giving a rare (these days) lecture online in the spring (6th March 2026): Studio Ilankai: A Tamil Photographic History of Sri Lankan Citizenship. Info and registration: www.byforcollective.com/programs/vin...
I reviewed some new books on queer Southasia for @himalmag.bsky.social
www.himalmag.com/politics/que...
Four new books open up debate on why same-sex marriage has come to anchor queer politics in India, and how the notions and politics of Southasian queer life shift across local, diasporic and transnational scales of identity and belonging.
A review essay by Rahul Rao :
“I was channelling the rage that I know exists into a character who will allow it to dictate her actions and fuel her ambition in a way that I think most of us, thankfully or otherwise, don’t let ourselves do.”
A conversation with Dur e Aziz Amna: buff.ly/9AydIn4
🎙️ Coming up on the #podcast "Saffron Siege: the RSS at 100": Apoorvanand speaks to Harsh Mander about how the #RSS emerged from the shadows in the decades after Gandhi’s assassination and the role of key leaders in legitimising it.
Episode out on 24 September on Himal's podcast channels.
PANEL DISCUSSION: Join Pranaya Rana, Ambika Satkunanathan and Zyma Islam as they analyse youth-led protests in #Nepal, #Bangladesh and #lka – and what comes afterwards, 25 September at 7 PM IST: bit.ly/4nI9Vsr
🎙️📚 “Like many British-Bangladeshis, I was aware of the migration within my family. I grew up being conscious that we came from somewhere else. And the thing that made us different to everybody else in the best possible way was food.”
A conversation with @shahnazahsan.bsky.social: buff.ly/vsKZzYn
'Images rémanentes de la disparition forcée' feauturing a video adaptation of my 2022 article (rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....) on the political uses of photography by the Tamil Families of the Disappeared in Northern Sri Lanka opens in Geneva this evening www.unige.ch/cite/eveneme...
"And now #Nepal, from its present abyss, dreams of a new politics that actually works for the people. Let it not have to see more blood in its striving," writes Himal EIC @romangtm.bsky.social about the #GenZprotests in #Kathmandu
“What is the idea of the birangona woman? It is not the government’s definition, it is not the soldiers’ definition. It is the definition of how the women defined themselves in that moment and afterwards.”
A conversation with Saima Begum:
📣 New podcast from @himalmag.bsky.social and Karwan e Mohabbat:
As the #RSS celebrates 100 years this Dussehra, a series of conversations examining its roots, its ideology and its role in India's public and social life.
Harsh Mander hosts this 12-part series starting 17 September.
📣🎙️New podcast from @himalmag.bsky.social and Karwan-e-Mohabbat!
As the #RSS turns 100 this Dussehra, the peace activist and writer Harsh Mander hosts a 12-part series examining its roots, ideology and role in #India’s public life.
Launching 17 September - you don’t want to miss this!
v happy to be working on new projects, in ‘new’ island places, fortutiously intersecting in one of my favourite towns, Trincomalee: on the conflated histories/present of militarisation & leisure in Ceylon/Sri Lanka + the making of place through photography everydayphotography.org/journal/stud...
📣 🎙️ Coming in 10 days: A new season of Partitions of the Heart – 12 episodes on the history of the RSS, its role in India's public life and in creating communal division.
One episode every Wednesday, starting 17 September.
@vindi-b.bsky.social on how Trincomalee, a port city on the northeast coast of Sri Lanka, has been shaped through photography everydayphotography.org/journal/stud...
"Although northern Sri Lanka has been insistently ignored in the canon of the island’s photographic history, its prominence for the claimed arrival and development of photography cannot be overestimated and warrants far greater attention."
"Depending on whom you ask, the BRI is a 21st-century Marshall Plan for the Global South, a series of crippling debt traps, or a herald of China’s new role as the dominant global superpower."
@joshuaqyang.bsky.social writes:
“History, too, is often written in the shadow of the same agendas as myth. As we see in our own time when what facts are available are twisted to serve particular religious and political agendas.”
A conversation with the Indologist Wendy Doniger: www.himalmag.com/podcast/wend...
📚🎙️“The difference between an AI model and a human ultimately is really basic. It’s the fact that an AI model isn’t a human. What I’m interested in is my relationship as a reader with the human writer who put the words on the page.”
@vauhinivara.bsky.social:
📚🎙️“We now have contested histories. History is being weaponised so that it can become a tool for the right wing to make a case against minorities, against the facts of our history.”
A conversation with Jerry Pinto on inclusive storytelling:
Tune in to our latest Southasia Review of Books episode for the full conversation with @arunikashyap.bsky.social on his new collection of short stories, 'The Way You Want to Be Loved'.
🎧Spotify: spoti.fi/4557fiy
🎧 Apple Podcasts: apple.co/44Z2YNr
🎧Youtube: youtu.be/btapvkwrTxU
🎙️📚New episode of the #SouthasiaReviewofBooks podcast!
A conversation with the Assamese writer @arunikashyap.bsky.social on crafting stories on love, resistance and belonging set against the long shadow of violence in India’s Northeast: www.himalmag.com/podcast/arun...
Coming on 4 June: Season 1 of the new Himal podcast "Partitions of the Heart", which is about Muslim Life – and Death – in Modi's India. Harsh Mander speaks to the researcher and activist Afreen Fatima about #bulldozers, the #hijab, Muslim rage and much more.
We need your support to continue producing independent journalism to the Southasian region. Become a paying supporter today for more investigative reporting and accountability journalism.
Join our Patrons programme here: www.himalmag.com/support-himal
We received the honor in the Small and Medium Outlets category for our investigative reportage “The costs of Reliance’s wildlife ambitions” by M Rajshekhar.
Read the full story here: buff.ly/QOcuJ1l
🏅🎉 Himal was chosen as a finalist for the 2025 Global Shining Light Awards by the Global Investigative Journalism Network (@gijn.org ) — the prize that honors watchdog journalism in developing or transitioning countries carried out under threat, or in perilous conditions.
I am glad to have written this piece for @himalmag.bsky.social with excellent editorial support from @romangtm.bsky.social and @shwethasrikanthan.bsky.social. It is always so gratifying to work with them because they nudge me towards clarity and sharpness.
🎙️📚"To say what the Gulf was according to the migrants, I did not want to read them as victims. I wanted to look at the kind of literature they wrote, the kind of photographs they produced or the films they made."
A conversation with Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil:
🎙️📚New episode of the #SouthasiaReviewofBooks podcast!
A conversation with Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil on his documenting the cultural imaginaries of Kerala and the Gulf through migrants’ literary and visual records of their transnational lives and aspirations: www.himalmag.com/podcast/moha...
