Rainlight
28 books
This book focuses on the current Muslim mood in India, particularly that of the youth who are trying to move the community into a new-more positive-direction. Despite a marked increase in religiosity and an assertion of Muslim identity, young Muslims are more secular and forward-looking than the older generation. They also have a strong sense of belonging to India, and see no contradiction between being proud Indians and proud Muslims at the same time.
Keen to ...
Half a Billion Rising travels to different parts of India, and finds that a tremendous wave is sweeping across the nation girls and women are getting educated, finding jobs and emerging as empowered citizens. The implications of such breakthrough transformation are phenomenal in a nation that is home to 17 per cent of the world's total number of women.
Half a Billion Rising analyzes the change drivers and the repercussions of present-day gender revolutions. It ...
One of the most important pillars (Of Hindi cinema) - Ranbir Kapoor Think Bollywood villain and one of the first names that comes to mind is that of Prem Chopra. One of the few actors to have been working in the industry for more than five decades, from the black-and-white era to the new millennium and still going strong, he is a legend in his own right. This fascinating memoir, penned by his daughter Rakita Nanda and told in Prem Chopras words, reveals the story ...
Velan saw the shape of a man in the dark, but not the machete gripped in his hand…
Set in a small town in South India in the early 1970s, Murder in Melur is the story of Vijayan, a confused idealist who is buffeted by the politics of the period-the Rationalist, Dravidian and Communist movements in the Tamil country as well as the incipient civil war in Sri Lanka. His idealism, however, is frustrated not only by social convention and injustice but also by ...
A concise and informative biography that examines the various facets of the fabled superstar and leader A matinee idol turned chief minister, a Sri Lankan-born Malayalee who made the hearts of millions of Tamils his home…MGR was a phenomenon.
Born in 1917, Marudhur Gopalan Ramachandran, better known as MGR, was an iconic Indian film actor, director, producer and politician. A member of the Congress Party and then the DMK, and the founder of the ADMK, he ...
An incisive book on post-Independence India and its future. 'A treasure house of views and opinions on all relevant matters that concern our national security needs' - Marshal of the Indian Air Force, Arjan Singh. 'I recommend this strongly for those who wish to understand a major and vital strand of thinking that will influence Indian policies for years to come' - Stephen Cohen. Experience over sixty-six years of independence reveals that India has failed when ...
The Japji, composed by Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh faith, is the most important prayer of the Sikhs, and one of the most sublime and majestic examples of sacred poetry in any language. Comprising a series of hymns in praise of ‘the One God Who is Truth’, it opens the sacred book of the Sikhs, the Guru Granth Sahib, and is recited every morning by all practising Sikhs.
The Rehras is a prayer of thanksgiving, recited at the end of the day in ...
Leaving home on 17 October 2011, Nandita Haksar and her husband, Sebastian Hongray, drove across Nepal to reach the Chicken Neck, the slim strip of land which connects the Northeast to the rest of India. From the Chicken Neck, they went up to the one of the easternmost towns of the country, Mayodia in Arunachal Pradesh. Making a U-turn in Mayodia, they swept south to the town of Moreh, a busy centre of trade (both legal and illegal) on the border between India ...
Is democracy driven by citizens or by the citizen elite? Acclaimed sociologist and author Dipankar Gupta argues that at every historical juncture when democracy made significant advances, it was the citizen elite, or the elite of calling, who led the charge, often going against the grain of popular demands and sentiments.
At its best, democracy does not reflect reality as much as it shapes and changes it. This requires active intervention by the citizen elite, ...
Crushed by successive crop failures and the burden of debt, Sudhakar Bhadra kills himself. The powerful district committee of Mityala routinely dismisses the suicide and refuses compensation to his widow. Gangiri, his brother, makes it his lifes mission to bring justice to the dead by influencing the committee to validate similar farmer suicides.
Keyur Kashinath of the Democratic Party first-time member of Parliament from Mityala, and son of Vaishnav Kashinath, ...