Pakistan has been reshaped by its 27th constitutional amendment that was passed in November. The amendment has formalised the military’s so-far unofficial dominance in the country’s governing structure into explicit constitutional supremacy. It was passed by a politically fragile parliament facing questions over its own legitimacy and elevates the army chief Asim Munir to an almost unassailable position as the Chief of Defence Forces. What had long operated as an informal military veto over civilian politics is now written into the basic law of the state, transforming Pakistan’s power structure for years to come.
The amendment also rewires the judiciary, creating a new Federal Constitutional Court whose judges are effectively chosen and controlled by the executive and legislature, both themselves deeply aligned with the military establishment. By stripping the existing Supreme Court of most constitutional jurisdiction and reshaping the body that appoints and transfers judges, the changes leave little room for independent legal scrutiny of military or executive overreach.
In this episode of State of Southasia, Ayesha Jalal, the Mary Richardson professor of history, arts and sciences at the Fletcher graduate school in Tufts University, speaks to Ayesha Jalal about Pakistan after the 27th amendment – what has changed and what has not, and what political players and civil society must do to reclaim democratic spaces in the country.
You can also listen to this episode on:
🎧 YouTube: https://youtu.be/eXiuTQ6ppkM
🎧 Apple podcasts:https://apple.co/4p7YhHt
Episode notes:
Ayesha Jalal’s recommendations:
- The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan's Political Economy of Defence – Ayesha Jalal (non-fiction)
- Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within – Shuja Nawaz (non-fiction)
- A Case of Exploding Mangoes – Mohammed Hanif (fiction)
Further reading from Himal’s archives:
In Pakistan, a mightier military and a judiciary undone (https://www.himalmag.com/politics/pakistan-27amendment-constitution-military-asim-munir)
- Pakistan’s struggle to reshape its fiscal federalism (https://www.himalmag.com/politics/pakistan-fiscal-federalism-province-punjab-budget)
- Asim Munir’s promotion to field marshal signals an authoritarian Pakistan (https://www.himalmag.com/politics/pakistan-military-asim-munir-authoritarianism)
- Pakistan is losing friends fast in both Beijing and Washington DC (https://www.himalmag.com/politics/pakistan-unitedstates-china-taliban-security)
Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.
Read more: https://www.himalmag.com/
Support our independent journalism and become a Patron of Himal: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
Find us on:
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A conversation with the writer and filmmaker Nirvana Bhandary on her collection of essays exploring feminist thought, lived experience and the generational shifts transforming contemporary Nepali womanhood.
Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books podcast, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan speaks to the writer and filmmaker Nirvana Bhandary about her new book, Unsanskari: A Feminist Life (October 2025).
Unsanskari: A Feminist Life by Nirvana Bhandary is a collection of essays, reflections and sharp cultural observations on what it means to be a Nepali woman beyond traditional expectations and patriarchal norms. From queerness and body politics to marriage, migration, intersectionality and intergenerational feminism, the book traces the cultural and political shifts shaping women’s lives today – and makes a compelling case for why claiming one’s femininity, and refusing to be “sanskari”, remains a radical act.
This episode is now available on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5VYhKdPlydfIkUivuDYtAd
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3KBb1s6
Youtube: https://youtu.be/4TeurmZBBcA
'Unsanskari: A Feminist Life' by Nirvana Bhandary (October 2025): https://linktr.ee/Unsanskari
✨ Thank you for listening to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal Southasian. If you like this episode, please share widely, rate, review, subscribe and download the show on your favourite podcast apps.
✉️ Let’s keep the conversation going – please share your thoughts on the episode. Leave us a comment on Youtube or write to us at editorial@himalmag.com.
🙏🏼 To make conversations like this possible, we need the support of our listeners like you. Become a paying Himal Patron to support the Southasia Review of Books: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
📚 Sign up to receive the Southasia Review of Books newsletter for Himal’s spotlight on Southasian literature, our latest conversations, and more: https://bit.ly/southasia-review-of-books
In this episode of Saffron Siege, the writer, historian and social activist Ram Puniyani explains the background of India’s freedom struggle in which the RSS was founded. He says the the founders of the RSS were reacting to the education of Dalits and women and the influx of average people into the national movement. On the other hand, they were influenced by the fascist nationalism growing in Europe. “The RSS stands for the presentation of old values, which they call the golden period of Hindu history represented by the Manusmriti, the values of caste and gender hierarchy,” Puniyani says. It also stands against religious minorities – Muslims to begin with and Christians to be followed up.
