New Books in South Asian Studies
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network, an academic audio library dedicated to public education. Each episode features scholars discussing their recently published research with another expert in their field. The network offers over 150 channels and more than 28,000 episodes. Listeners can subscribe to a free weekly newsletter and follow on social media for updates.
Episodes
Fictions of Freedom: Migration, Modern Slavery and Bureaucracy in India with Pankhuri Agarwal (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Fictions of Freedom: Migration, Modern Slavery and Bureaucracy in India (Cambridge UP, 2026) emerges from the fact of anti-trafficking interventions having led to newer forms of oppressions and entanglements of bureaucracy. Situating the lives of sex workers and daily-wage earning labourers through a multi-sited ethnography in India, this book opens up an examination of the rescue indus
The Steppe and Its Empires: The Russian Empire and Its Eurasian Counterparts
Winston Churchill famously called Russia "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." But what if the riddle is partly of our own making—the product of a habit of looking only west for answers? Michael Khodarkovsky today argues that to understand Russia, we need to look east, to the steppe and the empires it shaped.Michael’s new book, The Steppe and Its Empires: The Russian Empire and
Immoral Traffic An Ethnography of Law, NGOs, and the Governance of Prostitution in India with Vibhuti Ramachandran (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Immoral Traffic: An Ethnography of Law, NGOs, and the Governance of Prostitution in India (Cambridge UP, 2025) delves into the complex intersection of India's anti-prostitution law and global anti-trafficking campaigns, and how they impact sex workers in both voluntary and involuntary situations. Immoral Traffic examines the role of legal actors and NGOs in implementing these interventions, r
Lives, Land, and Labour: A Social History of Eighteenth-Century Sri Lanka with Luc Bulten (Brill, 2026)
The "Thombos" are a rather unique collection of eighteenth-century land and population registers detailing the lives lived, lands held, and labour provided by tens of thousands of people inhabiting the coastal regions of Sri Lanka that were colonised by the Dutch East India Company. Turning this archive inside out by highlighting both the indigenous and colonial roots of this administrative system
The Colombo Plan: Development Internationalism in Cold War Asia with David Lowe (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Conceived in 1950, the Colombo Plan for Co-operative Development in South and Southeast Asia was a unique experiment in foreign relations. Meeting annually across what we now know as the 'Indo-Pacific', talented administrators facilitated foreign aid provision, and promoted development fuelled state-making, internationalism and experimental regionalism across postwar Asia. In The
India, China, and Climate Change Governance: Leadership and Responsibility in the Asian Global South with Amit Ranjan and Agnieszka Nitza-Makowska (Routledge, 2026)
Can we expect leadership and responsibility from the Asian Global South in climate change governance? India, China, and Climate Change Governance: Leadership and Responsibility in the Asian Global South(Routledge, 2026) is a new book published by Routledge, edited by scholars from Singapore, Estonia, and Poland, explores this intriguing question by examining not only the domestic challe
The Range of the River: A Riverine History of Empire Across China, India, and Southeast Asia with Iftekhar Iqbal (Stanford UP, 2025)
Six great Asian river systems have their origins in the Tibetan glacial region: the Brahmaputra, the Irrawaddy, the Salween, the Mekong, the Red and the Yangtse ('BISMRY'). Together they comprise the largest concentration of fresh water on the planet outside of the polar regions, and they support one third of humanity. In the age of imperialism, Western colonial powers dreamed of harnessing the ec
Weaponizing Civilian Protection: Counterinsurgency and Collateral Damage in Afghanistan with Thomas Gregory (Oxford UP, 2025)
Thomas Gregory is Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His new book, Weaponizing Civilian Protection (Oxford UP, 2025), exposes how coalition efforts to minimize and mitigate civilian casualties during the recent conflict in Afghanistan also worked to rationalize the harm inflicted upon Afghan civilians. Drawing on
Spies and Other Pigeons: Hospitality and Hostility in Multispecies Pakistan with Muhammad A. Kavesh (U Washington, 2026)
Across Pakistan's rooftops, pigeon flyers devote enormous care and labor to birds that soar the skies, take part in competitions, and knit together communities otherwise divided by caste, class, language, and ethnicity. Spies and Other Pigeons: Hospitality and Hostility in Multispecies Pakistan (U Washington, 2026) follows these flyers across four provinces, revealing a world of shauq (passio
Karline McLain, "Living with Gandhi: Experiments in Utopia" (Association for Asian Studies, 2026)
