Westland Books Posts

“The Beast Within” by Rudraneil Sengupta 

07 11 , 2025 No Comments

The Beast Within is the first piece of fiction by Rudraneil Sengupta. It is published by Westland Books. A journalist who is known for his longform writing on sports, crime, human-interest stories. Also, a documentary filmmaker. The Beast Within has an enormous cast of characters, across socio-economic, religion, gender, and castes, based in Delhi. Not necessarily focussed upon South Delhi drawing rooms but the length and breadth of this massive urban space.

Rudraneil Sengupta wrote this book after shadowing various police personnel for a long time. With their permission, he recorded many of their conversations, and later transcribed the tapes. It enabled him to get a technical understanding of the interrogation techniques, the medical procedures such as autopsies, and even dialogues between the police officers while conversing amongst themselves or with various individuals.

This is the book, probably the first of many, but as first books go, it is packed tightly with many incidents that he probably encountered during the course of his reportage. As he writes and creates a series arc with these characters, they will begin to come into their own. Most likely, there will be fewer stories to investigate and the focus will be on one major story and a few minor/peripheral stories that may or may not be played up in later books.

Rudraneil gets the pacing of the story, the plotline, the dialogues, the speech rhythms, the socio-economic context of the origin stories of the characters, and the glimpses into their brutal side very well. His soft corner for sports writing is visible especially in the creation of the former wrestler and now policewoman Meera. There will be more such people in his stories.

It is worth reading.

7 Nov 2025

“Tangerine: How to Read the Upanishads Without Giving Up Coffee” by Namita Devidayal

19 10 , 2025 No Comments

p.21-22 I remember that moment when my constructed, conditioned versions of ‘self’ started dissolving, the disguises started peeling off.

It was the last morning of the retreat, which also happened to be my forty0seventh birthday. The previous evening, I had been sitting on a bench facing the river and the hill on the other side of it. I could see the cave where George Harrison had once hung out with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. A quiet mist ascended from the water and I felt my eyes tearing. It may have been from sadness or joy, or both, or neither. The aquamarine water and the emerald green hill in the distance turned into Impressionist art in my blurred vision. I blinked a few time and saw a speck of tangerine in the distance. As it came closer, the object morphed into a monk.

Then, the bells started to chime. First one, and then many, in symphonic unison, little and big bells that hung at the entrances of temples all around, until they reached a crescendo, distant but also simultaneously vibrating within me.

I remembered what a qawwali singer at Ajmer Sharif had once told me: Music is always an offering in temples and churches and mausoleums.

‘This is why you find a bell at the entrance in places of worship. And this is why we sing in the dargah or in the gurudwara,’ he said, pausing to engage with his spittoon. ‘Even when a dacoit is about to attack someone, and he hears a temple bell, he will involuntarily stop in his tracks, even if only for a moment. This is kachcha jadoo, primordial magic.’ And back he went to his music, belting out more boisterous Allahoos.

It felt like I was in a timeless space. I could have been sitting there centuries ago, or at some point in the future. It didn’t really matter. Our version of the ‘self’ are all clay, mutable, and therefore capable of what psychologists call neuroplasticity: the human being’s inherent potential to transform into anything they wish to be. A rogue bandit can become a saint; a warrior king could become a Buddhist monk.

p. 75 Before women had access to therapy, they often turned to religion and gurus to help them navigate difficult families. My ma-in-law Hardevi battled the trauma of early widowhood and overbearing patriarchy by turning to god. But rather than sitting passively in front of a statue, she found her way to the non-ritualistic altar of Vedanta philosophy. she studied the Bhagvad Gita and translated it into Sindhi, patiently writing in the Arabic script, for she had attended school in pre-Partition Karachi.

Senior journalist and musician Namita Devidayal’s latest book, Tangerine: How to Read the Upanishads Without Giving Up Coffee is a memoir about her finding peace and tranquility and shedding unnecessary baggage. In short, it is the the self-help book that she avoids reading but wrote one herself. Honestly speaking, it is much more. It is deliciousness poured into words with generous sprinkling of wisdom and the elegant manner in which she straddles cultures while writing is superb. She makes visible that many of prefer to keep hidden. A sense of familiarity and ease to be who we are in this modern age. We live, borrow, and breathe many experiences — call them faith, call them culture, call them whatever you will — but many individuals prefer to either shush about different aspects of their life or not acknowledge it all. Spiritual sustenance being a very key part of Namita’s existence and that she does not shy away from discussing. It does create some awkward moments for her in social gatherings or even with her son when she wants to pursue her readings of the Upanishads and has many questions to ask, but given the times that we live in, people misinterpret her genuine queries and think that she has crossed over to the other side and is being irrational. She is not. She is interested. She wants to know. Hence, this book. It does not matter if you are an atheist or a believer, it is a book that you will devour and not forget in a hurry.