Over the years the RSS and its ideologues, many who went forward to become BJP leaders, systematically entrenched the RSS’s influence over India’s citizenry – from Lal Krishna Advani as information and broadcasting minister planting RSS characters into the media to Narendran Modi co-opting big corporates as chief minister of Gujarat in the early 2000s world to building their own social media in recent years. “This chain which has grown and is very powerful, very difficult to break. And mainly because I think we have to blame ourselves when all this was going on, what were we doing?” Puniyani says.
You can watch this whole conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/orGOdfpGFxo
This episode is part of Season Two of Partitions of the Heart. In this season, Harsh Mander speaks to leading scholars and observers who have studied the RSS closely. Together, they examine its roots and core principles, its Hindutva agenda, and its corrosive role in India’s public and social life across a century.
“Saffron Siege” runs from 17 September to 3 December 2025, with a new episode releasing every Wednesday. Himal’s podcasts are available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Production: Imaad ul Hasan, Lydia Smith, Ritika Chauhan, Nayantara Narayanan
Support Himal Podcasts and Himal's independent journalism for just USD 5 per month: https://payhere.lk/pay/oee1bdaf1
Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.
Read more: https://www.himalmag.com/
Support our independent journalism and become a Patron of Himal: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
Find us on:
https://twitter.com/Himalistan
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India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru has become a figure of hate and derision for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under the leadership of Narendra Modi and for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), its ideological parent. In this episode of Saffron Siege, Harsh Mander and historian Purushottam Agrawal examine the reasons for their particular resentment against Nehru.
Agrawal ways that Nehru’s modernity of thought, the fact that he never used the idioms of religion in public speech and his relatability to Indians across geography and social divides makes him a symbol that the RSS has never been able to appropriate. “Nehru does not allow them to appropriate himself. So, if you cannot appropriate, you destroy”, says Agrawal.
They also discuss the lack of the RSS’s self-identity beyond its antagonism towards India’s minorities, the fickleness of political parties who once opposed to the RSS and BJP’s fascist ideas and later became their allies, and the reasons behind Hindu radicalisation. You can watch the full conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-0qrJfdTW0k
This episode is part of Season Two of Partitions of the Heart. In this season, Harsh Mander speaks to leading scholars and observers who have studied the RSS closely. Together, they examine its roots and core principles, its Hindutva agenda, and its corrosive role in India’s public and social life across a century
“Saffron Siege” runs from 17 September to 3 December 2025, with a new episode releasing every Wednesday. Himal’s podcasts are available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Production: Imaad ul Hasan, Lydia Smith, Ritika Chauhan, Nayantara Narayanan
Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.
Read more: https://www.himalmag.com/
Support our independent journalism and become a Patron of Himal: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
Find us on:
https://twitter.com/Himalistan
https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian
https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/
The Election Commission of India was, for many years, one of the country’s most trusted public institutions lauded around the world for carrying out, every five years, the seemingly impossible task of India’s general elections. The commission was seen as non-partisan that did its work without fear or favour. That reputation has taken a hit in recent years.
Since August this year, it has been facing a particularly difficult test of its credibility after Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition, made allegations against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Election Commission ranging from voter fraud to inconsistencies in electoral rolls. These allegation were based on investigations into the Election Commission’s own records. Questions have also been raised over the commission’s Special Intensive Revision of voter lists before the Bihar state elections as to the timing and manner in which it was conducted and the commission’s possible motivations for such an exercise.
In this episode of State of Southasia, Anjali Bhardwaj, a transparency and accountability activist speaks to Nayantara Narayanan about the behaviour of the Election Commission in the conduct of elections over the past decade, the recent allegations it and its reluctance to share election and voter data. She says all this raises “very serious concerns both about the health of India's democracy and about the legitimacy of the governments that are functioning at the centre and in the states.”
