How India, a land of diverse ethnicities, religions, and languages, has managed to maintain its social cohesion and harmony for thousands of years? How has it managed the forces of social stratification, social exclusion, social stagnation, and social emancipation? Are the institutions of caste and untouchability, jathi and varna peculiar to India? Or is there some other deeper coda to Indian society that sustains it through millennia?

This book explores these questions by tracing the origin and evolution of India’s social systems from the ancient Harappan civilization to the present day. It reveals the underlying principles, values, and worldviews that shaped India’s social dynamics and enabled it to adapt and thrive in changing times. It also highlights the role of Indian spiritual values, especially the concepts of yajna and bhakti, in fostering social inclusion and emancipation. Drawing on historical data from various Hindu traditions and biographical data of civilizational-spiritual seers, the book challenges the common perception of these seers as mere rebels or social reformers. Instead, it shows how they were agents of self-realisation who also energised the society to achieve social transformation.

This book is not only a comprehensive and insightful account of India’s social history but also a valuable source of inspiration and guidance for anyone who seeks to create a more peaceful, harmonious, and prosperous world.

Being Hindu adopts a longue durée view of history and attempts to contextualize the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its progenitor, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), as political phenomena by examining certain medieval state structures and instances of advocacy and popular mobilization in the colonial period. Further, it studies the politics of Narendra Modi and the policy initiatives undertaken by him as the prime minister of India to highlight their apparent cultural and moral underpinnings. Its eventual objective is to make a case for the historical authenticity of the Hindu mode of politics that emerged in post-Independence India. The attempt, in other words, is to demonstrate that it is a thing in its own right and not a cynical invention of hostility towards religious minorities, an irrational or ‘fascist’ mindset, or sundry anxieties, but has precedents in frameworks and practices going rather far back in history. The BJS and the BJP are thus shown to be locatable in a long tradition of Hindus organizing their political practice or politics through cultural resources and a cultural imagination distinctive to them. Narendra Modi, similarly, brings an inclusive Hindu catholicity and sangathanist outlook to his politics and developmental agenda. Being Hindu, in this way, relates a brief history of the political expressions of being Hindu over slightly more than eleven centuries—from the ascension of Aditya I, the first of the imperial Cholas, in 870 CE until our own time and age.

History writing, especially of the subcontinent during the colonial era, is filled with preconception and misconception. Colonial historiography stripped Hinduism of its Hindu-ness and India of Bharat. Colonial historicity, according to the author, is merely descriptive and random interpretations of myths rather than engaging with the idea of mythmaking. Decolonizing Hinduism is an attempt to address that. In the book, the author places ecology, astronomy and timescale (yuga cycle) at the heart of the Hindu belief system.

These important dimensions of Hinduism are not taught in our history classes. Instead, perceptions about Hinduism are limited to polytheism, idol worship and caste system. The book tries to rescue Hinduism from these biases and give voice to a uniquely indigenous version of Hinduism. He does so by demystifying the deeper concepts of Hinduism and history with allegories drawn from modern technological innovation in the field of capitalist economy, artificial intelligence, quantum physics, block chain, etc., to make them interesting.

Whispers from the Past is an overture to the history and culture of classical Kashmir, which for over a thousand years was one of the most creative places in the world. Through the book, the author hopes to acquaint the reader with Kashmir’s contributions to art and aesthetics, including drama, music, painting, sculpture, sciences, yoga, tantra, literature, and philosophy. The region’s culture was premised on the idea that universal consciousness binds humanity together, and knowing this at the individual’s level is fundamental to self-understanding and for creative growth. Classical Kashmiri artists appreciated great art not merely from its inherent cleverness points of view but for its capacity to inspire audiences to the source of creativity itself, and this entailed devotion to excellence and a robust tradition of criticism. The book explores the currents of intellectual life and the lives of prominent royals, writers, and sages, showing how Kashmiri scholars and travellers came to influence not only southern regions but also far-away lands beyond the Himalayas. It showcases Kashmir’s famed storytelling tradition through abridged tales from the Panchatantra, Kathā-sarit-sāgara, and Yoga Vāsiṣṭha, the last of which is arguably the greatest book of imagination and wisdom ever written on the conundrums of consciousness with unequalled clarity. Kashmiri aesthetics and the search for meaning in life resonate with modern sensibility

My Freedom of Expression is a collection of 22 articles published in recent years mostly by the Statesman newspaper. The anthology—varied in its themes ranging from Indic civilization to democracy, scientific temper to religious bigotry and identity to governance—is an exploration of what holds India back to become a global leader. The author picked some of contemporary’s most contentious topics, such as global warming, scientific marvels, the mysteries of life and the universe, cultural and religious superstitions, illusions and prejudices in the practise of science, and the importance of religion in society, and dissected them one by one with a rationalist knife. So what his writings essentially do is show a mirror to society. By being both accessible and arresting at once, the book deserves a place in everyone’s library.

Snakes in the Ganga unveils uncomfortable truths concerning India’s vulnerabilities:

• Intense warfare against India’s integrity is the work of a wellorchestrated global machinery driven by a new ideology.
• Marxism has been reincarnated as critical race theory in US academia and serves as the framework to address America’s racism. This has been recklessly mapped on to India: Caste is equated with Race. Marginalized communities of India are considered as Blacks and Brahmins as the Whites of India. Groups claiming grievances (like Muslims and LGBTQ+) are artificially clubbed together.
• Popularly called the woke movement, the mission is to dismantle Indian civilization and heritage by waging an uncompromising war against India’s government, educational institutions, culture, industry, and society.
• Harvard University is ground zero of these social theories developed in collaboration with Indian scholars, activists, journalists, and artists. This represents a clear and present danger to India’s sovereignty and national security.
• Several Indian elites are hoisting Harvard as the vishwa guru with their money and family names. Some private universities within India are importing wokeism that has serious repercussions for India’s stability.
• Indian corporates are bringing the latest Western rubric of environmental, social, and governance ratings into their workplaces. This is aligned with the global social justice movement.
• China has exploited this latest infrastructure as a passage to India.
• Wokeism has penetrated some of the Indian government’s policies. For instance, the National Education Policy 2020 is propagating Harvard’s liberal arts.
• An entire ecosystem of ideologies, institutions, and young leaders is emerging for the recolonization of India.

Is India for sale?

In this paperback edition, the back matter has been trimmed to shed some weight in the interest of portability. Readers can, however, still access it by scanning the QR code printed after the last chapter.

India became politically independent in 1947, but for economic freedom it had to wait for another four decades until P.V. Narasimha Rao, in tandem with Dr Manmohan Singh, chaperoned the country’s liberalization process in the summer of 1991. In 2014, another seismic revolution unravelled, the contours of which are still being drawn. For the first time, a ‘new India’ had not just seen an alternative model of governance that is truly divorced from the Nehruvian ethos but also initiated a process of democratization and decolonization of the largely ‘elitist, insular and compromised’ Lutyens’ world.

Argumentative and deeply researched, Bharat Rising combines the narrative style of journalism and the rigour and discipline of academia. It is as much about the resetting of Lutyens’ world as it is about a new India shedding its traditional distrust, if not distaste, for the country’s civilizational and cultural past.