Hello reader,
Books have a way of revealing what states are most afraid of. That felt especially clear over the last few weeks with the Sri Lankan government’s continued detention of multiple titles by the Tamil writer Theepachelvan Piratheepan. Published in Chennai and imported into Sri Lanka earlier this year, I Wage War Through Words and Even Now There Are Two Countries Here were part of a larger consignment seized by customs. After a state review process, only some of his books were released, while copies of these two remain withheld.
The episode recalls the 2020 arrest of the poet and teacher Ahnaf Jazeem under Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act over his Tamil poetry collection Navarasam, among the allegations levelled against him. Meanwhile, books written by military figures accused of wartime abuses continue to circulate freely and are often publicly celebrated in the country. (See Frances Harrison’s piece for Himal on how a sanctioned former Sri Lankan navy chief’s memoir contains potential admissions relevant to alleged war crimes.) Nearly 17 years after the end of Sri Lanka’s Civil War, Tamil writing on memory, grief and political violence continues to be treated with suspicion.
With SaRB, we often return to the idea that literature matters because it preserves the stories states would rather flatten or forget. That impulse toward cultural resistance also echoes through Palden Gyal’s review essay published this week, which explores how Tibetan comedians and rappers use satire to push back against Chinese surveillance and authoritarianism. Across Southasia, censorship rarely arrives only as an outright ban anymore – it also works through delays, intimidation, bureaucracy and selective silence. Which is precisely why independent publishing and criticism is so important.
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My inbox is open – I’d love to hear what you’ve been reading or reflecting on lately. Write to me at shwethas@himalmag.com.
Satire under surveillance in Tibet
In ‘Satirical Tibet’, Timothy Thurston shows how comedians and rappers are using satire as a tool of resistance under Chinese authoritarianism and surveillance
By Palden Gyal
Himal Interviews: Wendy Doniger on myth and many Hinduisms
A conversation with the renowned Indologist on how myths endure across cultures and traditions, why they resist fixed meanings, and what is at stake in attempts to control them
In She Who Tastes, Knows: A Memoir of Food, Exile and Awakening (Murdoch Books, May 2026) Durkhanai Ayubi reflects on exile, migration and cultural memory through the language of food. Born in Afghanistan and raised in Australia after her family became refugees, Ayubi writes about growing up with Afghanistan reduced in global imagination to war and devastation, while her own connection to home endured through cooking, family traditions and shared meals.
Structured around ingredients central to Afghan cuisine, the memoir moves between personal history and broader reflections on displacement, belonging and cultural inheritance to explore how food can challenge erasure and create new forms of connection across borders.
📖 From the Himal archives: Drawing from stories shared during a writing workshop she ran in Delhi in 2022, Taran N Khan writes about how Afghans living in India preserve ideas of home through food, memory and storytelling.
Backlash: The Global Rise of the Radical Right, edited by Don Kalb and Walden Bello (Pluto Press, May 2026), brings together essays examining the global resurgence of the radical right, from India and Eastern Europe to the United States and Argentina. The collection traces how financialised capitalism, authoritarian neoliberalism and neo-nationalist politics have converged to produce new forms of democratic backsliding and exclusions across the world.
In Demagogues and Despots: Democracies on the Brink (Hurst Publishers, May 2026), the political theorist John Keane argues that contemporary despotism increasingly operates through democratic systems rather than outside them. From Trump and Erdoğan to Modi and Netanyahu, Keane examines how elected strongmen consolidate power through disinformation, legal manipulation and manufactured enemies – and why democratic institutions remain essential safeguards against unaccountable rule.
Drawing on thinkers such as B R Ambedkar, W E B Du Bois and John Dewey, Hari Ramesh’s Harnessing the State: Oppressed Groups and the Pursuit of Radical Democracy (Harvard University Press, June 2026) argues that oppressed groups can use state power not only to resist exclusion, but also to build more genuinely democratic societies. Moving between caste in India and race in the United States, the book offers a hopeful defence of radical democracy at a moment of deepening inequality and democratic crisis.
