Biography India

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.

On 20 January 2021, Kamala Harris was sworn in as the Vice President of the United States of America, making her the first person of Indian descent, and the first woman to reach this position. This was hardly surprising, for Kamala - the daughter of a breast-cancer scientist Indian mother and a Stanford University emeritus professor of economics Jamaican father - has been known to blaze a trail for herself in her chosen fields.

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.

Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of 26. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary - and yet how typical - her family history truly was.

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.

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.

Kim Barker is not your typical, impassive foreign correspondent—she is candid, self-deprecating, laugh-out-loud funny. At first an awkward newbie in Afghanistan, she grows into a wisecracking, seasoned reporter with grave concerns about our ability to win hearts and minds in the region. In The Taliban Shuffle, Barker offers an insider’s account of the “forgotten war” in Afghanistan and Pakistan, chronicling the years after America’s initial routing of the Taliban, when we failed to finish the job.

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।

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.

How to Be a Writer is peppered with nuggets of practical advice for every person who is aspiring to write and be published, all told in Ruskin Bond's characteristic understated, tongue-in-cheek, humorous style. So, what is it that a person requires the most to become a writer? A love of books, of language, of life, an observant eye and a good memory, along with enthusiasm, optimism, and persistence. This book is an exclusive glimpse into the writing credo of Ruskin Bond, an author who has had an incredibly successful writing career spanning over 70 years.

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.

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.

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.

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.

An iconic figure in the world of cricket in the 1970s and 1980s, Mohinder Amarnath started his career as a batsman who was found suspect against short-pitched fast bowling and finished it as one of the finest and bravest players of pace. He is still remembered with awe for hooking fearsome pace attacks on bouncy Caribbean and Australian tracks-without wearing a helmet. Grit, guts and gumption defined Amarnath's rollercoaster career. According to both Sunil Gavaskar and Imran Khan, Amarnath was the best batsman of their era.

The dramatic and immersive story of an ambitious young empress who was the only woman to ever rule the Mughal Empire. More than four centuries ago in India, a Muslim woman ruled a magnificent empire: Nur Jahan, whose name means “light of the world.” Nur led troops into battle atop an elephant, hunted tigers, designed public buildings, and issued coinage and royal decrees in her own name.

Srinagar in the winter of 1989 was an eerie ghost town witnessing the beginnings of a war dance. The dam burst the night JKLF boys were freed in exchange for the release of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then Union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. As Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah had predicted, the government's caving in emboldened many Kashmiris into thinking that azaadi was possible. 'The price we will have to pay' were Farooq's prophetic words.

शेतीवर आधारित अथवा शेतीला पूरक उद्योगांची संख्या अमाप आहे. थेट अन्नधान्याशी निगडीत उद्योगांचा तर त्यात प्रामुख्याने समावेश आहेच. पण इतरही अनेक उद्योग त्यातून उभे राहू शकतात. अशाच एका उद्योगाची आणि उद्योजकाची ही कहाणी…

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.

For a brief moment on December 27, 2007, life came to a standstill in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, the country's former prime minister and the first woman ever to lead a Muslim country, had been assassinated at a political rally just outside Islamabad. Back in Karachi--Bhutto's birthplace and Pakistan's other great metropolis--Rafia Zakaria's family was suffering through a crisis of its own: her uncle Sohail, the man who had brought shame upon the family, was near death.