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The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is ideologically driven, has a strong and complex organizational structure and is demonstrably the most powerful non-government organization in present-day India, with a determining influence in cultural and political life. In terms of its appeal and reach across social and geographical boundaries, both its growth and expansion have been phenomenal. Yet, it remains inexplicably mystifying and beyond the reach of those who wish to understand its unfolding strength objectively.

Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay is better known as a prolific columnist and author. Quite often his journalism is considerably informed by modern Indian history, more particularly Hindu-Muslim relations. Besides, he has also authored a few books which include a biographical account of Narendra Modi and also a detailed account of the anti-Sikh pogrom which was unleashed after the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984.

In the post-liberalization era the tribal communities are facing two contradictory situations. On the one hand, neo-liberalization has enhanced the processes of dispossession and marginalization and on the other hand, tribal organizations have compelled the Indian state in recent years to introduce various national laws like the FRA and MNREGA, which give tribal and other marginalized communities ownership and livelihood rights.

This book is a necessary compilation that comes from an embattled republic of letters in a nation slowly being desiccated by the philistinism of its politics. The great merit of the book is its comprehensive nature as it focuses expansively on many themes. There is the question of the economy being roiled by adverse global headwinds that the ruling dispensation seems to be gloriously inept at handling.

From India’s most clear-headed political theorist Neera Chandhoke (a former Professor of Political Science at Delhi University), comes a new page turner—an extraordinarily accessible and yet tightly argued monograph on the nature and value of contemporary India’s plural democracy. Anyone familiar with Chandhoke’s earlier works such as Democracy and Revolutionary Politics (Bloomsbury, 2015)

Francis Fukuyama needs no intro- -duction. He shot into prominence with the publication of his widely read book, The End of History and the Last Man in 1992. In brief, Fukuyama had put forth the thesis that with the collapse of Communism ideological wars have come to an end and the future belonged to liberal democracy, which—in a Hegelian sense—was the culmination of all human associations, and indeed, its very pinnacle. Fukuyama’s contention was problematic and in a short period it became widely apparent that liberal democracy faced severe challenges from within.