Essay

Mari Selvaraj, ‘Maamannan’, and the cinema of caste in Tamil Nadu

A new generation of Tamil filmmakers are confronting the caste-glorification films of the past – but controversy is often quick to follow, and Tamil cinema’s history with caste is more complex than many recognise

| Aug 10, 2023

Who gets to write about Ambedkar?

Six new reappraisals show the gulf between Dalit-Bahujan and anglophone writing on B R Ambedkar

| Jul 28, 2023

Sri Lankan speculative fiction lifts off

An extraordinary burst of anglophone SF writing from Sri Lanka looks afresh at home and the universe(s)

| Jul 10, 2023

Southasia’s place in contemporary climate fiction

Western cli-fi seems almost addicted to Southasia as a theatre for exploring its greatest concerns, yet often falls prey to uninformed perspectives. But there is also a growing tide of climate fiction by Southasians themselves.

| Jun 28, 2023

“Yes, our son is gay”: A Nepali father’s awakening

A path-breaking personal essay calling for social acceptance and full rights for Nepal’s LGBTIQ+ community

What really makes a Sikkimese?

India’s Supreme Court set off a storm by describing Sikkimese-Nepalis as people of “foreign origin.” As “Indian” Old Settlers fight for new rights, Sikkim’s Bhutia-Lepcha and Nepali communities face a reckoning over belonging and identity.

| May 01, 2023

How agrarian utopianism shapes Sri Lanka

The idealised "village" was at the core of the people’s struggle last year. As a fundamental of Sri Lankan nationalist thought, agrarian utopianism helps to explain the country’s past and imagine a different future.

| Apr 17, 2023

Why the movement against Rampal plant in Bangladesh failed

Five years after a people’s movement to stop a power plant near the Sundarban, Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government has pushed the project through. Why did this movement fail where others in Bangladesh have succeeded?

| Feb 24, 2023

The Muslim-left legacy of an Urdu library in Mumbai

The Awami Idara, rooted in a working-class Muslim neighbourhood, connects the long history of Southasian Muslim labour activism to political movements and events across Mumbai, Southasia and beyond.

| Jan 09, 2023

Finding food in Chandrapur

An up-close account of hunger, food insecurity and ineffective state policies from a district in central India.

| Dec 23, 2022

Load More

Latest Articles

How Southasia and Oman intertwined

In ‘Sovereigns of the Sea’, the histories of Omani sultans in the age of empire speak to the interconnectedness of Southasia, West Asia and East Africa

Crisis in India’s bread basket

How agriculture, capital and corporate investment have reshaped Indian Punjab, and brought about its current precarity

Images of the two Punjabs, partitioned yet forever alike

A photographer’s journey through the Punjab in India and Pakistan shows a land and a people still tied together, despite Partition and the militarised border in between