Reviews

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
Namrata Raju | Sep 21, 2023

Notes on Southasian photography beyond borders
Rahaab Allana’s 'Unframed' explores how lens-based practices confront the divided realities of Southasia, yet also point to the region’s overlaps and entanglements.
Jatin Gulati | Sep 01, 2023

The historic struggle for housing by Bengali migrants in London
Shabna Begum’s ‘From Sylhet to Spitalfields’ offers a searing history of Bengali squatters in 1970s East London, and a chilling reminder of how migrants continue to be treated by a hostile British state
Ashraf Hoque | Aug 25, 2023

New Tibetan writing stares down the hard truths of exile
A generation of Tibetan writers, many working in English, are laying claim to the voice of exile and pushing back against the fetishisation of Tibet by the West
Amish Raj Mulmi | Aug 18, 2023

Where workers stand in Sri Lanka’s garment-industry boom
‘Garments without Guilt?’ sheds light on labour ethics and narratives associated with exceptionalism in Sri Lanka’s apparel industry
Dina M Siddiqi | Jul 17, 2023

In ‘Agra’, a grim portrait of the repressed Indian man
Director Kanu Behl’s Hindi feature film examines the sexual obsession and frustration of men, mental health and the transactional nature of human relationships in a patriarchal society where space is in short supply
Anna M M Vetticad | May 30, 2023

When neoliberalism came to the Indian farm
With a focus on agricultural policy since the 1990s, 'Distress in the Fields' demonstrates how neoliberal interventions sowed the seeds of the crisis faced by farmers today
Tanya Matthan | May 27, 2023

“I write with the same hands that carried shit”: Reading Pandiyakannan’s ‘Salavaan’
The Tamil writer Pandiyakannan, the first novelist from the Kuravar community, offers an intimate portrait of the lives of manual scavengers
Ashik Kahina | May 25, 2023

The politics of democratic planning in postcolonial India
In Nikhil Menon’s ‘Planning Democracy’, the vision of economic planning shows the strain between technocracy and representative democracy in India
Sarath Pillai | Apr 25, 2023

Meena Kandasamy’s feminist intervention on the Tirukkural
The unparalleled Tamil classic’s third part, covering desire, was long overlooked, but Kandasamy’s new translation looks precisely at it to challenge convention
Kavitha Muralidharan | Apr 11, 2023