Tangerine is published by Westland Books. The exquisitely designedcover, with its peekaboo circles in the dust jacket highlighting the moonlit night sky and plenty of green vegetation has been designed by Saurabh Garge.

I interviewed Namita for TOI Bookmark. Here is the Spotify link:

19 Oct 2025

“Animal Tales from India” by Chesta Wadhwani and “Tales from the Panchatantra” by Seher Beg. Both, illustrated by Nayan Bose.

19 09 , 2025 No Comments

Step into a world where animals talk, trick and teach, where tiny sparrows dream of the big sea and little parrots take on mighty fires. In Timeless Animal Stories from India, every forest hums with laughter and wisdom, every river carries a secret and every creature has a tale to tell. These heart-warming stories, full of wit and wonder, celebrate courage, cleverness and the simple magic of kindness.
Written by Chesta Wadhwani, these stories are perfect for readers aged six and above—and just right for younger children to enjoy at story time too. Brimming with adventure, gentle humour, old-world charm and even wit and wisdom, this collection will be loved by anyone who has ever loved animals or enjoyed listening to their tales.

Chesta Wadhwani is a journalist and writer passionate about stories that explore the connection between nature and the human experience. She studied fiction at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, has written widely for national publications and has contributed to anthologies, including works for children. As the co-author of HUM—When Women Lead for UN Women India, her work is deeply rooted in storytelling that brings the natural world to life.

Step into a world of wisdom, wit, and wonder with this beautifully illustrated collection of 25 timeless tales from the Panchatantra. Meet a brave princess, sly fox, clever hare, and many more unforgettable characters as they navigate thrilling adventures, tricky dilemmas, and unforgettable life lessons. From the Mongoose and the Snake to the Monkey and the Crocodile, these beloved fables have been passed down for generations, teaching kindness, intelligence, and the power of good choices. With vivid full-colour illustrations and engaging storytelling, this stunning book brings ancient wisdom to life. A must-have for every child’s library—perfect for reading alone or sharing with family!

Sahar Beg Oddly enough, the author is not acknowledged on the cover the book nor it there an author blurb available online. But, if I am right, then Sahar Beg is now a young woman who as a teenager would write and comment enthusiastically about children’s and YA literature. (Here, here) In all likelihood, she is another Samhita Arni in the making, who many years ago, retold the Indian epics as a twelve-year-old.

These two books were sent by Red Panda, the children’s imprint of Westland Books. Beautiful editions to look at, even if a tad too heavy to hold. Full page, four colour illustrations complementing the text. Curiously, the illustrator of both the texts is Nayan Bose, about whom there is no description in either the published books nor online. Nor is Nayan Bose acknowledged on the cover of the books. Why? Mysterious. Great idea to publish these two collections. One can never tire of such stories. They can be told and retold umpteen times. But, but, but…

Transferance of oral stories to the written word at the best of times can be challenging. So, I feel a little more effort could have been made, to go that extra mile, to create these stories in a little more child-friendly and definitely easier to read for readaloud. For example, the sentences are too long. The reader will get breathless or just start yawning reading it out aloud. A young listener will tire easily. A neo-literate will struggle to get to the end of a sentence instead of feeling a sense of achievement at having read a description or a piece of action before triumphantly moved on to the next sentence. Why is it that sentences cannot be short and sweet? Why must there be long winded with far too many conjunctions used? Why must there be so many polysyllabic words? Why cannot there be mesmerising joy in the rhythm of words and thus create an engaging text instead of a flat monotone? To top it all, the font used is very turgid. It should be softer and less tighter than it is at present. It is harsh to the eyes. Not at all enticing.

These story books are a good idea, a good effort, available at an affordable price point. and it is truly paisa vasool (value for money as many desi parents would like), but seriously, a little more effort put in to the editing and production, would have ensured a long tail of sales.

