July nonfiction: These six new titles explore the constantly changing nature of the Indian identity

Scroll.in

20 hours ago

All information sourced from publishers.
A Return to Self: Excursions in Exile, Aatish Taseer
In 2019, the Government of India revoked Aatish Taseer's citizenship, thereby exiling him from the country where he grew up and lived for thirty years. This loss, both practical and spiritual, sent him on a journey of revisiting the places that formed his identity and, in the process, compelled him to ask broader questions about the complex forces that make a culture and nationality.
In Istanbul, he confronts the hopes and ambitions of his former self. In Uzbekistan, he sees how what was once the majestic portal of the Silk Road is now a tourist facade. In India, he explores why Buddhism, which originated here, is practiced so little. Everywhere he goes, the ancient world mixes intimately with the contemporary: with the influences of the pandemic, the rise of new food cultures, and the ongoing cultural battles of regions around the world. How do centuries of cultures evolving and overlapping, often violently, shape the people that subsequently emerge from them?
In this blend of travelogue and memoir, Taseer casts an incisive eye at what it means to belong to a place that becomes a politicized vessel for ideas defined by exclusion and prejudice, and delves deep into the heart of the migrations that define our multicultural world.
The Hindi Heartland: A Study, Ghazala Wahab
The Hindi heartland, comprising Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh, covers nearly 38 per cent of India's total area and is home to over 40 per cent of India's population. It provides the country with over 40 per cent of its parliamentarians and determines the contours of national politics (out of the fifteen prime ministers India has had since 1947, eight have been from the Hindi belt). Yet, despite its political significance, the Hindi belt is among the most impoverished regions in the country. It consumes the bulk of the country's resources, but lags behind other states on various economic and welfare indices. It is plagued by violence, illiteracy, unemployment, corruption, poor life expectancy, and numerous other ills.
Centuries of war, conquests, invasions, political movements, and religious unrest have made the heartland a place of immense paradox. Despite its extraordinary and timeless religious heritage – some of the country's most revered spiritual leaders were born here and it is home to innumerable shrines and places of pilgrimage – it has also witnessed some of the worst communal riots in the country and has been troubled by long-running, divisive sectarian politics. Many of India's founders, who gave the country its secular identity, hailed from the heartland, but so too did those who have spread religious discord. And the land of Ganga–Jamuni tehzeeb routinely witnesses lynching and murder in the name of religion.
The book is divided into five sections and examines the region's disproportionate influence on the nation's politics, culture, and identity.
Believer's Dilemma: Vajpayee and the Hindu Right's Path to Power, 1977–2018, Abhishek Choudhary
Believer's Dilemma concludes Abhishek Choudhary's two-part study of Atal Behari Vajpayee (1924–2018), the RSS propagandist who established himself as an imaginative moderate, drawing the Hindu Right from the fringes to displace Congress as the natural party of power.
The second volume combines new archival documents with revealing interviews to present an unsentimental history of India's ongoing political moment, beginning with the short-lived Janata coalition and the Vajpayee–Morarji Desai tussle to steer foreign policy; Mrs Gandhi's ad-hocism in Assam, Punjab and Kashmir; Rajiv's cynical turn toward the Hindu vote; Vajpayee's failure to secularize the newborn BJP; the Sangh Parivar's meticulous plan to raze the Babri, and much more. Choudhary traces these machinations of the previous half-century to cast fresh light on major events from Vajpayee's term in office (1998–2004), including his desperation to conduct nuclear tests; his cold pragmatism and heartbreak in negotiating with Pakistan and China; his wide range of emotional strengths, which allowed him to manage an unwieldy thirteen-party coalition and turn India into a multi-party democracy; his role in propping India up as a potential superpower and embedding capitalist aspiration into its socio-political imagination.
Mapping the evolution of the Sangh Parivar, this book reveals a deeper pattern in Vajpayee's character: his reflexive loyalty to his ideological family in moments of crisis – be it the 1983 Assam riots, the 1992 Babri aftermath, the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, or his tragic last public appearance in 2008, when the stroke-battered patriarch voted against the Indo-US nuclear deal he had earlier helped seed.
Dapaan: Tales from Kashmir's Conflict, Ipsita Chakravarty
In Kashmir, folktales often begin with the word dapaan – 'it is said'. So too do local narratives told and retold about the past, among people who have lived through nearly eight decades of a bitter contest between India and Pakistan.
This is a story about stories. In the hyper-nationalist din over a territorial dispute, Kashmiri voices are often drowned out. Yet the region is home to long habits of storytelling, its communities intensely engaged with history-keeping. For centuries, folk traditions of theatre, song and fable have flowed into a reservoir of common talk. Mythology, hearsay and historical memory coexist here without any apparent hierarchies.
By the time armed rebellion spread through Kashmir in 1989, many of these traditions had died out or been forced underground. But they have left traces in the way ordinary people speak about the conflict – in their songs of loss, and jokes about dark times; in fantastical geographies, and rumours turning the Valley's militarisation into a ghostly haunting. From Partition to the 2019 Indian crackdown, Ipsita Chakravarty discovers a vivid, distinctly Kashmiri vision of events that have often been narrated from the top down. Her interviewees conjure a kaleidoscope of towns and villages shaping their own memories.
OTP Please!: Online Buyers, Sellers and Gig Workers in South Asia, Vandana Vasudevan
A great shift is underway in how we buy, eat, move, work and sell owing to technological intervention. Tech platforms – whether a Swiggy, Amazon or Uber in India, a Foodpanda in Pakistan or a Pathao in Bangladesh or Nepal – have eased the pressures of modern life. They have freed up our time, provided jobs to grateful millions and delivered guilty pleasures and last-minute necessities to online buyers.
But behind the dazzle of the digital, much is opaque. Gig workers live a precarious life while internet retailers cope with the oppressive rules of global behemoths. Consumers wonder if there are consequences to instant gratification and the extreme ease of living.
OTP Please delves into the wondrous new world of electronic commerce by connecting diverse stories and perspectives gathered across South Asia, from Peshawar to Patna and Colombo to Kathmandu. It explores the emotional dynamics between the different actors on this stage, the workings of tech companies and the implications for policy.
My Life: Story of an Imperfect Musician, Ustad Allauddin Khan, translated from the Bengali by Hemasri Chaudhuri
My Life: Story of an Imperfect Musician is the freewheeling autobiography of Ustad Allauddin Khan, the legendary Indian classical musician and founder of the Maihar–Senia gharana. Transcribed from his spoken accounts at Santiniketan in 1952 and translated from Bengali to English for the first time, the book offers an intimate look into his tumultuous journey – from his modest beginnings in Tripura to becoming a revered guru and maestro.
In his candid yet commanding voice, Allauddin Khan recalls his spiritual devotion to music, years of gruelling training, battles with poverty and his uncompromising integrity. He narrates his encounters with saints, ustads, nawabs and commoners with equal vividness if punctuated by his humour, rage and humility. The book sheds light on his unconventional personality – fierce, loving, deeply principled – and his immense contribution to Indian classical music, not just as a performer but also as a mentor.