Islam - Himal Southasian

Fifty years on, Sholay’s triumphs and flaws echo through Hindi cinema and Indian society

The 1975 Hindi blockbuster Sholay now unwittingly underlines the degradation of India’s landscape over the last five decades and the representation of gender, caste and Muslims in Bollywood

By Anna M M Vetticad

/ 15 Aug 2025

Fifty years on, Sholay’s triumphs and flaws echo through Hindi cinema and Indian society

Syeda Hameed & Harsh Mander on Partition, pluralism and poetry

This is part of the first season of Partitions of the Heart: Conversations with Harsh Mander, a Himal Southasian podcast series produced in association with Karwan-e-Mohabbat.

By The Editors

/ 8 Aug 2025

Syeda Hameed & Harsh Mander on Partition, pluralism and poetry

Mohsin Alam Bhat & Harsh Mander on the threat to Muslims as a crisis for India’s democracy

This is part of the first season of Partitions of the Heart: Conversations with Harsh Mander, a Himal Southasian podcast series produced in association with Karwan-e-Mohabbat.

By The Editors

/ 23 Jul 2025

Mohsin Alam Bhat & Harsh Mander on the threat to Muslims as a crisis for India’s democracy

Samina Luthfa on the battles of women in a new Bangladesh: State of Southasia #27

The sociologist and gender expert discusses violence against women, the invisibilisation of women leaders and their tussle with Islamist conservatives

By The Editors

/ 7 Jul 2025

Samina Luthfa on the battles of women in a new Bangladesh: State of Southasia #27

Muslim Life – and Death – in Modi’s India: A podcast with Harsh Mander

The peace activist Harsh Mander hosts conversations on Indian Muslim history and experience amid a crisis of Islamophobia and anti-minority hatred fuelled by the rise of the Hindu Right

By The Editors

/ 2 Jun 2025

Muslim Life – and Death – in Modi’s India: A podcast with Harsh Mander

Nusrat F Jafri on a personal history of caste and conversions in India: Southasia Review of Books podcast #17

Uncovering her maternal ancestors’ past rooted in the Bhantu identity, Jafri offers a rare account of the so-called criminal tribe, the circumstances of their conversions and the continuities of caste oppression in India today

By The Editors

/ 10 Feb 2025

Nusrat F Jafri on a personal history of caste and conversions in India: Southasia Review of Books podcast #17

Southasia Review of Books podcast #10: Zara Chowdhary on ‘The Lucky Ones’ and surviving the violence of the 2002 Gujarat pogrom

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

By The Editors

/ 28 Oct 2024

In her memoir, Zara Chowdhary recounts visiting the Jama Masjid in Ahmedabad with her grandfather, where Ahmad Shah I, the fi

Sri Lankan Muslims’ lasting pain over Covid-era forced cremations

The ‘Oddamavadi’ project, comprising a book and documentary film, takes on a shameful chapter in Sri Lanka’s recent history when Muslims were barred from burial in violation of their religious beliefs

By Adilah Ismail

/ 26 Oct 2024

A still from the documentary ‘Oddamavadi’, where a mourner dressed in a grey shirt and black pants walks through an overgrown

Southasia Review of Books podcast #09: Geetanjali Shree and Daisy Rockwell on ‘Our City That Year’ and India’s invisible partitions

The International Booker Prize-winning author-translator duo discuss their latest book – and why its story, based loosely around the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid, remains deeply relevant today

By The Editors

/ 14 Oct 2024

Rising hatred against India’s minority Muslim community is a central theme in Geentanjali Shree’s ‘Our City That Year’, trans

The secret new faiths of Indian believers navigating harsh anti-conversion laws and repression

New laws prohibiting “coerced” religious conversions are added obstacles for people looking to convert from Hinduism in BJP-ruled India

By Sumaiya Ali

/ 27 Sep 2024

The secret new faiths of Indian believers navigating harsh anti-conversion laws and repression

State of Southasia #08: Kate Clark on how Afghans are coping after three years of Taliban rule

Veteran journalist and Afghanistan analyst Kate Clark explains how Afghan people have been living under the Taliban’s ultra-conservative rule while grappling with global isolation and a crumbling economy

By The Editors

/ 26 Aug 2024

State of Southasia #08: Kate Clark on how Afghans are coping after three years of Taliban rule

Reading the ‘Star of Islam’: The story of a Ceylonese press on the cusp of World War II

Maritime trade routes passing through the ports of Sri Lanka helped spur the growth of pan-Islamic consciousness within the island's Muslim communities. Researcher and historian Ronit Ricci marks

By Ramla Wahab-Salman

/ 17 Jul 2019