You can also listen to this episode on:
🎧 YouTube: https://youtu.be/V6XhVNmMzJo
🎧 Apple podcasts: https://bit.ly/44iEnBY
Episode notes:
Anjali Bhardwaj’s recommendations:
Newton - Amit V. Masurkar (Hindi-language film)
Janne Bhi Do Yaaro - Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri (podcast on The Wire)
Electoral Democracy?: An Inquiry into the Fairness and Integrity of Elections in India – edited by M G Devasahayam (non-fiction)
Further reading from Himal’s archives:
India’s BJP government gamed the Jammu and Kashmir election – and still lost
Aakar Patel on the unprecedented threats to India’s election: State of Southasia #03
With an unfree and unfair election, Pakistan prepares to repeat its past
In Bangladesh’s sham election, the only real contest is geopolitical
Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.
Read more: https://www.himalmag.com/
Support our independent journalism and become a Patron of Himal: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
Find us on:
https://twitter.com/Himalistan
https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian
https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/
In this episode of Saffron Siege, the anthropologist Thomas Blom Hansen and journalist Qurban Ali join Harsh Mande to examine how the RSS has triggered, enabled and executed riots, targeted communal attacks and other forms of communal violence in India over the 100 years of its existence.
Ali who has reported on many of these incidents on the ground documents how many commissions have found the RSS culpable in riots dating back to Sholapur in 1967. Hansen talks about how violence is a central thesis of the RSS not only as a physical act but as a state of mind.
You can watch this full discussion on YouTube:
This episode is part of Season Two of Partitions of the Heart. In this season, Harsh Mander speaks to leading scholars and observers who have studied the RSS closely. Together, they examine its roots and core principles, its Hindutva agenda, and its corrosive role in India’s public and social life across a century
“Saffron Siege” runs from 17 September to 3 December 2025, with a new episode releasing every Wednesday. Himal’s podcasts are available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts
Production: Imaad ul Hasan, Lydia Smith, Ritika Chauhan, Nayantara Narayanan
Support Himal Podcasts and Himal's independent journalism for just USD 5 per month: https://payhere.lk/pay/oee1bdaf1
Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.
Read more: https://www.himalmag.com/
Support our independent journalism and become a Patron of Himal: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
Find us on:
https://twitter.com/Himalistan
https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian
https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/
A conversation with the writer Dur e Aziz Amna about her second novel, ‘A Splintering’, and its exploration of class struggle, female rage, and the challenges of navigating social expectations across rural and urban Pakistan.
Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books podcast, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan speaks to the writer Dur e Aziz Amna about her second novel, A Splintering (Duckworth Books, September 2025).
In a village in rural Pakistan, Tara dreams of escaping the dust, the stench, and the violent grip of her brother. An education and marriage to a middle-class accountant takes her to the capital, but she soon learns that respectability can become its own kind of cage. Her hunger for freedom and social mobility only deepens, even as the shadows of her past loom large.
Set against a backdrop of political unrest and everyday precarity, A Splintering by Dur e Aziz Amna is a gripping story of womanhood, desire and the costs of ambition.
This episode is now available on Spotify:
Apple Podcasts:
Youtube:
✨ Thank you for listening to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal Southasian. If you like this episode, please share widely, rate, review, subscribe and download the show on your favourite podcast apps.
✉️ Let’s keep the conversation going – please share your thoughts on the episode. Leave us a comment on Youtube or write to us at editorial@himalmag.com.
🙏🏼 To make conversations like this possible, we need the support of our listeners like you. Become a paying Himal Patron to support the Southasia Review of Books: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
📚 Sign up to receive the Southasia Review of Books newsletter for Himal’s spotlight on Southasian literature, our latest conversations, and more: https://bit.ly/southasia-review-of-books
Bhanwar Meghwanshi, who is a writer and a social and political activist, was once a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. He was a self-described “complete bhakt” with dreams of becoming a pracharak (preacher) till he realised that the RSS was as casteist as the rest of Hindu and Indian society. Meghwanshi who is a Dalit is now a strong opponent of the RSS and its divisive ideology. He describes his journey in this episode of Saffron Siege with Harsh Mander.
