Tag Archives: politics

In My Hands Today…

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Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity – Manu S. Pillai

When European missionaries arrived in India in the sixteenth century, they entered a world both fascinating and bewildering. Hinduism, as they saw it, was a pagan a worship of devils and monsters by a people who burned women alive, performed outlandish rites and fed children to crocodiles. But it quickly became clear that Hindu ‘idolatry’ was far more layered and complex than European stereotypes allowed, surprisingly even sharing certain impulses with Christianity.

Nonetheless, missionaries became a threatening force as European power grew in India. Western ways of thinking gained further ascendancy during the British while interest in Hindu thought influenced Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire in Europe, Orientalism and colonial rule pressed Hindus to reimagine their religion. In fact, in resisting foreign authority, they often adopted the missionaries’ own tools and strategies. It is this encounter, Manu S. Pillai argues, that has given Hinduism its present shape, also contributing to the birth of an aggressive Hindu nationalism.

Gods, Guns and Missionaries surveys these remarkable dynamics with an arresting cast of characters – maharajahs, poets, gun-wielding revolutionaries, politicians, polemicists, philosophers and clergymen. Lucid, ambitious, and provocative, it is at once a political history, an examination of the mutual impact of Hindu culture and Christianity upon each other, and a study of the forces that have prepared the ground for politics in India today. Turning away from simplistic ideas on religious evolution and European imperialism, the past as it appears here is more complicated – and infinitely richer – than previous narratives allow.

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Ghosted: An American Story – Nancy French

A riveting look inside a life of poverty, success, and the inner circles of political influence–from the foothills of Appalachia all the way to the White House.

New York Times bestselling ghostwriter Nancy French is coming out of the shadows to tell her own incredible story. Nancy’s family hails from the foothills of the Appalachians, where life was dominated by coal mining, violence, abuse, and poverty.

Longing for an adventure, she married a stranger, moved to New York, and dropped out of college. In spite of her lack of education, she found success as a ghostwriter for conservative political leaders. However, when she was unwilling to endorse an unsuitable president, her allies turned on her and she found herself spiritually adrift, politically confused, and occupationally unemployable.

Republicans mocked her, white nationalists targeted her, and her church community alienated her. But in spite of death threats, sexual humiliation, and political ostracization, she learned the importance of finding her own voice–and that the people she thought were her enemies could be her closest friends.

A poignant and engrossing memoir filled with humor and personal insights, Ghosted is a deeply American story of change, loss, and ultimately love.

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The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan – Yasmin Cordery Khan

The partition of India in 1947 promised its people both political and religious freedom—through the liberation of India from British rule, and the creation of the Muslim state of Pakistan. Instead, the geographical divide brought displacement and death, and it benefited the few at the expense of the very many. Thousands of women were raped, at least one million people were killed, and ten to fifteen million were forced to leave their homes as refugees. One of the first events of decolonization in the twentieth century, Partition was also one of the most bloody.

In this book Yasmin Khan examines the context, execution, and aftermath of Partition, weaving together local politics and ordinary lives with the larger political forces at play. She exposes the widespread obliviousness to what Partition would entail in practice and how it would affect the populace. Drawing together fresh information from an array of sources, Khan underscores the catastrophic human cost and shows why the repercussions of Partition resound even now, some sixty years later. The book is an intelligent and timely analysis of Partition, the haste and recklessness with which it was completed, and the damaging legacy left in its wake.

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Dethroned: The Downfall of India’s Princely States – John Zubrzycki

On 25 July 1947, India’s last Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, stood before the Chamber of Princes in New Delhi and prepared to deliver the most important speech of his career. He had just three weeks to convince more than 550 sovereign princely states–some the size of Britain, some so small that cartographers had trouble locating them–to become part of a free India. Once Britain’s most faithful allies, the princes could choose between joining India or Pakistan, or declaring their independence.

This is a saga of promises and betrayals, of brinkmanship and intrigue. Mountbatten worked with two of independent India’s founding fathers–the country’s most senior civil servant, V.P. Menon, and Congress strongman Vallabhbhai Patel–to save the subcontinent from self-destruction. What India’s architects described as a ‘bloodless revolution’ was anything but, as violence engulfed Kashmir and Indian troops put an end to Hyderabad’s dreams of independence.

Most states accepted the inevitable, giving up their kingdoms in exchange for guarantees that their privileges and titles would be preserved in perpetuity. Instead, they were led to their extinction–not by the sword, but by political expediency, leaving them with little more than fading memories of a glorified past.

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The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice – Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

The extraordinary story of the women who took on the Islamic State and won.

In 2014, northeastern Syria might have been the last place you would expect to find a revolution centered on women’s rights. But that year, an all-female militia faced off against ISIS in a little town few had ever heard Kobani. By then, the Islamic State had swept across vast swaths of the country, taking town after town and spreading terror as the civil war burned all around it. From that unlikely showdown in Kobani emerged a fighting force that would wage war against ISIS across northern Syria alongside the United States. In the process, these women would spread their own political vision, determined to make women’s equality a reality by fighting—house by house, street by street, city by city—the men who bought and sold women.

Based on years of on-the-ground reporting, The Daughters of Kobani is the unforgettable story of the women of the Kurdish militia that improbably became part of the world’s best hope for stopping ISIS in Syria. Drawing from hundreds of hours of interviews, bestselling author Gayle Tzemach Lemmon introduces us to the women fighting on the front lines, determined to not only extinguish the terror of ISIS but also prove that women could lead in war and must enjoy equal rights come the peace. In helping to cement the territorial defeat of ISIS, whose savagery toward women astounded the world, these women played a central role in neutralizing the threat the group posed worldwide. In the process, they earned the respect—and significant military support—of U.S. Special Operations Forces.

Rigorously reported and powerfully told, The Daughters of Kobani shines a light on a group of women intent on not only defeating the Islamic State on the battlefield but also changing women’s lives in their corner of the Middle East and beyond.