Dalithan
The life and work of K.K.
Speaking Tiger
One of India's most acclaimed independent publishing companies.
Ways of Being Indian
Identity formation in non-western societies involves paradox, as doctrines are frequently overridden by actual practices.
Speaking Tiger
The Emperor’s Mirror
‘Dr Bhaskara Rao has been India’s pre-eminent public opinion analyst and a pioneer in social audit and countrywide surveys…[His] deep analysis will lead to new solutions that can improve the quality of research at all stages.
Speaking Tiger
The Dilemma of an Indian Liberal
‘I became a liberal because I believed in the virtues of openness, mutual respect, and a concern for others.
Speaking Tiger
The Dismantling of India’s Democracy
India’s democracy, once celebrated as an unprecedented experiment in pluralism and participatory nation building, now faces a grave crisis.
Speaking Tiger
The Yellow Sparrow
Santa Khurai was seventeen when she decided to start dressing like a woman.
Speaking Tiger
Shooting the Sun
The ethnic clashes that broke out in Manipur in May 2023 have brought into focus the complexity of identity politics in the state.
Speaking Tiger
Boy, Unloved
In a sleepy village in Goa, a child grows up in a house whose windows are never opened.
Speaking Tiger
The Dharma of Unfaithful Wives and Faithful Jackals
How did Brahma create alluring women, and for what purpose? Why did the righteous King Bhangashvana choose womanhood? How did the sage Markandeya’s pupil prevent his guru’s wife from committing adultery? What role did Indra play in the births of Vishvamitra and Parashu Rama? How were death, diseases, desire and anger created? Why and how did the institution of kingship come about? What can one learn from the mouse who escaped the cat, the owl, the mongoose and the hunter; or the wise jackal who was betrayed by the lion king? Why did Shiva swallow Shukra, the guru of the Asuras? Embedded within the lengthy discourse on dharma in the Shanti and Anushasana Parvans of the Mahabharata are answers to a whole range of such questions—moral lessons from a dying Bhishma to King Yudhishthira, on life, death and everything in between.
Speaking Tiger
The Colours of Nationalism
The second in the series of Nandita Haskar’s introspective memoirs, The Colours of Nationalism is the story of an Indian human rights lawyer’s journey to discover India.
Speaking Tiger
Song of the Clay Pot
Who was the first ghatam player in the universe? Was it Lord Ganesh, who drummed out a rhythm on his potbelly? Or Shiva, whose love for the clay pot was so great that he decided to manifest on earth as one, becoming Kumbheswara, a form in which he is still worshipped in Tamil Nadu? Or was it Gundayya, the potter, who played and played on the pots he made, until the ‘whole world danced to the sound of the pot’? Or was it the village women who, since time immemorial, have walked home every evening with their pots on their heads, playing on them with their rings and bangles? In this fascinating book, Sumana Chandrashekar describes her love affair with the ghatam from the time when it called to her in her dreams, leading her to Sukanya Ramgopal, contemporary India’s first woman ghatam player, and to Sukanya’s own guru, Vikku Vinayakram, who, in 1966, had played the ghatam in New York, as an accompanist for the legendary M.
Speaking Tiger
Iru
‘…a fantastic, beautifully written, biography of one of India’s most remarkable scholars, Irawati Karve.
Speaking Tiger
Maya Nagari
You cannot catch a city in words. You cannot catch a city at all,’ write the editors of this anthology.
Speaking Tiger
Basti & Durbar
They say Delhi belongs to no one. For it seems everyone who lives in it calls someplace else home, from its slum dwellers to its ruling classes.
Speaking Tiger
The Artful Murders
‘Avarice and art, greed and guilt, passion and poison intertwine in this nail-biting, stay-up-all-nighter.
Speaking Tiger
Whistling in the Dark
‘By turns stark and wry, emotional and enlightening, Whistling in the Dark serves as more than just an academic addition to the canon of sub-continental queer studies.
Speaking Tiger
We, the People, and Our Constitution
The foundational ideas of Indian democracy—fraternity, equality, secularism, justice—are not alien concepts.
Speaking Tiger
Fraternity
There’s no dearth of references to a sense of kinship beyond one’s family or tribe in ancient Indian texts.
Speaking Tiger
Secularism
Secularism emerged in 17th-century Europe as an essential element of what became the modern state.
Speaking Tiger
Liberty
Few societies in the 19th and early 20th centuries remained untouched by the radical new idea of liberty, which implied both individual freedom and freedom from despotic rule.
Speaking Tiger