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
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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
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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.
🙏🏼 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
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/
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 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/
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In this episode of "Saffron Siege: The RSS at 100", Apoorvanand discusses how the Hindu and Hindutva common sense kept the RSS popular even though it was banned after Gandhi's assassination in 1948. He talks to Harsh Mander about how it emerged from the shadows of being a banned organisation, how it grew from strength to strength through the 1960s, 1970s up till 2014 when Narendra Modi became prime minister, and the leaders who legitimised it along the way.
You can watch the episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Osrg7Zy0GP4
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/
Become a paying Patron of Himal: https://www.himalmag.com/support-himalFind us on:
https://twitter.com/Himalistan
https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian
https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/
In her new book ‘The Jackfruit Chronicles’, the award-winning food writer Shahnaz Ahsan invites us into her family’s British-Bangladeshi kitchen, showing how food carries both resistance and remembrance, and reflects the complexities of diasporic life in Britain: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/shahnaz-ahsan-food-bangladesh-diaspora
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 award-winning food writer Shahnaz Ahsan about her new book, The Jackfruit Chronicles: Memories and Recipes from a British-Bangladeshi Kitchen (Harper Collins, July 2025).
Part memoir, part cookbook, The Jackfruit Chronicles is a deeply personal exploration of food, family and identity. Through stories and recipes, Shahnaz documents the vibrant flavours and captivating stories of Bengali food and its place in Britain. Beginning with the arrival of her grandfather in Manchester in the 1950s, the book traces not only one family’s journey, but also the wider story of the Bangladeshi diaspora’s search for home and belonging.
This episode is now available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/GnWLGrFyB3A
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0SwZazJ5odQSPuQrTrY9vd
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4n8PQvk
Let’s keep the conversation going – please share your thoughts on the episode. Leave us a comment here on Youtube or send me an email (shwethas[at]himalmag[dot]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 inaugural episode of the podcast “Saffron Siege”, Harsh Mander speaks to Rajmohan Gandhi, a renowned historian and grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, on the hostility of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh towards Gandhi that ultimately led to his assasination in January 1948.
Rajmohan Gandhi describes how Gandhi's demand for an India that belonged equally to all religions, communities and identities set him against the Hindu right. “Those who ultimately did kill him did not want an India for everybody. They wanted an India where some people would be supreme, others would be subservient or junior or second-class,” says Rajmohan Gandhi.
He describes how the Hindu Mahasabha and Hindutva ideologues were also advocates of Partition and kept their distance from India’s struggle for independence from British rule. “Those who do any serious study will know that the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha kept aloof from the freedom struggle and they openly said that the Muslims are a real enemy and in fact we should cooperate with the British.”You can watch this conversation 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.
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/
All eyes have been on Nepal since last week when a large but loosely organised protest by young people in Kathmandu turned into a revolution that brought down the government. On September 8th, many groups of young college and school goers took out a peaceful protest march in Kathmandu. There had been rising anger about systemic corruption and nepotism among the political class that was the foundation for these protests.
The immediate trigger, however, was a government announcement of a social media ban.The announcement of the ban itself was due to a government requirement that tech companies register in Nepal and many not having done so but was also seen, by many of the protesters, as a way for the government to silence dissent and criticism. For many weeks before the protest, videos had been circulating of so-called “nepo babies”, that is, children of rich and influential people flaunting lavish lifestyles while much of the rest of Nepal was dealing with poverty and the lack of jobs and opportunities for advancement.
The government came down hard on the protests. Police fired into the crowds and at least 19 people were killed on 8th September. Things then got out of hand. On the 9th, there was widespread violence in anger and retaliation. Mobs set buildings, including the parliament, ablaze, and attacked politicians, their families and anyone who as seen to be close to power. More people were killed with a reported death toll of 51 by the weekend. The prime minister KP Oli resigned, army patrols took over the streets and rumours and speculation took over. The power vacuum has led to fears in Nepal of foreign interference, or a push for a return to monarchy, or even a takeover by the army. Meanwhile, Gen Z-ers have been holding public town hall-style meetings on the online platform Discord to discuss their agendas and a way forward. On Friday night, they voted for Sushila Karki, a former chief justice, to lead the interim government.
In this episode, we look at what Nepal’s GenZ and others hope for in the coming days, months and years, and what about Nepal’s politics, economy and society they see as needs fixing. Nayantara Narayanan speaks to the Ujjawala Maharjan, a poet and educator from Kathmandu, Anjali Sah, a law student in Kathmandu originally from Madhesh, and Tashi Lhozam, a climate activist and social scientists from the Humla district in the highlands of Nepal.
This episode is also available on
🎧YouTube: https://youtu.be/qQwZGV6gWVk
🎧 Apple podcasts: https://apple.co/4n0KJx3
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 British-Bangladeshi writer on her debut novel, The First Jasmines, and the untold stories of women who survived the violence of the 1971 Liberation War: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/saima-begum-novel-bangladesh-liberation-war-birangona
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 British-Bangladeshi writer Saima Begum about her debut novel The First Jasmines (Hajar Press, July 2025).
In 1971, during the nine-month war that gave Bangladesh its independence from then West Pakistan, the Pakistan Army carried out a brutal crackdown against Bengalis in which hundreds of thousands of women were detained and repeatedly brutalised.
What the women had experienced was one of the first recorded examples of rape being used as a weapon of war in the 20th century. However, an uncanny silence has remained when it comes to the birangonas’ own testimonies.
Within Bangladesh, widespread stigma led to the women being ostracised by their communities, and their accounts are suppressed by silencing and shame. Today, a plaque at the Liberation War Museum in Dhaka reads: “There are not many records of this hidden suffering.” Yet across the country, there are survivors with stories to tell.
Set against the final weeks of the Liberation War in Bangladesh, Saima Begum’s novel follows two sisters, Lucky and Jamila, who are captured and imprisoned by the Pakistan military.
Through their story, Begum writes the birangona women back into a history from which they had been largely erased. The First Jasmines brings to light the experiences of the women who endured unimaginable violence and injustices in 1971 and its invisible aftermath – women whose voices have largely been excluded from national memory and popular narratives.
This episode is now available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/GsfNH8aFHus
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0SQfCXYyUvczJwIT0obwLp
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/45RJ0Em
Let’s keep the conversation going – please share your thoughts on the episode. Leave us a comment here on Youtube or send me an email (shwethas[at]himalmag[dot]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