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 Coast in Kerala between the 12th and 16th centuries and how these communities navigated and adjusted to changes in their local environments. The...

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 from the worst famine on record, was central to India's nation-building process. Food was essential and at the core of India's transition from...

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 Punjab (AMP) that resisted the Pakistani army’s efforts to liberalise a sharecropping system in rural Punjab. The move to push through a market-based...

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 both countries sought to gain leverage by working to win over local groups in contested regions through a process called ‘state shadowing’....

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 India despite having made deep social inroads in several states. Paradoxically, Dalit parties gain political power in states where they have had...

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 demonstrates how marriage has emerged as a process or an 'in-between' space where dispersed segments of the Sri Lankan Tamil community reunite across...

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 lives on tea plantations in the SL hill country. Through feminist decolonial ethnographic methods, the book recenters the focus on Tamil women and...

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 inequality? Khan Mohmand investigates this question by probing how rural voters in Pakistan vote during elections and how their agency is exercised...

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 and seas and how individuals - leaders, bureaucrats, administrators, scientists,  engineers and farmers attempted to control water. This history...

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 that cogently illustrates how discourses of innovation were articulated and used to drive development policies in an India that was rapidly...

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 competitive pressures compelled Chinese and Indian tea producers to adopt various strategies to support tea exports. Through the book, Liu...

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 freedom that connected both India and the United States.  The book examines struggles and battles against racism, casteism and imperialism that tested...

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