In the 35th episode, I speak to Kasia Paprocki, Associate Professor in Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science on her recent book Threatening Dystopias: The Global Politics of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh published by Cornell University Press. The conversation begins by asking about the genesis of the book and…

In the 34th episode, I speak to Aditya Balasubramanian, Lecturer in Economic History, at Australian National University on his first book Toward a Free Economy: Swatantra and Opposition Politics published by Princeton University Press. The conversation begins by enquiring about the origins of the project and why focus on Swatantra as an opposition …

In the 33rd episode, I speak to Paul Staniland, Political Scientist at the University of Chicago on his recent book Ordering Violence: Explaining Armed Group-State Relations from Conflict to Cooperation published by Cornell University Press. The book is a theoretically savvy, empirically rich contribution on armed politics or how governments work w…

In the 32nd episode, I speak to Ravinder Kaur and Nayanika Mathur, editors of a new volume The People of India: New Indian Politics in the 21st century published by Penguin. The collection includes concise chapters from leading scholars of South Asia who write about a person or concept that exemplifies the politics of contemporary India. The conver…

In the 31st and final episode of 2022, I speak to LSE historian Taylor Sherman on her new book Nehru’s India: A History in Seven Myths published by Princeton University Press in October 2022. The conversation begins by asking Sherman how the book began, what she means by myths that exist around Nehru and how the availability of new sources and arch…

In the 30th episode, I speak to Historian Mircea Raianu at the University of Maryland on his recent book Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism published by Harvard University Press in July 2021. The conversation begins by asking what sparked Raianu to write the book before he describes the materials and resources he accessed and…

In the 29th episode, I speak to Gowri Vijayakumar, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University, on her recent book At Risk: Indian Sexual Politics and the Global AIDS Crisis published by Stanford University Press in 2021. The book shows how India’s AIDS response from the 1990s onward presented …

In the 28th episode, I speak to Vidya Krishnan, journalist and author of The Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis shaped History published by Hachette. The book’s a comprehensive and compelling social history of Tuberculosis ranging from the 19th century to its recent resurgence, especially across the developing world. The conversation begins by asking…

In the 27th episode, I speak to Andrea Wright, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at William & Mary, on her recent book Between Dreams and Ghosts Indian Migration and Middle Eastern Oil (Stanford University Press, 2021). The book's an ethnography of Indian migration to the Gulf, focusing on workers in oil and g…

In the 26th episode, I speak to Bharat Venkat, Assistant Professor at Institute for Society and Genetics in the Department of History, UCLA, on his new book At the Limits of Cure (Duke University Press, 2021). The book’s an anthropological history of tuberculosis treatment in India that asks fundamental questions about what it means to be cured of …

In the 25th episode, I speak to Rajesh Veeraraghavan, Assistant Professor in the Science, Technology and International Affairs program at Georgetown University on his new book Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Change in India (OUP, 2022). The book shows how Indian bureaucrats used ‘patches’ to resolve pesky last miles problems i…

In the 24th episode, I speak to Dwai Banerjee, Associate Professor, MIT, on his recent book Enduring Cancer: Life, Death, and Diagnosis in Delhi published by Duke University Press in 2020. The book is an ethnography of cancer in urban India. It focuses on the efforts of individuals in Delhi who negotiate and manage the disease, battling inept healt…

In the 23rd episode, I speak to Ravinder Kaur, Associate Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen on her recent book Brand New Nation: Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First-Century India published by Stanford University Press in 2020. The book examines how various publicity campaigns enabled the In…

In the 22nd episode, I speak to Debjani Bhattacharyya, Associate Professor of History and Urban Studies, Drexel University and soon to be Professor and Chair of the History of the Anthropocene at the University of Zurich on her recent book Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta published by Cambridge University Press in 2018…

In the 21st episode, I speak to Sandeep Mertia, PhD Candidate, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University on his new edited volume Lives of Data: Essays on Computational Cultures from India published by the Institute of Network Cultures (2021). The edited volume brings together chapters from fifteen interdisciplinary schol…

In the 20th episode, I speak to Swetha S Ballakrishnen, Assistant Professor of Law, UC Irvine on their recent book Accidental Feminism: Gender Parity and Selective Mobility among India's Professional Elite published by Princeton University Press in January 2021. The book explores the unintentional production of seemingly feminist outcomes in India,…

In the nineteenth episode, I speak to Pratinav Anil, PhD Candidate, University of Oxford about his recently co-authored book (with Christophe Jaffrelot) India’s First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975–1977 published by Hurst in December 2020. The book examines Indira and Sanjay Gandhi's authoritarianism, Jayaprakash Narayan's muddled politics, how …

In the eighteenth episode, I speak to Pradip Ninan Thomas, Associate Professor, University of Queensland, about his recent book The Politics of Digital India: Between Local Compulsions and Transnational Pressures published by Oxford University Press in 2019. The book situates and locates Digital India in a global and local context by identifying th…

