March Indian nonfiction: Six new titles that take a sharp look at India’s past and future

All information sourced from publishers.

The Phoenix Rises: The Resurrection of Cochin, Raghu Palat and Pushpa Palat

Raghu and Pushpa Palat return with the untold saga of Rama Varma IX, better known as the legendary Shakthan Thampuran. The kingdom of Cochin was at its nadir, teetering on the brink of collapse and annexation, when 18-year-old Kunjipilla was entrusted with its governance. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the fragile state transformed into a rich and prosperous kingdom under Kunjipilla’s able leadership. He entered into alliances, built towns, advanced trade relations and consolidated power, breaking the nexus between priests and the Nair nobility.

Drawing on meticulous archival research and employing gripping narrative flair, the Palats breathe life into a forgotten giant of Indian history. This is more than a novelised biography – it is the resurrection of a reign that shaped the soul of Kerala.

Wajid Ali Shah: A Cultural and Literary Legacy, Kaukub Quder and Sajjad Ali Meerza, translated from the Urdu by Talat Fatima

Wajid Ali Shah, the erstwhile ruler of Awadh, is embedded in popular imagination as the ill-fated king who lost his throne to the British and sought solace in music and dance. This obtuse narrative barely scratches the surface of a figure whose extraordinary creative legacy has been overshadowed by colonial caricatures and historical neglect.

In this book, Kaukub Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza brings to light the vast and often misunderstood cultural and literary contributions of Wajid Ali Shah. Drawing from rare manuscripts, forgotten letters and overlooked compositions, the book reconstructs the multifaceted life of a ruler who was not only a patron of the arts but a prolific poet, dramatist, musicologist and innovator in architecture, fashion and performance. Dr Meerza’s work is not only a biography, but a cultural history of nineteenth-century Lucknow and a reclamation of a voice nearly lost to time. From the lyrical grandeur of Sabatul Quloob to the theatrical innovations of the “Shahi Rahas”, Wajid Ali Shah’s oeuvre is examined with deep intellectual labour and a marked sensitivity.

A definitive portrait of an artist-king whose genius was dismissed as eccentricity, this book challenges the myths of incompetence and decadence, and restores Wajid Ali Shah to his rightful place in the pantheon of India’s cultural visionaries.

India’s Forests: Revisiting Nature and History, edited by Arupjyoti Saikia and Mahesh Rangarajan

India’s Forests brings together essays by some of the country’s leading scholars with a fresh view of nature and history. These reappraisals of Indian forests and their many lives in the past and present matter more than ever today.

Born of years of sustained reflection, the essays here view forests not as passive, unchanging backdrops to the past but as living, contested spaces.

Forests were shaped and in turn deeply influenced by power, culture and society. They could mean very different things to different people who often were in conflict over meaning as much as control of the space or the resource.

The volume spans from prehistory through ancient and early modern India into the present. It is also alive to the impact of the colonial era while tracing the changing fortunes of tribal and hill peoples.
They are ecological lifelines and sites of legend, memory, and scientific knowledge. Material remains and life cycles of animals and plants matter, so too do social and literary imaginations.

Forests have been continually redefined through conflict, negotiation, and care. Attentive to the changing meanings across time and place, the book asks us fundamental and unsettling questions: what are forests for?

A Statesman and a Seeker: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Dr Karan Singh, Harbans Singh

Karan Singh was just 18 and had barely recovered from a mysterious illness that left him bedridden for over a year when he was catapulted into political life in 1949. His father, the last Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir who had recently signed the Instrument of Accession to India, appointed him Regent and left the State, never to return. Over the next two decades, Karan Singh presided over J&K’s difficult transition to a modern but troubled democracy – first as Regent, then as Head of State (Sadr-e-Riyasat) and finally as Governor. In 1967, he joined Indira Gandhi’s Congress government at the Centre, becoming India’s youngest cabinet minister, and served as Minister of Tourism and Aviation, Health, and Education. He was also India’s Ambassador to the USA, head of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), Member of the Rajya Sabha, Chairman of the Auroville Foundation and member of the UNESCO Executive Board. Throughout, he has remained of an independent mind and spirit – a gentleman and a consensus-builder in the fractious world of Indian politics, and a celebrated scholar of Hinduism, a philosopher and spiritual seeker who has championed interfaith understanding for over half a century.

Both intimate and objective, A Statesman and a Seeker tells the story of Karan Singh’s life and legacy – and his fascinating encounters with, among others, Nehru, Patel, Sheikh Abdullah, Shastri, Indira Gandhi, JRD Tata, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Rajiv Gandhi, Aldous Huxley, and the spiritual gurus Sri Krishnaprem and Sri Madhav Ashish.

At 94, Karan Singh remains one of India’s most respected public personalities – and arguably the best President India never had. This comprehensive biography examines his life and times with the rigour and nuance that has never been brought to any portrait of this remarkable figure.

Battleground Bengal: The Political Future of a Fiercely Contested State, Sayantan Ghosh

Long considered a bastion of the Left, the state of West Bengal has been politically dominated by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) for more than a decade, to the extent that the opposition parties here have been reduced to electoral irrelevance. But over the last few years, the TMC has been faced with a new challenger: the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has slowly made inroads into the state’s political arena, winning 77 seats in the 2021 assembly election, a significant jump from its 2016 tally of three assembly seats.

Does this mean that the end is near for the TMC as the BJP prepares for a historic wipeout, reminiscent of the Left’s decimation in 2011? Or will Mamata Banerjee manage to hold her own by utilising her grassroots presence and still-formidable public appeal? In Battleground Bengal, author Sayantan Ghosh attempts to answer these questions and to gauge the anxiety and excitement in the build-up to the 2026 assembly election in the state.

Through archival documents, electoral data, interviews with political leaders and experts, and years of field reporting, Ghosh presents a critique of the contemporary political scene – from Mamata’s welfare-oriented populism to the BJP’s organisational crises – and looks back at the state’s recent history for clues about its possible future. In the final analysis, Battleground Bengal reveals how identity, patronage and fear continue to shape Bengal’s politics, regardless of who is at the helm.

How Law Shapes Transgender Lives, Identity and Community in India, edited by Jayna Kothari

India’s rapid transformation in transgender rights has few global parallels. From the recognition of gender self-determination to the decriminalisation of same-sex relations, courts have set out a framework that guarantees dignity, autonomy and equal protection under the law. Yet the lived reality of the trans community continues to be marked by exclusion, discrimination, violence and the daily fight for even basic rights like access to education, healthcare, employment and shelter. Transforming Rights confronts this contradiction head-on.

Edited by Jayna Kothari, Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court and a leading practitioner in gender and equality law, this volume brings together scholars, activists, lawyers, policy researchers and community members whose work engages directly with transgender rights and the wider LGBTQIA+ community. The chapters explore constitutional protections, the demand for reservations, questions of intimacy and family, public attitudes, access to higher education and livelihood, structural exclusion and the intersection of trans activism with caste and indigeneity.

Drawing on legal, social and community-based perspectives, the collection identifies the progress made, the challenges that persist and the reforms necessary to realise equal protection for transgender persons in India.