Books

Two men grip the hump of a bull at a Jallikattu event, a bull-taming sport in Tamil Nadu. The background shows the ground of churned-up brown dirt. The men display intense focus and physical effort as they hold onto the charging bull, which is covered in patches of coloured powder.
By
Ashik Kahina
Perumal Murugan and Appupen’s graphic adaptation of C S Chellappa’s novella ‘Vaadivaasal’ fails to capture the essence of the original when trying to bring it to a new generation shaped in part by the ...
A close-up photograph of a man's face partially obscured by tangled and rusted barbed wire as he stare through the gaps. The background is slightly blurred, with hints of a green and white flag visible behind him.
By
Burhan Majid
Aman Hingorani’s ‘Unravelling the Kashmir Knot’ is emblematic of Indian liberals’ depoliticisation of Kashmir, mirroring the Bharatiya Janata Party’s justification for abrogating Article 370
An old photograph of M T Vasudevan Nair (right), wearing glasses and a light striped shirt, smiling while facing the camera. K Ramachandra Babu (left) facing past the camera stands next to MT.
By
Anjana S
The Malayalam literary giant’s merits and limitations in addressing Kerala’s traditional caste, gender and social hierarchies defined frontiers that other writers must now transcend
The widow (center) of a Muslim man murdered by a cow-protection group in Jharkhand in 2017. The rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in India has come with a surge in violence against Muslim and Dalit communities by cow-protection vigilantes.
By
Sohel Sarkar
Three new books unpack the violent roots of caste-based vegetarianism and India’s dairy industry as Dalits and Muslims continue to be targeted by cow-protection vigilantes
Yasser Arafat (left), the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, with Indira Gandhi (right) in Delhi in 1980. India once saw the Palestinian struggle as a battle against colonialism not unlike its own freedom movement.
Three new books demonstrate how India’s position on Israel–Palestine is determined by a careful calibration of geopolitical ties and its own image and interests
A student holds an image of Lajpat Rai (right) during a martyrs’ memorial at the Jallainwallah Bagh in Amritsar. Rai’s trajectory reveals that Hindu nationalism can involve conservative or radical attitudes to caste even as “secular” Indian nationalism can embody more conservative caste outlooks.
By
Manoj Mitta
Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav’s biography of Lajpat Rai helps trace the Indian freedom fighter’s ideas on nationalism and caste – which, when compared to Gandhi’s, point to the often counterintuitive caste po ...
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