New Books in South Asian Studies

By New Books Network

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently publ... more

4.5

1818 ratings

Download on the App Store

Download on the App Store

Get it on Google Play

FAQs about New Books in South Asian Studies:

How many episodes does New Books in South Asian Studies have?

The podcast currently has 1,440 episodes available.

New Books in South Asian Studies episodes:

August 16, 2026 Mithi Mukherjee, "Asianism and the Fall of Empire: India's Road to Freedom" (U California Press, 2026)
Offering a new global perspective on modern Indian history, Asianism and the Fall of Empire: India's Road to Freedom (University
of California Press, 2026) by Mithi Mukherjee identifies the rise of
Asianism in the early twentieth century as the origin and primary
driving force of resistance movements that brought down the British
Empire. Mithi Mukherjee ties together into a single sweeping narrative
two contrasting, conflicting forms of anticolonialism: the emergence of
the nonviolent resistance movement under Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa
and the militant movement culminating in the war on British India by the
Indian National Army under Subhas Chandra Bose in alliance with the
Japanese army. Asia emerges in this breakthrough retelling not as an
inert geographical category, but instead as a singular agent of change
in modern world history.
Mithi Mukherjee is a Professor of
History at the University of Colorado Boulder. She specializes in the
legal, political, and cultural history of modern India.
Shatrunjay
Mall is a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Trinity College in
Hartford, Connecticut. His work in modern Japanese history, South Asian
history, and transnational Asian history explores ideas of Pan-Asianism
and its legacies, as well as intellectual, political, and cultural
intersections and affinities between colonial India and imperial Japan
in the twentieth century.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
...more
1h 10min
August 13, 2026 James Lochtefeld, "God’s Own Land: Sacred Landscape, Pilgrim Economy and Religious Change in the Ganga Himalaya" (Lever Press, 2026)
God’s Own Land: Sacred Landscape, Pilgrim Economy and Religious Change in the Ganga Himalaya (Lever Press, 2026) follows the tectonic shift from traditional religious pilgrimage in the early twentieth-century to contemporary pilgrim tourism, in which ever-burgeoning visitor numbers have brought both benefits and challenges to the Garhwal region of India—the source of Hindu India’s sacred river, the Ganges. Despite Hinduism’s regional and sectarian variation, India’s Garhwal Himalaya region is one the most sacred places to Hindus, drawing pilgrims across sectarian lines from throughout the subcontinent and the world. This sacred land—dev bhumi or “land of the gods”—appears in foundational Hindu stories describing the presence and activity of gods, goddesses, saints, and cultural heroes.
This study from James G. Lochtefeld draws out Hindu convictions regarding the Garhwal’s eternal and continuing sanctity as a holy region, based on the premise of an “imagined landscape.” This region is strongly associated with divine activity and yet this landscape is also a real place with a real history inhabited by real people, who have historically been poor because of the challenges created by the region’s geography. Juxtaposing the history of the region with its construction in the Hindu imaginary, this multidisciplinary study unpacks the nuanced image of the region, its religious significance, and the impacts of pilgrimages on the community through textual, historical, and ethnographic methods.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
...more
46min
August 13, 2026 The MANTRAMS Project and Digital Mantra Research: A Discussion with Borayin Larios
Every day, tens of millions of people use mantras all around the globe. Originating in South Asia and then spreading via practitioners, texts, rituals, and iconography, mantras have been grounded in speech and sound but also take a range of material forms. For instance, they are inscribed on surfaces, written in manuscripts, printed on posters, visually encoded in diagrams, or worn as amulets and textiles. Not surprisingly, mantras also circulate widely in digital spaces.
In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Borayin Larios about the ERC Synergy project MANTRAMS - Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia, and about digital mantra research. Funded by a Synergy Grant from the European Research Council, MANTRAMS is a pioneering, large-scale research project entirely dedicated to mantras, past and present. The interdisciplinary and comparative six-year project will investigate mantras across millennia and around the world, examining the roots of mantra, their circulation across South and Southeast Asia, and their transcultural significance in global contexts today.
