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Maroof Raza’s book Contested Lands: India, China and the Boundary Dispute was published in 2021, while the LAC between India and China in Eastern Ladakh was being actively contested. The author has done a diligent job of deep research and logical concatenation of the history of the contest. The subject has already been extremely well covered by many luminaries like Alistair Lamb, Neville Maxwell, Claude Arpi, RS Kalha and Shiv Kunal Verma, to name a few.

The history of West Asia is littered with violent conflicts—interstate wars, civil wars, insurgencies, revolutions, coups, invasions by foreign powers, and ethnic and sectarian strife. After the 1967 war between Israel and a group of Arab nations led by Egypt, peace in the ‘Middle East’ has been elusive. The events in the region constantly seek global attention for a variety of reasons. Divided into eight chapters the book under review seeks to piece together diverse matters into a coherent narrative that helps to make sense of the dynamics of the region—political, religious, military, socio-economic and cultural—that have shaped contemporary alignments and divisions, thus making the region unstable and volatile.

South Asia is witnessing a phase of churning in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Political volatility combined with economic instability has badly hit the region. As the pandemic seemingly recedes, there is great deal of uncertainty in the entire region straddling India’s periphery. Harsh V Pant’s edited volume Politics and Geopolitics: Decoding India’s Neighbourhood Challenge comes at a cusp moment as nations in South Asia grapple to recover from the shock of the pandemic that claimed millions of lives and ground nations across the region including India to a halt for two years.

Mahatma Gandhi once referred to Sri Lanka as India’s ‘daughter state’. True to this metaphoric observation, India is not only Sri Lanka’s closest, but also an important and powerful neighbour in every aspect: territorial extent, population size, economic strength, military might and diplomatic standing. Relations between the two neighbours stretch to more than two millennia in wide-ranging areas—political, economic, socio-cultural and military. Common colonial experiences under Britain led both countries to have similar world views, yet certain strategic imperatives and national interests dictated differing policies, at times in conflict with each other.

The book under review by Muhammad Azfar Nisar provides important insights into the identity, marginalization and governance of the Khawaja Sira of Pakistan. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Lahore, it studies various forms of governance of the Khawaja Sira community across legal, social and administrative institutions.Muhammad Azfar Nisar is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy & Administration at the Suleman Dawood School of Business, Lahore University of Management Sciences. His research focuses on issues related to policy implementation, public administration, health policy, gender identity, and governance.

The India-Pakistan War of 1965 was the second major war fought between the two countries after Partition in 1947. The War also called the ‘Second Kashmir War’ was a culmination of skirmishes that took place in the preceding months. The seventeen-day War (6 September-22 September 1965) caused thousands of casualties on both sides.  The hostilities between the two countries ended after a ceasefire was declared through the United Nations Security Council Resolution, following diplomatic intervention by the Soviet Union and the United States, and the subsequent issuance of the Tashkent Declaration.