Showing titles in South Asia

Subhas Chandra Bose was a revolutionary who sought Indian independence, but as many would contend, he ended up on the wrong side of history. In order to shake off the British yoke, Bose enlisted aid from Germany and Japan during World War II. This has led some to roundly condemn Bose as nothing more than a fascist cast in the same mold as Adolf Hitler, Hideki Tojo, and Benito Mussolini. But is there more to this complicated figure than meets the eye?

There are many intellectual biographies of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, but until now none has sought to reveal the personality of the man. They will tell you what he thought or what he wrote, but remain silent about who he actually was, his inner struggles, how he felt. They give information about...

On 24 May 1971, based on a telephone call purportedly from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her secretary P.N. Haksar, the chief cashier at the Parliament Street branch of the State Bank of India handed over Rs 60 lakh to a stranger posing as the PM's courier. The money was supposedly meant for...

The battle of Saragarhi took place in September 1897 - but has remained largely forgotten in the mainstream. Drawing upon research and primary sources, this book tells the story of the significance of the battle when 21 Sikh soldiers stood firm to the last against thousands of Pathan tribesmen.

Stories are stories. When a powerful story takes root in a child’s heart, that story may shape and guide that tiny heart to imagine, to hope, to love, to conquer, and live an extraordinary life. Some among us who have lived by magnificent stories, have themselves gone on to be storied. Such is the magic of stories. Stories can be fun. They may be blood-curdling. They can be funny. The stories we tell and the ones we dare not, in turn, they tell a story about us. While on a teaching mission to South America, I saw boys there had no books of the stories I know and live by. The book I wrote ...

The story of Mohandas Gandhi, one of the world's best-loved and most important promoters of freedom and justice, fascinates every generation. Thrown off a South African train for sitting in a "whites only" compartment, Gandhi resolved to oppose injustice wherever he encountered it. His life of resistance led him to a remarkable philosophy of nonviolence that culminated in the freedom struggle in India.

Once upon a time, there lived a man with his wife. We are talking about 300 BCE (Before Christian Era) timeline. He just didn’t live and die. He wrote his knowledge and wisdom into scripts that survived few wars, feminine, flooding, etc. This book is called ‘Thirukkural’ from Thiruvalluvar. One of the most translated work besides the ‘Bible’. The first printed edition happened in 1850. What is the secret of it’s fame and popularity. The content is still applicable to 21st century and that too in the social-media craze world of 2024. He didn’t wrote stories but two short ...

Few possess greater courage, yet remain in oblivion, than the Indian Para Special Forces. To these brave officers worthy owners of the Balidan badge is entrusted the safety of the most perilous heights and the annihilation of the darkest underbellies of terrorism. The legacy of these warriors is shrouded in mystery and legend. So secretive are their missions that little is known about them beyond code names like Dagger, Ghost, Viper or Desert Scorpio. In this remarkable collection of tales of valour beyond measure, Pandey lifts the curtain on some of the greatest Special Forces officers.

India, a culture that witnessed the dawn of civilisation. That witnessed the rise of other cultures and watched them turn to dust. It has been celebrated and attacked. Admired and vilified. But through all these millennia, after all the ups and downs of history, it's still here! And now, after a few centuries of decline, it's driving a new dawn once again. Ajanaabhavarsh. Bharat. Hindustan. India. The names may change, but the soul of this great land is immortal. Amish helps you understand India like never before.

The 1971 war between India and Pakistan, to help liberate the beleaguered people of Bangladesh, is considered one of the last 'just wars' of the twentieth century. Good triumphed decisively, unequivocally and indisputably. Yet, given the scale of atrocity that was halted in its tracks, it is...

Winner of the 1997 Booker Prize. The richly exotic story of the childhood the twins Esthappen and Rahel craft for themselves amongst India’s vats of banana jam and mountains of peppercorns. Here, perhaps, is the greatest Indian novel by a woman. Arundhati Roy’s ‘The God of Small Things’...

The photographs of three young men had stood in his grandmother's house for as long as he could remember, beheld but never fully noticed. They had all fought in the Second World War, a fact that surprised him. Indians had never figured in his idea of the war, nor the war in his idea of India. One of them, Bobby, even looked a bit like him, but Raghu Karnad had not noticed until he was the same age as they were in their photo frames. Then he learned about the Parsi boy from the sleepy south Indian coast, so eager to follow his brothers-in-law into the colonial forces and onto the front line.

The sheer volume of commentaries on the Mahabharata is awe-inspiring. So, what is it in the Mahabharata that gives it its timeless magic? Is it the mythical characters with which it is replete that makes the epic so enchanting? Or is it the great wealth of philosophical and metaphysical ideas in it that dazzles its audiences? Or could it be a combination of all these that makes it ever-fascinating to scholars and audiences around the world? And, most of all, what accounts for its incredible effect on the subconscious of millions of Indians through several generations?

The history of India's struggle for freedom is usually told from the perspective of the non-violent movement. Yet, the story of armed resistance to colonial occupation is just as important. Names such as Vinayak Savarkar, Aurobindo Ghosh, Rashbehari Bose, Bagha Jatin, Sachindra Nath Sanyal...

"Sisters of Mokama is proof that faith and courage does move mountains."—Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone The never-before-told story of six intrepid Kentucky nuns, their journey to build a hospital in the poorest state in India, and the Indian nurses whose lives would never be...

This book takes you all the way from India’s prehistoric beginnings at Mohenjo-daro to the development of Buddhism and the Maurya Empire, the Hindu empires of the Middle Ages, the Mughals who brought Islam to the mix (and created the Taj Mahal), the British Raj, and finally the fight for independence and the modern yet ageless India of today.

During the last centuries of the first millennium BCE, most of the Mediterranean basin and the Near East were either directly or indirectly under the influence of Hellenism. The Greeks spread their ideas to Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia and attempted to unify all of the peoples of those regions under one government. Although some of the Hellenistic kingdoms proved to be powerful in their own rights -- especially Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid Empire.

This is the story of Mazagon, once an island inhabited by Kolis, Bhandaris and Agris. It remained so under the Portuguese, fetching them the highest revenue among all the islands of Bombay. Falling into British hands through a disputed dowry deed, Mazagon retained its identity as an island for many more years with its own fort, dock, churches and even a gunpowder factory. Then, like the other islands of the archipelago, Mazagon too got merged into a single entity called Bombay. But that did not diminish the importance of this place, which soon became a sought-after suburb of British Bombay,...

In the last year of the Taliban's government in Afghanistan, visitors to Mullah Omar's office in Kandahar received a parting gift. As they left, the movement's supreme leader asked them to take a slim volume from a pile beside the door. He told them that if they wanted to know how the Taliban were meant to behave, they should read the book. The books which Mullah Omar handed out were Pashto and Farsi translation of Eta’t Amir, or 'Obedience to the Leader'. Mufti Rasheed published the original in Urdu after having toured Taliban-run Afghanistan. Mullah Omar's endorsement indicates that he ...

What if history got it wrong—and the ancients knew far more than we ever imagined? Step into the thrilling world of The Oopart Archaeologist, where forgotten relics, sacred verses, and suppressed science converge to challenge everything you thought you knew about the ancient past. Out-of-Place Artifacts (OOParts)—real, verified anomalies—are dismissed as mistakes or misinterpretations. But what if they are not out of place at all? Vedic texts, Biblical genealogies, Mesopotamian legends, and Sanskrit hymns are reexamined and decoded through the lens of modern science. The result? A ...