Meghwanshi talks about how the RSS and the BJP use oppressed communities, such as the Dalits, to gain power through politics and to do their dirtiest communal work, such as being on the frontlines of communal violence. He says that the time has come for oppressed communities to unite against exploitation, especially by upper caste groups and India’s right wing ecosystem.
🎧 You can watch the full episode with subtitles on YouTube: https://youtu.be/S7uXcpQrnkQ
This episode is part of Season Two of Partitions of the Heart. In this season, Harsh Mander speaks to leading scholars and observers who have studied the RSS closely. Together, they examine its roots and core principles, its Hindutva agenda, and its corrosive role in India’s public and social life across a century.
“Saffron Siege” runs from 17 September to 3 December 2025, with a new episode releasing every Wednesday. Himal’s podcasts are available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Production: Imaad ul Hasan, Lydia Smith, Ritika Chauhan, Nayantara Narayanan
Support Himal Podcasts and Himal's independent journalism for just USD 5 per month: https://payhere.lk/pay/oee1bdaf1
Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.
Read more: https://www.himalmag.com/
Support our independent journalism and become a Patron of Himal: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
Find us on:
https://twitter.com/Himalistan
https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian
https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/
The trajectory of the RSS in south India is very different from its history and progress in the north and northeast of the country. While coastal Karnataka was the landing ground of the Sangh in the south as far back as the 1950s, Hindutva found little traction in large parts of the south till the last decade when Narendra Modi and his BJP have been in national power. The biggest resistance to the RSS and Hindutva has been in Tamil Nadu.
In this episode, musician and socio-political commentator T M Krishna speaks to Harsh Mander about Tamil Nadu’s long history of social movements that has led to this resistance. They examine how the state’s linguistic and faith traditions have stood as a bulwark against the RSS’s attempts at homogenisation under a Hindu umbrella. Krishna points out the multiple streams of religious influence on arts in India, especially in music, and how the RSS has tried to deny this past in service of the ideological project. “Carnatic music is symbolic of something for the RSS. It is symbolic of that puritanical and cultural superiority… Homogenisation, or rather a linearisation, of that is convenient for them.”
You can watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/cPIGBhmk4us
This episode is part of Season Two of Partitions of the Heart. In this season, Harsh Mander speaks to leading scholars and observers who have studied the RSS closely. Together, they examine its roots and core principles, its Hindutva agenda, and its corrosive role in India’s public and social life across a century.
“Saffron Siege” runs from 17 September to 3 December 2025, with a new episode releasing every Wednesday. Himal’s podcasts are available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Production: Imaad ul Hasan, Lydia Smith, Ritika Chauhan, Nayantara Narayanan
Support Himal Podcasts and Himal's independent journalism for just USD 5 per month: https://payhere.lk/pay/oee1bdaf1
Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.
Read more: https://www.himalmag.com/
Support our independent journalism and become a Patron of Himal: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
Find us on:
https://twitter.com/Himalistan
https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian
https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/
As the Spring Revolution approaches its fifth year, Ma Thida, one of Myanmar’s foremost activists and intellectuals, reflects on the country’s political trajectory leading up to and beyond the 2021 military coup – and the people’s enduring fight for democracy.
Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books podcast, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan speaks to the Burmese surgeon, award-winning writer and human-rights activist Ma Thida about her new book, A-Maze: Myanmar’s Struggle for Democracy, 2011-2023 (Balestier Press, May 2024).
In February 2021, Myanmar’s junta staged a coup, ending a decade of fragile democratic transition and plunging the country back into military rule. What followed was the Spring Revolution – a nationwide movement, led above all by the country’s youth, which has continued to resist the junta through extraordinary courage and collective action.
The road to democracy in Myanmar has been nearly four decades long, beginning with the 1988 uprising. Ma Thida – one of Myanmar’s leading activists and intellectuals – has lived through every turn of that journey. In her new book, A-Maze, she traces how far Myanmar has come, how far it still has to go, and how the people’s struggle since the 2021 coup has both deepened and redefined the country’s quest for democracy.
The book looks at nearly three years of resistance and transformation, showing how the Spring Revolution isn’t just about ending military rule, but about breaking out of the larger “Maze” – the deep-rooted systems of control and inequality – and building together a new path toward a truly federal and democratic Myanmar.
