Video Culture in India: The Analog Era narrates the evolution of video technology in India since its introduction in the 1980s, locating the moment within the country's socio-political context.

Upinder Singh urges us to abandon simplistic stereotypes and instead think of ancient India in terms of the coexistence of five powerful contradictions-between social inequality and promises of universal salvation, the valorization of desire and detachment, goddess worship and misogyny, violence and non-violence, and religious debate and conflict. She does so using a vast array of sources including religious and philosophical texts, epics, poetry, plays, technical treatises, satire, biographies, and inscriptions, as well as the material and aesthetic evidence of archaeology and art from sites across the subcontinent. Singh's scholarly but highly accessible style, clear explanation, and balanced interpretations offer an understanding of the historian's craft and unravel the many threads of what we think of as ancient Indian culture. This is not a dead or forgotten past but one invoked in different contexts even today. Further, in spite of enormous historical changes over the centuries, the contradictions discussed here still remain.

Media plays a significant role in reshaping, restructuring, and recalibrating the existing understandings of society and politics, giving birth to new cultural forms. Video, as a medium, captures not only real-time events but also the ethos of a milieu. Video Culture in India: The Analog Era narrates the history of video technology in India since its introduction in the 1980s, locating the moment within the country's socio-political context. It aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of video technology in post-1980s India: one that speaks to its global history and context and fills the lacunae in the existing literature of the field. The monograph draws on diverse oral histories, discarded tapes, and forgotten archives to unravel the history of analog video in India. Specifically, it looks at the widespread popularity of the marriage video, the little-known history of the video-film, the intensity associated with the video-news magazine, and the explosive imagination attached to the religious video. Analysing the multi-dimensionality of video provides the context for a better understanding of the proliferation of video culture in contemporary sites such as television news channels, digital photography, WhatsApp videos, and streaming. As the first full-length study of analog video production and circulation in India, this book invokes the forgotten video era in India.

This is the first cultural and literary history of India and the First World War, with archival research from Europe and South Asia.

Inglorious Empire' tells the real story of the British in India from the arrival of the East India Company to the end of the Raj, revealing how Britain's rise was built upon its plunder of India. In the eighteenth century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannon, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalised racism, and caused millions to die from starvation. British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial "gift" - from the railways to the rule of law -was designed in Britain's interests alone. He goes on to show how Britain's Industrial Revolution was founded on India's deindustrialisation, and the destruction of its textile industry.

Aurangzeb Alamgir (r. 1658-1707), the sixth Mughal emperor, is widely reviled in India today. ... While many continue to accept the storyline peddled by colonial-era thinkers--that Aurangzeb, a Muslim, was a Hindu-loathing bigot--there is an untold side to him as a man who strove to be a just, worthy Indian king.

Hinduism is one of the world's oldest and greatest religious traditions. In captivating prose, Shashi Tharoor untangles its origins, its key philosophical concepts and texts. He explores everyday Hindu beliefs and practices, from worship to pilgrimage to caste, and touchingly reflects on his personal beliefs and relationship with the religion. Not one to shy from controversy, Tharoor is unsparing in his criticism of 'Hindutva', an extremist, nationalist Hinduism endorsed by India's current government. He argues urgently and persuasively that it is precisely because of Hinduism's rich diversity that India has survived and thrived as a plural, secular nation. If narrow fundamentalism wins out, Indian democracy itself is in peril.