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:

https://twitter.com/Himalistan

https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian

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

The filmmaker Saeed Akhtar Mirza talks to Harsh Mander about a civilisational slide in india over the past three decades. “The idea of India as in our constitution being slowly eroded in front of our eyes and nothing was done about it,” he says. In this episode Mirza talks about how the Hindu right is rewriting history and scripting one-sided narratives through cinema, about the takeover over film schools by political agenda and more.

Mirza recalls his immense despair in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, followed by communal riots and bomb blasts in his home city of Mumbai. At the time he made a film called Naseem in which he wrote the epitaph of India. But Mirza believes that India’s current troubles will pass as everything before it has. After making Naseem, he travelled across the country meeting ordinary people who restored his faith in its pluralism.

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 full episode on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/5WO0WRYFbls

♦️ Glossary

Scoundrel Times: A term coined by the American playwright Lillian Hellman referring to the McCarthy era which was defined by selfishness, cruelty, corruption, and fear in the US government and society.

Taimur: A 14th century ruler of Turco-Mongol origin and founder of the Timurid Empire situated in an around modern-day Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia

Khiljis: A Turco-Afghan dynasty who ruled large parts of the Subcontinent fron Delhi between 1290 and 1320

Aurangzeb: The sixth Mughal emperor who ruled from 1658 and 1708

Seljuks, Mamluks, Ottomans: Powerful Turkic dynasties with Islamic rulers

♦️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: ♦️ https://twitter.com/Himalistan♦️ https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian♦️ https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/

A conversation with the Indologist Wendy Doniger on her wide-ranging study ‘The Cave of Echoes’, and the importance of understanding other peoples’ myths and rituals: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/wendy-doniger-history-myths-hinduism-india

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 distinguished Indologist and scholar of Sanskrit and Indian textual traditions Wendy Doniger about her book, The Cave of Echoes: Stories About Gods, Animals and Other Strangers (Speaking Tiger, July 2025).

In The Cave of Echoes, Wendy Doniger writes that, “it is impossible to define myth, but it is cowardly not to try.” For her, the best way to approach myth is not by defining it, but to look at it in action, which is precisely what she has set out to do throughout this book: to explore what myth does, rather than what myth is.

This book is a celebration of the universal art of storytelling and the diverse narratives that shape how people understand their world and their pasts. Drawing on Hindu epics, Biblical parables, Greek myths and modern mythologies, Doniger examines the enduring force of myth and tradition, and how they shape societies. 

She shows how myth not only allows cultures to define themselves, but also how the myths of others can reflect back truths often overlooked in our own. Along the way, Doniger raises critical questions about how we interpret mythic stories, and how different communities across Southasia and beyond engage with these foundational texts and traditions.

This episode is now available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/g9ZB8Tsb5bUSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4QXQSdxK4MF30bV5rXQULW?si=5b1e0acc9cec40f6Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wendy-doniger-on-importance-of-understanding-other/id1464880116?i=1000719434400

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

In this conversation with Harsh Mander, the legal academic Mohsin Alam says that the crisis of Indian Muslims, which is about safety, integration, and citizenship, is tied to the crisis of Indian democracy. How the Indian state and society treats with its weaker populations, including religious minorities, will determine whether India remains a democracy or not.

Alam points to evidence that anti-democratisation of the economy has had a terrible impact on minorities and Muslims in particular. He says that greater neoliberalism has led to a loss of solidarity among majorities and minorities, among different communities.

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 entire episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gMol26m0aYw

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 2 April, the US president Donal Trump announced a set of import tariffs on almost all countries. He claimed the measure was to eliminate trade imbalances and called them recirpocal. The Trump administration then applied individual tariffs rates depending on which countries had the largest trade deficits with the US.

The US first set a 3-month deadline for countries to make trade agreements with it or else the tariff would be imposed. Earlier this month, Trump unveiled revised tariffs on at least 20 countries including Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, threatening 30 percent on all goods imported into the US from Sri Lanka and 35 percent on goods from Bangladesh. He announced a new deadline of August 1.

Southasia’s economy, like much of the rest of the world, has been sustained and has grown due to access to the US markets. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh’s garment sectors are likely to be the most impacted by the tariffs. In India, there are worries over agriculture, steel, aluminium and pharmaceutical exports.

On this episode of State of Southasia, the economist Umesh Moramudali speaks to associate editor Nayantara Narayanan about the impacts of the Trump tariffs on Southasia – the hit on exports, the possible impact on unskilled labour, and the ramifications for balance of payments and debt restructuring in countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

This episode is also available on:

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

🎧 Apple podcasts: https://apple.co/44WDzlT

🎧 Himal website: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/umeshmoramudali-trump-tariff-exports-srilanka-bangladesh

Episode notes:

Umesh Moramudali’s recommendations:

- The Wolf-Krugman Exchange (podcast)

- The Great Rebalancing: Trade, Conflict, and the Perilous Road Ahead for the World Economy – Michael Pettis (non-fiction)

- The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa – Deborah Brautigam (non-fiction)

- Between Debt and the Devil – Adair Turner Further reading from Himal’s archives:

- Trump’s approach to Southasia bolsters China’s regional sway

- Jayati Ghosh on the USAID shocker and the politics of foreign aid: State of Southasia #19

- Trump’s aid cuts have broken global health – but we can fight back

- How the IMF bailout is changing Sri Lanka’s foreign policy

- Pakistan’s IMF bailout is not without political consequences

- Why did India fail to industrialise where East Asia succeeded?

