New Books in South Asian Studies

Over the centuries, millions of migrant labourers sailed from the Indian subcontinent, across the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean, to shape what is now the world’s largest diaspora. Coolie Migrants, Indian Diplomacy: Caste, Class and Indenture Abroad, 1914-67 (Hearst, 2025 and Oxford UP, 2026) recovers the histories and

Film City Urbanism in India: Hyderabad, from Princely City to Global City ,1890-2000 (Cambridge UP, 2025) is about the reciprocal relationship between cinema and the city as two institutions which co-constitute each other while fashioning the socio-political currents of the region. It interrogates imperial, postcolonia

For more than 60 years, the United States has trained fewer physicians than it needs, relying instead on the economically expedient option of soliciting immigrant physicians trained at the expense of other countries. The passage of the Hart–Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 expedited the entry of foreign m

Focusing on India between the early nineteenth century and the First World War, Colonial Terror explores the centrality of the torture of Indian bodies to the law-preserving violence of colonial rule and some of the ways in which extraordinary violence was embedded in the ordinary operation of colonial states. Although

How did Brahma create alluring women, and for what purpose? Why did the righteous King Bhangashvana choose womanhood? How did the sage Markandeya's pupil prevent his guru's wife from committing adultery? What role did Indra play in the births of Vishvamitra and Parashu Rama? How were death, diseases, desire and ang

How did India’s landmark Forest Rights Act come into being? And what difference has it made to the lives of historically marginalized forest-dwelling communities? These questions are at the heart of Anand Vaidya’s new monograph Future of the forest: Struggles over land and law in India that we discuss in this episode.