In this episode, I am in conversation with Neha Dixit about her new book, ‘The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian’- an outcome of 9 years and more than 900 interviews to tell the story of an ordinary working-class faceless Indian woman, from the early 1990s to the present day.

We also discuss her journey as a journalist since 2007 and her extraordinary resolve to report the ground realities of the ‘New India’ in the face of increased corporatisation of the media, ongoing law and order cases and criminal cases against her that take years in the court of law (two days after recording this episode, she had to appear for a hearing in Guwahati), imminent threats and intimidation.

References:

1. Neha Dixit: Journalism, Twitter, Scroll, The Wire, Outlook
2. The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian by Neha Dixit
3. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India by Urvashi Butalia
4. Operation #BetiUthao: The Sangh’s Stolen Child Crusade
5. A Chronicle of the Crime Fiction That is Adityanath’s Encounter Raj
6. For Haryana Police, the Holy Cow Is an Excuse for Extra-Judicial Killings
7. Muzaffarnagar riots: This graphic narrative tells the story of the courage of seven rape survivors

What does education do? Whose needs are being met by education? What does education mean to different people? Why did schooling fall short in providing equality of opportunity? Vishal Vasanthakumar joins us in this episode to illustrate the complex issues involved in the provision and purpose of education in India.

References:

1. Vishal Vasanthakumar: LinkedIn, Twitter, Cambridge Website
2. Following Fish: Travels around the Indian coast by Samanth Subramanian
3. Slouching towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
4. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
5. Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
6. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich
7. The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life by Ryszard Kapuscinski
8. China in Seven Banquets: A Flavourful History by Thomas David DuBois
9. The forms of capital by Pierre Bourdieu
10. The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? By Michael J. Sandel

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay stands among very few freedom fighters who imagined 'Freedom' in transnational terms meaning to end exploitation everywhere and of every form. She espoused an expansive idea that will contribute to individual as well as collective growth and evolution. Very few Indians could match her in terms of her travels to countries across the world (England, Germany, Denmark, China, Japan, United States, Srilanka, etc), the relations she forged with leaders worldwide and the multiple fields she straddled in(nationalist politics, socialist politics, women’s movement, education, refugee rehabilitation, theatre, cinema, renewal of handicrafts).

In this episode, I am in conversation with Nico Slate to talk about his recent biography ‘Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: The Art of Freedom’.

Nico Slate is a Professor of History and Head of the Department of History at Carnegie Mellow University. His research focuses on democracy and social movements in the United States and India. He is the author of six books: The Art of Freedom: Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and the Making of Modern India (HarperCollins India and the University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024); Brothers: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Race (Temple University Press, 2023); Lord Cornwallis Is Dead: The Struggle for Democracy in the United States and India (Harvard University Press, 2019); Gandhi’s Search for the Perfect Diet: Eating with the World in Mind (University of Washington Press, 2019); The Prism of Race: W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson and the Colored World of Cedric Dover (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); and Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Harvard University Press, 2012).

In this episode, I am in conversation with Rahul De, to discuss the key ideas in his book ‘A History of Economic Policy in India: Crisis, Coalitions and Contingency’. Rahul takes us through the meaning of economic history and the need for studying it. He situates industrial development in colonial India and its integration with the global economy. Rahul meticulously and candidly explores the failure of the Indian variant of planning, the reality of the green revolution and changes in voting behaviour, the evolution of liberalisation, and defining what can make a coalition government successful. Don’s miss this episode.

References:

1. Rahul De: A History of Economic Policy in India: Crisis, Coalitions, and Contingency
2. Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain by Aditya Mukherjee
3. Planning Democracy: Modern India’s Quest for Development by Nikhil Menon
4. India’s Political Economy 1947-2004: The Gradual Revolution by Francine R. Frankel
5. Technological Change and Political Turnover: The Democratizing Effects of the Green Revolution in India by Aditya Dasgupta
6. The Basic Approach by Jawaharlal Nehru
7. India’s Political Economy 1947-2004 by Francine R. Frankel
8. Industry and Empire: The Birth of the Industrial Revolution by Eric Hobsbawm
9. The Bombay Plan: Blueprint for Economic Resurgence (Edited by Sanjay Baru and Meghnad Desai)
10. Tirthankar Roy Website

In this episode, I am in conversation with Professor Rajshree Chandra, to talk about her book, ‘Competing Nationalism: The Sacred and Political Life of Jagat Narain Lal’, the biography of her grandfather. Jagat Babu was a key leader in the Indian National Congress and played an important role in national movement, especially in Bihar. He was also a member of the Constituent Assembly and minister for Law and Animal Husbandry in the Bihar government post-independence. In her work, Rajshree traces the life and ideas of Jagat Babu and shows us how his life as a microcosm reflects the trajectory of Indian nationalism and the dilemmas of nationalists. She narrates the journey of Jagat Babu through four pathways: Ascetic, Hindu Nationalist, Anti-Colonial and Civic nationalisms. Rajshree talks about how Jagat Babu navigated through and sometimes attempted to refashion these four pathways. Towards the end, Rajshree reflects on forms taken by these nationalisms in contemporary times. This episode will leave us with several lessons to reflect upon.

Rajshree Chandra is a professor of political science at Janki Devi Memorial College, Delhi University, and is a senior visiting fellow at Centre for Policy Research.

In this episode, I am in conversation with Dr Dev Nath Pathak⁠ about his new paper titled 'COVID-19 Cuts in Sociology of South Asia', published in Economic and Political Weekly.

Pathak spoke with absolute candour about the tradition of crisis mongering in social sciences, obsession with positivism, need for writing a very honest and hard-hitting polemics on the academic conferences, offered a critique on nation-building and the cancel culture in academia. He laments on how many of the academic conferences in South Asia and other parts of the world have became big talk-shows where one might not witness any real intellectual disputes. Admitting to the institutional constricts present, he calls upon scholars to taking risks and finding ways forward, raising above existential anxieties- “who has stopped individual scholar from practicing intellectual freedom”. He also reminds us of the history of social sciences in the beginning where these was openness to learn from different sources, and how the long drawn process of standardisation of the discipline forced scholars to stick to the new boundaries. These and many other things….I admire his frankness and I am certain, this conversation with be a source of delight and deep introspection to all the listeners.

Towards the end, Pathak suggests two songs to listen to after you finish this podcast: I have a Dream by Abba, Circle of Life from The Lion King. Don’t miss them.

Dev Nath Pathak⁠⁠ teaches at the Department of Sociology, South Asian University, New Delhi. His books include In Defence of the Ordinary: Everyday Awakenings and To Be or Not to Be Sociological: Methodological Ways of Seeing (forthcoming).

In this episode, I am in a short conversation with author, translator and medical officer Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, where we reflect on some key themes that influenced and informed his works.

His debut novel, The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey, won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar award in 2015. His second book, The Adivasis Will Not Dance: Stories, is a path-breaking text in subaltern and post-colonial literature. He recently translated ‘Kaale Adhyaay’ by Manoj Rupda from Hindi to English, titled I named my sister Silence.

He also authored several interesting essays in leading newspapers and magazines. My favourites: Leaving the egg for the end, Discrimination-eva Jayate and A Blooming Garden.

Also, read A Poem for the Ol-Chiki - by Sokhen Tudu - translated from Santhali to English by Sowvendra, illustrating how the Santhali language became a ground for conflict between three different scripts: Roman, Deanagari, and Ol-Chiki.