India Memoir

Rebels Against the Raj tells the story of seven people who chose to struggle for a country other than their own: foreigners to India who across the late 19th to late 20th century arrived to join the freedom movement fighting for independence from British colonial rule.

We begin with a man off balance: one in one thousand, the only child in town whose polio leads to partial paralysis. We meet his future wife, chanting Hai Rams for Gandhiji and choosing education over marriage. On one side of the line that divides this book, we follow them as their homeland splits in two and they are drawn together, moving to Canada and raising their children in mining towns and in crowded city apartments.

Jawaharlal Nehru remains a towering figure in Indian politics, a man who left an indelible stamp on the history of South Asia. As a leading light of the nationalist struggle and as India's first and longest-serving prime minister, his ideas shaped the political contours of the country and left an imprint so deep that his legacy continues to be debated furiously today. This book illuminates four encounters that Nehru had with contemporaries from across the political spectrum that are critical to understanding his ideas and his long afterlife.

In this concluding volume of the Savarkar series, exploring a vast range of original archival documents from across India and outside it, in English and several Indian languages, historian Vikram Sampath brings to light the life and works of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, one of the most contentious political thinkers and leaders of the twentieth century.

As a young man, Narendra Modi had got into the habit of writing a letter to the Mother Goddess, whom he addressed as jagat janani, every night before going to bed. The topics were varied: there were seething sorrows, fleeting joys, lingering memories. In Modi's writings there was the enthusiasm of a youngster and the passion to usher in change. But every few months, Modi would tear up the pages and consign them to a bonfire. The pages of one diary, dating back to 1986, survived, however.

स्वतंत्रता आंदोलनात संघाचा सहभाग होता परंतु संघानी त्याचे श्रेय घेतले नाही. संघसंस्थापक डॉ. हेडगेवार यांनी स्वातंत्र्य संग्रामात भाग घेण्यासाठी आपल्या डाँक्टरी पेशाचा स्वेच्छेने त्याग केला. डॉ. हेडगेवार यांचा जन्म १ एप्रिल,१८८९ साली नागपूर मध्ये झाला. नागपूर मध्ये १९०४-१९०५ मध्ये स्वातंत्र्य चळवळीचे वारे वाहू लागले. त्या आधी इथे पोषक वातावरण नव्हते. तरी १८९७ साली राणी व्हिक्टोरिया यांच्या राज्यारोहणाच्या हिरक जयंती निमित्त शाळांमध्ये मिठाई वाटप करण्यात आली. आठ वर्षाच्या केशवनी (डॉ हेडगेवार) ती मिठाई न खाता कचऱ्यात फेकून दिली.

Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955) was an established Urdu short story writer and a rising screenwriter in Bombay at the time of India's partition in 1947, and he is perhaps best known for the short stories he wrote following his migration to Lahore in newly formed Pakistan. Ayesha Jalal draws on Manto's stories, sketches, and essays, as well as a trove of his private letters, to present an intimate history of partition and its devastating toll.

There are not many Indian heroes whose lives have been as dramatic and adventurous as that of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. That, however, is an assessment of his life based on what is widely known about him. These often revolve around his resignation from the Indian Civil Service, joining the freedom movement, to be exiled twice for over seven years, throwing a challenge to the Gandhian leadership in the Congress, taking up an extremist position against the British Raj, evading the famed intelligence network to travel to Europe and then to Southeast Asia.

Lost in time for generations, the story of a 19th-century English gentleman in British India - a family mystery of love found and loyalties abandoned, finally brought to light. In 1841, 20-year-old Nigel Halleck set out for Calcutta as a clerk in the East India Company. He went on to serve in the colonial administration for eight years before abruptly leaving the company under a cloud and disappearing in the mountain kingdom of Nepal, never to be heard from again.

From heading an ashram at Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA, in the 1980s to allegedly spearheading what is known as the largest bioterror attack in American history and spending 39 months in prison, Ma Anand Sheela's life is one that fascinates and intrigues. But who is the woman beyond the persona of the commune leader? What is Sheela like behind the sensational "tough titties" avatar?

25 AUGUST 2015 was to be a happy day for Indrani Mukerjea—a birthday celebration had been planned in the family. But everything changed when she was accosted by a group of officers of the Mumbai Police in plain clothes as she exited Anand Ashram that day. The charge: the murder of her daughter, Sheena Bora.

