Sunela Jayewardene’s search for Ravan’s presence in Sri Lanka offers a counter to Sinhala Buddhist appropriation of the mythic king, but comes with its own pitfalls
In ‘Sahaj Path’ – Rabindranath Tagore’s much-loved work for young readers of Bengali – his views on class, caste and gender are inextricably intertwined with his aesthetics and pedagogy
Syed Irfan Ashraf’s ‘The Dark Side of Journalism’ and Saad Mohseni and Jenna Krajeski’s ‘Radio Free Afghanistan’ show how local journalists became both victims and agents of geopolitical conflict and an exploitative global media – and looked to push back
The ‘Oddamavadi’ project, comprising a book and documentary film, takes on a shameful chapter in Sri Lanka’s recent history when Muslims were barred from burial in violation of their religious beliefs
With the collapse of India-backed authoritarianism in Bangladesh – and Myanmar too – ‘India’s Near East: A New History’ reads like a testament to the failure of New Delhi’s policy on its eastern flank
Noorjahan Bose’s memoir of her pioneering life recounts a host of stories born of female autonomy – all while spanning Partition, the Bangla Language Movement, the Liberation War and the post-independence history of Bangladesh
The past struggles of brown and black immigrants have brought improvement in racial equality in the United Kingdom – but recent books make clear that British liberalism’s claims of substantive progress are overly optimistic
Two recent books conjure up a society and polity in Tamil Nadu bound by a Dravidian consensus, but they fail to explore the economic and social contexts behind fissures in the Dravidian compact – especially when it comes to the Dalit question
India and China’s close interactions over the centuries – literary or otherwise – make for important and interesting reference points, but much work needs to be done to address the failings and inadequacies of comparing the two
In ‘Waiting on Empire’, Arunima Datta resurrects the largely forgotten travelling ayahs – one of the many groups of Southasian migrant workers in the British Empire