Borayin Larios is Assistant Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Vienna. His research interests span contemporary and classical Indian religious traditions, including the anthropology and history of mantras, popular and everyday Hinduism, material religion, and Yoga and Tantra traditions. In his interdisciplinary approach, he combines cultural anthropology, religious studies, and historical philology. He is a Principal Investigator in the ERC Synergy project MANTRAMS - Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia.
Xenia Zeiler is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of digital media, culture, and society, specifically as related to India and global Indian communities. Her focus within this wider field of digital culture is video games and gaming research, in India and beyond. She also researches and teaches digital religion, popular culture, cultural heritage, and mediatization processes.
The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway).
We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
...more
0min
August 10, 2026 Dalit Studies with Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana and Sanal Mohan
This episode featured a conversation with Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana, and Sanal Mohan, three scholars in the burgeoning field of Dalit Studies. We began with the significance of the 1990s as a point of departure for new work in this field and segued to the interventions made by their two edited volumes published in 2016 and 2025. We discussed the paths opened up by earlier radical historiographical paradigms, such as Subaltern Studies, which nonetheless failed to address the caste question. The guests noted three key emphases of contemporary Dalit Studies: one, centering Dalit historical agency and intellectual production; two, decentering the binary of colonialism and nationalism, and illuminating the colonial period as a complex terrain of maneuver; and three, foregrounding the importance of “the Dalit social” as a field of variegated power irreducible to the state. We ended with a discussion of the heterogeneity of Dalit sociopolitical formations, what makes “Dalit” cohere as a category, and future directions for the field of Dalit Studies.
Read the transcript here
References
Ramnarayan Rawat and K. Satyanarayana eds. Dalit Studies (Duke University Press, 2016)
Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana, and Sanal Mohan eds. Dalit Journeys for Dignity: Religion, Freedom, and Caste (SUNY Press, 2025)
Rajni Kothari, “Rise of the Dalits and the Renewed Debate on Caste.” In State and
Politics in India, edited by Partha Chatterjee, 439–58 (New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1998).
Gopal Guru, “The Language of Dalit-Bahujan Political Discourse.” In Dalit Identity and
Politics, edited by Ghanshyam Shah, 96–107 (New Delhi: Sage, 2001).
Baburao Bagul, Dalit Sahitya ajache Kranti Vidynana (Nagpur: Buddhist Publishing
House, 1978).
Belcchi: village in Patna district of Bihar where eight Dalits and three Backward Caste men were killed by members of the landowning Kurmi caste in 1977.
Keezhvenmani: hamlet in Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu where upper caste landlords burnt alive 44 Dalit agricultural laborers in 1968.
Karamchedu: village in Bapatla district of Andhra Pradesh where members of the Kamma landholding caste murdered six Dalit men, raped three Dalit women, and displaced hundreds of Dalit families in 1985.
Vempenta: village in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh where, in response to the killing of a village official by the People’s War Group, landholders killed more than thirty Dalits and burned more than 100 of their houses in 1998.
Chundur: village in Bapatla district of Andhra Pradesh where members of the Reddy landholding caste killed eight Dalit men in 1991.
Mandal Commission:
Divya Cherian, Merchants of Virtue
B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste
Phule: Jyotirao Phule was an anti-caste social reformer and writer from Maharashtra.
NTR: Indian actor and politician who served as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh for four terms between 1983 and 1995.
Mahad Satyagraha: mass mobilization by B.R. Ambedkar to claim Dalit access to a public water tank in Mahad, Maharashtra.
Ayyankali: Indian social reformer and lawmaker who worked for the advancemetnt of Dalits in the princely state of Travancore.
Ad Dharm: an anticaste movement in the 1920s that claimed a distinct identity for Dalits separate from Hinduism and Sikhism.
Adi Hindu Mahasabha: sociopolitical organization founded in 1923 by Dalit leader Swami Achhutanand in Uttar Pradesh that claimed for Dalits the identity of originary Hindus.
IITs: the Indian Institutes of Technology