When Bhagat Singh was executed by the British after a sham trial for his involvement in the Lahore Conspiracy Case at the age of 23, he was glorified by the Indians as a martyr for his youth, his defiance and his reckless bravery. It was only many years later, after Independence in 1947, that his writings came to light. Today, it is these that set Bhagat Singh apart and reveal him as not just a hot-headed revolutionary who believed in the cult of the bomb but a widely-read intellectual inspired by the writings of Marx and Lenin.

Born into the minor aristocracy (as Eugenia Peterson), Devi grew up in the midst of one of the most turbulent times in human history. Forced to flee the Russian Revolution as a teenager, she joined a famous Berlin cabaret troupe, dove into the vibrant prewar spiritualist movement, and, at a time when it was nearly unthinkable for a young European woman to travel alone, followed the charismatic theosophical leader Jiddu Krishnamurti to India.

When Amy B. Scher was struck with undiagnosed late-stage, chronic Lyme disease, the best physicians in America labeled her condition incurable and potentially terminal. Deteriorating rapidly, she went on a search to save her own life - from the top experts in Los Angeles and the world-renowned Mayo Clinic in Minneapolis to a state-of-the-art hospital in Chicago. After exhausting all of her options in the US, she discovered a possible cure - but it was highly experimental, available only in India, and had as much of a probability of killing her as it did of curing her.

Never Cheat a Holy Man is my memoir about the three enlightening adventure-filled years in the mid-60s when my family and I lived in East Pakistan. As "memsahib", my job was to supervise a Muslim all-male household workforce. When the cook warmed the toast in his armpits and chilled the chicken in the refrigerator - still alive, I realized I was not communicating adequately. I acquired new skills mediating between cook and laundryman who were at constant odds.

In 2010, just as the Indian government was stepping up its counterinsurgency operations in the country's Naxal-affected areas, Alpa Shah set out on a seven-night march with a guerrilla platoon across 250 kilometres of the same territory. An anthropology professor, she wanted to understand why, against the backdrop of a shiny new India, the country's poor had shunned the world's largest democracy and united with revolutionary ideologues.

या पुस्तकात जगातील स मोठी लोकशाही अस्तित्वात कशी आली या घटनेचा मानवी पैलू सांगण्याचा प्रयत्न लेखकाने केला आहे. चमकदार उदाहरणं आणि सखोल संशोधनानं समृद्ध अशा या पुस्तकासोबत बीबीसी रेडिओ सीरिज4 या मालिकेच्या माध्यमातून लेखकाने अध्यात्म क्षेत्रातील भगवान बुद्धांपासून ते भांडवलशहा धीरूभाई अंबानींपर्यंत 50 भारतीय जीवनांचा आढावा घेतला आहे.

Rahul Pandita was fourteen years old when he was forced to leave his home in Srinagar along with his family. They were Kashmiri Pandits—the Hindu minority within a Muslim-majority Kashmir that was by 1990 becoming increasingly agitated with the cries of 'Azaadi' from India. Our Moon Has Blood Clots is the story of Kashmir, in which hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits were tortured, killed and forced to leave their homes by Islamist militants and to spend the rest of their lives in exile in their own country.

प्रधानमंत्रियों की सफलताओं और विफलताओं की रौशनी में यह किताब भारतीय लोकतंत्र की विकास-यात्रा को रेखांकित करती है जिसमें उसकी उपलब्धियाँ और चुनौतियाँ, दोनों दर्ज हैं। देश जब स्वतंत्रता का अमृत महोत्सव मना रहा है, तब 'भारत के प्रधानमंत्री' किताब एक जरूरी उपहार की तरह है। इसे हर भारतीय नागरिक को पढ़ना चाहिए। सोशल मीडिया के दौर में भ्रामक सूचनाओं का प्रसार चरम पर है। ऐसे में यह किताब स्वतंत्र भारत के क्रमिक नेतृत्व और विकास का वास्तविक लेखाजोखा पेश करती है। तकनीक और संचार के अभूतपूर्व विस्तार तथा राजनीति में लोगों की बेहिसाब दिलचस्पी के मेल से हैरतअंगेज नतीजे सामने आए हैं।

Basta decir que la historia lo conoce como El Chacal, y que es por aclamación el villano mayor en la galería de los presidentes de México. Sin embargo, es mucho más que eso: en su juventud, ese indígena huichol se convirtió en uno de los mejores astrónomos de su época y fue un brillante matemático, geógrafo, alpinista, cartógrafo y uno de los mejores militares mexicanos. Jamás perdió una batalla, algo único en la historia del país.