Growing interest in the history of peninsular India has sparked a series of excellent books of value to the specialist and lay reader alike. Kamini Dandapani disavows being either a historian or a writer by profession, but her Rajajraja Chola, King of Kings does long-delayed justice to a ruler who is among the greats of the world and to a dynasty that for several hundred years was the shining light of India with a legacy that stretches to this day.
Tears of the Begums is the first-ever English translation by Rana Safvi of Begumat ke Aansoo, originally written in Urdu by Khwaja Hasan Nizami, a follower of the Sufi order Chishti-Nizamiya and a descendant of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. Born almost twenty years after the revolt of 1857, Hasan Nizami’s spiritual pursuits led him to investigate the events of 1857, the encounters of the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, the cruelties meted out to the royal family and the plight of royal family members, many of them women, who survived the revolt.
Women in the Worlds of Labour, originating in a conference on the same theme in 2014, brings wide-ranging critical and theoretical approaches into conversation with one another. While not claiming to be comprehensive, the editors lay out the analytical and historical importance of an interdisciplinary and intersectional perspective on the subject.
This timely study of the Indian National Congress of yore, now widely referred to as the Congress Party, in the context of political processes in the post-sixteenth general elections in India in 2014, comes at a time when Rahul Gandhi, a scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, disparaged as ‘Pappu’ (immature and naïve) by the BJP, has recently completed the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ that began on 7 September 2022 to traverse 3,570 kilometres to reach Srinagar after a 150-day journey.
I Could Not Be Hindu: The Story of a Dalit in the RSS by Bhanwar Meghwanshi, an autobiographical note of his political genesis, where he shares his experiences with the RSS and the reasons he quit, is the narrative of an agonized author. Unlike other autobiographies which focus on different aspects of life, this book premises Meghwanshi’s metamorphosis of political career and varied discourses of political engagement.
Can mankind eliminate nuclear weapons and eliminate the greatest existential risks to the human species and the existence of the planet? This is one of the most intriguing concerns that plague people in modern times. Logic will disagree with such a question or even assertion, but evidence suggests that a number of key global leaders and dignitaries have shown willingness for such a vision, not immediately attainable but may be in the foreseeable future.