Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal Southasian, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan, associate editor at Himal Southasian, speaks to Ari Gautier on his new short story collection, Nocturne Pondicherry, translated from the French by Roopam Singh (Hachette India, June 2024), and his novel, Lakshmi’s Secret Diary, translated by Sheela Mahadevan (Columbia University Press, September 2024). 

Blending philosophy, retellings of Southasian mythology, and the little-known history of French colonialism in Pondicherry, Lakshmi’s Secret Diary tells the fictionalised story of a temple elephant seeking to escape captivity. Through Lakshmi’s journey, where she encounters a colorful cast of animals, both real and mythical, Ari Gautier provides a searing critique of the caste system and colonial rule and sheds light on the paradoxes of human-animal relations in India, where animals are both abused and worshiped. 

In Nocturne Pondicherry, we see the city in altogether a different light. Ari’s immersive, dark and unsettling collection of short stories peels back layers of ghettoised Black Town where its ill-fated dwellers are at the mercy of caste oppression, anger, greed and lust. 

This episode is now available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud and Youtube. 

In September, India’s home minister Amit Shah suddenly announced a name change for the capital of the union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands – from Port Blair to Sri Vijaya Puram. He said the move was meant to “free the nation from the colonial imprints”. But surprised residents of the islands were not entirely happy with the new name that did not resonate with the history of the islands and because of what it would mean for the brand of tourism that the name Port Blair had come to signify.

The government and much of India has often acted as though the islands are a remote outpost meant for tourism and, when opportunity arises, commercial exploitation. In a move far more disruptive than the name change, the government has cleared an infrastructure project on Great Nicobar Island that includes a port, an airport, a power plant and a new township that will increase the island's population from 8,000 to 350,000. The investment in the project will be around INR 72,000 crore or USD 9 billion. Critics have pointed out to the severe ecological damage to the island and the surrounding Andaman sea, disruptions to the local populace including the Nicobarese and Shompen tribes and possible loss of unique species endemic to the islands.

Pankaj Sekhsaria, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (Bombay) and member of Kaplavriksh Environmental Action Group, says that it is important to centre the islands’ interests while considering any development there. Sekhsaria, who has researched and written about the islands for 30 years, discusses the project and its many impacts with associate editor Nayantara Narayanan on this episode of State of Southasia. Recalling the destruction caused by the 2004 tsunami, he said that such large-scale disruptions to a geologically sensitive region such as Great Nicobar puts ecology, infrastructure, indigenous people and migrants to the island at significant risk. 

State of Southasia releases a new interview every two weeks.

This podcast is now available on Spotify, Apple podcasts and Youtube.

In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan, associate editor at Himal Southasian, speaks to the journalists Saba Imtiaz and Tooba Masood-Khan about their new book Society Girl: A Tale of Sex, Lies, and Scandal (October 2024, Roli Books). 

On one October morning in 1970, phones began ringing all over Karachi. The established poet and former civil servant Mustafa Zaidi had been found dead in his bedroom. He wasn’t alone: Shahnaz Gul, a socialite in her late twenties, who was Zaidi’s muse and lover, was lying unconscious in the next room.

What seemed like an apparent suicide turned into a scandal, ensnaring Shahnaz, and threatening to expose Karachi high society. The story grew to include obsession, revenge porn, the involvement of influential politicians and businessmen, smuggling and espionage, becoming a fixture on the front pages of newspapers even as the Subcontinent was going through major political upheaval.

But two autopsies, a series of investigations and a trial later, no one was able to answer what exactly happened.

Over fifty years later, authors Saba Imtiaz and Tooba Masood-Khan explore this question in their podcast, Notes on a Scandal, and in their new book, Society Girl. Their retelling of, and years-long investigation into this story led to a far more complex tale. It is ultimately not just about Mustafa and Shahnaz; but about the forces that existed during that time - the press, the elitist social structures, and the power dynamics in Pakistan – all just as potent today. 

In January 2018, Naqeebullah Mehsud, a young Pashtun from Waziristan was killed at the hands of police in Karachi. The incident triggered mass protests by Pashtuns, the ethnic community to which Mehsud belonged, which then consolidated into the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM). Pashtuns had for decades alleged and protested extra judicial killings and enforced disappearances by Pakistan’s security forces. However, in 2018, thousands joined the protests and civil society across Pakistan supported the movement. 

The Pashtun community is the second largest ethnic group in Pakistan, making up about 15 percent of the country’s population. They have been viewed with suspicion by the Pakistani state because of their ethnic and cultural ties with Pashtuns across the border in Afghanistan. They have been caught in conflicts from the Afghan jihad of the 1980s to the War on Terror in the 2000s. 

