Three new books unpack the violent roots of caste-based vegetarianism and India’s dairy industry as Dalits and Muslims continue to be targeted by cow-protection vigilantes
Three new books demonstrate how India’s position on Israel–Palestine is determined by a careful calibration of geopolitical ties and its own image and interests
Maharashtra’s politics has been pushed so far to the right that progressive voices are endorsing the Maha Vikas Aghadi – which includes Uddhav Thackeray’s faction of the Shiv Sena, with its history of Hindutva vigilantism
A conversation with the writer Zara Chowdhary on her debut memoir ‘The Lucky Ones’, exploring the past of her multigenerational Muslim family and reckoning with a sense of unbelonging within one’s own home and state
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
The BJP’s reduced seat count after the 2024 election prompted rare public criticism from the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, offering a glimpse into the recurring power struggle between the two organisations
Separatist groups in Indian-administered Kashmir did not call a poll boycott for the first time in a generation, and voters took the chance to rebuff the Modi government and the BJP
The peace activist Harsh Mander says that hate crimes against Muslims that the Modi regime allowed and incentivised in its first two terms will not abate only because of the BJP’s recent electoral setback
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
A conversation with Siddhartha Deb on recording the histories of India’s present and the dystopian futures of climate crisis and authoritarianism in his fiction and nonfiction
