Awakening Bharat Mata

The rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was much more than an ordinary electoral phenomenon: it brought to the fore two contrasting views of nationhood: between those who saw modern India in terms of secular republicanism and on the other hand were those who sought to blend technological modernity with the country's Hindu inheritance. The Right's ascendancy and the debates that accompanied it, anticipated many of the concerns that find reflection today in the United States and Europe. The phenomenon of Hindu nationalism was also a profound intellectual challenge to the loose Left-liberal consensus that had prevailed in India since Jawaharlal Nehru became Prime Minister in 1947. The idea of Hindutva and the political character of the BJP have been closely scrutinised by scholars, and the impulse has been to view India's Right-wing politics as either a variant of fascism or merely a collection of sectarian prejudices. In fact, the inspiration for the Right in India has come from multiple and often contradictory sources, including the influence of individuals such as Sarvarkar, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo, not to mention the Arya Samaj movement. This collection is an attempt to showcase the phenomenon of Hindu nationalism in terms of how it perceives itself. Many of the concerns that drive the Indian Right are located in the country's nationalist culture. In trying to locate some of the ideas, attitudes and beliefs that define the Indian Right, Awakening Bharat Mata also seeks to identify the nature of Indian conservatism and identify its similarities and differences with political thought in the West. This book is not about Hindu nationalism in power but as a social and political movement and its aim is to encourage a more informed understanding of an idea that will remain relevant in Indian life far beyond victories and defeats in elections.

This volume is the story of the Indian independence struggle through political prints omnipresent during the period.

‘Your best day is today. Not tomorrow, nor day after.’ The Covid-19 pandemic is considered as the most crucial global health calamity of the twenty-first century. It caught humankind like a deer in the headlights. All across the globe, people were unprepared to face this disease head-on. Apart from enduring the impact of the socio-economic and political crisis, we had to deal with the consequences of staying inside our homes without knowing what the future held for us. The severity of this disease forced us all to become homebodies. This phase has reminded us that we must strive to find pleasure in life’s simplicity. It has also taught us the significance of the smallest of things we always took for granted. As humans, we have a tendency of leaving things for tomorrow, and this crisis has made us realise that the best day to do anything is today . . . Your Best Day Is Today! is a compendium of experiences, lessons, and positive takeaways that will help you deal with the dark times in your life. It is a guide to getting in touch with your inner self and finding solutions to the problems that arise with adapting to changes in life. It is also a reminder of how you are not alone and there is always a way to make the best of any situation life throws at you. This book will inspire you and fill your heart with immense love, faith, and joy.

In Cultural Constellations, Place-Making and Ethnicity in Eastern India, c. 1850-1927, Swarupa Gupta outlines a fresh paradigm moving beyond stereotypical representations of eastern India as a site of ethnic fragmentation. The book traces unities by exploring intersections between (1) cultural constellations; (2) place-making and (3) ethnicity. Centralising place-making, it tells the story of how people made places, mediating caste / religious / linguistic contestations. It offers new meanings of ‘region’ in Eastern Indian and global contexts by showing how an interregional arena comprising Bengal, Assam and Orissa was forged. Using historical tracts, novels, poetry and travelogues, the book argues that commonalities in Eastern India were linked to imaginings of Indian nationhood. The analysis contains interpretive strategies for mediating federalist separatisms and fragmentation in contemporary India.

Lively, eloquent and provocative, this is a book that will stimulate much thought, discussion and debate as it challenges the dogmas of the left and the extreme right and raises the key issues that engage India today.

A riveting account of how a popularly elected leader has steered the world's largest democracy toward authoritarianism and intolerance Over the past two decades, thanks to Narendra Modi, Hindu nationalism has been coupled with a form of national-populism that has ensured its success at the polls, first in Gujarat and then in India at large. Modi managed to seduce a substantial number of citizens by promising them development and polarizing the electorate along ethno-religious lines. Both facets of this national-populism found expression in a highly personalized political style as Modi related directly to the voters through all kinds of channels of communication in order to saturate the public space. Drawing on original interviews conducted across India, Christophe Jaffrelot shows how Modi's government has moved India toward a new form of democracy, an ethnic democracy that equates the majoritarian community with the nation and relegates Muslims and Christians to second-class citizens who are harassed by vigilante groups. He discusses how the promotion of Hindu nationalism has resulted in attacks against secularists, intellectuals, universities, and NGOs. Jaffrelot explains how the political system of India has acquired authoritarian features for other reasons, too. Eager to govern not only in New Delhi, but also in the states, the government has centralized power at the expense of federalism and undermined institutions that were part of the checks and balances, including India's Supreme Court. Modi's India is a sobering account of how a once-vibrant democracy can go wrong when a government backed by popular consent suppresses dissent while growing increasingly intolerant of ethnic and religious minorities.

In November 2012, Hamid, a 27-year-old Mumbai-based techie, disappeared. What happened? Where did he go? All his parents knew was that he had gone to Kabul, Afghanistan, to explore a job prospect. Upon some investigation, they found out that their son had been chatting online with some Pakistani friends, especially a girl across the border. Authored by Hamid Ansari and Geeta Mohan, this is the definitive insider account of the man who saw no boundaries when it came to saving a girl from the forced marriage tradition known as wani. Nothing could scare or stop him; until he was ditched by his friends in Pakistan. Soon, he was caught in a whirlwind of allegations made by Pakistani authorities to break him and label him a spy. What followed were years of suffering during the investigations, along with long periods of solitary confinement and a struggle for survival. In India, his mother led a relentless fight, knocking on as many doors as it took, eventually moving three nations, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, to get him back home, with the help of the then external affairs minister, Sushma Swaraj. On 18 December 2018, Hamid finally touched India soil again. Gritty, heart-wrenching and moving, this is s story of humanity, love, betrayal and hope against all odds.

For two decades bestselling author Ruchir Sharma has chased election campaigns across every major state in India, travelling the equivalent of a lap around the Earth. Democracy in India takes readers on a rollicking ride with Ruchir and his band of highly-informed fellow writers as they talk to farmers, shopkeepers and CEOs from Rajasthan to Tamil Nadu, and to interview leaders from Narendra Modi to Rahul Gandhi. No other book takes readers has taken readers so close to the action, or traced the arc of modern Indian politics so immediately. Offering an intimate view inside the lives and minds of India's political giants and its people, Sharma explains how the complex forces of family, caste and community, economics and development, money and corruption, Bollywood and Godmen, have conspired to elect and topple Indian leaders since Indira Gandhi.

The BJP enjoys the predominant position in Indian politics today. In its journey from coalition politics to single-power hegemony, it has emerged as a very different entity from the one that came to power in 1998. Naqvi tells the story from the party's founding in n1980 to its two stints in power.