In this episode of Saffron Siege, the writer, historian and social activist Ram Puniyani explains the background of India’s freedom struggle in which the RSS was founded. He says the the founders of the RSS were reacting to the education of Dalits and women and the influx of average people into the national movement. On the other hand, they were in…

India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru has become a figure of hate and derision for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under the leadership of Narendra Modi and for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), its ideological parent. In this episode of Saffron Siege, Harsh Mander and historian Purushottam Agrawal examine the reasons for their…

The Election Commission of India was, for many years, one of the country’s most trusted public institutions lauded around the world for carrying out, every five years, the seemingly impossible task of India’s general elections. The commission was seen as non-partisan that did its work without fear or favour. That reputation has taken a hit in recen…

In this episode of Saffron Siege, the anthropologist Thomas Blom Hansen and journalist Qurban Ali join Harsh Mande to examine how the RSS has triggered, enabled and executed riots, targeted communal attacks and other forms of communal violence in India over the 100 years of its existence. Ali who has reported on many of these incidents on the groun…

A conversation with the writer Dur e Aziz Amna about her second novel, ‘A Splintering’, and its exploration of class struggle, female rage, and the challenges of navigating social expectations across rural and urban Pakistan. Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books podcast, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from acr…

Bhanwar Meghwanshi, who is a writer and a social and political activist, was once a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. He was a self-described “complete bhakt” with dreams of becoming a pracharak (preacher) till he realised that the RSS was as casteist as the rest of Hindu and Indian society. Meghwanshi who is a Dalit is now a strong oppone…

The trajectory of the RSS in south India is very different from its history and progress in the north and northeast of the country. While coastal Karnataka was the landing ground of the Sangh in the south as far back as the 1950s, Hindutva found little traction in large parts of the south till the last decade when Narendra Modi and his BJP have bee…

As the Spring Revolution approaches its fifth year, Ma Thida, one of Myanmar’s foremost activists and intellectuals, reflects on the country’s political trajectory leading up to and beyond the 2021 military coup – and the people’s enduring fight for democracy. Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books podcast, where we speak to celebrated authors an…

How has the RSS and Hindutva propaganda worked over a century? Journalists and writers Akshaya Mukul and Kunal Purohit dive into the strategies and successes with Harsh Mander on the this episode of Saffron Siege. Mukul examines the popularity Gita Press, which was founded in 1923 – two years before the RSS itself, and its many publications and how…

As the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup reaches its final week, veteran sports journalist Sharda Ugra examines the progress that women’s cricket in Southasia has made in recent years – especially since 2017, when the ICC televised the tournament, drawing in a wider audience and greater interest – as well as persistent gaps shaping women’s cricket toda…

Political scientists Tariq Thachil and Kamal Nayan Choubey speak to Harsh Mander about how the RSS and its offshoots have made inroads into and are influencing tribal and Adivasi society. They discuss the role of the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and Ekal Vidyalayas in co-opting tribal communities into broader Hindu society and their stated goals of counte…

The Mumbai based author Amrita Mahale discusses her novel ‘Real Life’ – delving into female friendship, obsession, Artificial Intelligence, and what it means to live freely in a world of control: https://www.himalmag.com/podcast/amrita-mahale-himalaya-literary-mystery-novel Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books podcast, where we speak to celebra…

On 18 September, Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu ratified a new media law aimed at streamlining media regulation and seeking to curb disinformation. The law allowed the creation of a new commission with extensive powers, including the ability to block news websites, suspend media outlets’ registrations, issue fines to journalists and criminalise …

The feminist historian Tanika Sarkar speaks to Harsh Mander about the role of women in the #RSS, the organisation's view on gender and its reinforcement of patriarchy. Sarkar describes the creation of the RSS's women's wing, the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, and how it evolved over the years. She also speaks about the women leaders have emerged in the Hin…

In this writer Aakar Patel and journalist Rana Ayyub examine with Harsh Mander whether India under Narendra Modi has transformed into a Hindu Rashtra or and to what extent does India’s secular socialist democracy still endures. You can watch this conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/P3mb8QO9uDU This episode is part of Season Two of Partitions …

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 Aatish Taseer on history, syncretism and the search for belonging at the heart of his new book, A Return to Self: Excursions in Exile (HarperCollins Fourt…

In this episode, Harsh Mander speaks to historians Mridula Mukherjee and Vinay Lal about the origins of the RSS, the ideologies of its founders, the it played (and did not play) in India’s freedom struggle, and its role during the Partition riots. Mukherjee talks about how in pre-independence India, the idea that Hindus must constitute a separate n…

Since June, Pakistan has experienced yet another season of severe monsoon flooding, with particularly heavy impacts across the Punjab region. Flood waters and landslides have claimed many hundreds of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands more. The Pakistan Disaster Management Authority announced that, by 10 September, that 900 people had died a…

In this episode of "Saffron Siege: The RSS at 100", Apoorvanand discusses how the Hindu and Hindutva common sense kept the RSS popular even though it was banned after Gandhi's assassination in 1948. He talks to Harsh Mander about how it emerged from the shadows of being a banned organisation, how it grew from strength to strength through the 1960s,…

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…

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 …

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 nepot…

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…

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 …

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 ep…

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…

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 …

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 Jan…

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 conver…

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 B…

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 fre…

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 prosperit…

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 narra…

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 literar…

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 dem…

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 de…

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 …

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, …

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 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 re…

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 t…

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. …

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 medi…

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…

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 f…

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 liter…

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 r…

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 …

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 a…

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 speak…