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Suggested Reading and Media
We believe that reading fiction and non-fictions books about India will help you gain deeper understanding of Indian society and culture. Here is a list of books on various topics in India that one can read to understand India better. It is not an exhaustive list, but a representation of diverse opinions in the form of books from various personalities on India.
India-History/Modern India
Indian Culture and Society
Religion and Philosophy
Politics and International Affairs
Business and Economy
Law and the Indian Constitution
Fiction/Literature
Documentaries
TV/Movie suggestions
India-History/Modern India
- A Concise History of Modern India by Barabara Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf
- Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy by Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal
- The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan by Yasmin Khan
- India: A History by John Keay
- Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy by Judith M. Brown
- India After Gandhi by Ram Guha
- Incarnations: India in 50 Lives by Sunil Khilnani(podcast also available)
- Interpreting India by Carnegie India (podcast hosted by acclaimed historian Srinath Raghavan)
- Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India by Ranajit Guha
- The Other side of Silence by Urvashi Butalia
- Everyday Lives, Everyday Histories: Beyond the Kings and Brahmanas of Ancient India by Uma Chakravarti
- A History of Modern India by Bipin Chandra
- Other books are linked here : 53 Best Books on Indian History (The Complete Guide) (bookgeeks.in)
- Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy by Judith M. Brown
- A History of India by Thomas Trautmann
- Partition Archive and The 1947 Partition Archive
- The Long Emergency
- Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century by Joya Chatterji
- Toward a Free Economy: Swatantra and Opposition Politics in Democratic India by Aditya Balasubramanian
- Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India by Mytheli Sreenivas
- Planning Democracy by Nikhil Menon
- Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy’s Turning Point by Gyan Prakash
Indian Culture and Society
- Religion, Caste, and Politics in India by Christophe Jaffrelot
- The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen
- Critical Themes in Indian Sociology by by Sanjay Srivastava, Yasmeen Arif, Janaki Abraham
- The Caravan Magazine
- Duke University Press – South Asia
- Grand Tamasha (podcast produced by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Hindustan Times)
- Daughters of Parvati: Women and Madness in Contemporary India by Sarah Pinto
- Disquieting Gifts: Humanitarianism in New Delhi by Erica Bornstein
- White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender, and Body in North India by Sarah Lamb
- Cultures of Servitude: Modernity, Domesticity, and Class in India by Raka Ray
- Annihilation of Caste : The Annotated Critical Edition by Dr.B.R Ambedkar, Annotated and Introduction by Arundhati Roy
- Ants Among Elephants by Sujatha Gidla
- Reconceptualising gender: Phule, Brahmanism and Brahmanical patriarchy” By Uma Chakravarti
- Conceptualising Brahmanical Patriarchy in Early India : Gender, Caste, Class and State | Economic and Political Weekly (epw.in)
- With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture) 1st Edition by Gayatri Reddy
- Servants of the Goddess: The Modern-Day Devadasis by Catherine Rubin Kermorgant
- Critical Collective
- Sahapedia
Religion and Philosophy
- Religion in India: Past and Present by Alan Babb
- A Journey Through Ladakh: Encounters with Buddhism by Andrew Harvey
- Perspectives on Modern South Asia: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation by Kamala Visweswaran
- Sikhism: An Introduction by Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh
- Antigod’s Own Country: Counter culture in Kerala by A.V. Sakthidharan
- The Hindus: An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger
- The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition by Harjot Oberoi
- Nine lives by William Dalrymple
Politics and International Affairs
- The Makers of Modern India by Ramachandra Guha
- The politics of vishwas: political mobilization in the 2019 national election by Neelanjan Sircar
- Contemporary South Asia 28(2) 2020
- Capital: The Eruption of Delhi by Rana Dasgupta
- Unsettling Memories: Narratives of the Emergency in Delhi by Emma Tarlo
- The Delhi Riots: Three Days in the Life of a Nation by Chakravarti and Haksar
- Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge by Bernard Cohn
- Provincializing Europe by Dipesh Chakrabarty
- The Delhi Riots: Three Days in the Life of a Nation by Chakravarti and Haksar
- Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India by Ashutosh Varshney
- Jotirao Phule and the Ideology of Social Revolution in India by Gail Omvedt
- Jotirao Phule and the Ideology of Social Revolution in India by Gail Omvedt
- Modi’s India by Christophe Jaffrelot
- Quotidian Revolution: Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India by Christian Novetzke
- Lokniti
- Power and Contestation: India Since 1989 by Aditya Nigam and Nivedita Menon
- India’s Political Economy: The Gradual Revolution (1947–2004). 2nd edition by Francine R. Frankel
- Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial Democracy by Partha Chatterjee
Business and Economy
- India Transformed: 25 Years of Economic Reforms edited by Rakesh Mohan
- Business and Politics in India edited by Christophe Jaffrelot, Atul Kohli, and Kanta Mural
- Poverty Amid Plenty in the New India by Atul Kohli
- Economics and Political Weekly
- Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen
- Story of Indian Business series by Gurucharan Das
- A Business History of India: Enterprise and the Emergence of Capitalism from 1700 by Tirthankar Roy
- The Oxford History of Contemporary Indian Business by Dwijendra Tripathi and Jyoti Jumani
- Tata: The Global Corporation that Built Indian Capitalism by Mircea Raianu
- The Price of Aid by David Engerman
Law and the Indian Constitution
- The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation by Granville Austin
- How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise by Ornit Shani
- The Transformative Constitution: A Radical Biography in Nine Acts by Gautam Bhatia
- India’s Founding Moment: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy by Madhav Khosla
- A People’s Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic by Rohit De
Fiction/Literature
- City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi by William Dalrymple
- The Salt Inspector and Other Stories by Munshi Premchand/Pawan Kumar Pandey
- Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
- The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
- The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
- The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh
- The Case of the Love Commandos by Tarquin Hall
- The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
- Amrita Pritam
- Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh
- The Girl in the Garden by Kamala Nair
- A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
- Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag
- Saadat Hasan Manto
- Ismat Chughtai
- Leila by Prayaag Akbar
- Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup
- A Burning by Megha Majumdar
- White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Kathrine Boo
- Pyre by Perumal Murugan
- Karukku by Bama
Documentaries
- The Story of India (BBC, Michael Wood)
- The Great Indian Railway (National Geographic)
- Powerless
- Ram ke Naam
- I am Gurgaon
- India Untouched
TV/Movie suggestions
- The Lunchbox
- PK (Netflix)
- Eeb allay ooo! (Netflix)
- Made in Heaven (Amazon Prime)
- Panchayat (Amazon Prime)
- Taj Mahal 1989 (Netflix)
- Lagaan
- Uski Roti
- A Suitable Boy
- Stories by Rabindranath Tagore (in Hindi on Netflix)
- Viceroy’s House
- Manto
- Delhi Belly
- Sairat
- Dangal
- Laapataa Ladies
- KD (Tamil)
- Kathal: The Core