Being Trans in India

Trans women are organizing to fight discrimination and oppression. Trans men face different problems because they’re often not recognized at all.
Lakshmi Sahgal

Recruiting Warrior Queens for the Rani of Jhansi Regiment

Why did so many plantation workers in Burma, Malaya, and Singapore rush to join the all-woman Rani of Jhansi regiment of the Indian National Army?
The cover of A Passage to India on top of a 1920s map of India

The Sociopolitical Impact of A Passage to India

E. M. Forster’s novel captured not only the tensions between colonizers and colonized but also the fraught internal politics that shaped India’s fight for independence.
Kavita Daswani’s For Matrimonial Purposes (2003); Daswani’s The Village Bride of Beverly Hills (2004); and Sonia Singh’s Goddess for Hire (2004).

The Hybrid Heroines of “Bollywood Chick Lit”

Material consumption and marriage have different meanings for South Asian American women, and those meanings should shape the way we read Desi “chick lit.”
Woman lighting the candles for Diwali in India

A History of Diwali

Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, is observed across the length and breadth of India as well as among the large Indian diaspora around the world.
Lajpat Rai and W.E.B. Du Bois

Black Freedom and Indian Independence

Activists including W. E .B. Du Bois in the United States and Lajpat Rai in India drew connections between Black American and Indian experiences of white rule.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Matrimandir_Auroville_Pondicherry.jpg

A Utopia—for Some—in India

In 1968, an international group led by an Indian freedom fighter and a French spiritualist formed a utopian—and problematic—community called Auroville.
Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.24887166

Women in the Vijayanagar Empire

According to legend, a woman played a central role in the founding of the Vijayanagar empire. But what was it really like to be a woman in India’s medieval era?
A drawn portrait of Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Pakistan’s Ambiguous Islamic Identity

Pragmatism, not faith, drove Muhammad Ali Jinnah to lead the call for the founding of the new Islamic state of Pakistan.
Taj Mahal, 2007

The Taj Mahal Today

In parallel with the recent shift in political attitudes toward Islamic heritage, India’s most famous monument may need to find a new place in history.