New Books Network
South Asian Studies
South Asian Studies February 26, 2021

Rethinking Markets in Modern India

Embedded Exchange and Contested Jurisdiction

A. Gandhi, B. Harriss-White, D. E. Haynes and S. Schwecke

Hosted by Saronik Bosu
Modern markets and exchange, compared with other social and political spheres, are seen through technical abstractions. This intellectual compartmentalization has political consequences: if capitalism operates through arcane, objective, and rational …

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Indian Religions February 25, 2021

The Mahabharata

Bibek Debroy

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Dispute over land and kingdom may lie at the heart of this story of war between cousins the Pandavas and the Kouravas but the Mahabharata is about conflicts of dharma …
Asian Review of Books February 25, 2021

Bombay Hustle

Making Movies in a Colonial City

Debashree Mukherjee

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
In 1935, the writer Baburao Patel writes the following about Bombay’s film industry: “In India, with financing conditions still precarious, the professional film distributor thrives. . . . He comes …
Indian Religions February 24, 2021

Education and Modernity in Colonial Punjab

Khalsa College, the Sikh Tradition and the Webs of Knowledge, 1880-1947

Michale P. Brunner

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Michael P. Brunner's Education and Modernity in Colonial Punjab: Khalsa College, the Sikh Tradition and the Webs of Knowledge, 1880-1947 (Palgrave, 2020) explores the localisation of modernity in late colonial India.  As a …
Indian Religions February 17, 2021

Ownership and Inheritance in Sanskrit Jurisprudence

Christopher T. Fleming

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Ownership and Inheritance in Sanskrit Jurisprudence (Oxford UP, 2021) provides an account of various theories of ownership (svatva) and inheritance (dāya) in Sanskrit jurisprudential literature (Dharmaśāstra). It examines the evolution of different …
South Asian Studies February 16, 2021

The Politics and Poetics of Authenticity

A Cultural Genealogy of Sinhala Nationalism

Harshana Rambukwella

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
What is the role of cultural authenticity in the making of nations? Much scholarly and popular commentary on nationalism dismisses authenticity as a romantic fantasy or, worse, a deliberately constructed …
Indian Religions February 9, 2021

Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions

Knut A. Jacobsen

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
The Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions (Routledge, 2020) presents critical research, overviews and case studies on religion in historical South Asia and in the seven nation states of contemporary South …
Law February 8, 2021

Asia's New Geopolitics

Essays on Reshaping the Indo-Pacific

Michael R. Auslin

Hosted by Jane Richards
Is the Indo-Pacific already the most dominant in terms of global power, politics, and wealth? In his newest book, Michael R. Auslin considers the key issues facing the Indo-Pacific which have ramifications …
Japanese Studies January 29, 2021

Seeking Sakyamuni

South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism

Richard M. Jaffe

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
Though fascinated with the land of their tradition’s birth, virtually no Japanese Buddhists visited the Indian subcontinent before the nineteenth century. In the richly illustrated Seeking Śākyamuni: South Asia in the …
Indian Ocean World January 28, 2021

Imperial Mecca

Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj

Michael Christo Low

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
With the advent of the steamship, repeated outbreaks of cholera marked oceanic pilgrimages to Mecca as a dangerous form of travel and a vehicle for the globalization of epidemic diseases …
Anthropology January 27, 2021

The Occupied Clinic

Militarism and Care in Kashmir

Saiba Varma

Hosted by Sneha Annavarapu
In The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir (Duke UP, 2020), Saiba Varma explores the psychological, ontological, and political entanglements between medicine and violence in Indian-controlled Kashmir—the world's most …
Anthropology January 26, 2021

The Cow in the Elevator

An Anthropology of Wonder

Tulasi Srinivas

Hosted by Lakshita Malik
In The Cow in the Elevator: An Anthropology of Wonder (Duke UP, 2018), Tulasi Srinivas explores a wonderful world where deities jump fences and priests ride in helicopters to present …
Indian Religions January 26, 2021

Digital Hinduism

Xenia Zeiler

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Digital Religion does not simply refer to religion as it is carried out online, but more broadly studies how digital media interrelate with religious practice and belief. Xenia Zeiler's book …
Indian Religions January 20, 2021

Anti-Christian Violence in India

Chad M. Bauman

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Does religion cause violent conflict, asks Chad M. Bauman, and if so, does it cause conflict any more than other social identities? Through an extended history of Christian-Hindu relations, and …
Islamic Studies January 15, 2021

The Bruce B. Lawrence Reader

Islam Beyond Borders

Bruce B. Lawrence and Ali Altaf Mian

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
For more than four decades, Bruce Lawrence’s multivalent and fulsomely prolific scholarship has influenced and imprinted the Western study of Islam and Religious Studies more broadly in singularly profound ways …
Asian Review of Books January 14, 2021

Three Asian Divas

Women, Art and Culture In Shiraz, Delhi and Yangzhou

David Chaffetz

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
The “diva” is a common trope when we talk about culture. We normally think of the diva as a Western construction: the opera singer, the Broadway actress, the movie star …
Indian Religions January 12, 2021

Tracing the Path of Yoga

The History and Philosophy of Indian Mind-Body Discipline

Stuart Ray Sarbacker

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Clear, accessible, and meticulously annotated, Tracing the Path of Yoga: The History and Philosophy of Indian Mind-Body Discipline (SUNY Press, 2021) offers a comprehensive survey of the history and philosophy of …
Indian Religions January 8, 2021

Maya in the Bhagavata Purana

Human Suffering and Divine Play

Gopal K. Gupta

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
The idea of Maya pervades Indian philosophy. It is enigmatic, multivalent, and foundational, with its oldest referents found in the Rig Veda. Maya in the Bhagavata Purana: Human Suffering and …
South Asian Studies January 6, 2021

The Loss of Hindustan

The Invention of India

Manan Ahmed Asif

Hosted by Samee Siddiqui
Did South Asia have a shared regional identity prior to the arrival of Europeans in the late fifteenth century? This is a subject of heated debate in scholarly circles and …
Indian Ocean World December 31, 2020

Narrating Africa in South Asia

South Asian History and Culture, Volume 11, Issue 4, 2020

Mahmood Kooria, Khatija Khader, and Sofia Péquignot

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Narrating Africa in South Asia (Special Journal Issue: South Asian History and Culture, Volume 11, Issue 4, 2020) explores the multifaceted and longue durée history of the African diaspora in …