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
...more
1h 8min
August 10, 2026 Daniel Majchrowicz, "A Journey to Mecca and London: The Travels of an Indian Muslim Woman, 1909–1910" (Indiana UP, 2025)
Descended from Mughal nobility, Akhtar al-Nisa Begum Nawab Sarbuland Jung grew up in Hyderabad in southern India, where she lived a quiet, private, and privileged life at the heart of the state's royal court. In 1896, at the age of 20, she married Nawab Muhammad Hamidullah Khan Sarbuland Jung, a prominent lawyer and the scion of a leading Muslim reformist movement. In 1909, the wealthy couple embarked on a four-month journey through the Middle East and Europe, performing the hajj in Mecca and sitting for tea with the future king and queen of England.
A Journey to Mecca and London: The Travels of an Indian Muslim Woman, 1909–1910 (Indiana University Press, 2025) provides
the first full English translation of Begum Sarbuland's Urdu travel
diary from this journey, of which only three original copies remain.
Originally intended for circulation among friends and family and later
published, her informal entries not only reveal the everyday practices
of an Indian woman of her time, but also detail her impressions and
reactions as she explored the world alongside her husband. As Begum
Sarbuland encountered other women and Muslims during her travels, those
encounters shaped her reassessment of her own identity as a Muslim
woman. Her observations hold continued significance for readers
interested in critical questions about gender, Islam, and identity.
Daniel Majchrowicz has thoroughly annotated his translation and paired
it with rich appendices, including a biographical sketch of Begum
Sarbuland and excerpts from Hamidullah Khan's own accounts of their
journey.
Engagingly written and enriched with years of original research, archival work, and family interviews, A Journey to Mecca and London
restores the nearly forgotten narrative of one of India's first Muslim
women travel writers to its rightful place in Indian and Islamic
history.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
...more
1h 2min
August 08, 2026 Edward T. G. Anderson, "Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Hindu nationalism is transforming India as an increasingly dominant
ideology and political force. But it is also a global phenomenon, with
sections of India’s vast and influential diaspora drawn to, or actively
supporting, right-wing Hindu nationalism. Indians overseas can be seen
as an important, even inextricable, aspect of the movement. This is not a
new dynamic—diasporic Hindutva has grown over many decades.
Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism
(Oxford University Press, 2024) explores how and why the movement
became popular among India’s diaspora from the second half of the
twentieth century. It shows that Hindutva ideology and its plethora of
organizations have a distinctive resonance and way of operating
overseas; the movement and its ideas perform significant, particular
functions for diaspora communities.
Edward T.G. Anderson argues that
transnational Hindutva cannot simply be viewed as an export: this
phenomenon has evolved and been shaped into an important aspect of
diasporic identity, a way for people to connect with their homeland. He
also sheds light on the impact of conservative Indian politics on
British multiculturalism, migrant politics and relations between various
minority communities.
Sachin Nikarge has
extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent
foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard’ as well as ‘soft’ power
domains.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
...more
1h 6min
August 05, 2026 Muslims and the Minority Question across the Indian Ocean: A Conversation With Roy Bar Sadeh
In this conversation, we are entering an Indian Ocean world connected
by steamships, telegraphs, pilgrimage routes, and print. From Bombay
and the Gulf to Cairo and Mecca—and onward to Moscow and
Geneva—merchants, scholars, activists, and political exiles debated a
question that still feels urgent: how can different communities live
together without being reduced to permanent majorities and minorities?
Bombay
sits near the center of our story. Under British rule, it was a major
imperial port. But it was also a meeting place where Indian Ocean
merchants financed publications, hosted traveling scholars, and helped
ideas cross borders.
At the same time, British censuses and
representative politics produced a striking paradox. South Asia
contained the world’s largest Muslim population, yet Muslims were
increasingly classified as a political minority within India.
Dr. Roy Bar Sadeh
is a historian of modern South Asia and the broader Islamic world,
joining the University of Oxford in September 2026 as an Associate
Professor in the Faculty of History and at St Antony’s College. He is
currently a Lecturer at the University of Manchester.
His many articles and forthcoming book with University of Chicago Press, Muslims and the Minority Question: A Global History of South Asia, 1856–1947, follow
the people who refused to accept that minority label as their political
destiny. Along the way, we’ll talk about food and language, Gulf pearl
merchants and printing presses, rival plans for Mecca, an unlikely
Soviet-Saudi partnership, and the search for protection beyond the
nation-state.
Host: Dr. Ahmed Y. AlMaazmi, an assistant professor of history at New York University Abu Dhabi.
Co-host: Dr. Mohammed Alsudairi,
a Lecturer of Politics and International Relations of the
Arabic-speaking world at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the