This episode is now available on Youtube:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4EkNsOR7RzJYpxtG8VXM4D
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3JA9rpC
✨ Thank you for listening to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal Southasian. If you like this episode, please share widely, rate, review, subscribe and download the show on your favourite podcast apps.
✉️ Let’s keep the conversation going – please share your thoughts on the episode. Leave us a comment on Youtube or write to us at editorial@himalmag.com.
🙏🏼 To make conversations like this possible, we need the support of our listeners like you. Become a paying Himal Patron to support the Southasia Review of Books: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
📚 Sign up to receive the Southasia Review of Books newsletter for Himal’s spotlight on Southasian literature, our latest conversations, and more: https://bit.ly/southasia-review-of-books
How has the RSS and Hindutva propaganda worked over a century? Journalists and writers Akshaya Mukul and Kunal Purohit dive into the strategies and successes with Harsh Mander on the this episode of Saffron Siege.
Mukul examines the popularity Gita Press, which was founded in 1923 – two years before the RSS itself, and its many publications and how it insinuated itself into the consciousness of millions of Hindus. Purohit discusses the more recent phenomenon of Hindutva pop in which the internet has enabled young people in the smallest towns and villages to become Hindutva influencers regardless of education, access, gender or caste.
🎧 You can watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Kq6ffi92x5k
This episode is part of Season Two of Partitions of the Heart. In this season, Harsh Mander speaks to leading scholars and observers who have studied the RSS closely. Together, they examine its roots and core principles, its Hindutva agenda, and its corrosive role in India’s public and social life across a century.
“Saffron Siege” runs from 17 September to 3 December 2025, with a new episode releasing every Wednesday. Himal’s podcasts are available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Production: Imaad ul Hasan, Lydia Smith, Ritika Chauhan, Nayantara Narayanan
Support Himal Podcasts and Himal's independent journalism for just USD 5 per month: https://payhere.lk/pay/oee1bdaf1
Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.
Read more: https://www.himalmag.com/
Support our independent journalism and become a Patron of Himal: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
Find us on:
https://twitter.com/Himalistan
https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian
https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/
As the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup reaches its final week, veteran sports journalist Sharda Ugra examines the progress that women’s cricket in Southasia has made in recent years – especially since 2017, when the ICC televised the tournament, drawing in a wider audience and greater interest – as well as persistent gaps shaping women’s cricket today.
In this episode of State of Southasia, Ugra reflects on the growth in performance and professionalism across India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, while also pointing to the uneven marketing, sponsorship, and administrative support that continue to hold the game back. Despite rising viewership and a handful of breakout stars, she notes that the sport still fights for the kind of institutional investment and fan enthusiasm long guaranteed to the men’s side.
Amid the challenges, there are clear signs of change – from the Women’s Premier League opening new pathways for talent to the growing visibility of women in the sport. “One of the other really good things about this World Cup has been the presence of women everywhere,” Ugra says. “You see them – they're umpires, they're match referees, they’re officials, they’re in the commentary panel. It becomes normal for women to be in this space, which is a great thing.”
You can also listen to this episode on:
🎧 YouTube: https://youtu.be/1E6nW76WOD0
🎧 Apple podcasts: https://apple.co/3Wsiax4
Episode notes:
Sharda Ugra’s recommendations:
- She Dared: Women in Indian Sport – Abhishek Dubey and Sanjeeb Mukherjea (non-fiction)
- Unveiling Jazba: A History of Pakistan Women’s Cricket – Aayush Puthran (non-fiction)
- The Fire Burns Blue: A History of Women's Cricket in India – Karunya Keshav and Sidhanta Patnaik (non-fiction)
- Free Hit – Suprita Das (non-fiction)
Further reading from Himal’s archives:A sports journalist’s journey alongside the rise of Sri Lankan women’s cricket
The 2025 Women’s World Cup could be India’s biggest cricketing moment in over 50 years
Beyond the boundary: When a pandemic takes hold, even cricket knows when to stop buying its own hype
Cricketing rivalry with India can transform Australia’s view of Southasia – and of itself
Jasprit Bumrah embodies a better kind of Indian cricketer – and a better India
Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.
