This book is a chronicle of memories ... narratives from an India which few of us who read this book will ever encounter. Have you ever really looked at the people who live on the streets around you? Many of them have fought against unimaginable odds to live a life of dignity and courage. Some have emerged from their sufferings with greater strength, and gone on to help others like them. Harsh Mander writes with compassion and deep sensitivity about these unsung heroes of India—Mogalamma w...

The Constitution of India is a dream, a vision, a set of promises. Step into the pages of Indian history to understand what this important document means for our present and our future, and what it means to be a citizen of this country.

This feeble blemished light, this dawn mangled by night, this is not the morning we had all so longed for... -Faiz Ahmed Faiz In the two decades since the early 1990s, when India confirmed its allegiance to the Free Market, more of its citizens have become marginalized than ever before, and society has become more sharply riven than ever. In 'Looking Away', Harsh Mander ranges wide to record and analyse the many different fault lines which crisscross Indian society today. There is increasi...

This volume collects seventeen stories of women and men who, simply because they were born poor, or a particular gender, or into a certain caste or religion, fell prey to the many atrocities and indignities endemic to contemporary India. Some resisted, survived, and soldier on. Some did not. Lachmi Kaur lost almost all the male members of her family in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. She then overcame despair to singlehandedly bring up her children and grandchildren with fierce love and pride...

There was one partition of the land in 1947. Harsh Mander believes that another partition is underway in our hearts and minds.How much of this culpability lies with ordinary people? What are the responsibilities of a secular government, of a civil society, and of a progressive majority? In Partitions of the Heart: Unmaking the Idea of India, human rights and peace worker Harsh Mander takes stock of whether the republic has upheld the values it set out to achieve and offers painful,...

**A Globe and Mail Best BookThe inimitable M.G. Vassanji turns his eye to India, the homeland of his ancestors, in this powerfully moving tale of family and country. Part travelogue, part history, A Place Within is M.G. Vassanji’s intelligent and beautifully written journey to explore where he belongs.**It would take many lifetimes, it was said to me during my first visit, to see all of India. The desperation must have shown on my face to absorb and digest...

Interest in India has never been greater. Here Shashi Tharoor, one of the subcontinent’s most respected writers and diplomats, offers precious insights into this complex, multifaceted land, which despite its dazzling diversity of languages, customs, and cultures remains-more than sixty years after its founding-the world’s largest democracy. He describes the vast changes that have transformed this once sleeping giant into a world leader in science and technology, a nation once poverty-stric...

As 2012 came to a close, news of the gang rape of a young woman in India's capital generated headlines around the world. Her assault on a moving bus with a metal rod, and her death two weeks later from her injuries, focused attention on the dark side of the world's largest democracy: the struggle that faces many Indian women in a country where chauvinistic and misogynistic attitudes prevail.The Wall Street Journal's India bureau explored this horrendous crime and others th...

In this anthology, which comprises some of Khushwant Singh's best writing, you can look forward to some talk of sex, a little of Scotch and much Scholarship. The collection attempts to mirror the author's concerns and passions-his love of nature, his anguish over the situation in Punjab, his interest in religions of the world and his scholarly research on the one into which he was born, Sikhism. The highlight of this book, however, is the expansive, autobiographical opening piece written i...

Framed As a Terrorist is the harrowing and heart-rending narrative of an ordinary young Indian man, from the by-lanes of Old Delhi, who was kidnapped by the police, falsely accused of being a terrorist, framed and kept in jail for almost fourteen years.Released after a long and incredibly difficult legal battle, after surviving torture and solitary confinement, Mohammad Aamir Khan remains committed to the secular and democratic values that he grew up with. He refuses to be...

When journalist Shruti Ranjan, newly-wed wife of the Deputy Commissioner of Kishanganj in the lawless Bihar of the 1990s, is brutally raped by a 'politically sheltered local goon' all of her attempts at getting justice are crushed by a corrupt and complicit state government.That's when the charismatic Sharad Malviya a leading member of the Opposition party offers her an unlikely solution: his party's ticket to contest the Lok Sabha elections.Left with littl...

On 9 November 2019, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous verdict, cleared the way for the construction of a Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya. As we look back, we will be able to see how much we have lost over Ayodhya through the years of conflict. If the loss of a mosque is preservation of faith, if the establishment of a temple is emancipation of faith, we can all join together in celebrating faith in the Constitution. Sometimes, a step back to accommodate is several steps forward ...