19 Sept 2025

Avtar Singh’s “Into the Forest” and “The Pretenders”

17 09 , 2025 No Comments

Avtar Singh is an internationally published author and magazine editor. He was the founding editor of Time Out Delhi and was most recently managing editor of The Indian Quarterly. He has twenty years of experience editing magazines engaged with arts and literature, entertainment, food, travel and fiction. Recent fiction credits include the short story ‘A Scandal in Punjab’ in The Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction (2024), and ‘The Corpse Bearer’ in Subnivean.org (shortlisted for the Subnivean prize 2023). Recent non-fiction credits include work in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, Nikkei Asian Review, India Today and Biblio. He was a summer fellow at the MacDowell Colony in 2018. His last novel, Necropolis, about crime, poetry and a woman who may be centuries-old (HarperCollins India and Akashic Press, US, 2014), was translated into German as Nekroplis. His first novel was The Beauty of These Present Things (Penguin India, 2000). Among other print credits, his work has been collected in Mumbai Noir, Civil Lines and the essay volume Pilgrim’s India. He has written for GQ, Cosmopolitan and other prestigious publications. He has lived and worked in India, the US and China, and is now based in Germany.

In less than a year, he has published two novels. Into the Forest (2024, Westland Books) and The Pretenders (2025, Simon and Schuster India).

INTO THE FOREST, AN EXQUISITELY WRITTEN, HARD-TO-DEFINE NOVEL, IS AS MUCH A MEDITATION ON THE HUMAN RELATIONSHIP TO NON-HUMAN LIFE AS IT IS A LOOK AT THE PUSH AND PULL OF GENDER, CLASS AND RACE IN OUR SOCIETIES.
‘Why do you want to know about what happened, bhai?’
The older man mentions a paper in the UK that may be interested in what happened to Nabi. Its politics are impeccable. His story will resonate there.
Nabi looks unconvinced.
‘People must know our stories,’ says the reporter.
‘Why? What good does it do?’
There are three disappearances; they could all be ‘crimes’, but only one of them ends up in murder. Germany, with its unique fractures, is the perfect setting. This story could only be about women. Yet, this is also a novel about the human condition anywhere, everywhere.
Into the Forest is about loneliness and isolation, migration and belonging. It is also about how times of great stress are both brake and accelerant to human connection.

Shamsher Singh (Sammy to his friends) watches a man carry a corpse around Delhi, looking for a place to cremate the body with dignity. Sammy’s is a privileged life, yet the sickness has ripped open all the insecurities and anxieties of his past. In Beijing, Mei must come to terms both with her stepfather’s demands and her long-distance relationship with Farid, Shamsher Singh’s young “nephew”. Changez Khan finds kindness from an unexpected quarter in Bangkok, but his own ghosts carry an intolerable weight. In Jakarta, Nina, Mei’s mother, must overcome her husband’s paranoia and her own isolation. As death steps ever closer, lies are exposed and deceptions unraveled. But there is always hope.

Set across Asia at the peak of the brutal Delta wave, The Pretenders is a novel about finding love, freedom, and human connection in the bleakest of times. In Delhi’s sprawling homes, in the cramped quarters of the staff that keep them running, in the loneliness of Bangkok’s streets, The Pretenders takes one to the heart of what it means to be human when life itself is in the balance. Policemen and predators, the privileged and the under-privileged, masters and servants: everyone must look in the mirror when the time comes and know truth from artifice.

17 Sept 2025

“The Dravidian Pathway: How the DMK Redefined Power and Identity in South India” by Vignesh Rajahmani

28 08 , 2025 No Comments

Politics at the best of times can be bewildering. So, when a book like The Dravidian Pathway comes along, one can only hope it provides a useful explanation on how and why the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) movement became as big as it did and is a political entity to contend with in Tamil Nadu. The DMK is a political party that cannot be ignored and is able to hold its own. It is particularly fascinating when observing contemporary politics and the inroads that the North Indian parties like the BJP are trying to make in South India. These days, there are videos circulating on social media of various DMK party members or individuals linked to DMK politicians, refusing to acknowledge BJP politicians ( here and here). The why and the wherefores about the DMK are documented and analysed by Vignesh Rajahmani, He has put together a lot of information and data to provide a sense of history and chronology about the DMK. It is a book that will be useful to political scientists, perhaps even politicians, researchers, and journalists. It has been published by Westland Books.