In 2014, a group of Mehsud students came together to demand safety and security of Pashtuns and formed the Mehsud Tahafuz Movement (MTM). In 2018, after the killing of Naqeebullah Mehsud, the MTM organised a Pashtun Long March through Pashtun-majority areas all the way to Islamabad. The march grew as families of the “disappeared” joined them in the thousands and the movement become the PTM. The Pakistan government tried its best to stop the march and stifle the 2018 protests. In a piece for Himal Southasian at the time, Sara Eleazar and Sher Ali Khan write about “reports of harassment and threatening phone calls from intelligence agencies and policemen to activists, journalists, professors, Pashtun university students, traders and even labourers in Lahore's Walled City flooded social media.”

The state tried to crack down on the PTM again in October when it announced a ban on the movement, calling it a threat to national security. A notification from Pakistan’s ministry of interior said that “The federal government having reasons to believe that the PTM is engaged in certain activities prejudicial to peace and security of the country [...] is pleased to list the PTM in the First Schedule as a proscribed organisation.” This came days ahead of a jirga, or consultation of the Pashtun community, about its way forward. The pushback from the community and civil society in Pakistan and abroad resulted in the government stepping back and the jirga going ahead. “All these developments point to a greater popular and political consolidation of the Pashtun struggle – something the Pakistan state and security forces will certainly see as a threat,” writes Hurmat Ali Shah in Himal Southasian. 

In this episode of State of Southasia, Shah speaks to associate editor Nayantara Narayanan about how the Pakistani state has always tried to define itself as against ethnic identities and particularly the Pashtuns,  the long history of systemic discrimination against the Pashtuns and how the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement has been pushing back. 

https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/pakistan-pashtun-tahafuz-movement-ptm-military-taliban-protest-hurmat-ali-shah

State of Southasia releases a new interview every two weeks.

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Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal Southasian, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan, associate editor at Himal Southasian, speaks to the writer, producer, and educator Zara Chowdhary, joining us from Madison, to talk about her memoir, The Lucky Ones (Context, September 2024)

On the 27th February 2002, two train carriages were lit on fire in Gujarat, claiming the lives of sixty Hindu right-wing volunteers. The chief minister of the state at the time, Narendra Modi, called the burning an “act of terror”. The next day, raging Hindu mobs, poured into Gujarat’s streets looting, raping and burning alive the state’s Muslims. The massacre continued for three months. Within three weeks, more than 2000 Muslims were killed and by the end of 2002, more than 50,000 Muslims became refugees and survivors in their own country. 

In 2002, Zara Chowdhary is sixteen years old and living with her family in the city of Ahmedabad. Instead of taking her board exams that week, Zara is put under a three-month lockdown, with her family and thousands of others fearing for their lives as Hindu neighbours and members of civil society transform overnight into mobs, hunting and massacring their fellow citizens. Modi, will later be accused of fomenting the massacre, and yet a decade later, will rise to become the prime minister of the “world’s largest democracy”, fuelling the rise of Hindu nationalism across India. 

Zara’s memoir The Lucky Ones is a reckoning with this past that feels all too present today, and is an affecting ode to the women in her family. It is about the refusal to allow the violence that tore Gujarat apart in 2002, to be forgotten or repeated. It is the rebellion of a young Muslim woman who insists she will belong to her country, family, and faith on her own terms. 

This episode is now available on Spotify, Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts and Youtube. 

In mid-October, the Bangladesh interim government announced the cancellation of eight national holidays introduced by Sheikh Hasina during her tenure as prime minister. These holidays celebrated her father and former president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as well as Bangladesh’s liberation from Pakistan in 1971. An adviser to the interim government headed by Muhammad Yunus also said that it did not recognise Rahman as the Father of the Nation. The move is one of a series of attempts to reverse many of the changes instituted by Hasina and her party, the Awami League, during their 15 years in power since 2009. It reflects the anger of the Bangladeshi people against the Hasina regime that had become autocratic and immensely unpopular. 

The bigger and more difficult task for the interim government, however, has been to release Bangladesh's public institutions from the grip of the Awami League. Hasina had installed people from the party and others close to her in positions of power in the security apparatus, the judiciary and the banking system. The interim government has instituted a commission to rework the country’s constitution to restore democratic processes and prevent abuse of power in the future. 

In this episode of State of Southasia, the economist and political commentator Jyoti Rahman speaks to associate editor Nayantara Narayanan about this critical period of transition for Bangladesh, when Yunus and interim government have to lay the groundwork for free and fair elections, for a democratically-elected government to take over and about the challenges involved.   

State of Southasia releases a new interview every two weeks.

This podcast is now available on Soundcloud, Spotify, Apple podcasts and Youtube.