Himal Southasian Podcast Channel

Development economist Amirullah Khan explains the social indicators that show the stark deprivation of the majority of India’s Muslims, especially in education and employment.   He explains the different points in India’s history at which changes occurred. For example, he says, after the 1990s, jobs where being created mostly in India’s service and financial sectors that required higher education....

A conversation with the renowned writer and poet Jerry Pinto on Bollywood and the nation-state, the art of translation, and lessons of a life in literature and teaching: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/jerry-pinto-history-bollywood-translation Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode,...

In this episode, the academic and writer Hilal Ahmed speaks to Harsh Mander about his positionality as a practising Muslim and as a scholar looking at Muslim lives and the Muslim experience. Ahmed recalls growing up in the 1990s when the idealism of a secular India had all but faded in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. He remembers that when I was in the school in 80s and...

In mid-April, young people took to the streets of Male, the capital of the Maldives to protest the country’s culture of political impunity and nepotism. The trigger for these protests was a case in which a young woman was discovered unmoving on the tin roof of a warehouse in Malé, having fallen from a nine-storey apartment building next door where there had been a party. That building was co-owned...

In this episode, the researcher and activist Afreen Fatima speaks to Harsh Mander about what it means to be Muslim in India today. Afreen experienced first-hand punitive demolitions by the state. In June 2022, authorities in Prayagraj, formerly called Allahabad, bulldozed her house, on the pretext that her father had orchestrated protests against anti-Islamic comments made by members of the India’...

A conversation with the Assamese writer Aruni Kashyap on crafting stories on love, resistance and belonging set against the long shadow of violence in India’s Northeast. 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 Assamese writer, translator and poet, Aru...

In early May, when the world’s attention was on the escalating conflict between India and Pakistan and the threat of war, India’s government released data that showed it in poor light. The new data from the civil registration system – the country's official record of births and deaths – showed that there had been about 3.7 million excess deaths during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. This...

A conversation with the journalist Thomas Bell on his latest book, ‘Human Nature’ , and the social, cultural and natural history of people’s lives in the Himalayan environment . 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 Thomas Bell about his...

Since 22 April, when militants carried out a deadly attack in Pahalgam district killing 26 civilians – most of them Hindu tourists – Kashmir has faced one of its worst crises in recent years. The attack triggered a dangerous escalation in hostilities between India and Pakistan with cross-border missile strikes and shelling and a looming threat of war between the two countries. A ceasefire was anno...

A conversation with the Sri Lankan-born Australian author on unsettling the realist novel form and exploring the messy gaps between ideals and actions: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/michelle-de-kretser-novel-theory-and-practice 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 Srika...

The Bhima Koragaon case has come to be seen as emblematic of the gravest problems with India's democracy. Between June 2018 and October 2020, 16 people were arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case, accused of inciting violence in a riot and of being part of a conspiracy to assassinate India’s prime minister Narendra Modi. The arrests occurred despite the lack of credible evidence. The 16 individua...

A conversation with the Mumbai-based journalist on the roots of Hindutva, the proliferation of Aadhaar and the surprising origins of India’s identification project. 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 speaks to the Mumbai-based journalist...

In early March this year, a massive gathering of some 10,000 royalist supporters gathered to greet Nepal's former king, Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah, as he returned to the capital Kathmandu from the city of Pokhara. The rally had political observers in Kathmandu wonder about the possibility of a return to monarchy in Nepal. On Friday, 28 March, a similar pro-royalist rally in Kathmandu turned violent...

In a sharp critique of iconisation, Teltumbde pushes back against the hagiography surrounding B R Ambedkar, calling for a nuanced reassessment of his contested legacy in view of the ongoing oppression of Dalits in India today. 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 epis...

The Rohingya are facing a new crisis. Cuts to foreign aid by the United States government under Donald Trump have caused huge upsets in the humanitarian sector worldwide and refugees are among the hardest hit. The cuts have caused a freeze on funds in healthcare facilities within Rohingya camps in Bangladesh leading to a reduction in doctors and healthcare staff available to the residents. The Wor...

A conversation with the Sri Lankan-Pākehā writer on exploring anger, trauma, queerness and displacement in a multigenerational saga of three women from the Southasian diaspora. 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 speaks to the Auckland-bas...

In January this year, soon after taking over as president of the United States for the second time, Donald Trump announced a suspension of all prgrammes of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), pending review. Six weeks later, the United States government announced that it was shutting down 83 percent of those programmes, which it perceived as antithetical to the interest...

A conversation with Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil on documenting the cultural imaginaries of Kerala and the Gulf through migrants’ literary and visual records of their transnational lives and aspirations. https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/ mohamed-shafeeq-karinkurayil-kerala-gulf-migrant-archives Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal Southasian , where we speak to celebrated au...

A conversation onLahore’s histories, the role of itinerancy, memory and violence, and the questions of state control and nationalism in Pakistan. https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/ manan-ahmed-asif-lahore-pakistan-writing-history 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 ep...

In December, the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP), an international non-government organisation working to promote justice and accountability in Sri Lanka after its civil war, announced that it had in recent years submitted more than 60 sanction and travel ban requests against Sri Lankan officials and security personnel for alleged human rights violations committed during the country...

Uncovering her maternal ancestors’ past rooted in the Bhantu identity, the cinematographer and writer Nusrat F Jafri offers a rare account of the so-called criminal tribe, the circumstances of their conversions and the continuities of caste oppression in India today. himalmag.com/podcast/nusrat-jafri-caste-conversions-identity-india Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal South...

A conversation with the book historian on how Daryaganj’s Patri Kitab Bazaar tells the story of Delhi’s urban aspirations, spatial politics and informal economies: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/kanupriya-dhingra-delhi-daryaganj-book-bazaarWelcome to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal Southasian, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasi...

On 3 January, the body of Mukesh Chandrakar, a journalist in the Bastar region of India’s Chhattisgarh state, was found in a septic tank, bearing signs that he had been brutally killed. He had been missing for two days. Investigations into the case indicate that his murder is linked to his reporting for a national news channel about corruption in a road construction project. The main accused in th...

A conversation with the Nepali-born writer on her debut novel ‘Kanchhi’, and capturing the realities of women’s lives in rural Nepal. https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/weena-pun-kanchhi-women-rural-nepal-literature 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...

Bhutan’s Nepali-speaking diaspora, created by the expulsion of the Lhotshampa in the 1990s, can help the country’s tottering economy, the researcher says – if the Bhutan government were ready to reach out. In the introduction to her book The Ecosystem of Exile Politics: Why Proximity and Precarity Matter for Bhutan’s Homeland Activists , Susan Banki, a researcher of the international refugee syste...