Book blurb

The transformation of the Dravidian socio-cultural movement into an electorally viable political party-the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, or DMK-is one of the most fascinating stories in modern India. It is also one that is critical to an understanding of South Indian politics as a whole.

Although the movement and the party have both been widely studied, the interplay between the two has been largely neglected, with scholars tending to focus on outcomes. Vignesh Rajahmani’s innovative, detailed study of the Dravidian Movement explores the strategic leadership of DMK and non-DMK figures like Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, C.N. Annadurai, M. Karunanidhi and K. Kamaraj. It illustrates their synthesis of anti-caste ideology, socio-economic and educational mobility, and inclusive Dravidian-Tamil identity, and considers why that vision resonated with marginalised communities.

Tracing the early DMK years, from the party’s social justice campaigns to its landmark electoral victory in 1967, Rajahmani highlights the challenges of navigating ideological commitments within the constraints of political pragmatism, while also making politics accessible to the common person. He explains how iterations on the initial ideology and political offering can reinvigorate such movements, keeping their politics agile, and importantly, incentivising inclusive policymaking. An investigation into how the DMK shaped Tamil Nadu’s counter-hegemonic political identity, which has proven electorally resilient in spite of majoritarian onslaughts, The Dravidian Pathway is a timely contribution to the public and scholarly understanding of Tamil Nadu’s politics.

‘The definitive study of one of India’s most important social movements and the political party it gave rise to’ — Faisal Devji, Beit Professor of Global and Imperial History, University of Oxford

‘[C]asts casts new light on the deepening of democratic politics in the early decades of the Indian republic.’ — Srinath Raghavan, author of Indira Gandhi and the Years That Transformed India

‘Ideas and interests, coalitions and contests, personality and populism are measured in Rajahmani’s stimulating book.’ — Shruti Kapila, author of Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age

‘[S]hows us that majoritarianism is not the only pathway to power—social reform is not just a viable political strategy, it is rich with democratic possibilities too’. — Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire

Vignesh Rajahmani is a postdoctoral research fellow in Indian and Indonesian politics at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, with a PhD in Political Science and Public Policy from King’s College London. He is also a postdoctoral affiliate at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a research affiliate at the King’s India Institute, King’s College London. Rajahmani has over five years of professional experience in public policy, legislative research and political consulting, including his advisory work on a range of Indian parties’ electoral strategies and manifestos, at regional and national levels. His research interests include public policy, the politics of mobilisation, democratic development, the interplay between domestic politics and foreign policy, and political communication in the age of social media.

28 August 2025

Kavitha Rao’s books

22 08 , 2025 No Comments

Kavitha Rao is a London-based author and journalist. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, South China Morning Post, Mint, The Hindu and various other publications. She is the bestselling author of Lady Doctors. Spies, Lies and Allies is her latest books and is published by Westland Books.

We spoke on TOI Bookmark regarding her Spies, Lies and Allies. Here is a snippet:

Well, you just sink yourself in it. I mean when you are writing historical fiction this book is curious because as you pointed out, it has won a couple of prizes for historical fiction and both those prizes have a rule which is that it has got to be set sixty years before the date of publication. So, we were just kind of over a line. I don’t claim to be an expert, there is a lot of smoke and mirror involved, you try to get a feel and a sense of what it might have been. So yes it is research, reading, and the kind of stuff a scholar might recognise, but we are not scholars.  

Listen to our conversation on the Times of India website and Spotify:

TOI Bookmark is a weekly podcast on literature and publishing. TOI is an acronym for the Times of India (TOI) which is the world’s largest newspaper and India’s No. 1 digital news platform with over 3 billion page views per month. The TOI website is one of the most visited news sites in the world with 200 million unique monthly visitors and about 1.6 billion monthly page views. TOI is the world’s largest English newspaper with a daily circulation of more than 4 million copies, across many editions, and is read daily by approximately 13.5 million readers. The podcasts are promoted across all TOI platforms. I have recorded more than 145+ sessions with Jnanpith, Padma Bhushan, and Padma Shree awardees, International Booker Prize winners, Booker Prize winners, Women’s Prize for Fiction, Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize, Stella Prize, AutHer Awards, Erasmus Prize, BAFTA etc. Sometimes the podcast interviews are carried across all editions of the print paper with a QR code embedded in it.