Read more: https://www.himalmag.com/
Support our independent journalism and become a Patron of Himal: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
Find us on:
https://twitter.com/Himalistan
https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian
https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/
Political scientists Tariq Thachil and Kamal Nayan Choubey speak to Harsh Mander about how the RSS and its offshoots have made inroads into and are influencing tribal and Adivasi society. They discuss the role of the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and Ekal Vidyalayas in co-opting tribal communities into broader Hindu society and their stated goals of countering Christian missionaries and alleged conversion.
You can watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-un2dGnUbs8
This episode is part of Season Two of Partitions of the Heart. In this season, Harsh Mander speaks to leading scholars and observers who have studied the RSS closely. Together, they examine its roots and core principles, its Hindutva agenda, and its corrosive role in India’s public and social life across a century.
“Saffron Siege” runs from 17 September to 3 December 2025, with a new episode releasing every Wednesday. Himal’s podcasts are available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Production: Imaad ul Hasan, Ayushi Malik, Lydia Smith, Ritika Chauhan, Nayantara Narayanan
Support Himal Podcasts and Himal's independent journalism for just USD 5 per month: https://payhere.lk/pay/oee1bdaf1
Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.
Read more: https://www.himalmag.com/
Support our independent journalism and become a Patron of Himal: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
Find us on:
https://twitter.com/Himalistan
https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian
https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/
The Mumbai based author Amrita Mahale discusses her novel ‘Real Life’ – delving into female friendship, obsession, Artificial Intelligence, and what it means to live freely in a world of control: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/amrita-mahale-himalaya-literary-mystery-novel
Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books podcast, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan speaks to the Mumbai-based author Amrita Mahale about her new novel, Real Life (Penguin India, July 2025).
In Amrita Mahale latest novel Real Life, the wildlife biologist Tara disappears from a remote Himalayan valley, sending her best friend Mansi on a search to retrace her steps. Meanwhile, the prime suspect, Bhaskar, unravels a disturbing labyrinth of obsession and half-truths.
Against a backdrop where technology, nature, caste, class, and the pursuit of freedom collide, Mahale’s novel is a haunting exploration of love, loss, and friendship. In a world constantly pushing for conformity, Real Life is a story about the many ways women vanish – from the world, and sometimes from themselves.
This episode is now available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/0gZTeTOq3pIApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4njFHLASpotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3USk3qKwYcevOEXPEMLXsl
✨Thank you for listening to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal Southasian. If you like this episode, please share widely, rate, review, subscribe and download the show on your favourite podcast apps.
✉️Let’s keep the conversation going – please share your thoughts on the episode. Leave us a comment on Youtube or write to us at editorial@himalmag.com.
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On 18 September, Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu ratified a new media law aimed at streamlining media regulation and seeking to curb disinformation. The law allowed the creation of a new commission with extensive powers, including the ability to block news websites, suspend media outlets’ registrations, issue fines to journalists and criminalise vague offences such as spreading fake news.
There was a huge outcry in the country against the controversial bill that critics say could muzzle the media and stifle free speech. The journalists associations pledged to defy the bill, the main opposition party called for protests against it and a global press freedom group urged Muizzu to veto the legislation. Yet Muizzu’s government, which enjoys a supermajority, was able to push the bill through parliament.
In this episode of State of Southasia, Ahmed Naish, editor of the Maldives Independent, talks to Nayantara Narayanan about the provisions of concern in the new law, including the creation of a commission that will act as a “super regulator”, the code of ethics that might be instituted for media organisations to follow and the broad and vague language of the law that might alow the government to persecute critical media on flimsy grounds.
You can also listen to this episode on:
🎧 YouTube: https://youtu.be/h-3fKG2q7QI
🎧 Apple podcasts: https://apple.co/4nTrO7S
Episode notes:
Ahmed Naish’s recommendations:
- The Maldives: Islamic Republic, Tropical Autocracy – JJ Robinson (non-fiction)
- Descent into Paradise – Daniel Bosley (non-fiction)
- The Island President - John Shenk (documentary film)
Further reading from Himal’s archives:
JJ Robinson on how Mohamed Muizzu’s Maldives is “a free-for-all kleptocracy”: State of Southasia #25
Youth protests take on the Maldives’s political culture after a woman’s fall
Interview: The Maldives makes a turn with new president Mohamed Muizzu
Strains between Malé and the atolls in the Maldives
The Maldives’ ruling party is fighting itself and the opposition in the race for president
Unpacking the Maldives’ Transitional Justice Act
Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.