Mahatma Gandhi was an anticolonial activist, lawyer, and politician. Less famously, but no less importantly, he was also a back-to-the-land farmer, a founder of communes, and a seeker of utopia. Living with Gandhi: Experiments in Utopia tells the story of everyday life at four of Gandhi's communities in India and South Africa. It explores who lived at each community alongside Gandhi, the experime
Mehran Gul, "The New Geography of Innovation: The Global Contest for Breakthrough Technologies" (Simon and Schuster, 2026)
Increasingly, it seems like the corporate names that dominate headlines are much more diverse than they used to be. Samsung, TSMC, and SK Hynix. Alibaba and Tencent; BYD and DeepSeek. Sea and Grab. For twenty-five years, it seems like every major technology was American . That assumption is now under strain as innovation spreads from one place to many. Mehran Gul tries to map out this ne
Pushpesh Kumar et al. eds., "Sociology of Gender in India: Contemporary Issues and Perspectives" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Sociology of Gender in India brings together feminist and queer scholarship to chart the changing landscape of gender debates in Indian sociology. Spanning over five decades of disciplinary evolution, this volume interrogates how gender, caste, sexuality, class, and digitalisation intersect in shaping contemporary social life. With chapters by a new generation of scholars, it critically engages wi
Darinee Alagirisamy, "Sober State: Origins of Alcohol Prohibition in India" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
What happens when a democratic state—still in the process of formation—commits to banning a substance, especially one as controversial as alcohol? Sober State: Origins of Alcohol Prohibition in India (Cambridge UP, 2025) traces the origins and evolution of alcohol prohibition in India, drawing on extensive archival research and rich vernacular sources to explain its surprising resilienc
Ashish Koul, "Reinventing Caste: Islam and Hierarchy in Late Colonial India" (Stanford UP, 2026)
Reinventing Caste: Islam and Hierarchy in Late Colonial India (Stanford UP, 2026) reveals that caste, usually assumed to be a feature of Hindu society, was in fact a trans-religious phenomenon in colonial India, as it is today. Even in an Islamic religious milieu that was supposedly more egalitarian than hierarchical Hinduism, colonial Indian subjects thought and acted in terms of caste. Through a
Janaka Jayawickrama and Jerome Wright, "Under the Gaze of Global Mental Health: A Critical Reflection" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
What went wrong with global mental health?
Under the Gaze of Global Mental Health: A Critical Reflection (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) critically examines how the globalisation of mental health through the dominant medical model has created barriers to understanding and responding to distress with reference to cases from Malawi and Sri Lanka. Its authors argue that mental health must be understood wi
Srirupa Roy, "The Political Outsider: Indian Democracy and the Lineages of Populism" (Stanford UP, 2024)
Defying the dire predictions that attended its birth as an
independent nation-state in 1947, the Indian republic is more than
seventy-five years old. And yet, it is a place where criticisms of
actually existing democracy are intense and strident. In recent years,
the trope of victimized people suffering at the hands of a predatory
elite and political dysfunction has reaped rewards. The popul
Kanchana N. Ruwanpura and Wilfried Swenden eds., "Protecting Workers? Crisis, COVID-19 and South Asia" (Helsinki UP, 2026)
In our recent conversation about Protecting Workers? Crisis, COVID-19 and South Asia, the editors Kanchana N. Ruwanpura and Wilfried Swenden reflect on the need to move beyond treating the pandemic as a singular, isolated shock. Our discussion reflected on the deeper mechanics of knowledge production, how we reflect on crisis beyond its immediate occurrence, how we conceptualize South Asia today,
Niharika Pandit, "Occupying the Everyday: Militarisation and Gendered Politics of Living in Kashmir" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Our recent conversation about Occupying the Everyday: Militarisation and Gendered Politics of Living in Kashmir (Oxford UP, 2026), with author Niharika Pandit, covers the journey of how critical methodology meets the weight of lived experience. This book examines the everyday politics of militarized control in Kashmir following the Indian government’s August 5, 2019, decision to de-operationalize
Vivek Neelakantan, "The Emergence of International Health Policy in Southeast Asia, India, and Sri Lanka, 1937–1978" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)
Examining the emergence of international public health policy between the 1930s and 80s, The Emergence of International Health Policy in Southeast Asia, India, and Sri Lanka, 1937–1978
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) by Dr. Vivek Neelakantan sheds light on the
role that rural community health initiatives in South and Southeast Asia
played in the movement towards ‘primary health care’ and ‘health for
Sandip Roy, "Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal" (Seagull Books, 2026)
Chapal Rani was one of India’s most famous performers of jatra, Bengal’s popular theater. Traditionally, all the roles, including female roles, were played by men—and Chapal Rani was perhaps the most prominent performer of women on the stage.
