South Asia’s interaction with the rest of the world has varied over time, depending on the global agenda of the major powers, policy choices and internal politico-economic dynamics of each state of South Asia.
Paul Brass had already published fifteen books before he came out with this relatively slim volume late last year, most of them on ethnic politics and violence in South Asia, an area of research to which he had devoted almost his entire academic career of well over four decades.
The language question in Pakistan has remained a politically contested one since the creation of Pakistani state in 1947. In a multilingual society like Pakistan, language becomes an important marker of identity of various communities and groups of people.
Sufia M. Uddin makes an engaging and persuasive argument on a current topic of global concern, which is critical to the future of Bangladesh—the make-up of a modern Islamic identity. Inspired by the work of Talal Asad, her book maps a distinctive South Asian passage of Islam from pre-modern times to the recent past, presenting Bangladesh as an Islamic nation on its own terms.
Bangladesh has just gone through one of the most traumatic phases of its history. For most of 2006 and the first ten days of 2007, normal life in the country was completely disrupted as the ruling coalition, consisting of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jamaat-i-Islam, was confronted
There are currently two parallel discourses on ancient India, one based on texts, the other on archaeology. Historians tend to use archaeological data selectively and sporadically, usually in order to support their text-based hypotheses.