Australian National University.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
...more
1h 11min
August 02, 2026 Monalisa Adhikari, "A Post-Liberal Peace: How Emergent Powers Are Reshaping Global Conflict Management" (Cornell UP, 2026)
In A Post-Liberal Peace: How Emergent Powers Are Reshaping Global Conflict Management (Cornell UP, 2026), Dr. Monalisa Adhikari shows how rising powers like India and China are reshaping global peace governance. Over recent decades, both countries have deepened engagement with institutions built on liberal principles, including those related to peacebuilding. Their growing role raises critical questions about how their approaches diverge from liberal models and their impact on the domestic politics of conflict-affected states.
Focusing on India and China's involvement in peace processes in Nepal and Myanmar, Dr. Adhikari demonstrates that these powers advance distinctive, state-centered programs that privilege regional stakeholders, stability, development, and pragmatism. Operating under conditions of "negotiated coexistence" with liberal peacebuilders, their initiatives neither fully align with nor openly contest existing actors, limiting cooperation while avoiding confrontation. This pluralized form of international engagement enables domestic elites to resist external pressures, producing hybrid peace orders that incorporate some liberal elements yet remain largely at the status quo—and often illiberal.
Rich with archival and interview evidence, A Post-Liberal Peace sheds light on alternative forms of peacebuilding and their on-the-ground effects in an increasingly multipolar world.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
...more
1h 5min
July 31, 2026 Nabi Sahak, "Anglo-Afghan Power and Politics, 1893–1947: The Durand Line Unmasked" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
In
this episode of New Books Network, I speak with Nabi Sahak about his
book, Anglo-Afghan Power and Politics, 1893–1947: The Durand Line Unmasked (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).
Anglo-Afghan
Power and Politics revisits one of the most contested borders in the
modern world. The roughly 2,640-kilometre line drawn in 1893 by Mortimer
Durand and Amir Abdur Rahman
Khan, which today divides Pashtun communities between Afghanistan and
Pakistan. Sahak's central argument is that the historical purpose of the
Durand Line has never been settled: was it a temporary
sphere-of-influence arrangement, a frontier meant to manage dissent, or a
genuine international border? The book contends that answering this
question by using long-neglected Afghan-language sources alongside the
familiar British colonial record. Anchored chronologically in the period
from Abdur Rahman
Khan's rise to Afghan independence in 1919, with earlier and later
chapters extending the frame back to 1761 and forward to 1947, the book
draws on original correspondence between the Afghan Amir and British
viceroys, the writings of Afghan historians such as Ghubar, Kakar, and
Habibi, the accounts of colonial officials like Holdich and Caroe, and a
set of original interviews with contemporary Afghan and Pakistani
scholars and politicians. What distinguishes the book is its explicit
reframing of the dispute as a matter of missing perspective. Sahak
argues that decades of scholarship on the Durand Line have been built
almost entirely
on British and Pakistani positions, leaving the Afghan and Pashtun view
including the lived experience of communities split by the line is
largely absent
from the international debate. Writing partly from personal history as
someone who grew up in Kabul during the Soviet occupation and civil war,
Sahak situates the technical and diplomatic history of the boundary
within its human cost. The author treats
the line not only as a nineteenth-century colonial artefact but as an
unresolved question still shaping Afghanistan-Pakistan relations,
Pashtun identity, and regional security today.
Qaseem
Ahmadzai holds a master's degree in intellectual history from Södertörn
University, Sweden. His research focuses on postcolonial theory,
historiography, and non-Western intellectual traditions, with particular
attention to Afghanistan and the broader Pashto-Persephone worlds.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
...more
31min
July 30, 2026 The Long Reach of the Strong Arm: Evolving Forms of Transnational Authoritarianism in Asia and Beyond
How do authoritarian regimes silence critics across borders? And what are the repressive tools and strategies that authoritarian regimes use transnationally? In this episode we are joined by Arild Engelsen Ruud, Mubashar Hasan and Karin Zackari to discuss the role of digital surveillance, emotional blackmail, enforced family isolation, psychological harassment, and the imprisonment of relatives on fabricated charges by Asian authoritarian regimes seeking to control populations and narratives across borders.
You can read more about the research discussed in this episode in the book The Long Reach of the Strong Arm: Evolving Forms of Transnational Authoritarianism, published by Springer.
Arild Engelsen Ruud is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Oslo.
Mubashar Hasan is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Western Sydney University.
Karin Zackari Associate Senior Researcher at the School of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg.
Kenneth Bo Nielsen, your host, is an Associate Professor of Social Anthropology and the Director of the Centre for South Asian Democracy at the University of Oslo.
The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway).
We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
...more
0min

