A top monk’s alleged rape of a child threatens to unmask the Sri Lankan sangha, but its moral decay is rooted in the millennia-long transformation of the Buddha’s dhamma into Sinhala Buddhism
Vijay’s rise as Tamil Nadu’s new chief minister has bamboozled analysts, and his political vision is hypothesized based on “punch dialogues” rather than ideological clarity
Field Marshal Asim Munir is riding high on Pakistan’s mediation of US–Iran talks, but the country remains beset by economic crisis, a rapacious elite, IMF-imposed austerity and violent insurgencies
Himal turns 39! Join the readers who make independent Southasian journalism possible.
New Delhi’s redistricting of Ladakh has raised fears of Muslim marginalisation and heightened tensions with the Buddhist community, threatening a Leh–Kargil alliance demanding statehood and rights
Set in Toronto’s Tibetan community, Kunsang Kyirong’s ‘100 Sunset’ captures raw realities of diasporic life in sharp contrast to the false glamour migrants project to audiences back home
Gyanendra Pandey’s new book reads the lives of India’s great 20th-century writers and reformers through the home, revealing how domestic life sustained gendered hierarchies even as they relegated it to the margins
An excerpt from the Balochi novel ‘Nazuk’ by Sayad Hashumi, translated by Fazal Baloch
