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

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On the 22nd of August, Colombo police arrested the former president of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe over allegations that he used public funds on a two-day personal visit to the United Kingdom in September 2023.

Sri Lanka’s anticorruption units have been cracking down on corruption cases since the president Anura Kumara Dissanayake came to power in September last year on a promise to fight corruption. More than a dozen political leaders from the previous government and former government officials have been arrested or being investigated for corruption and malpractice. Wickremesinghe’s arrest is the most high-profile one in this yet. In the wake of his arrest, a number of politicians from Wickfremesinghe’s party and others in the opposition have rallied behind him, calling the case unfair and politically motivated.

In this episode of State of Southasia episode, associate editor Nayantara Narayanan speaks to writer, editor and researcher Marlon Ariyasinghe to talk about what Wickremesinghe’s signifies in the larger politics of Sri Lanka, what about its culture has changed and what has remained stubbornly unchanging. You can also listen to this episode on:

🎧 YouTube: https://youtu.be/Z6s98j6P0K0

🎧 Apple podcasts: https://apple.co/3I29HNk

♦️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.

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A conversation with Vishwambhari Parmar on curating and translating The Blaft Anthology of Gujarati Pulp Fiction, and uncovering the genre’s darker and more irreverent worlds in Southasian literature.

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 Vishwambhari Parmar, the curator and translator of The Blaft Anthology of Gujarati Pulp Fiction (Blaft Publications, December 2024).

The term “pulp” comes from the cheap wood-pulp paper on which stories considered lowbrow were printed on. Their content often reflected society’s darker sides: crime, corruption, misogyny and problematic caricatures. And despite – or because of – their racier subject matter, pulp fiction was wildly popular in Southasia. 

These stories also helped shape much of what we now consider canon in Southasian science fiction, noir, horror and romance. Over time, paperbacks, comics, and higher-quality magazines largely replaced pulp publications – but the stories never stopped being written.

The Blaft Anthology of Gujarati Pulp Fiction, curated and translated by Vishwambhari Parmar, and edited by Rakesh Kannah, preserves this rich and often overlooked Gujarati literary world. From supernatural crime thrillers and folk horror, to Mumbai underworld revenge fantasies, the anthology brings a taste of Gujarat’s bestselling adventure, dark fantasy and mysteries to wider English-reading audiences.

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).

We’re on a mission to give Southasian literature the spotlight it deserves. 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

Harsh Mander wraps up Season 1 of this podcast series with Himal associate editor Nayantara Narayanan. They talk about the significant moments and takeaways from Mander's conversations with eminent and emerging voices on the crisis of Muslims in India: Afreen Fatima, Hilal Ahmed, Amirullah Khan, Seema Chishti, Shahrukh Alam, Aman Wadud, Irfan Habib, Mohsin Alam Bhat, Saeed Mirza, Syeda Hameed, Manoj Jha and Zeyad Masroor Khan.

This episode is part of the podcast series Partitions of the Heart: Conversations with Harsh Mander, produced in association with Karwan-e-Mohabbat. The inaugural season called Muslim Life – and Death – in Modi's India, focuses on the deepening crisis of Muslims in India under the rule of Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Mander hosts conversations with a powerful array of Indian Muslim figures both eminent and emerging, young and old. Together, they talk about the lived experiences of Indian Muslims amid the rise of the Hindu Right and escalating Islamophobia, as well as the politics and the history that have brought India to this shocking new reality.

You can watch this episodes on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Uw3bGOXSbgU

Watch and listen to the full season on Himal Southasian's podcast channels.

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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Zeyad Masroor Khan grew up in a Muslim ghetto in Aligarh, a place he says is still “caught in time” and one he describes as still a slice of “India as it was envisioned by Nehru and Gandhi” with people from different religious communities living close by, running their businesses together and having family connections. But, in this same ghetto, he also witnessed several communal riots as he came of age.

In this podcast episode, Khan speaks to Harsh Mander about what he witnessed and the lessons from that childhood. They also speak about why Muslims live in ghettos, the new dangers they face from economic boycotts and the unabashed hate and division that is even causing their expulsions from parts of the country. 

