By Andreas Altmann

Andreas Altmann ist das Gegenteil eines Esoterikers: aufgeklärt, kritisch, meinungsfreudig. Aber auch ein rastloser Reiseschriftsteller braucht Momente der Ruhe, um sich zu sammeln. So kam Altmann nach Indien. used to be er suchte: Einkehr und Klarheit. used to be er fand: Ein Trainingscamp des inneren Friedens.
Von Neu-Delhi fährt er nach Varanasi, erkundet die wichtigsten Stätten des Buddhismus – und landet durch Zufall im Meditationszentrum von S.N. Goenka. Seit vierzig Jahren unterrichtet der Guru Buddhas wichtigste Meditationslehre. Jede shape der Ablenkung ist untersagt. Und die Regeln sind streng: Alle mitgebrachten Gegenstände werden eingesammelt, kein Radio, keine Drogen, kein intercourse, kein Strom, keine Gespräche. Altmann befolgt alles, nur eines nicht: das Verbot des Schreibens.
Und ganz am Ende bewahrheitet sich die Weisheit, dass Buddha lehrt, Buddha zu überwinden. Andreas Altmann hat eine klarsichtige, persönliche und mutige Reportage geschrieben, die auch den Hiergebliebenen die Augen öffnet.

By Chung Tan

Himalaya Calling: The Origins of China and India will take the reader via a trip throughout the classes of time and locations ranging from the start of civilization from the Himalayas and lengthening into the Himalaya Sphere. The chapters within the ebook allow the reader to view the dynamics of China and India from the geo-civilizational paradigm of the Himalaya Sphere. one of the different new innovations brought is a brand new knowing of the Buddhist tryst with China's constructing procedure as a super-state and the interplay of the dynamics of 'wandering ascetics' from India and 'householder' in China. It conveys the message of 2 'civilization-states' as similar to oases within the desolate tract of recent 'nation-states' and advocates the Indian religious aim of 'Vasudhaiva kutumbakam' (the entire international is one unmarried kin) and the chinese language non secular objective of 'tianxia datong'(grand concord all-under-Heaven).

The e-book is a must-read for the entire leaders and coverage makers of China and India. it's a fruits of a long time of studying by means of the writer who has lived in either the international locations. The reader will start to comprehend the shared origins of China and India and the way the civilizations were associated throughout the a while. The publication is well timed because it coincides with the commemoration of the diamond jubilee (50th anniversary) of the Panchsheel (Five rules of peaceable Coexistence) in 2014.

Readership: coverage makers, historians, leaders in China and India and someone drawn to figuring out extra approximately China and India.

By Ranajit Guha

What's colonialism and what's a colonial kingdom? Ranajit Guha issues out that the colonial nation in South Asia used to be essentially various from the metropolitan bourgeois nation which sired it. The metropolitan country used to be hegemonic in personality, and its declare to dominance was once in keeping with an influence relation within which persuasion outweighed coercion. Conversely, the colonial kingdom used to be non-hegemonic, and in its constitution of dominance coercion was once paramount. certainly, the originality of the South Asian colonial country lay accurately during this distinction: a old paradox, it used to be an autocracy organize and sustained within the East by way of the key democracy of the Western global. It used to be impossible for that non-hegemonic nation to assimilate the civil society of the colonized to itself. therefore the colonial nation, as Guha defines it during this heavily argued paintings, used to be a paradox--a dominance with out hegemony. Dominance with out Hegemony had a nationalist element in addition. This arose from a structural break up among the elite and subaltern domain names of politics, and the ensuing failure of the Indian bourgeoisie to combine massive parts of the lifestyles and recognition of the folk into an alternate hegemony. That problem is mentioned by way of the nationalist venture of looking ahead to energy by means of mobilizing the loads and generating another historiography. In either endeavors the elite claimed to talk for the folk constituted as a state and sought to problem the pretensions of an alien regime to symbolize the colonized. A contention among an aspirant to energy and its incumbent, this was once in essence a competition for hegemony.