He’s also the subject of a new book from Sandip Roy, titled Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal. Roy, who joins us the show today, tells the story of Chapa
Utathya Chattopadhyaya, "Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India" (U California Press, 2026)
Ganja
is the popular name in Hindustani, Bengali, and other South Asian
languages for intoxicating substances produced from the plant species
Cannabis sativa L. Starting in the eighteenth century, British India's
colonial administrators sought ways to systematically tax and govern how
ganja circulated from the farms of peasant families in rural Bengal to pipes, plates, and cups elsewhere in t
Mithi Mukherjee, "Asianism and the Fall of Empire: India's Road to Freedom" (U California Press, 2026)
Offering a new global perspective on modern Indian history, Asianism and the Fall of Empire: India's Road to Freedom (University
of California Press, 2026) by Mithi Mukherjee identifies the rise of
Asianism in the early twentieth century as the origin and primary
driving force of resistance movements that brought down the British
Empire. Mithi Mukherjee ties together into a single sweeping nar
James Lochtefeld, "God’s Own Land: Sacred Landscape, Pilgrim Economy and Religious Change in the Ganga Himalaya" (Lever Press, 2026)
God’s Own Land: Sacred Landscape, Pilgrim Economy and Religious Change in the Ganga Himalaya (Lever Press, 2026) follows the tectonic shift from traditional religious pilgrimage in the early twentieth-century to contemporary pilgrim tourism, in which ever-burgeoning visitor numbers have brought both benefits and challenges to the Garhwal region of India—the source of Hindu India’s sacred river, t
The MANTRAMS Project and Digital Mantra Research: A Discussion with Borayin Larios
Every day, tens of millions of people use mantras all around the globe. Originating in South Asia and then spreading via practitioners, texts, rituals, and iconography, mantras have been grounded in speech and sound but also take a range of material forms. For instance, they are inscribed on surfaces, written in manuscripts, printed on posters, visually encoded in diagrams, or worn as amulets and
Dalit Studies with Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana and Sanal Mohan
This episode featured a conversation with Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana, and Sanal Mohan, three scholars in the burgeoning field of Dalit Studies. We began with the significance of the 1990s as a point of departure for new work in this field and segued to the interventions made by their two edited volumes published in 2016 and 2025. We discussed the paths opened up by earlier radical historio
Daniel Majchrowicz, "A Journey to Mecca and London: The Travels of an Indian Muslim Woman, 1909–1910" (Indiana UP, 2025)
Descended from Mughal nobility, Akhtar al-Nisa Begum Nawab Sarbuland Jung grew up in Hyderabad in southern India, where she lived a quiet, private, and privileged life at the heart of the state's royal court. In 1896, at the age of 20, she married Nawab Muhammad Hamidullah Khan Sarbuland Jung, a prominent lawyer and the scion of a leading Muslim reformist movement. In 1909, the wealthy couple
Edward T. G. Anderson, "Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Hindu nationalism is transforming India as an increasingly dominant
ideology and political force. But it is also a global phenomenon, with
sections of India’s vast and influential diaspora drawn to, or actively
supporting, right-wing Hindu nationalism. Indians overseas can be seen
as an important, even inextricable, aspect of the movement. This is not a
new dynamic—diasporic Hindutva has gro
Muslims and the Minority Question across the Indian Ocean: A Conversation With Roy Bar Sadeh
In this conversation, we are entering an Indian Ocean world connected
by steamships, telegraphs, pilgrimage routes, and print. From Bombay
and the Gulf to Cairo and Mecca—and onward to Moscow and
Geneva—merchants, scholars, activists, and political exiles debated a
question that still feels urgent: how can different communities live
together without being reduced to permanent majorities and m
Monalisa Adhikari, "A Post-Liberal Peace: How Emergent Powers Are Reshaping Global Conflict Management" (Cornell UP, 2026)
In A Post-Liberal Peace: How Emergent Powers Are Reshaping Global Conflict Management (Cornell UP, 2026), Dr. Monalisa Adhikari shows how rising powers like India and China are reshaping global peace governance. Over recent decades, both countries have deepened engagement with institutions built on liberal principles, including those related to peacebuilding. Their growing role raises critical que
Nabi Sahak, "Anglo-Afghan Power and Politics, 1893–1947: The Durand Line Unmasked" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
In
this episode of New Books Network, I speak with Nabi Sahak about his
book, Anglo-Afghan Power and Politics, 1893–1947: The Durand Line Unmasked (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).