Some of the authors who have been interviewed are: Banu Mushtaq, Deepa Bhashti, Samantha Harvey, Jenny Erpenbeck, Michael Hoffman, Paul Murray, V. V. Ganeshananthan, Hisham Matar, Anita Desai, Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzro, Venki Ramakishnan, Siddhartha Deb, Elaine Feeney, Manjula Padmanabhan, NYRB Classics editor and founder Edwin Frank, Jonathan Escoffery, Joya Chatterji, Arati Kumar-Rao, Paul Lynch, Dr Kathryn Mannix, Cat Bohannon, Sebastian Barry, Shabnam Minwalla, Paul Harding, Ayobami Adebayo, Pradeep Sebastian, G N Devy, Angela Saini, Manav Kaul, Amitav Ghosh, Damodar Mauzo, Boria Majumdar, Geetanjali Mishra, William Dalrymple, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Dr Rachel Clarke, Charlotte Wood, Catherine Chidgey, Andrew Miller, Sam Dalrymple, and Annie Ernaux.

22 August 2025

Premchand ki khaniya, Ekada, Westland Books

31 07 , 2025 No Comments

Today is Premchand’s 145th birth anniversary. He was born on 31 July 1880. Dhanpat Rai Srivastava or Munshi Premchand as he was known is famous for his stories in Hindustani. Premchand was a pioneer of Hindi and Urdu social fiction. He was one of the first authors to write about caste hierarchies and the plight of women and labourers prevalent in the society. He is one of the most celebrated writers of the Indian subcontinent and is regarded as one of the foremost Hindi writers of the early twentieth century. He began writing under the pen name ‘Nawab Rai’, but subsequently switched to ‘Premchand’. He published his first collection of five short stories in 1907 in a book called Soz-e-Watan (Voice of the Nation). His body of work includes more than a dozen novels, around 300 short stories, several essays and translations of a number of foreign literary works into Hindi.

Even though he died in 1936, his stories continue to be read and are very popular. Although, I have to say that I have read some recent versions of his stories and they are nothing like the original. New editions tend to “revise” his stories into Hindi rather than retaining the original Hindustani — a mix of Hindi and Urdu that many generations, including mine, grew up speaking and writing. We are familiar with it. Westland Books imprint, Ekada, focusses on Indian language books. Ekada Classics is a curated list that revives beloved literature from various Indian languages. This month, Ekada Classics released माँगे की घड़ी और अन्य कहानियाँ and मोटर के छींटे और अन्य कहानियाँ.

Premchand’s stories will never be out of fashion but will they be permitted to survive as he wrote them, only time will tell.

31 July 2025

“Abundant Sense: Rahim – Selected Dohas” by Chandan Sinha

27 07 , 2025 No Comments

While reading Abundant Sense, I realised how many of Rahim’s doha’s were familiar. These were part of our Hindi curriculum in middle school. We had supplementary books that consisted of prose and poetry. If memory serves me correctly, we had one volume of poetry devoted to Hindi poets like Mahadevi Varma, Dinkar, Suryakant Tripathi (Nirala), Harivansh Rai Bachchan et al. Another volume of poetry consisted of poets like Kabir and Rahim. For prose, we had a fine collection of Premchand’s stories written in the Devnagari script. These were slim texts published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). So, reading Rahim’s doha’s in Abundant Sense brought back memories.

Every page has a doha. The original in Hindi, followed by a literal translation of the couplet and the explanation in English. Here are four examples of these competent translations:

Abundant Sense ( published by Westland Books) is an exquisitely produced book, beginning from the elegant dust jacket to the design layout of every single page. It is generous and a pleasure to read. This is a book that is a keeper but has probably been designed keeping the “gift market” in mind as well. For instance, it would make for an excellent contribution to the Diwali hampers that are circulated.

Book blurb

Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khanan was a remarkable man, a navaratna in Akbar’s court—warrior, general, administrator, minister, scholar, polyglot, translator and poet. But, today, he is remembered primarily as a poet, a fact evident in his mausoleum in Delhi, now partially restored, which introduces him thus: ‘Rahim was famous for his dohas and Persian translation of the Ramayana.’

Rahim’s life saw wild swings of fate; he knew glory and ignominy, power and insignificance, and above all, loss. Born into wealth and nobility, he was yet finely attuned to the lives and needs of the common man. And four centuries later, his dohas, or couplets, are still invoked, still on the tongue of ordinary folk.

