Showing titles in India

In 1876 Sophia Duleep Singh was born into royalty. Her father, Maharajah Duleep Singh, was heir to the Kingdom of the Sikhs. Exiled to England, the dispossessed Maharajah transformed his estate at Elveden in Suffolk into a Moghul palace. Sophia, god-daughter of Queen Victoria, was raised a genteel aristocratic Englishwoman: presented at court, afforded grace-and-favour lodgings at Hampton Court Palace and photographed wearing the latest fashions for the society pages. But when, in secret defiance of the British government, she travelled to India, she returned a revolutionary.

Learn something new with each episode of Did You Know. This is a podcast where each episode is a short knowledge nugget that will give you five lesser-known or surprising facts on one topic.

 Historian Sunil Khilnani, Professor of History and Politics at Ashoka University, takes listeners on an immersive, whirlwind journey from ancient India to the 21st century through the life stories of 50 remarkable individuals, exploring their surprising legacies and illuminating both the wonders and the urgent conflicts of India today. 

22 December 1949: A conspiracy that began with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi culminated in the execution of the Ayodhya strategy. Late that night, a little-known sadhu, Abhiram Das, and his followers entered the Babri Masjid and planted an idol of Rama inside it. While it is known that the...

In the feverish tropics of the Andaman Islands, a young Botanist tends to a fragile rose he has imported to welcome his bride. Hoping their marriage will bloom in this strange life, hundreds of miles from the East Coast of India, he is entranced by Chanda Devi's fierce nature and unusual gifts; speaking to trees and the ghosts of former colonialists. These islands, she tells her adoring husband, rest on a fault line, cracked so deep into the earth that spirits cross the boundary freely. But it is not this fracture that takes a tragic bite out of their happiness. 

A holy man to Hindus, a hero to Muslims, and a criminal to the British, Mohandas K. Gandhi was an inspiring figure of the 20th century, a man whose quest to live in accord with God’s highest truth led him to initiate massive campaigns against racism, violence, and colonialism.

മഹദ്‌വ്യക്തികളുടെ സംഭവഹുലമായ ജീവിതഗാഥകളാണ് ചരിത്രത്തിന്റെ താളുകളില്‍ നിറഞ്ഞുനില്‍ക്കുന്നത്...

ശിലായുഗകാലം മുതല്‍ ക്രിസ്തുവര്‍ഷം 1500 വരെയുള്ള കേരളത്തിന്റെ സമഗ്രമായ...

"I thought the nation was coming to an end,’ wrote Khushwant Singh, looking back on the violence of Partition that he was witness to over half a century ago. He believed then that he had seen the worst that India could do to herself. But after the violence in Gujarat in 2002, he had reason to...

Forged during the tumultuous aftermath of Partition in 1947, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) has grown to become the preeminent intelligence service in Pakistan. Its capabilities are comprehensive, its remit covers both foreign and domestic intelligence, and it is one of the most feared and respected agencies of the Global South. Pakistan's ISI provides an up-to-date and detailed introduction to the ISI and its historical evolution.

For readers of Caste, the coming-of-age story of a Dalit individual that illuminates systemic injustice in India and its growing impact on US society “A moving personal story and a useful educational examination of persistent discrimination”—Kirkus Reviews Winner of the Sahitya Akademi...

My Journey: Transforming Dreams into Actions is the life story of India's 11th President, Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, who started off as an insignificant little boy Rameswaram, but ended up becoming the president of the country, besides being a brilliant scientist as well. The book portrays the struggle that Dr. Kalam had to endure, as he climbed the ladder of success in life.

In his brilliantly illuminating new book Sathnam Sanghera demonstrates how so much of what we consider to be modern Britain is actually rooted in our imperial past. In prose that is, at once, both clear-eyed and full of acerbic wit, Sanghera shows how our past is everywhere: from how we live to how we think, from the foundation of the NHS to the nature of our racism, from our distrust of intellectuals in public life to the exceptionalism that imbued the campaign for Brexit and the government's early response to the COVID crisis. And yet empire is a subject weirdly hidden from view.

The Day I Became a Runner starts from a striking premise-that, since running is a solitary activity conducted in the public sphere, women who take up this sport pose a more direct challenge to patriarchy than those who play sports such as badminton, cricket and tennis. To support this thesis...

| WINNER OF THE GAJA CAPITAL BUSINESS BOOK PRIZE 2019 | The nineteenth century was an exciting time of initiative and enterprise around the world. If John D. Rockefeller was creating unimagined wealth in the United States that he would put to the service of the nation, a Parsi family with humble...

Syeda X left the holy city of Banaras (now Varanasi) for Delhi with her young family in the aftermath of riots and communal violence in the early '90s. In Delhi, she settled into the life of a poor migrant, juggling multiple jobs a day - from sewing soccer balls and removing the stems from raisins, to shelling almonds sold in bulk to multinationals and assisting in illegal abortions. Syeda has held over 50 different jobs in 30 years, earning paltry sums in the process. And if she ever took a day off, her job would be lost to another faceless migrant.

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption.

This is the story of how Darjeeling tea began, was key to the largest tea industry on the globe under imperial British rule, and came to produce the highest-quality tea leaves anywhere in the world. It is a story rich in history, intrigue, and empire, full of adventurers and unlikely successes in culture, mythology and religions, ecology and terroir, all set with a backdrop of the looming Himalayas and drenching monsoons.

સરદાર, સિર્ફ નામ હી કાફી હૈ..... સરદાર વલ્લભભાઈ પટેલનું નામ અને કામ ગુજરાત માટે અજાણ્યું નથી, અને ભારત રાષ્ટ્ર તો...

India’s Five-Year Plans were one of the developing world’s most ambitious experiments. After nearly two centuries of colonial rule, planning the economy was meant to be independent India’s route from poverty to prosperity. Planning Democracy explores how India married liberal democracy to...