About the Book

A deep dive into Indian politics, history, culture
Most of the conversations in this book were published in their original form on the Indian Cultural Forum. Novelists, activists, historians, actors, musicians, translators—the voices are diverse and the conversations thoughtful, incisive, and wide-ranging. What is the truth about our society, culture, politics, and how do we hope to shape it in the future? We listen in to some of the finest minds of our time, including Bama, Nayantara Sahgal, Romila Thapar, Shanta Gokhale, Volga, T.M. Krishna, Sanjana Kapoor, as they speak frankly about subjects ranging from caste and contested texts to the silences that surround dissent, skilfully anchored by Githa Hariharan.

About the Author

Githa Hariharan has written novels, short fiction and essays over the last three decades. Her highly acclaimed work includes The Thousand Faces of Night which won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book in 1993, the short story collection The Art of Dying, the novels The Ghosts of Vasu Master, When Dreams Travel, In Times of Siege and Fugitive Histories, and a collection of essays entitled Almost Home: Cities and Other Places. She has also written children’s stories and edited a collection of translated short fiction, A Southern Harvest, the essay collection From India to Palestine: Essays in Solidarity and co-edited Battling for India: A Citizen’s Reader. Her most recent novel is I Have Become the Tide.
Hariharan has, over the years, been a cultural commentator through her essays, lectures and activism. In 1995, she challenged the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act as discriminatory against women. The case, Githa Hariharan and Another vs. Reserve Bank of India and Another, led to a landmark Supreme Court judgment in 1999 on guardianship.
For more on this Delhi-based author, see www.githahariharan.com