From news about World War II to the broadcasting of music from popular movies, radio played a crucial role in an increasingly divided South Asia for more than half a century. Radio for the Millions examines the history of Hindi-Urdu radio during the height of its popularity from the 1930s to the 1980s, showing how it created transnational communities of listeners.
Isabel Huacuja Alonso argues that despite British, Indian, and Pakistani politicians’ efforts to usurp the medium for state purposes, radio largely escaped their grasp. She demonstrates that the medium enabled listeners and broadcasters to resist the cultural, linguistic, and political agendas of the British colonial administration and the subsequent independent Indian and Pakistani governments. Rather than being merely a tool of nation building in South Asia, radio created affective links that defied state agendas, policies, and borders. It forged an enduring transnational soundscape, even after the 1947 Partition had made a united India a political impossibility.
Huacuja Alonso traces how people engaged with radio across news, music, and drama broadcasts, arguing for a more expansive definition of what it means to listen. She develops the concept of “radio resonance” to understand how radio relied on circuits of oral communication such as rumor and gossip and to account for the affective bonds this “talk” created. By analyzing Hindi film-song radio programs, she demonstrates how radio spurred new ways of listening to cinema. Drawing on a rich collection of sources, including newly recovered recordings, listeners’ letters to radio stations, original interviews with broadcasters, and archival documents from across three continents, Radio for the Millions rethinks assumptions about how the medium connects with audiences.
From the author of the Ramnath Goenka Award-winning book, The Long Game: How the Chinese Negotiate with India
The establishment of a communist regime in China upended Western plans for the post-WWII Asian order. As the United States of America and Great Britain grappled with the implications of this new China in terms of their strategic and economic interests in the western Pacific, significant divergences also emerged. A newly independent India seeking to define its place and role in the region under conditions of Cold War was hoping to enlist China as partner.
This book, based on archival material, outlines India’s efforts to craft a foreign policy in the context of the Anglo–American competition in the Far East. The roles played by the towering personalities of that era—Jawaharlal Nehru, Zhou Enlai, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles, Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden and Krishna Menon—and the personal chemistry between them are woven into the narrative to paint a picture of the nuts and bolts of Indian diplomacy during the early years of the nation.
एक विचार, एक हकीकत और एक पहेली है भारतीय सभ्यता। इस दिलचस्प किताब में नमित अरोरा हमें इतिहास की हज़ारों साल की अविस्मरणीय यात्रा पर ले जाते हैं जिसमें वे भारतीयों के सामाजिक और सांस्कृतिक पड़ावों का ब्योरा देते हैं। वे उनकी राजनीतिक उथल-पुथल और प्रतिद्वन्दिता, उनके रीति-रिवाज, व्यवसाय और पर्व-त्योहारों पर गौर करते हैं। इस क्रम में अरोरा छह ऐतिहासिक स्थलों की यात्रा करते हैं—हड़प्पा कालीन धोलावीरा, नागार्जुनकोंडा में इक्ष्वाकुओं की राजधानी, बौद्धों का ज्ञान केंद्र नालंदा, रहस्यपूर्ण खजुराहो, हम्पी में विजयनगर साम्राज्य की राजधानी और ऐतिहासिक बनारस। अपने सुस्पष्ट विश्लेषण, स्थानीय कहानियों और चित्रों के माध्यम से वे इसे जीवंत बनाते हैं। साथ ही उनकी इस पुस्तक में भारत आने वाले मशहूर यात्रियों मसलन मेगस्थनीज़, ह्वेनसांग, अलबरूनी, मार्को पोलो और बर्नियर के विवरण भी हैं जो हमारे देश के बारे में आश्चर्यजनक बातें कहते हैं।
इंडियंस में अरोरा हमारे पूर्वजों के विचारों, विश्वासों और मूल्यों की पड़ताल करते हैं—जिनमें कुछ अभी भी आधुनिक भारत को आकार दे रहे हैं, जबकि अन्य खो गए हैं। यह एक ऐसी मौलिक, शोधपूर्ण और विचारोत्तेजक पुस्तक है जो हमारी नसों में प्रवाहित हो रहे कई तरह के इतिहासों पर प्रकाश डालती है।
Not many people are aware that a small country like Nepal is home to incredibly diverse culinary traditions. Each community in this beautiful country has nurtured a unique culinary legacy influenced by geographic and climatic conditions on one hand and their individual cultural heritage on the other. This is true of the Sherpas and the Thakalis from the Himalayan mountain ranges, the Brahman, Chetri, Gurung, Tamang, Newar and Kirati communities in the lower mountain ranges to the Tharus and the Madeshis in the Terai jungles in the south.
Rohini Rana, food connoisseur and the author of The Rana Cookbook, has travelled the length and breadth of Nepal interacting with different ethnic communities and recording in painstaking detail their recipes and knowledge of food and nutrition. The result is this remarkable book featuring a carefully curated selection of 108 recipes, each accompanied by stunning photographs. Its purpose is to offer readers a glimpse into the kaleidoscope that is Nepali cuisine. From the delicious rikikur (potato pancake) and the Newari Haans Ko Choela (barbecued tempered duck) to the lip-smacking momos, this book takes you on a captivating journey across Nepal—a journey that nourishes both your belly and your soul.
Surprisingly little is known about the siege of Kohima, considered a game-changing event that altered the course of world history during the Second World War. His Majesty’s Headhunters adds to our understanding of this battle and shows how it redefined a whole era.