Read more: https://www.himalmag.com/
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The feminist historian Tanika Sarkar speaks to Harsh Mander about the role of women in the #RSS, the organisation's view on gender and its reinforcement of patriarchy. Sarkar describes the creation of the RSS's women's wing, the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, and how it evolved over the years. She also speaks about the women leaders have emerged in the Hindutva fold to gain strategic power in the RSS's project of hate.
You can watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ghjTuQco4vw
This episode is part of Season Two of Partitions of the Heart. In this season, Harsh Mander speaks to leading scholars and observers who have studied the RSS closely. Together, they examine its roots and core principles, its Hindutva agenda, and its corrosive role in India’s public and social life across a century.
“Saffron Siege” runs from 17 September to 3 December 2025, with a new episode releasing every Wednesday. Himal’s podcasts are available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Production: Imaad ul Hasan, Ayushi Malik, Lydia Smith, Ritika Chauhan, Nayantara Narayanan
Support Himal Podcasts and Himal's independent journalism for just USD 5 per month: https://payhere.lk/pay/oee1bdaf1
Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.
Read more: https://www.himalmag.com/
Support our independent journalism and become a Patron of Himal: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
Find us on:
https://twitter.com/Himalistan
https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian
https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/
In this writer Aakar Patel and journalist Rana Ayyub examine with Harsh Mander whether India under Narendra Modi has transformed into a Hindu Rashtra or and to what extent does India’s secular socialist democracy still endures.
You can watch this conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/P3mb8QO9uDU
This episode is part of Season Two of Partitions of the Heart. In this season, Harsh Mander speaks to leading scholars and observers who have studied the RSS closely. Together, they examine its roots and core principles, its Hindutva agenda, and its corrosive role in India’s public and social life across a century.
“Saffron Siege” runs from 17 September to 3 December 2025, with a new episode releasing every Wednesday. Himal’s podcasts are available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Production: Imaad ul Hasan, Lydia Smith, Ritika Chauhan, Nayantara Narayanan
Support Himal Podcasts and Himal's independent journalism for just USD 5 per month: https://payhere.lk/pay/oee1bdaf1
Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.
Read more: https://www.himalmag.com/
Support our independent journalism and become a Patron of Himal: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
Find us on:
https://twitter.com/Himalistan
https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian
https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/
Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books podcast, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan speaks to the writer Aatish Taseer on history, syncretism and the search for belonging at the heart of his new book, A Return to Self: Excursions in Exile (HarperCollins Fourth Estate India, July 2025).
https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/aatish-taseer-history-exile-return-to-self
In 2019, the Indian government under Narendra Modi revoked the writer Aatish Taseer’s Overseas Citizenship, exiling him from the country where he had grown up and lived for thirty years. This loss prompted a journey revisiting the places that shaped his identity, exploring broader questions of the ties that bind us to home.
Spanning Istanbul to Uzbekistan, the high Andes to Mongolia, Taseer’s new book, A Return to Self: Excursions in Exile traces a life shaped by displacement and curiosities. He examines how overlapping pasts of culture, migration, and faith shapes both people and places, and what it means to exist in societies scarred by prejudice, exclusion and a contempt of history.
This episode is now available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/kXecyexfed8
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4nC6unj
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6kW2u2LhfxK1AR86405Z52
✨Thank you for listening to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal Southasian. If you like this episode, please share widely, rate, review, subscribe and download the show on your favourite podcast apps. ✉️Let’s keep the conversation going – please share your thoughts on the episode. Leave us a comment on Youtube or write to us at editorial@himalmag.com.📼If you haven’t already, do subscribe to the Himal Southasian YouTube channel and help us spread the word by sharing these episodes widely.🙏🏼 To make conversations like this possible, we need the support of our listeners like you. Become a paying Himal Patron to support the Southasia Review of Books: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal📚 Sign up to receive the Southasia Review of Books newsletter for Himal’s spotlight on Southasian literature, our latest conversations, and more: https://bit.ly/southasia-review-of-books
In this episode, Harsh Mander speaks to historians Mridula Mukherjee and Vinay Lal about the origins of the RSS, the ideologies of its founders, the it played (and did not play) in India’s freedom struggle, and its role during the Partition riots.