- Elite capture is the real issue plaguing Pakistan’s economy

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/

Irfan Habib, who is regarded as one of India's best historians, tells Harsh Mander that encouraged by the Narendra Modi and BJP leadership, The Hindu right is attempting not just to rewrite India's history to erase Muslim presence and contribution but to manufacture it entirely. Now 94, Habib looks back to when India got independence – when he was a young man – and at the inclusiveness and spirit of service of national leaders at the time. He also looks critically at the divisive politics of the present but believes that "ultimately I think India is a large country with varied languages and I think a pure Hindu religious philosophy can't unite 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. 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 episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/uyoDoPELQdU

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:

https://twitter.com/Himalistan

https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian

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

No Place to Call My Own’ seethes with a quiet anger of our times, where a young woman struggles with her own sense of self and belonging, and the restless anxieties of adulthood in Urban India.

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 Alina Gufran about her debut novel, No Place to Call My Own (Westland Tranquebar, January 2025)

Stories with self-aware but disillusioned millennial women protagonists are on the rise, and many of these characters, especially in recent Southasian literary fiction, are caught up in the messiness of late-capitalist life.

Through Sophia, a young woman navigating life and painful self-discovery across cities, No Place to Call My Own tackles issues related to class, religion and economic precarity. Unfolding against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement, the 2020 Delhi riots, and a global pandemic, the novel questions what it means to fit in when apathy becomes a mode of survival.

Sophia’s journey is not just her own but that of any woman who finds themselves caught in between – unable to back down and refusing to conform – and who doesn’t quite feel rooted to one place or identity. Though the picture Alina Gufran paints of this generation may be grim, it will be immediately and uncomfortably relatable to anyone contending with what it means to belong in Urban India today.

This episode is now available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/K-fhyQAxkAI

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7BFGQl29bldpT52KgMNHAC

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alina-gufran-on-millennial-precarity-and-unbelonging/id1464880116?i=1000717116210

Let’s keep the conversation going – please share your thoughts on the episode or on Alina Gufran's novel. If something resonated with you, 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

Aman Wadud, a lawyer and politician, tells Harsh Mander that Bengali Muslims Assam are among the most persecuted in the country. Having been accused or taunted of being "outsiders" or "Bangladeshis" for decades, they have in recent years faced the terror of state policies questioning their citizenship, especially the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act.

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 this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/kf-Zs4lsrXY

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/Himalistanhttps://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian https://www.instagram.com/himalistan/

In October 2024, two months after the monsoon revolution in Bangladesh toppled Sheikh Hasina as prime minister and Awami League government, four gender experts wrote a column in the Bangladesh newspaper Prathom Alo about the women leaders of the movement. They said that these women had been invisibilised in the initiatives and discussions around rebuilding Bangladesh. 

In the months since Hasina's ouster and the formation of an interim government, Bangladesh has also seen a resurgence of its Islamic parties, particularly the Jamaat-e-Islami, in the country's politics. This has raised concerns about these parties trying to enforce restrictions on women's participation in public life. There has also been much discussion across the country about incidents of violence against women. In March, students from 30 colleges in Dhaka held a protest against what they called a rise in violence, rape and torture of women, demanding that the interim government institute maximum punishments for perpetrators. This protest ended in

ended in clashes between the protesters and law enforcement. 

On this episode of State of Southasia, sociologist and gender expert Samina Luthfa speaks to associate editor Nayantara Narayanan about the present status of women in Bangladesh, what is happening with the feminist movement, and how the country's politics – which is still in a state of flux – is affecting women. Luthfa explains that the interim government has failed in providing women protection. At the same time, she says, some incidents have been overblown and politicised to build a perception that Bangladesh has become more unsafe since the change of government. 

This episode is also available on:

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

🎧 Apple podcasts: http://bit.ly/4lFqm7x

🎧 Himal website: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/samina-luthfa-bangladesh-women-gender

Episode notes:

Samina Luthfa’s recommendations:

Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism – Elora Shehabuddi (non-fiction)

Sultana’s Dream - Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (fiction) 

Further reading from Himal’s archives:

Bangladesh’s flawed attempt at transitional justice after Sheikh Hasina

The future of Bangladesh’s fragile media freedom
New reports caution Bangladesh against “replicating poor practices” of the Sheikh Hasina regime
India’s warped narrative of an “anti-Hindu” Bangladesh imperils its own future standing

State of Southasia #11: Jyoti Rahman on rebuilding democracy in Bangladesh

How Pakistan still shuts women out of political power

Can Sri Lanka’s newly empowered NPP deliver a new dawn for women in politics?

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/

Shahrukh Alam, a lawyer practicing in India's Supreme Court, dissects how the country's law and order machinery has been turned against its Muslim citizens in recent years. Alam talks about the criminalising of protest by Muslims and anti-constitutional arguments being made in the courts, how cultural narratives have shifted to allow these things to happen.

You can find watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/hc9I7ssBPuQ

Glossary

- Naroda Patiya: A village where nearly 100 Muslims were killed on 28 February 2002 during larger communal riots in the Indian state of Gujarat

- Agamben: Giorgio Agamben is a leading political philosopher and political theorist

- Sudarshan: Sudarshan news is a television channel in India known for its openly right-wing and anti-Muslim rhetoric

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:

https://twitter.com/Himalistan

https://www.facebook.com/himal.southasian

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