This episode is part of the podcast series Partitions of the Heart: Conversations with Harsh Mander, produced in association with Karwan-e-Mohabbat. The inaugural season called Muslim Life – and Death – in Modi's India, focuses on the deepening crisis of Muslims in India under the rule of Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Mander hosts conversations with a powerful array of Indian Muslim figures both eminent and emerging, young and old. Together, they talk about the lived experiences of Indian Muslims amid the rise of the Hindu Right and escalating Islamophobia, as well as the politics and the history that have brought India to this shocking new reality.

You can watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/AxaEEUPkc-k

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/

On 15 August 2025, the Taliban marked four years since retaking control of Afghanistan – a period defined by deepening authoritarianism, economic collapse, and international isolation. As the regime tightens its grip, the country faces yet another compounding crisis: mass deportations of Afghan migrants from neighboring Iran and Pakistan.

Since January 2025, more than one million Afghans have been expelled from Iran alone, while Pakistan – once a long-time host of Afghans – began its own deportations in November 2023, contributing to a total of 2.5 million returnees over the past two years. Many of those forced back had lived abroad for decades, built families, and held legal documentation, only to find themselves suddenly unwelcome and pushed into an Afghanistan ill-equipped to receive them.

In this episode of State of Southasia episode, journalist Zahra Nader, editor-in-chief of Zan Times, speaks to Himal’s associate editor Nayantara Narayanan about the rapidly escalating humanitarian emergency. Drawing from months of Zan Times’ field reporting along the Iran-Afghanistan border, Nader recounts harrowing stories of Afghan refugees beaten in detention, robbed of wages and housing deposits, and returned across the border. Camps in Herat and Nimruz provinces, already overcrowded and under-resourced, now shelter hundreds of thousands – many without access to food, water, or medical care. Women and children, who make up over 60 percent of returnees, face further repression under Taliban rule, including travel restrictions, bans on education and total economic exclusion.

This episode is also available on

🎧 YouTube: https://youtu.be/O617eehXE2c

🎧 Apple podcasts: https://apple.co/45mdzSp

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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Manoj Jha, a politician and member of India’s upper house – the Rajya Sabha – is the rare politician who has spoken up about the persecution of Muslims in India and their being pushed into being second-class citizens of the country. Jha believes and has written that Muslims are not mere footnotes but co-authors in the story of India. In this conversation with Harsh Mander, Jha says that the the craving for peace that was once the default template of India has been warped into a politics of hate.

Jha attributed many factors to this change. For instance, “the prosperity or the non-prosperity of the middle class, the shift from a public sector to a liberalised economy. The market can sell anything. If it finds that love has few takers, hate has more takers, it will package hate,” he says.

This episode is part of the podcast series Partitions of the Heart: Conversations with Harsh Mander, produced in association with Karwan-e-Mohabbat. The inaugural season called Muslim Life – and Death – in Modi's India, focuses on the deepening crisis of Muslims in India. Mander hosts conversations with a powerful array of Indian Muslim figures both eminent and emerging, young and old. Together, they talk about the lived experiences of Indian Muslims amid the rise of the Hindu Right and escalating Islamophobia, as well as the politics and the history that have brought India to this shocking new reality.

You can watch the whole conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8MOhZggVcb4GlossaryRahi Masoom Raza: An Indian writer and poet in Urdu and Hindi who wrote screenplays and dialogies for major Hindi films and among whose important literary works are Aadha Gaon and Topi Shukla.Jawaharlal Nehru on India as a palimpsest: “She was like some ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously.”

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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https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/

A conversation with the journalist Ipsita Chakravarty on what it means for the people of Kashmir to tell their stories – in a place where history is contested, identity is under siege, and memorialisation itself is a political act: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/ipsita-chakravarty-conflict-storytelling-kashmir

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 journalist Ipsita Chakravarty about her new book, Dapaan: Tales from Kashmir’s Conflict (Context, July 2025 / Hurst, June 2025).