FAQs about New Books in South Asian Studies:

How many episodes does New Books in South Asian Studies have?

The podcast currently has 1,440 episodes available.

More shows like New Books in South Asian Studies

The New Yorker Radio Hour by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

The New Yorker Radio Hour

6,826 Listeners

Global News Podcast by BBC World Service

Global News Podcast

7,639 Listeners

The LRB Podcast by The London Review of Books

The LRB Podcast

301 Listeners

New Books in Philosophy by New Books Network

New Books in Philosophy

110 Listeners

New Books in History by Marshall Poe

New Books in History

211 Listeners

New Books in Military History by Marshall Poe

New Books in Military History

160 Listeners

New Books in Political Science by New Books Network

New Books in Political Science

62 Listeners

New Books in Economics by Marshall Poe

New Books in Economics

26 Listeners

New Books in Psychoanalysis by Marshall Poe

New Books in Psychoanalysis

195 Listeners

New Books in African American Studies by New Books Network

New Books in African American Studies

165 Listeners

New Books in Environmental Studies by Marshall Poe

New Books in Environmental Studies

23 Listeners

New Books in Literary Studies by New Books Network

New Books in Literary Studies

24 Listeners

New Books in Intellectual History by New Books Network

New Books in Intellectual History

66 Listeners

Pod Save America by Pod Save America

Pod Save America

87,529 Listeners

The Daily by The New York Times

The Daily

111,948 Listeners

Radio Atlantic by The Atlantic

Radio Atlantic

2,374 Listeners

Today, Explained by Vox

Today, Explained

10,282 Listeners

Today in Focus by The Guardian

Today in Focus

986 Listeners

Throughline by NPR

Throughline

16,399 Listeners

Himal Southasian Podcast Channel by Himal Southasian Podcast Channel

Himal Southasian Podcast Channel

5 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

15,950 Listeners

Empire: World History by Goalhanger

Empire: World History

2,409 Listeners

The Tucker Carlson Show by Tucker Carlson Network

The Tucker Carlson Show

16,332 Listeners

The Chris Hedges Report by Chris Hedges

The Chris Hedges Report

362 Listeners

The Rest Is Classified by Goalhanger

The Rest Is Classified

1,092 Listeners