Providing a unique perspective of Nagaland and its warriors, this book uncovers the untold story of the siege, regarded as one of the more celebrated battles of D-Day and often referred to as the ‘Stalingrad of the East’ by Western scholars. Historians even believe that this was the last battle of the British Empire
and the first battle of the ‘New India’.
However, that is just the tale told so far by everyone except the Nagas. The real history of this battle—which involved the Japanese Army, led by Lieutenant General Sato, and the Allied forces—is yet to be recounted. As Lt Gen. Sato is said to have remarked, if it were not for the Naga people, the Allied forces would have been defeated in Kohima, and the Japanese Army would have easily secured the Dimapur railway station and moved victoriously towards Bengal via Assam, thus reversing the outcome of the war.
This rare and deeply researched historical account, drawing on records left by the officers and soldiers who fought in Kohima, is a page-turner. It brings to light the valour and spirit of the Naga ‘headhunters’, who made the supreme sacrifice to protect the honour of their people.
In 1906, Britain’s grip on the world was unassailable. Its navy ruled the seas, and its trade empire spanned the globe. But in the small port town of Tuticorin, a lawyer named V.O. Chidambaram Pillai—known to the world as VOC—had a revolutionary idea that would challenge the might of the empire itself.
VOC’s plan was audacious: to launch the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company, a venture that would compete head-on with the British India Steam Navigation Company, the shipping giant that controlled the region. To make his dream a reality, he rallied native traders and patriotic citizens, raising the capital needed to launch his daring enterprise. But the company faced a formidable foe: British mercantile interests and the imperial state both backed its competitor, giving it deep pockets and brazen government backing. VOC and his allies would have to defy overwhelming odds to make their venture a success.
Swadeshi Steam is a tale of heroism and defiance in the face of colonial oppression. Based on four decades of research in archives around the world, this inspiring saga showcases the power of one individual’s vision to ignite a movement.
The unknown history of economic conservatism in India after independence.
Neoliberalism is routinely characterized as an antidemocratic, expert-driven project aimed at insulating markets from politics, devised in the North Atlantic and projected on the rest of the world. Revising this understanding, Toward a Free Economy shows how economic conservatism emerged and was disseminated in a postcolonial society consistent with the logic of democracy.
Twelve years after the British left India, a Swatantra (“Freedom”) Party came to life. It encouraged Indians to break with the Indian National Congress Party, which spearheaded the anticolonial nationalist movement and now dominated Indian democracy. Rejecting Congress’s heavy-industrial developmental state and the accompanying rhetoric of socialism, Swatantra promised “free economy” through its project of opposition politics.
As it circulated across various genres, “free economy” took on meanings that varied by region and language, caste and class, and won diverse advocates. These articulations, informed by but distinct from neoliberalism, came chiefly from communities in southern and western India as they embraced new forms of entrepreneurial activity. At their core, they connoted anticommunism, unfettered private economic activity, decentralized development, and the defense of private property.
Opposition politics encompassed ideas and practice. Swatantra’s leaders imagined a conservative alternative to a progressive dominant party in a two-party system. They communicated ideas and mobilized people around such issues as inflation, taxation, and property. And they made creative use of India’s institutions to bring checks and balances to the political system.
Democracy’s persistence in India is uncommon among postcolonial societies. By excavating a perspective of how Indians made and understood their own democracy and economy, Aditya Balasubramanian broadens our picture of neoliberalism, democracy, and the postcolonial world.
It is rare to see a lawyer from a district court occupy centre stage in the Supreme Court but M.K. Nambyar achieved this remarkable feat. Starting his practice in a district court in Mangalore, M.K. Nambyar rose to become an eminent constitutional lawyer. Written by his son K.K. Venugopal, a legal luminary himself, this biography provides a fascinating account of Nambyar’s life. It not only describes the man but also recapitulates India’s legal history from the pre-Independence era. The book includes some landmark cases argued by Nambyar that have significantly contributed to the development of constitutional law in India such as A.K. Gopalan v. State of Madras and I.C. Golak Nath v. State of Punjab, where he sowed the seeds of the ‘basic structure’ doctrine. These cases continue to guide and inspire lawyers and judges today.
A must-read for scholars and practitioners of constitutional law, this book is a tribute to the man whose deep understanding and visionary interpretation of law continue to inform judicial thinking.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd pens a thought-provoking critique of Brahmanism and the caste system in India, while anticipating the death of Hinduism as a direct consequence of, what he says is, its anti-scientific and anti-nationalistic stand. This work challenges Hinduism`s interpretation of history, with a virulent attack on caste politics, and also takes a refreshing look at the necessity of encouraging indigenous scientific thought for the sake of national progress.
Winston Churchill was closely connected with India from 1896, when he landed in Bombay with his regiment, until 1947, when Independence was finally achieved. No other British statesman had such a long association with the subcontinent—or interfered in its politics so consistently and harmfully.
Churchill strove to sabotage any moves towards Independence, crippling the Government of India Act over five years of dogged opposition to its passage in the 1930s. As prime minister during the Second World War, Churchill frustrated the freedom struggle from behind the scenes, delaying Independence by a decade. To this day for Indians, he is the imperialist villain, held personally responsible for the Bengal Famine of 1943.
This book reveals Churchill at his worst: cruel, obstructive and selfish. However, the same man was outstandingly liberal at the Colonial Office, risking his career with his generosity to the Boers, the Irish and the Middle East. Why was he so strangely hostile towards India?
