New Books in South Asian Studies

Feb 04 2025 1198 ep. 54 mins 2.9k
New Books in South Asian Studies Podcast artwork

Interviews with Scholars of South Asia about their New Books

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

  Society & Culture  History
RSS feed Share
Copy RSS


Subscribe on Podcast Addict


Chandigarh

Feb 04 2025 19 mins  
Chandigarh is the shared capital city of the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana, built under the leadership of modernist and brutalist architect Le Corbusier, as an emblem of the postcolonial Indian nation state as visualized by the first Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. It was a repudiation of the imperialist architectural style, and for Le Corbusier a personal revenge pro

Ayesha Jalal, "Muslim Enlightened Thought in South Asia" (Routledge, 2025)

Feb 04 2025 46 mins  
In Ayesha Jalal’s latest work Muslim Enlightened Thought in South Asia (Routledge, 2024) readers are introduced to the “roshan khayali” (enlightened thought) of South Asian Muslim thinkers spanning from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. In the course of eleven chapters Jalal highlights the contributions of diverse Muslim voices to debates about reason, religion, libe

Ramachandra Guha, "Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism" (Yale UP, 2024)

Feb 01 2025 65 mins  
From one of the world’s leading historians comes the first substantial study of environmentalism set in any country outside the Euro-American world. By the canons of orthodox social science, countries like India are not supposed to have an environmental consciousness. They are, as it were, “too poor to be green.” In Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism

Dan Archer, "Voices from Nepal: Uncovering Human Trafficking through Comics Journalism" (U Toronto Press, 2024)

Jan 31 2025 47 mins  
How can we better protect survivors? How can we learn from their stories without causing further harm? With a pen in one hand and watercolours in the other, graphic journalist Dan Archer embarks on an investigation into human trafficking and how comics can be used to empower survivors and raise awareness of human rights issues. Based on years of research and reporting, Voices from

About Spider-Mother: The Fiction and Politics of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

Jan 30 2025 66 mins  
Today I talked to Ben Baer and Smaran Dayal about About Spider-Mother: The Fiction and Politics of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. Pioneering Indian Muslim feminist Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain wrote speculative fiction, manifestoes, radical reportage, and incisive essays that transformed her experience of enforced segregation into unique interventions against gender oppression everywhere. He

Anand Venkatkrishnan, "Love in the Time of Scholarship: The Bhagavata Purana in Indian Intellectual History" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Jan 30 2025 38 mins  
Where is the "life" in scholarly life? Is it possible to find in academic writing, so often abstracted from the everyday? How might religion bridge that gap? In Love in the Time of Scholarship: The Bhagavata Purana in Indian Intellectual History (Oxford UP, 2024), author Anand Venkatkrishnan explores these questions within the intellectual history of a popular Hindu scripture, the

Jorge Flores, "Empire of Contingency: How Portugal Entered the Indo-Persian World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

Jan 29 2025 56 mins  
Portuguese India was tiny—a handful of trading posts and enclaves, centered on the colony of Goa. The Estado da Índia faced the Mughal Empire and the Deccan Sultanates, large Muslim and Persian-based societies that ruled the subcontinent. How did Portuguese India survive? Well, by spying. Jorge Flores in his book Empire of Contingency: How Portugal Entered the Indo-Persian World

India’s Land Mafia: A Discussion with Chiara Arnavas

Jan 24 2025 24 mins  
Who and what are India’s land mafia? How do they operate, and why have they become so crucial to India’s land market? In this episode, we are joined by Chiara Arnavas for a discussion on the emergence over the past decades of a dynamic Indian land mafia that is centrally involved in moving land around, freeing it up for new uses, and passing it onto other actors for mega-profit

Avinash Paliwal, "India's Near East: A New History" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Jan 23 2025 49 mins  
After student protests toppled Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina last year, New Delhi and Dhaka have been at odds. Indian politicians complain about Hindus being mistreated in the Muslim-majority country; Bangladesh’s interim government fears that Hasina may launch a bid to return to power from India. It’s the latest development in what’s become an extremely complicated

Gidi Ifergan, "The Discerning Clear Gaze of Yoga" (Equinox, 2024)

Jan 23 2025 40 mins  
Gidi Ifergan's The Discerning Clear Gaze of Yoga (Equinox, 2024) explores the road map of yoga as reflected in the Yogasūtra of Patañjali (third century CE) and the Sāṁkhyakārikā of Iśvarakṛṣṇa (350–450 CE) which leads to the rise of this discerning insight, evading interpretations motivated by naivety on the one hand, and excessive suspicion on the other. Inspired