Anglo-Afghan
Power and Politics revisits one of the most contested borders in the
modern world. The roughly 2,640-kilometre line drawn in 1893 by Mortimer
Durand and Amir Abdur Rahman
Khan, which today divides Pashtun
The Long Reach of the Strong Arm: Evolving Forms of Transnational Authoritarianism in Asia and Beyond
How do authoritarian regimes silence critics across borders? And what are the repressive tools and strategies that authoritarian regimes use transnationally? In this episode we are joined by Arild Engelsen Ruud, Mubashar Hasan and Karin Zackari to discuss the role of digital surveillance, emotional blackmail, enforced family isolation, psychological harassment, and the imprisonment of relatives on
Samantha Iyer, "Agrarian Superpower: Food, Development, and the Global Ascendancy of the United States" (Columbia UP, 2026)
The United States’ superpower status is often associated with its industrial, financial, and military might. Yet its global power after the Second World War hinged in part on something often seen as backward: agriculture. In contrast to Britain, the predominant global power of the nineteenth century, which depended on its current and former colonies for food and raw materials, the United States pr
Mitra Sharafi, "Fear of the False: Forensic Science and the Law of Crime in Colonial South Asia" (Cornell UP, 2026)
Fear of the False: Forensic Science and the Law of Crime in Colonial South Asia
(Cornell University Press, 2026) uncovers colonial South Asia's
critical role in the development of forensic science. Around 1900, the
government of British India created a web of institutions for the
scientific detection of crime. Driven by anxieties about "native
mendacity," newly minted forensic analysts focus
Lily Kelting, "Against Heritage: The Reinvention of Traditional Foods" (UNC Press, 2026)
The rise of “heritage” foods—that is, the reinvention of traditional
foods—has enjoyed a high profile thanks to the oft-praised efforts of
chefs such as Sean Brock and René Redzepi. But Lily Kelting observes the
popularity of heritage foods as something more: a global movement in
response to climate catastrophe and the rise of right-wing, populist
movements that center a return to the past as
Dominik A. Haas, "South Asia Before Religion: Reflections on an Anachronistic Concept" (Knowledge Commons Works, 2026)
South Asia Before Religion: Reflections on an Anachronistic Concept (Knowledge Commons Works, 2026) critically examines the applicability of the concept of religion to premodern South Asian culture. I argue that premodern South Asia did not possess a concept equivalent to religion as understood today – neither as a distinct system of religious teachings and practices, nor as a fundamental cultural
Debolina Dutta, "A Jurisprudence of Conversations: Law, Life and Feminism in Post-colonial India" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Grounded in empirical studies, this book is both a history of the
emergence of feminist jurisprudence in post-colonial India and a model
of innovative legal research. The book inaugurates a creative practice
of scholarly activism that engages a new way of thinking about law and
feminist jurisprudence, one that is geared to acknowledge and take
responsibility for the hierarchies in Indian acad
Caste as a Material Question with Rahul Sonpimple
This episode featured a conversation with Rahul Sonpimple, founder of the All-India Independent Scheduled Castes Association. Our conversation began with Rahul’s conception of Indian history and the place of anti-caste struggle within it. We delved further into Rahul’s own understanding of “anti-caste” as deeply rooted in Ambedkar’s own argument about the necessity of force in emancipatory social
Renisa Mawani, "Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire" (Duke UP, 2018)
In 1914 the British-built and Japanese-owned steamship Komagata Maru
left Hong Kong for Vancouver carrying 376 Punjabi migrants. Chartered
by railway contractor and purported rubber planter Gurdit Singh, the
ship and its passengers were denied entry into Canada and two months
later were deported to Calcutta.
In Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire (Du
Ute Hüsken and Suganya Anandakichenin eds., "Pathika: Studies of South Asian Texts and Traditions" (HAS, 2026)
A conversation featuring the editors of the new Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing series Pathika - Studies of South Asian Texts and Traditions (HAS, 2026)
Pathika – Sanskrit for "traveler" or "one who follows a path" – is a new series dedicated to the textual traditions of South Asia, engaging with the rich landscape of South Asian literary and religious traditions. The series encompasses criti
Luna Sabastian, "Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Fascism swept the world in the 1920s and 1930s, but not only because of the seductive rhetoric of Mussolini, Hitler, and their collaborators. In India as well, a distinctive brand of fascist thought emerged—influenced by Euro-American ideologies but also departing from them in critical ways. The first systematic examination of this political philosophy, Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutv
Vignesh Rajahmani, "The Dravidian Pathway: The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the Politics of Transition in South India" (Hurst Publishers, 2025)
In
the rich political landscape of Tamil Nadu, few movements have had as
profound and enduring an impact as the Dravidian movement. Vignesh
Rajahmani’s The Dravidian Pathway (Hurst
Publishers, 2025) offers a compelling and detailed account of how the
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) transformed a powerful socio-cultural
and anti-caste movement into a highly successful electoral political
for
Pratap Kumar Penumala and Arvind Sharma, "The Bloomsbury Handbook of Hindu Ethics" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
With the plurality of Hinduism in mind, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Hindu Ethics focuses on the human, sociological and situational ethical framework underpinning Hindu ethics. Chapters go beyond the traditional classical sources-such as the Vedas, epics, mythological narratives and Dharmasastra texts-to include lesser known vernacular based moral texts, as well as contemporary sources from organiz
Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach, "Freedom to Know: Creating Community with Ambedkar, Du Bois, Iqbal, Ramabai and Tagore" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
Freedom to Know: Creating Community with Ambedkar, Du Bois, Iqbal, Ramabai and Tagore (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) asks
how a (world) community can be created to allow structural minorities
equitable access to intellectual and material resources
Draws on a range of primary sources
Brings the work of W.E.B. Du Bois into conversation with his Indian contemporaries
Adds a novel histori
Meena Khandelwal, "Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women's Technology in India" (U Arizona Press, 2026)
Stove
improvers have been designing and promoting “clean” or “efficient”
biomass cookstoves in India since the 1940s and have been frustrated to
find their carefully engineered stoves abandoned in trash heaps or
repurposed as storage bins, while the traditional mud chulha retains a
central place in the kitchen. Why do so many Indian women continue to
use wood-burning, smoke-spewing stoves wh
Gajendran Ayyathurai, "Tamil Buddhism and Brahminism in Modern India: Deep Resistance Against Caste" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Tamil Buddhism and Brahminism in Modern India: Deep Resistance Against Caste (Oxford University Press, 2026) explores
Tamil Buddhism in modern India, focusing on its emergence
as a response to caste-based oppression during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Central to this movement was Pandit Iyothee
Thass (1845–1914), a pioneering intellectual who reinterpreted India’s
Buddhi
Aditi Chandra, "Unruly Monuments: Disrupting the State at Delhi's Islamic Architecture" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Unruly Monuments: Disrupting the State at Delhi's Islamic Architecture (Cambridge University Press, 2025) examines
how Delhi's Sultanate and Mughal architecture, dating from the twelfth
to the seventeenth centuries, became modern monuments and were
assimilated and ordered into public consciousness as spaces for tourism,
leisure, and intellectual contemplation during the colonial and early
pos
Caste and Music with T.M. Krishna
This episode features a conversation with Carnatic vocalist, T.M. Krishna, who is also the author of two books on this musical tradition. We began with his first book’s account of the modernization of Carnatic music through a set of social, technical, and spatial processes that transformed it from a more socially diverse practice into a predominantly Brahmin performative genre. We moved on to disc
Christian Environmentalism in a Hindu Majoritarian Context
Why has the Catholic Church in India become so engaged in environmental initiatives? And what does the wider Indian political context defined by an assertive Hindu nationalism mean for the ability of church actors to pursue environmental agendas? In this episode, we are joined by Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Nihar Gokhale who have examined these questions in the Indian state of Goa, focusing on church a
Carola E. Lorea, "Communities of Sound: Religion, Displacement, and Caste in the Bay of Bengal" (Wesleyan UP, 2026)
Communities of Sound: Religion, Displacement, and Caste in the Bay of Bengal (Wesleyan University Press, 2026) brings
together insights from religion, anthropology, sound, and migration
studies to explore the sonic traces of untouchability and forced
migration across the Bay of Bengal. Based on an immersive, multi-sited
ethnography with Matua devotees—a low-caste, Bengali-speaking Dalit
reli
Hamsa Stainton and Anna Lee White, "Sanskrit Hymns Across Traditions: Studying Stotras" (Routledge, 2026)
Sanskrit hymns of praise (stotra/stuti/stava) have been popular and influential within multiple religious traditions for thousands of years. Sanskrit hymns remain lively, meaningful parts of the religious lives of countless Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains today, and new stotras continue to be composed and recited around the world. The academic study of these hymns has made notable progress in recent
Manasicha Akepiyapornchai, "Surrender to God Across Languages: Multilingual Intellectual History of Premodern India" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Surrender to God Across Languages: Multilingual Intellectual History of Premodern India (Oxford UP, 2026) explores the role of languages in the intellectual landscape of second-millennium India by way of six theological treatises composed between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, each written by a key intellectual figure: Vātsya Varadaguru, Periyavāccān Pillai, Meghanādari Sūri, Pillai Lokācār
Shikha Jhingan, "The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology" (Wayne State UP, 2025)
How the sound of the female playback voice impacts Bollywood's cultural, musical, and cinematic environment.
