Himal Southasian Podcast Channel

In her new book ‘The Jackfruit Chronicles’, the award-winning food writer Shahnaz Ahsan invites us into her family’s British-Bangladeshi kitchen, showing how food carries both resistance and remembrance, and reflects the complexities of diasporic life in Britain: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/shahnaz-ahsan-food-bangladesh-diaspora Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books podcast, where we speak...

In this inaugural episode of the podcast “Saffron Siege”, Harsh Mander speaks to Rajmohan Gandhi, a renowned historian and grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, on the hostility of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh towards Gandhi that ultimately led to his assasination in January 1948. Rajmohan Gandhi describes how Gandhi's demand for an India that belonged equally to all religion...

All eyes have been on Nepal since last week when a large but loosely organised protest by young people in Kathmandu turned into a revolution that brought down the government. On September 8th, many groups of young college and school goers took out a peaceful protest march in Kathmandu. There had been rising anger about systemic corruption and nepotism among the political class that was the foundat...

A conversation with the British-Bangladeshi writer on her debut novel, The First Jasmines , and the untold stories of women who survived the violence of the 1971 Liberation War: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/saima-begum-novel-bangladesh-liberation-war-birangona Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books podcast, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southas...

On the 22nd of August, Colombo police arrested the former president of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe over allegations that he used public funds on a two-day personal visit to the United Kingdom in September 2023. Sri Lanka’s anticorruption units have been cracking down on corruption cases since the president Anura Kumara Dissanayake came to power in September last year on a promise to fight corru...

A conversation with Vishwambhari Parmar on curating and translating The Blaft Anthology of Gujarati Pulp Fiction, and uncovering the genre’s darker and more irreverent worlds in Southasian literature. 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 Vishwambhari P...

Harsh Mander wraps up Season 1 of this podcast series with Himal associate editor Nayantara Narayanan. They talk about the significant moments and takeaways from Mander's conversations with eminent and emerging voices on the crisis of Muslims in India: Afreen Fatima, Hilal Ahmed, Amirullah Khan, Seema Chishti, Shahrukh Alam, Aman Wadud, Irfan Habib, Mohsin Alam Bhat, Saeed Mirza, Syeda Hameed,...

Zeyad Masroor Khan grew up in a Muslim ghetto in Aligarh, a place he says is still “caught in time” and one he describes as still a slice of “India as it was envisioned by Nehru and Gandhi” with people from different religious communities living close by, running their businesses together and having family connections. But, in this same ghetto, he also witnessed several communal riots as he came o...

On 15 August 2025, the Taliban marked four years since retaking control of Afghanistan – a period defined by deepening authoritarianism, economic collapse, and international isolation. As the regime tightens its grip, the country faces yet another compounding crisis: mass deportations of Afghan migrants from neighboring Iran and Pakistan. Since January 2025, more than one million Afghans have been...

Manoj Jha, a politician and member of India’s upper house – the Rajya Sabha – is the rare politician who has spoken up about the persecution of Muslims in India and their being pushed into being second-class citizens of the country. Jha believes and has written that Muslims are not mere footnotes but co-authors in the story of India. In this conversation with Harsh Mander, Jha says that the the cr...

A conversation with the journalist Ipsita Chakravarty on what it means for the people of Kashmir to tell their stories – in a place where history is contested, identity is under siege, and memorialisation itself is a political act: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/ipsita-chakravarty-conflict-storytelling-kashmir Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books podcast, where we speak to celebrated authors...

The educationist, writer and women's rights activist Syeda Hameed had a ringside view on much of what was unfolding in the new India in the years after it became independent. This was a country that had become free, but after Partition when a million Hindus and Muslims had been slaughtered by the other. Yet, Hameed remembers the first decade of free India as one of immense hope. "My famil...

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: Ge...

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...

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, S...

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-d...

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...

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...

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 filmma...

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 A...

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...

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...

A conversation with the tech journalist and writer Vauhini Vara on the ways in which language can be used to serve our purposes, independent from, and in opposition to, the goals of powerful big tech companies. 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...

Journalist Seema Chishti was covering events in Ayodhya when a right-wing Hindutva mob demolished the Babri Masjid, a 16th century mosque, in December 1992. In this episode, Chishti recounts the events of that day, the media's role in bearing witness to it and how the media in India has changed since then. From the pockets of resistance in the media during the Emergency in 1975, to its commerc...

On 25 June this year, India marks 50 years since former prime minister Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency in India. This was the third time that the emergency had been declared in India, but unlike the first two times which were in case of external threats due to wars with India’s neighbours, the 1975 Emergency was due to internal threats and resulted in the suspension of many constitutional rights a...