Mukherjee talks about how in pre-independence India, the idea that Hindus must constitute a separate nation that opposed including minorities already existed and the RSS was set up in 1925 with the purpose of forming a militant group – directly inspired by Europe’s fascists – that would form its ideological core. Lal points to how the RSS ideologue, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, wanted to “militarise Hindudom” to counter the British attempt to portray Indians as effeminate – which is an important reason why the RSS focuses on physical culture and hyper-masculinity.
You can watch the video of this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/7VbD_HMJF-8
This episode is part of Season Two of Partitions of the Heart. In this season, Harsh Mander speaks to leading scholars and observers who have studied the RSS closely. Together, they examine its roots and core principles, its Hindutva agenda, and its corrosive role in India’s public and social life across a century.
“Saffron Siege” runs from 17 September to 3 December 2025, with a new episode releasing every Wednesday. Himal’s podcasts are available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Production: Imaad ul Hassan, Ayushi Malik, Lydia Smith, Ritika Chauhan, Nayantara Narayanan
Support Himal Podcasts and Himal's independent journalism for just USD 5 per month: https://payhere.lk/pay/oee1bdaf1
Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.
Read more: https://www.himalmag.com/
Support our independent journalism and become a Patron of Himal: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
Find us on:
https://twitter.com/Himalistan
https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian
https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/
Since June, Pakistan has experienced yet another season of severe monsoon flooding, with particularly heavy impacts across the Punjab region. Flood waters and landslides have claimed many hundreds of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands more. The Pakistan Disaster Management Authority announced that, by 10 September, that 900 people had died and about four million were impacted by the floods.
The 2025 floods mark the third major event in the past 15 years – following the catastrophic flooding of 2010 and 2022. Climate change-induced weather phenomena are making extreme rainfall more common. But there is also unplanned development and dam mismanagement that are turning these extreme events into disasters.
In this episode of State of Southasia, Daanish Mustafa, a professor of critical geography and an expert on hydropolitics talks to Nayantara Narayanan about how climatic variability, unregulated development, and colonial water governance intersect to exacerbate Pakistan and other Southasian countries’ vulnerabilities to floods. Mustafa questions planning paradigms that rely on statistical "normality" and outdated colonial models and advocates for a shift toward participatory, democratic forms of environmental governance, grounded in local knowledge systems, social equity, and an understanding of water as both an ecological and cultural entity.
You can also listen to this episode on:
🎧 YouTube: https://youtu.be/_6rWl2S8yxM
🎧 Apple podcasts: https://apple.co/3WboIQn
Episode notes:
Daanish Mustafa’s recommendations:
The disastrous redesign of Pakistan’s rivers - Vox (video)
The Indus Rivers: A Study of the Effects of Partition - Aloys Arthur Michel (non-fiction)
Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India - Rohan D’Souza (non-fiction)
Further reading from Himal’s archives:
Pakistan loses nothing from India’s suspension of the Indus Waters
TreatyUnpacking the floods in PakistanManaging floods in
BangladeshExplainer: Why embankments won’t solve Nepal’s flood woesIs
Kerala’s pokkali the rice of the future?
Himal Southasian is Southasia’s first and only regional news and analysis magazine. Stretching from Afghanistan to Burma, from Tibet to the Maldives, this region of more than 1.4 billion people shares great swathes of interlocking geography, culture and history. Yet today neighbouring countries can barely talk to one another, much less speak in a common voice. For three decades, Himal Southasian has strived to define, nurture, and amplify that voice.
Read more: https://www.himalmag.com/
Support our independent journalism and become a Patron of Himal: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himal
Find us on:
https://twitter.com/Himalistan
https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian
https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/