🎧 From the Himal archives: In conversation with Harsh Mander, the legal academic Mohsin Alam Bhat argues that the growing precarity faced by Indian Muslims around safety, citizenship and belonging is inseparable from the broader crisis of Indian democracy.
In Celebration of Memories, translated by Kamna Prasad (Speaking Tiger, May 2026), the poet and public figure Kanwar Mohinder Singh Bedi ‘Sahar’ reflects on a life shaped by colonial Punjab, Partition, Urdu literary culture and post-Independence public life. A poet, wrestler, bureaucrat and advocate of secularism, Bedi moved through varied worlds – from zamindari Punjab and elite colonial schools to the cultural circles of Delhi.
Along the way appear figures such as Josh Malihabadi, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Mohammad Rafi and Zakir Husain, alongside memories of Partition and the shared social worlds of North India before communal division hardened.
In Ambedkar – Sonic Imagination of Casteless Utopia (Panther’s Paw Publication, May 2026), Yogesh Maitreya reimagines B R Ambedkar through music, memory and radical thought. Moving across seven decades and the work of fifteen musicians, the book traces how anti-caste cultural movements in Maharashtra shaped, and continue to sustain, a sonic imagination of liberation and casteless futures.
Blending cultural criticism, history and political reflection, Maitreya offers a fresh way of thinking about Ambedkarite politics through sound, performance and collective memory.
📖 From the Himal archives: Harish S Wankhede asks who gets to write about Ambedkar, unpacking how recent books reveal the gulf between Dalit-Bahujan and anglophone writing on the iconic Dalit leader and intellectual.
In Zubeen Garg: The Voice that Bridged Worlds (Penguin India, May 2026), Prosenjit Nath traces the life and career of one of Northeast India’s most influential cultural figures. Blending biography, cultural history and personal reflection, the book follows Garg’s journey from his childhood in Tura to his emergence as a transformative force in Assamese music and cinema.
Nath explores how Garg moved across genres, languages and musical traditions while remaining deeply rooted in Assam, revitalising local cultural forms even as his music reached audiences far beyond the region.
📖 From the Himal archives: Sanjoy Hazarika writes on how the Assamese icon sang and spoke the language of the secular, and how his death – like his art – united Assam’s Hindus and Muslims, tribals and non-tribals, rich and poor.
In Pebble in the Pond: An Approach to Regional Development in Balochistan and Sindh (Folio Books, May 2026), Kaiser Bengali and Mehnaz Hafeez examine why two of Pakistan’s most resource-rich provinces continue to lag on development indicators despite decades of state investment and sprawling development schemes.
Arguing that fragmented planning and dispersed resources have deepened underdevelopment, the authors propose a cluster-based model centred on rural and urban settlements capable of driving regional growth. Combining economic analysis with geospatial mapping, the book offers an alternative framework for thinking about inequality and development planning in Pakistan.
🎧 From the Himal archives: The professor of critical geography Daanish Mustafa discusses how climatic variability, unregulated development and colonial water governance continue to deepen Pakistan’s vulnerability to floods, especially in regions such as Balochistan and Sindh.
Gulabiya by Abha Purbey, translated from the Angika by Shivangi Pandey and Tejaswi Rawal (Hachette India, May 2026), is the first ever English translation of an Angika-language novel. Set in the floodplains of Bihar’s Kosi region, it follows Gulabiya and Balesar, two agricultural labourers whose modest dreams of independence provoke the hostility of landlords, village elites and even their own families.
First published in 2008, the novel offers an unflinching portrait of caste, labour and rural power in contemporary India, while also telling a story of love, resistance and the struggle to escape servitude. The translation was shortlisted for the 2024 Armory Square Prize for Southasian Literature in Translation.
📖 From the Himal archives: Revisit our 2024 Fiction Fest event on Southasian literature in translation, featuring the finalists for the Armory Square Prize – including a reading by the translators of Gulabiya – and a discussion on the future of translated fiction in the region.
Until next time, happy reading!
Shwetha Srikanthan
Associate Editor, Himal Southasian
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