“Haalaat” is a word used in Kashmir to describe the time after 1989, the conditions under which the armed resistance for freedom gained momentum. When the journalist Ipsita Chakravarty first visited the Valley in 2016, she found the haalaat was constantly being turned into stories.

The stories often begin with the word “dapaan” – “it is said” – a signature that links them to Kashmir’s long traditions of storytelling. In a place where the conflict has seeped into homes, language and culture, everyone seemed to be telling stories of the strange conditions that had overtaken their lives.

These narratives – by turns intimate, satirical, surreal – express a kind of public understanding, a distinctly Kashmiri memory of events so often narrated from elsewhere.

In her new book, Dapaan: Tales from Kashmir’s Conflict, Chakravarty listens closely to these stories — not as a chronicle of the Indian nation, but as a way of seeing Kashmir on its own terms. She brings together dark humour, songs of grief and blood maps of memory that reveal how storytelling itself became a form of survival and resistance in Kashmir. 

This episode is now available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/O9e-C4-NM1kSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4q6TVdGK4lnAXYAy5GbeCCApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3J85Aj1

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

The educationist, writer and women's rights activist Syeda Hameed had a ringside view on much of what was unfolding in the new India in the years after it became independent. This was a country that had become free, but after Partition when a million Hindus and Muslims had been slaughtered by the other. Yet, Hameed remembers the first decade of free India as one of immense hope.

"My family comes from Panipat," Hameed says. "And Panipat was a symbol of Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb – the mingling of the Hindu-Muslim, the composite culture... There was a beautiful commingling and that is really the India, that was my DNA, you know." Speaking to Harsh Mander, Hameed says she does not feel any of that hope now.

This episode is part of the podcast series Partitions of the Heart: Conversations with Harsh Mander, produced in association with Karwan-e-Mohabbat. The inaugural season called Muslim Life – and Death – in Modi's India, focuses on the deepening crisis of Muslims in India. Mander hosts conversations with a powerful array of Indian Muslim figures both eminent and emerging, young and old. Together, they talk about the lived experiences of Indian Muslims amid the rise of the Hindu Right and escalating Islamophobia, as well as the politics and the history that have brought India to this shocking new reality.

You can find audio versions of this conversation on:

🎧 Spotify:

🎧 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

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Bhutan’s bold new urban venture, the Geluphu Mindfulness City, is being pitched as a landmark in values-based development. Envisioned as an economic hub rooted in sustainability and Buddhist ideals, the project spans 2,500 square kilometres along the country’s southern border with India. But while official narratives emphasise harmony and prosperity, they overlook a critical historical context: Geluphu was once home to thousands of Lhotshampa – Nepali-speaking Bhutanese who were expelled from the country in the 1990s.In this episode of State of Southasia, writer and researcher Maximilian Morch who studies Asia’s borderlands speaks to associate editor Nayantara Narayanan about the implications of the project. Morch says that the announcement project has been “incredibly painful” for displaced Lhotshampa communities, many of whom still hold land documents for plots now earmarked for development. “There are refugees alive today in Nepal who own the land that the GMC is being built on,” he says. “They have not been consulted. Their concerns are being bulldozed.” He also questions the economic viability of the city, given Bhutan’s growing brain drain and struggling public services, noting that “special economic zones tend to have weaker worker rights and less employment protection.” Morch raises questions about who benefits from Bhutan’s development strategy, and who is being left out. You can also listen to this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gVElZ4oZpe8Apple podcastsEpisode notes:Maximilian Morch’s recommendations:- The dark shadows of Bhutan’s Gelephu ‘mindfulness city’ project (Scroll.in)- Susan Banki on the battles of Nepali-Bhutanese refugees: State of Southasia #16 (Himal Southasian podcast)- Unbecoming Citizens: Culture, Nationhood, and the Flight of Refugees from Bhutan - Michael Hutt (non-fiction) Further reading from Himal’s archives:
Bland lessons and careful lies from Bhutan’s prime minister
Dictated democracy? Bhutan struggles to stabilise its government and political system
The dragon bites its tail – Part I, Part II, Part III

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-himalFind us on:

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