By Johannes Bronkhorst

Higher Magadha, approximately the jap a part of the Gangetic undeniable of northern India, has to date been seemed upon as deeply indebted to Brahmanical tradition. Religions corresponding to Buddhism and Jainism are considered derived, in a single means or one other, from Vedic faith. This trust is flawed in a variety of respects. The e-book argues for the significance and independence of larger Magadha as a cultural zone till a date with regards to the start of the typical period. with the intention to right the inaccurate notions, varieties of questions are handled: questions relating cultural and spiritual dependencies, and questions with regards to chronology. for this reason a changed photo arises that still has a referring to the extra improvement of Indian tradition. The ebook is prepared in 5 elements. Part-I describes cultural beneficial properties of better Magadha, below which there are 3 chapters-The basic religious Ideology, different beneficial properties and Conclusions. Part-II: Brahmanism vis-a-vis Rebirth and Karmic Retribution has 3 sections- Hesitantly accredited, Rebirth and Karmic Retribution missed or Rejected, and concrete Brahmins. below part one there are chapters onó Dharma Sutra, a component from the Mahabharata and the early Upanisads. part positive aspects chapters on Rebirth and Karmic Retribution neglected and Rebirth and Karmic Retribution Rejected. part 3 is on city Brahmins. Part-III dwells at the chronological matters, - linguistic attention, the Vedic texts identified to the early Sanskrit grammarians, to the early Buddhists, a few symptoms in late-Vedic literature, city as opposed to rural tradition, and so on. Part-IV is end, whereas half V has invaluable appendices-The antiquity of the Vedanta philosophy, a Carvaka within the Mahabharata, Vedic texts recognized to panini, the shape of the Rgveda recognized to Panini, Vedic texts identified to Patanjali, Brahmins within the Buddhist canon, Brahmanism in Gandhara and surrounding and Carvakas and the Sabarabhasya. The booklet additionally comprises references and index.

By Jon Wilson

For the century and a part sooner than the second one international battle, Britain ruled the Indian subcontinent. Britain's East India corporation governed enclaves of land in South Asia for a century and a part ahead of that. For those three hundred years, conquerors and governors projected themselves as heroes and improvers. The British public have been offered a picture of British authority and advantage. yet underneath the veneer of pomp and splendour, British rule in India was once worried, fragile and fostered chaos. Britain's Indian empire was once equipped through those that desired to make sufficient cash to dwell good again in Britain, to prevent humiliation and threat, to place their slender expert services into perform. The associations they created, from legislation courts to railway traces, have been designed to guard British energy with no connecting with the folk they governed. the outcome used to be a precarious regime that supplied Indian society with out management, and which oscillated among paranoid paralysis and coffee moments of utmost violence. the shortcoming of love among rulers and governed eventually triggered the system's cave in. yet even after its death, the Raj lives on within the fake concept of the efficacy of centralized, authoritarian energy. Indians answered to the extraordinary nature of British energy via doing issues for themselves, developing enterprises and routine that created an order and prosperity of its personal. India Conquered revises the way in which we predict approximately nation-building up to empire, exhibiting what number of the associations that formed 20th century India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have been in-built reaction to British energy. the result's an interesting tale very important for somebody who desires to comprehend the historical past of empires and the origins of latest South Asian society.

By Sarah Besky

Nestled within the Himalayan foothills of Northeast India, Darjeeling is synonymous with many of the best and most costly tea on the earth. it's also domestic to a violent circulation for nearby autonomy that, just like the tea undefined, dates again to the times of colonial rule.

In this nuanced ethnography, Sarah Besky narrates the lives of tea staff in Darjeeling. She explores how notions of equity, worth, and justice shifted with the increase of fair-trade practices and postcolonial separatist politics within the area. this can be the 1st booklet to discover how fair-trade operates within the context of large-scale plantations.

Readers in quite a few disciplines—anthropology, sociology, geography, environmental stories, and foodstuff studies—will achieve a serious standpoint on how plantation existence is altering as Darjeeling struggles to reinvent its signature commodity for twenty-first-century shoppers. The Darjeeling Distinction demanding situations fair-trade coverage and perform, exposing how exchange tasks frequently fail to contemplate the bigger environmental, historic, and sociopolitical forces that form the lives of the folk they meant to help.

By Heyfunnyboy

By Arundhati Roy

First released in 2001, this publication brings jointly all of Arundhati Roy's political writings thus far. This revised paperback variation contains new essays, written in early 2002: 'Democracy: who is She while She's no longer at Home', which examines the awful communal violence in Gujarat, and 'War speak: summer time video games with Nuclear Bombs', concerning the probability of nuclear battle within the Subcontinent

By Ajay Mitra Shastri

By Bibek Debroy

The Mahabharata is without doubt one of the maximum tales ever informed. even though the fundamental plot is celebrated, there's even more to the epic than the dispute among Kouravas and Pandavas that ended in the conflict in Kurukshetra. It has innumerable sub-plots that accommodate attention-grabbing meanderings and digressions, and it has not often been translated in complete, given its ambitious size of 80,000 shlokas or couplets. This superb 10-volume unabridged translation of the epic relies at the serious variation compiled on the Bhandarkar Oriental study Institute.

The 5th quantity will entire Udyoga Parva with the tale of Amba who was once reborn as Shikandi. It comprises Bhishma Parva which covers the 1st ten days of the warfare and has Krishna’s recommendation to Arjuna within the type of the Bhagavad Gita. This quantity therefore will get into the struggle right. After Bhishma’s downfall, Drona is instated because the commander and Abhimanyu is killed.

Every plausible human emotion figures within the Mahabharata, explanation why the epic keeps to carry sway over our mind's eye. during this lucid, nuanced and assured translation, Bibek Debroy makes the Mahabharata marvelously available to modern readers.