In Triveni are birds perched on branches, moonstruck musings, a house of straws, walking roses and unbridled desires of the heart. The poems are inhabited by lost lovers, unreturned books and bloodsucking rumours. A poetic form unique to Gulzar, Triveni is a confluence of three of India’s majestic rivers—the golden-hued Ganges, the deep green Yamuna and a third, the mythical one that lies beneath the former two, the Saraswati. A form Gulzar began experimenting with in the 1960s, Triveni comes close to several classical Japanese forms of poetry such as the Haiku, Senryu and Tanka. The closest Indian forms to Triveni are the doha and shayari. In this stunning translation by Neha R. Krishna, Triveni have been transcreated as tanka and are ladled with musicality, breaking away from the charm of rhyme and metre. This collection, too, is a confluence or sangam of forms and nothing short of a gift from one of India’s most beloved poets.

Dreams and Realities is a thought-intriguing collection of essays on pertinent and persistent social, political, environmental as well as other diverse issues across the spectrum of humanity, humankind and life as a whole. The objective of this book is not to educate but to catalyse the seeker amongst the reader to pursue the truth in its purest forms. So embark on the journey of self-exploration that shall possibly channel the curious being encapsulating your soul.

In this compelling social history, William R. Pinch tackles one of the most important but most neglected fields of the colonial history of India: the relation between monasticism and caste. The highly original inquiry yields rich insights into the central structure and dynamics of Hindu society—insights that are not only of scholarly but also of great political significance. Perhaps no two images are more associated with rural India than the peasant who labors in an oppressive, inflexible social structure and the ascetic monk who denounces worldly concerns. Pinch argues that, contrary to these stereotypes, North India's monks and peasants have not been passive observers of history; they have often been engaged with questions of identity, status, and hierarchy—particularly during the British period. Pinch's work is especially concerned with the ways each group manipulated the rhetoric of religious devotion and caste to further its own agenda for social reform. Although their aims may have been quite different—Ramanandi monastics worked for social equity, while peasants agitated for higher social status—the strategies employed by these two communities shaped the popular political culture of Gangetic north India during and after the struggle for independence from the British.

Comprises lectures delivered at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Simla.

Exhibition catalog of Buddhist art.

India has long been dominated by the upper castes, even though the lower castes make up more than two thirds of the population. This book examines how the lower castes have become more assertive in recent decades.

This book is a collection of essays by prominent thinkers on the historist and humanist transcendence of the caste system such that an authentic democracy can bloom in India. It locates caste as not only a social problem, but a moral evil and schizophrenia affecting India civilization. Besides reflecting on Jotiba Phule, Karl Marx, and B.R. Ambedkar, this book also traverses through Nietzschean genealogy, communalism in colonial India, the need for radical education to fulfil the democratic revolution, the literature of Triveni Sangh, questions of social exclusion and inequality, the story of Eklavya in the Mahabharata and the asking of pertinent questions to the Indian left. This book is co-published with Aakar Books. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

Wordweavers 2020 Anthology, a book of Poetry & Short Fiction written by various authors, for the year 2020.