Against the Nation invites readers to explore South Asia as a place and as an idea with a sense of reflection and nuance rather than submitting to conventional understanding of the region merely in geopolitical terms. The authors take the readers across a vast terrain of prospects like visual culture, music, film, knowledge systems and classrooms, myth and history as well as forms of politics that offer possibilities for reading South Asia as a collective enterprise that has historical precedents as well as untapped ideological potential for the future.

One Nation, One Dharma: The Hindu Claim to India is a bold and thought-provoking exploration of what it means for India to embrace its Dharmic identity. Through 40 captivating chapters, the book delves into the heart of Bharat’s civilization, unraveling the ancient concept of Dharma and its profound relevance in the modern world. It examines how Dharma serves as the invisible thread that binds the nation’s diversity and guides its values, culture, and politics. This book takes readers on a journey through history, philosophy, and modern Indian society—addressing topics like Hinduism’s foundational role, the challenges of secularism, the impact of colonial rule, and the rise of a Dharmic political consciousness. With humor, sharp analysis, and a visionary tone, it argues for a future where India reclaims its spiritual and cultural identity to become a beacon of unity, justice, and strength. Written in an engaging style that blends scholarly insight with accessible storytelling, One Nation, One Dharma is a powerful call for Bharat to awaken to its true potential and lead the world with its unique values. It’s a book that every Indian, and anyone interested in India’s future, must read.

Hindu nationalism has been responsible for acts of extreme violence against religious minorities and is a dominant force on the sociopolitical landscape of contemporary India. How does such a violent and exclusionary movement recruit supporters? How do members navigate the tensions between the normative prescriptions of such movements and competing ideologies? To understand the expansionary power of Hindu nationalism, Kalyani Menon argues, it is critical to examine the everyday constructions of politics and ideology through which activists garner support at the grassroots level. Based on fieldwork with women in several Hindu nationalist organizations, Menon explores how these activists use gendered constructions of religion, history, national insecurity, and social responsibility to recruit individuals from a variety of backgrounds. As Hindu nationalism extends its reach to appeal to increasingly diverse groups, she explains, it is forced to acknowledge a multiplicity of positions within the movement. She argues that Hindu nationalism's willingness to accommodate dissonance is central to understanding the popularity of the movement. Everyday Nationalism contends that the Hindu nationalist movement's power to attract and maintain constituencies with incongruous beliefs and practices is key to its growth. The book reveals that the movement's success is facilitated by its ability to become meaningful in people's daily lives, resonating with their constructions of the past, appealing to their fears in the present, presenting itself as the protector of the country's citizens, and inventing traditions through the use of Hindu texts, symbols, and rituals to unite people in a sense of belonging to a nation.

A COMPREHENSIVE PROFILING OF ALL THE MAJOR LEADERS OF THE INDIAN RIGHT-WING, NOW THE SINGLE BIGGEST FACTOR IN INDIAN POLITICS. A fog of mystery surrounds the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—or RSS—the largest cadre-based organisation in the world. Veteran journalist and author of the bestseller Narendra Modi: The Man, the Times, Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay lays bare its fascinating, unique and perhaps startling world. He also chronicles the personal and political journeys of the most important men (and a woman) of the Hindu right wing, digging up little-known but revealing facts about them. From Hegdewar, the founder of the RSS and its first sarsanghchalak, Savarkar, Golwalkar, Balasaheb Deoras, Syama Prasad Mukherjee and Deendayal Upadhyaya to Vijaya Raje Scindia, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani, Ashok Singhal and Bal Thackeray, all the major leaders of the political right wing are reckoned with in this book. Through individual stories of the organisation’s tallest leaders, a bigger picture emerges: in spite of a three-time ban on the RSS in a multicultural and secular India—and despite the RSS’s insistence that it has no truck with electoral politics—the group is, and will continue to be, the hand that rocks the BJP’s cradle.

In the 21st century, the Indo-Pacific region has become the new centre of the world. The concept of the 'Indo-Pacific', though still under construction, is a potentially 'pivotal' site, where various institutions and intellectuals of statecraft are seeking common ground on which to anchor new regional coalitions, alliances. and allies to better serve their respective national agendas. This book explores the 'Indo-Pacific' as an ambiguous and hotly contested regional security construction. It critically examines the major drivers behind the revival of classical geopolitical concepts and their deployment through different national lenses. The book also analyses the presence of India and the U.S in the Indo-Pacific, and the manner in which China has reacted to their positions in the Indo-Pacific to date. It suggests that national constructions of the Indo-Pacific region are more informed by domestic political realities, anti-Chinese bigotries, distinctive properties of 21st century U.S hegemony, and narrow nation-statist sentiments rather than genuine pan-regional aspirations. The Rise and Return of the Indo-Pacific argues that the spouting of contested depictions of the Indo-Pacific region depend on the fixed geo-strategic lenses of nation-states, but what is also important is the re-emergence of older ideas - a class conceptual revival - based on early to mid-20th century geopolitical ideas in many of these countries. The book deliberately raises the issue of the sea and constructions of 'nature', as these symbols are indispensable parts of many of these Indo-Pacific regional narratives. Despite the existence of diverse nation-statist, pan- and sub-regional discourses, the narratives of the most powerful states still dominate 21st century Indo-Pacific statecraft. The term 'Indo-Pacific' has the potential of unsettling various existing bilateral and multilateral geopolitical equations within the Indian Ocean region. Despite substantial heterogeneity in Indo-Pacific regional imaginations, the most dominant 'stories' and 'maps' are crafted and disseminated by the most dominant nation -in this case, the U.S- as it grapples with new ways of retaining its hegemony into the 21st century.