Drawing on sound studies and performance theory, scholar Shikha Jhingan explores the discursive nature of the female playback voice in Bombay film songs in The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology (Wayne State UP, 2025). Mapping the production, circulation, and recepti
The Diasporic Hindu Right with Savera
This episode features a conversation with Prachi and Ram, organizers with Savera, a multiracial, interfaith, anti-caste coalition of Indian Americans and partners standing together in the fight against the rise of the transnational far right. After laying out Hindu supremacy as an ideology, we considered the different phases of consolidation of the Hindu right in the United States from its late 20
Ashok Malhotra, "Imperial Science, the Organic Movement and the Path to Shangri La, 1900-1969" (UCL Press, 2026)
Imperial Science, the Organic Movement and the Path to Shangri La, 1900-1969 (UCL Press, 2026) is a global history project that examines the diffusion of scientific
and environmental discourses from India to Britain and the US.
Ashok Malhotra examines how imperial agendas and colonial stereotyping shaped
dietary and agricultural research carried out in the 1920s in British
India, from soil prot
Bruno Shirley, "Religion, Gender, and Politics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Reconstruction of Buddhist Kingship, ca. 1070-1215" (ARC Humanities Press, 2026)
Dr. Shirley's monograph, Religion, Gender, and Politics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Reconstruction of Buddhist Kingship, ca. 1070-1215 (ARC Humanities Press, 2026), is now available open access, thanks to the generous support of the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation. This book offers a radical
reconsideration of the Poḷon-naruva period, long understood to be a
turning point in the history of Ther
Amrita Chowdhury and Ujaan Ghosh trans., "Baidehisha Bilasa: The Amorous Plays of Sita’s Husband" (Wide Open Window Books, 2025)
Amrita Chowdhury and Ujaan Ghosh bring into English for the first time a long-inaccessible masterpiece of South Asian literature Baidehisha Bilasa: The Amorous Plays of Sita’s Husband (2025). Composed in the late seventeenth century by Upendra Bhanja — the Odia prince-poet hailed as Kavi Samrat, the Emperor of Poets — the work is a Ramayana that privileges shringara, the erotic sentiment, over ma
Rahul Mukherjee, "Unlimited: Aspirational Politics and Mobile Media Distribution" (MIT Press, 2026)
Around 2016, buoyed by so-called data kranti ("data revolution"), an aspirational neo-middle class of users in India accessed internet for the first time on their mobile phones. Unlimited: Aspirational Politics and Mobile Media Distribution (MIT Press, 2026) tells the story of digital infrastructures that are being created by state-corporations for content and money to move and reach such users.
India’s 2026 State Elections and Indian Democracy?
This week on Democracy Dialogues, Maya Tudor speaks with two keen observers of Indian politics, Gilles Verniers and Yamini Aiyar, about what India’s 2026 state elections reveal about the future of the world’s largest democracy.
