The most recommended books about South Asia

Kenya was an exotic territory for British colonial interests in the late 19th century. For reasons almost impossible to understand today, the British decided to build a railroad from Mombasa, the seaport on the Indian Ocean, through the Kenyan savannah, to Kampala, a city of some riches in the far interior of what is now Uganda. The story of the building of the railroad at the end of the 19th century is hair-raising, thanks to Miller’s classic history, as imported Indian workers had to endure predatory lions, harsh climates, and raging rivers to forge across the frontier. That the railroad to nowhere was completed is a tribute to those Indian workers and their intrepid British overseers.

Today, one can take the train from Mombasa to Nairobi, some three hundred miles distant, either in the daylight, hoping to spy some wildlife, or in a sleeping berth at night. I… show more.

Bhog’s Sehgal saga takes you to the world of India’s mega-rich. Kabier Sehgal returns to India to take over the running of Sehgal Systems from his grandfather, Janak Sehgal. Janak is a loveable grandfather figure, who keeps a close eye on his grandchildren and is a mentor to many of their friends too. Keya Karia is one of the trio known as Janak’s Angels, the other being Sheena Sehgal and Raashi Dewan. In this enemy-to-lover romance, Kabier suspects Keya of selling company secrets, but their instant chemistry plays havoc with their lives. As Sheena’s wedding nears, they admit their feelings. Bhog’s books take you to the world of found families and the joy of lifelong friendships and to the world of crazy rich South Asians.

Samrat Upadhyay’s English-language novels and short stories often read like anthropological work on Nepal’s middle class.
The Royal Ghosts fictionalizes the sluggish economy in and urban migration to contemporary Kathmandu, the decade-long civil war that ended along with the collapse of the Hindu monarchy in 2006, and the political tensions that defined Nepal in the first decade of the current millennium. His attention to the previous king’s grasp at power using political propaganda in the form of monumental billboards in 1990 (in “Supreme Pronouncements”) reflects my own interest in similar rhetoric fifteen years later.

I also like the use of the popular religious imagery when in “Chintamani’s Women”, the main character pauses briefly at the picture of the elephant-headed Ganesh on his kitchen wall as he offers a quick prayer for his deceased mother and sick father (RG 130). 

In the early 1980s, when I lived in Lahore, Pakistan, and served on the board of the Lahore American School—an institution that catered to rich Pakistanis and expats whose commercial companies paid the high tuition—I talked to a fourth-grade class whose Pakistani teacher was a close friend. She alerted me twenty years later that one of those students had just published his first novel, describing the fast life of the affluent and often decadent Pakistanis who lived in mansions, partied till dawn, drank heavily, and engaged, it was rumored, in romantic liaisons with each other’s spouses.

Moth Smoke describes this life, with a main character who falls in love with a friend’s wife while losing his job and turning to the sale of heroin and hashish to survive.  Mohsin takes the reader through a bittersweet recounting of life in the fast lane in modern Pakistan, a life I observed for… show more.

Willem van Schendel is one of those first few names who are the authority on Bengal Borderland. Schendel's interest in the Bengal Borderland and Bangladesh has been persistent for decades.

This particular volume is significant because the author focused on the complex and intertwined relationship between border-making in the region and the historical perpetuation of 1947. The book helps one to see how the Partition, far from being an event from the past, has yet been unfolding in the lands and lives of people living there. I consider it to be an intervention of both Partition studies and Borderland studies.

A historian by training, Schendel has taken his methodological venture into the realm of anthropology, and his empirical research reciprocated the political history with a rich social corpus.

Dev’s book is an escape into the exuberance of migrant families from India. Ria is a reclusive Bollywood actress, who betrays Vikram, her childhood sweetheart, to protect him from the same fate as her father. Ten years later, Ria returns to Chicago for her cousin Nik’s wedding, knowing she will meet Vik again. For Ria, the loving embrace of her family and found family provides the safety and love she needs to reassess her life in Bollywood. For Vik meeting Ria again brings back all the pain he thought he had recovered from after her betrayal. In the two weeks, Ria and Vik rekindle the love they have both denied. A beautifully written story of migrants who embrace their life in America but still hold on to their Indian heritage.

This book by Joya Chatterji is a path-breaking one, as it posed a challenge against the hegemonic narratives dominant in the 1947 Partition studies to date.

Before Chatterji's work, Partition studies largely agreed upon the fact that apart from the British, the only home-grown villain behind the communal plot of Partition was the Muslim League and its leadership. Scholars in the field also agreed that the Indian National Congress was a secular platform.

Chatterji, however, argues that in the case of Bengal, the upper-class Hindu Bhadraloks were against the Partition in 1905. However, this same section of people in 1947 went for Partition along the communal line. And Congress, besides Hindu Mahasabha, had taken up communal politics.

This book served as my entry point to Indian goddess traditions. It examines a millennia-old tradition alongside the modern concept of feminism. What emerges is a nuanced and complicated set of essays that challenges my understanding of goddesses and their relation to women and men. At the end of the day, I walk away with a greater appreciation for both goddesses and feminism.

This book is not only a deep scholarly engagement with the world of art collection and Hindu goddesses, but it also reads like a mystery novel. Kaimal took me on a journey from India, the home of the images/works of art under discussion, through their disparate journeys in the shadowy world of international art collecting and sales. It made me understand how the modern museum is stocked with images taken from active sites of religious practice. 

This book is a riveting exploration of the major goddess festival in India, Navaratri, and a follow-up volume of the popular Nine Nights of the Goddess.

I love this book because it dives into the regional diversity of the festival, taking me on a journey into the many ways that the goddess is celebrated throughout India and into the lives of her devotees. What I find so mesmerizing about Nine Nights of Power is the balance between breadth and depth that gives me a flavor of the diversity of the traditions with deep dives into the individual case studies.