Books like Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India — picked by fans

This book enriched my understanding of how Hindu nationalism framed India’s imagination, not just through politics but also through publishing. Mukul’s minute excavation of Gita Press’s empire enthralled me—how two Marwari businessmen set up a publication house to strengthen militant Hindu nationalism.

What particularly stunned me was the reach of this vernacular press and its publications and how many nationalists legitimized its project—their bylines sandwiched between caste orthodoxy and cow protection pamphlets.

The book powerfully showed to me how a ‘spiritual’ enterprise quietly standardized the grammar of Hindutva, making devotion quantifiable, nationalism religious, and majoritarianism sacred.

This book left a deep impact on me because it exposed how Hindu nationalism did not just politicize religion; it rewired gender itself. Sarkar’s razor-sharp analysis of Bankimchandra’s novels, women’s memoirs, scandal, rumors, and popular press powerfully showed me how Hindu patriarchal norms were rewritten to shape dominant conceptions of womanhood, domesticity, wifeliness, and mothering.

What I found particularly enriching in the book was the stimulating use of vernacular sources to weave an everyday social history of Hindu cultural revivalism in the late nineteenth century. It is indeed a landmark work from one of the most creative and thinking historians of gender and Hindu histories in colonial times. 

I loved this book because it nuanced my understanding of how modern Hindu identity was manufactured through Hindi literature in the literary salons and polemics of nineteenth-century Banaras. Dalmia’s intricate study of the life and writings of Bharatendu Harischandra, a colorful and creative personality and often called the Father of Modern Hindi, impacted me strongly.

Here was a writer, playwright, publisher, and polemicist who played a critical role in the formation of Hindu modernity in North India. I also find the book interesting for its description of social history, rooted in the ancient city of Banaras. 

This is the final book that I have included in my list. I read this book only recently and thought of it as an important intervention because it traces the roots of modern Hindu nationalism to the encounter between Hindu society and European missionaries under colonial rule, an angle often overlooked in mainstream scholarship.

Manu S. Pillai persuasively shows how colonial pressures led to a reimagining of Hinduism, not just as resistance but also as adaptation and appropriation. For me, the book showed how Hindu nationalism emerged from this complex process, shaped by both confrontation and mimicry.

Its rich cast of historical actors and lucid narrative style make it an important intervention, one that connects cultural anxieties, colonial power, and identity formation with striking clarity.

This book is misnamed Riot - A Love Story. But don’t be deceived. In fact it is the tale of an affair gone wrong: Page one starts with a news article about the death of an American student. Solving the puzzle sheds light on the Hindu-Muslim riots in India as well as the underpinning of Indian families and how they view foreign-born individuals.

The book is a murder mystery without a detective, or even a clear denouement. That put me, as the reader before a set of puzzle pieces, each from a different point of view, laid out unflinchingly to draw a picture of enormous betrayal. Murder Mystery readers expect a neat wrap-up at the end and a clean ending. Tharoor has none for us. Instead, murderers pray piously, wearing their religion with a self-righteous smirk. But no, I do not believe criminals go unpunished by the eternal eye,… show more.

A children’s book that adults will enjoy, The Night Diary is the story of twelve-year-old Nisha, half-Muslim, half-Hindu, and caught up in the tragedy of partition – where Pakistan and India separated in the aftermath of India’s independence from Britain.

Nisha is about to experience the disorientation and fear that comes when a family decides to flee for safety. Nisha’s story is told through a series of letters to her mother as she leaves what is now Pakistan, to find a home and an identity. Her predicament – that of a desperate search not just for physical safety but for hope - reminds me of that of Resi, the main character in Sigh For A Strange Land, who wants nothing more than to find that "'tomorrow' is not a threatening word."

"India will sing like a bird out of its cage when she is free," says one of the characters in this wonderfully engaging book. Times of transition interest me and this book is set during the early part of Indian Independence, when everyone was trying to find a new identity and way of living, especially Victoria, one of the three main characters who is Eurasian, or as we would now say, mixed race. She is torn between the two sides of her heritage. Some of the language is shocking in our times but it is a fascinating story of people caught up in a country’s re-birth. It is also a tender love story. It’s a great way to get a feel of that period of upheaval.

Set in South India in the 1950s, this is a story of Meera, Manuel, and Shankar—three conflicted souls, each with secrets that can destroy the other. It is a beautiful novel showing how one can become a prisoner of one's secrets and live compromised lives. The descriptions are so hauntingly vivid that they will remain etched in my mind forever. I loved the narration and the poetic language, and the bittersweet ending was like icing on the cake.

I was fascinated by this book by William Dalrymple, a Scottish historian who has written widely about the Indian subcontinent.

He explains in intriguing detail how India and Indian civilisation contributed so much to the world—from the religions (like Buddhism and Hinduism) that took root in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, China and Indonesia, from the creation of the numerals that we use today and mistakenly refer to as Arabic numerals, from the exotic goods that flowed out of India and drained the gold of the Roman Empire.

He creates a plausible case for the Indian subcontinent being responsible for transforming the technology and culture of the ancient world,

Reading Dalrymple’s book gave me the insight and confidence to publish my own book, which complements and supplements the stories and ideas discussed in his book.

This book examines the function and representation of religion in Indian cinema and demonstrates that the interplay between the modern and the traditional in modern India is a natural aspect of daily existence. It discusses India's various cinemas while focusing on Bollywood, the Hindi film industry in Mumbai.

The devotional genre, which peaked during the height of the nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s, the mythological genre, which carries on India's long tradition of retelling Hindu myths and legends by drawing from sources like the national epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and Bombay-produced films that portray India's Islamicate culture, including historical, courtesan, and "Muslim social" genres, are all covered in Rachel Dwyer's engaging conversation.