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods. He argues that Madagascar was held to be indebted to France because France invaded it, reminds us that texts from Vedic India included God in credit systems and shows how the dollar changed European society forever in the sixteenth century. He also brilliantly demonstrates how words like ‘guilt’, ‘sin’ and ‘redemption’ derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong.
Debt: The First 5000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—of how it has defined the evolution of human society, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.
The Wrong Enemy
A Corner of a Foreign Field
A Corner of a Foreign Field seamlessly interweaves biography with history, the lives of famous or forgotten cricketers with wider processes of social change. C. K. Nayudu and Sachin Tendulkar naturally figure in this book, but so, too, in unexpected ways, do B. R. Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, and M. A. Jinnah. The Indian careers of those great British cricketers, Lord Harris and D. R. Jardine, provide a window into the operations of Empire. The remarkable life of India’s first great slow bowler, Palwankar Baloo, provides an arresting new perspective on the struggle against caste discrimination. Later chapters explore the competition between Hindu and Muslim cricketers in colonial India and the destructive passions now provoked when India plays Pakistan.
For this new edition, Ramachandra Guha has added a long epilogue bringing the story up to date to cover, among other things, the advent of the Indian Premier League and the Indian team’s victory in the World Cup of 2011, these linked to social and economic transformations in contemporary India.
A pioneering work, essential for anyone interested in either of those vast themes, cricket and India, A Corner of a Foreign Field is also a beautifully written meditation on the ramifications of sport in society at large.
Madhavrao Scindia
Suave, secular and known for his unwavering honesty, Madhavrao Scindia was no conventional politician. Born to the last king of Gwalior and conscious of his heritage, he espoused liberal and democratic values throughout his life. A nine-term member of the Lok Sabha and hugely successful minister, he remained a family man at heart.
Scindia was a beguiling figure because of the way he chose to live: His was a path that proved neither predictable nor easy. Perhaps that’s why his life reads like the plot of a grand novel, dotted with intriguing courtiers and wily politicians-in a bitter falling out with his mother, a powerful force of the Jana Sangh, in battles with at least two Congress governments, in his own tragic death. His captivating story emerges as the portrait of a fascinating life as much as a chronicle of contemporary Indian politics.