Why did the incumbent government BJP make major gains in some states while struggling in others? Do competitive elections still mean democracy is entirely healthy? And why
Patrick S. D. McCartney, "Sanskrit-Speaking' Villages, Linguistic Utopias and the Metaphysics of Development" (Routledge, 2026)
Sanskrit-Speaking' Villages, Linguistic Utopias and the Metaphysics of Development (Routledge, 2026) is a recollection of the McCartney's journey across 'Sanskritland, ' which is the term coined to refer to the utopian landscape within which the 'Language of the Gods' is thought to be spoken. There are three destinations on the author's journey. This study sheds light on how, why, and where Sanskr
Shefalee Vasudev, "Stories We Wear: Status, Spectacle and the Politics of Appearance" (Westland Non-Fiction, 2025)
Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, is known for his outfits. Since rising to become India’s head of government in 2014, photographers and journalists have long followed his clothing styles, each saying something about India. It’s part of a long tradition of using clothing to make a statement about India—and about defining a political brand. Nor is it unique to India–remember Obama’s tan suit,
Kanika Singh, "The Story of a Sikh Museum: Heritage, Politics, Popular Culture" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The Story of a Sikh Museum: Heritage, Politics, Popular Culture, published
by Cambridge University Press in July 2025, is a pioneering study on
Sikh museums, a unique phenomenon of contemporary India—for their sheer numbers, distinctive display, malleability and presence in multiple
cultural spheres and their political significance. This case study of
Bhai Mati Das Museum at Gurdwara Sisganj,
Dalit Feminism with Thenmozhi Soundararajan
This episode features a conversation with Thenmozhi Soundararajan, founder Equality Labs and author of The Trauma of Caste. We discussed her own coming to consciousness of caste as the child of Dalit parents who were “passing” and how her work as an organizer has involved sustained engagement with anticaste thought, Black feminism, and Indigenous epistemologies. The conversation then turned to the
Shyam Ranganathan, "Moral Philosophy and De-Colonialism: The Irrationality of Oppression" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026)
Why have moral philosophers largely ignored colonialism? In Moral Philosophy and De-Colonialism: The Irrationality of Oppression (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026), Shyam Ranganathan tells the story of moral philosophy and colonialism and reveals the benefits of drawing from a colonized tradition to a create a rigorous logic-based ethics. This is a timely exploration of the the ways in which Western col
Erica Bornstein, "A Revolution of Rules: The Regulatory Reform of India's Nonprofit Sector" (Stanford UP, 2025)
Erica Bornstein, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oregon (and Divisional Associate Dean), has a new book that delves into the regulatory reforms within the nonprofit sector in India. These reforms transpired over more than a decade, and Bornstein spent extended time developing this ethnographic study of not only the changes, but the institutional structures that manage nonprofit orga
Sumana Roy, "Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal (Oxford UP, 2024) by Sumana Roy takes an unexpected cast of writers and artists and, in studying their work as ‘plant thinkers’, looks at how their stories and songs, art and films, and, of course, the idiomatic affected Bengali life and thought. Forest and garden, grass and root, weeds and magical plants—supported by a foliage of thought that allowed the
Nayantara Srinivasan, "The Brick-and-Mortar Bookstore in Contemporary India" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The Brick-and-Mortar Bookstore in Contemporary India (Cambridge UP, 2025) explores the landscape of anglophone trade bookselling in India, aiming to identify some key factors that have influenced the changing place of the brick-and-mortar bookstore over the last decade. The discussion focuses on a specific time period identified as a significant turning point, the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kenneth G. Zysk, "South Asian Animal Divination: A Critical Anthology" (Brill, 2025)
South Asian Animal Divination: A Critical Anthology (Brill, 2025) examines the history and practice of animal omen divination in South Asia, comparing it to similar traditions in Mesopotamia and classical antiquity. It provides critical editions and translations of relevant texts, focusing on the interpretation of bird calls and behaviour. The study incorporates ornithological and natural historic
T. V. Paul, "The Unfinished Quest: India's Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi" (Oxford UP, 2024)
From a Distinguished International Relations Scholar comes The Unfinished Quest: India's Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi (Oxford UP, 2024), an important book that looks at India's search for major power status. It is an unfinished quest with a long and winding road ahead. This is not to say that India's ambitions in world politics for greater peer recognition and institutional pos
Caste and Urbanization with Malini Ranganathan and Juned Shaikh
This episode features a conversation with urban geographer, Malini Ranganathan, and historian, Juned Shaikh, on the centrality of caste to urbanization in India. Through a focus on 20th century Bombay (now Mumbai) and 21st century Bangalore (now Bengaluru), we explored the symbiotic relationship between caste and capitalism manifest in the political economy of urbanization from the heyday of indus