In the seventeenth episode, I speak to Kate Imy, a historian at the University of North Texas, about her recent book Faithful Fighters: Identity and Power in the British Indian Army, published by Stanford University Press in 2019. The book explores how the military culture, created by the British, spawned new dialogues and dynamics between soldiers…

In the sixteenth episode, I speak to Himanshu Jha, Lecturer and Research Fellow, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University on his recent book Capturing Institutional Change: The Case of the Right to Information Act in India published by Oxford University Press in 2020. The book presents an alternate narrative of India’s 2005 Right to Information …

In the fifteenth episode, I speak to Ali Raza, Historian at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) on his recent book Revolutionary Pasts: Communist Internationalism in Colonial India published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. The book maps and reveals the stories of individuals in Colonial India - dissidents, migrant workers, st…

In the fourteenth episode, I speak to Sarah Besky, cultural anthropologist at Cornell University on her recent book Tasting Qualities: The Past and Future of Tea published by the U of C Press in 2020. The book asks what the role of quality is in contemporary capitalism and how a product like a bag of tea is understood and judged for its quality. Th…

In the thirteenth episode, I speak to Joseph McQuade, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, on his recent book A Genealogy of Terrorism: Colonial Law and the Origins of an Idea published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. The book demonstrates how terrorism was …

In the thirteenth episode, I speak to Priya Atwal, British historian of empire, on her recent book Royals and Rebels: The Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire published by Hurst and Oxford University Press in 2020. The books shines fresh light on the Sikh empire (1799-1849), transcending prevailing interpretations that focus wholly on the founding fath…

In the twelfth episode, I speak to Sebastian Prange, Associate Professor of History, University of British Columbia on his recent book Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith in the Medieval Malabar Coast published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. Monsoon Islam traces the history of pre-modern Muslim merchants and traders who arrived on the Malabar Co…

In the eleventh episode, I speak to Benjamin Siegel, Assistant Professor of History, Boston University, on his recent book - Hungry Nation: Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. The book argues that the tasks and responsibilities incumbent under feeding India post independence, as it emerged f…

In the tenth episode, I speak to Mubbashir Rizvi, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Georgetown University, on his recent book - The Ethics of Staying: Social Movements and Land Rights Politics in Pakistan published by Stanford University Press in 2019. The book focuses on a major social movement in rural Pakistan - Anjuman Mazarin Punja…

In the ninth episode, I speak to Bérénice Guyot-Réchard, Senior Lecturer, King’s College London on her recent book - Shadow States: India, China, and the Himalayas, 1910-1962 published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. Through the book, Guyot-Réchard studies China–India relations not through high politics but from the bottom up to show how bot…

In the eight episode, I speak to Amit Ahuja, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California Santa Barbara on his recent book - Mobilising the Marginalized: Ethnic Parties without Ethnic Movements published by Oxford University Press in March 2019. In the book, Ahuja shows why only some Dalit parties are successful electorally in…

In the seventh episode, I speak to Sidharthan Maunaguru, Associate Professor of Sociology and South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore on his recent book - Marrying for a Future: Transnational Sri Lankan Tamil Marriages in the Shadow of War published by University of Washington Press in March 2019. Through the book, Maunaguru demonstra…

In the sixth episode, I speak to Mythri Jegathesan, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Santa Clara University on her new book - Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka published by University of Washington Press in July 2019. In her book, Jegathesan presents the stories of the women, men, and children who have built their li…

In the fifth episode of Lekh, I speak to Shandana Khan Mohmand, Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex on her new book Crafty Oligarchs, Savvy Voters: Democracy under inequality in rural Pakistan published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press. Does democracy empower rural voters under conditions of extreme in…

In the fourth episode of Lekh, I speak to Sunil Amrith, Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History at Yale University, on his recent book Unruly Waters: How Rains, Rivers, Coasts and Seas have shaped Asia’s history published in 2018 by Basic Books. Amrith's book reimagines Asia's and India's history through its unruly waters - rains, rivers, coasts…

In the third episode of Lekh, I speak to Lilly Irani, Associate Professor of Communication & Science Studies at University of California, San Diego on her recent book Chasing Innovation: Making Entrepreneurial Citizens in Modern India.The book weaves together history, ethnography, and critique of a seductive vision of entrepreneurial citizenship th…

In the second episode of Lekh, I speak to Andrew Liu, Assistant Professor of History, Villanova University on his recent book Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India. Tea War tells the story of how tea, the world’s most popular commercial drink today, drove competition between China and colonial India in the 19th century and how these c…

In the pilot episode of Lekh, I speak to Nico Slate, Professor of History, Carnegie Mellon University on his recent book Lord Cornwallis is Dead: The Struggle for Democracy in the United States and India. Spanning nearly three centuries and as many continents, Lord Cornwallis is Dead presents a sweeping look at the struggle for democracy and freedo…

Lekh - on books, book reviews, authors, non-fiction and South Asia.