Sumita Mukherjee, "Imperial Footprints: A History of South Asian Child Migrants in Britain" (Hurst, 2026)
Between 1857 and 1947, over 28 million Indians left the subcontinent to live, work and study elsewhere. Today, India has the largest diaspora in the world, with approximately 18 million Indians living overseas. Though often absent from historical narratives, migrant children were instrumental during the time of the British Empire in the development not only of Indian national and diasporic identit
Vindhya Buthpitiya, "A Volatile Picture: War and the Political Work of Photography in Sri Lanka" (U Washington Press, 2026)
A Volatile Picture: War and the Political Work of Photography in Sri Lanka (U Washington Press, 2026) by Dr. Vindhya Buthpitiya is a groundbreaking ethnography that explores how, in the context of Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war and its turbulent aftermath, photography has become bound to the Tamil political imagination. From state-commissioned images meant to surveil and rebel documentation of a
Caste and Race: Ambedkar and King with the Ambedkar King Study Circle
This episode features S. Karthikeyan and S. Subbulakshmi, the Convenor and Secretary of the Ambedkar King Study Circle, an anti-caste organization based in Silicon Valley. Our conversation began with a discussion of the choice of B. R. Ambedkar and Martin Luther King Jr. as the titular heads of the organization, then moved on to a conversation about its membership-based structure, the anti-caste s
The MANTRAMS Project: Mantras in Religion, Media, and Society in Global Southern Asia
Carola Lorea discusses the MANTRAMS project, a major ERC Synergy Grant initiative jointly hosted by Oxford, Vienna, and Tübingen dedicated to producing a history and anthropology of mantras. The six-year project investigates mantras across millennia and geographies — from their roots in Indian religious traditions through their circulation across South and Southeast Asia to their role in global sp
Shameem Black, "Flexible India: Yoga's Cultural and Political Tensions" (Columbia UP, 2023)
Yoga has offered the Indian state unprecedented opportunities for global, media-savvy political performance. Under Modi, it has promoted yoga tourism and staged mass yoga sessions, and Indian officials have proposed yoga as a national solution to a range of social problems, from reducing rape to curing cancer. But as yoga has gone global, its cultural meanings have spiraled far and wide. In Flexib
Gautamiputra Kamble, "The Seekers" (Blaft Publication, 2025)
The seekers in these stories travel through worlds both ancient and modern, worlds of symbol and fantastical allegory, on their paths to greater truth.
The state of Maharashtra is famous for its ancient Buddhist cave complexes. It's also known as the birthplace of leaders in the struggle against caste oppression: Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule in the early 1800s, and B. R. Ambedkar in 1891. It is h
Gudrun Bühnemann, "Scholar, Serpent, Yogin, and Devotee: The Many Faces of Patañjali in Indian Traditions" (Brill, 2025)
Scholar, Serpent, Yogin, and Devotee: The Many Faces of Patañjali in Indian Traditions (Brill, 2025) illuminates the many faces of Patañjali in Indian traditions. Often regarded as an incarnation of the cosmic serpent Ādiśeṣa or Anantanāga, Patañjali is celebrated, in both story and art, as a grammarian, scholar and practitioner of yoga, physician-alchemist, medical authority, teacher, ascetic, an
Transnational Solidarities with Nico Slate
My conversation with Nico Slate began with him reflecting on his own path into the study of historical connections between South Asia and the United States. We then moved to a wide-ranging discussion covering the importance of the transnational scale for an understanding of antiracist and anticaste politics, the repurposing of ‘race’ and ‘caste’ through creative acts of transnational translation,
Tim Connor et al., "Global Business and Local Struggle: Reimagining Non-Judicial Remedy for Human Rights" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
In the quest for human rights justice for communities and workers whose rights are breached by transnational businesses, non-judicial mechanisms (NJMs) are often deployed, but how effective are they? Global Business and Local Struggle: Reimagining Non-Judicial Remedy for Human Rights (Cambridge UP, 2025) creates a blueprint for reforming transnational human rights NJMs and for helping communities
Radio ReOrient 14.2: State of the Ummah: Authoritarianism and Resistance: Bangladesh and Pakistan, Hosted by SherAli Tahreen and Shehla Khan, with Tanzeen Doha and Salman Sayyid
In this episode of Radio ReOrient’ s occasional series The State of the Ummah, SherAli Tahreen, Shehla Khan, Tanzeen Doha, and Salman Sayyid unpack the intertwined stories of authoritarianism and resistance in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Moving beyond Orientalism, methodological nationalism, and Indological approaches, they explore Bangladesh’s relative success in overthrowing Sheikh Hasina’s authori
Asif Iqbal, "Bangladesh in Anglophone and Vernacular Literature: Cultural Imaginings of a Postcolonial Nation" (Routledge, 2025)
Bangladesh in Anglophone and Vernacular Literature: Cultural Imaginings of a Postcolonial Nation (Routledge, 2025) illuminates individual and collective imaginings of postcolonial Bangladesh. It explores the emergence of Bangladesh as a nation from a variety of perspectives. The author studies the impact of Muslim nationalism on the subaltern life-worlds of East Bengal during the Partition, religi
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