This thoughtfully compiled volume is the first substantial body of translations of Rahim’s dohas, comprising more than half of the 290 dohas he has written. Chandan Sinha’s translation breaks with the modern tendency to use free verse, working instead with meter and rhyme to strongly evoke the original, especially its memorability. Accompanied by brief explanations of each verse as well as the original in Devanagari, Abundant Sense is a tribute to one of the greats of Indian history and literature.

A writer, translator and former civil servant, Chandan Sinha read English Literature at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and Public Administration at the Universities of South Carolina and Syracuse in the USA. In 2023 he superannuated from the Indian Administrative Service as Director General of the National Archives of India.

Sinha writes in both English and Hindi. He has published articles in various journals and is the author of three books: Public Sector Reforms in India: New Role of the District Officer (Sage, 2007); Kindling of an Insurrection: Notes from Junglemahals (Routledge, 2013) and The Vision of Wisdom, Kabir: Selected Sakhis (Rupa, 2020).

The present work is the second in a series of translations of Hindi poetry from the early modern period in India.

27 July 2025

“One In a Billion: Becoming India’s First Master of Wine” by Sonal C. Holland

27 07 , 2025 No Comments

Who would have guessed that it is possible for an Indian woman to defy all odds to become India’s first master of wine. One in a Billion is an account of how Sonal C. Holland did just that. It is a smoothly written memoir, straddling the space of motivational and narrative non fiction books. There are interesting nuggets of information shared, such as:

p. 173 It’s no secret that Indians love to drink! India is the third largest alcobev market by volume in the world, next only to the United States and China. Every year, Indians guzzle six billion litres of alcohol, over half the world’s whisky ( a staggering 1.5 billion litres) and double the amount of beer. We imported 219 million bottles of whisky in 2023, which was up by 60 per cent from 2011.

A double-digit growth consistently over the past decade makes wine the fastest-growing beverage in the country. Indians are becoming exposed to the wine lifestyle on account of their social networks, international travel, rising disposable incomes and aspirational living. As the demand for luxury products and more spending drives premiumisation across sectors, wine and other alcoholic beverages are the direct beneficiaries of this upward moving trend. Premium vodka, rum, gin and sake, alongside high-quality wines and craft beers, have grown popular too.

Consumers perceive wine to be healthy, see it as a symbol of success and sophistication, and it is socially the most acceptable drink. No other alcoholic beverage enjoys this trilogy of appeal, and it has worked in the favour of wine remarkably.

….

Women represent an important demographic for wine consumption in India as they are choosing wine for being a softer, healthier option as well as for its aura of elegance. Research shows that women, in general, feel less inhibited and face less criticism when drinking wine in front of their family members. In a soceity that has traditionally lived in joint families and encouraged only male drinking, women drinking wine at restaurants, bars and at home is a huge opportunity and a real game changer for the industry. In a way, wine has democraticised drinking for women in India, allowing them to join their male counterparts in enjoying a drink. This movement is now reaching smaller cities; with the exposure to urban culture and the arrival of luxury dining options, women finally have the liberty to experience wine regularly.

A book that is far too smoothly written, almost as if ghost written, and not a firsthand lived experience. There is something very sanitised, without granularity in the prose. Definitely has interesting nuggets of information about Sonal Holland’s life and the wine sector in India, but it is almost as if this book is fulfilling the desire to be a calling card of the subject. After all, Indians (possibly globally too), once you have a book to your name, your respectability rises manifold.

Good luck to Sonal on her wine journey.

27 July 2025

“A Man For All Seasons: The Life Of K.M. Panikkar” by Narayani Basu

27 07 , 2025 No Comments

A Man for All Seasons (published by Westland Books) has been a few years in the making. Biographies are not easy to write, especially if you want to stay clear of writing a hagiography. Also, not too dry, by focussing only on facts and step by step details. It could not have been easy to write but it is always interesting to read what a biographer thinks is important vis-a-vis historical details. How do they go back in the past to recreate a life? Is it focussing on the life that the person led in their time or is it to be written from the perspective of present day India with a view on the modern reader’s appetite? Which is it to be? Tough act. Nevertheless, Narayani Basu manages to find the right balance.

From Twitter

Book blurb

AN UNFLINCHING LOOK AT ONE OF INDIA’S MOST FASCINATING FIGURES—THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL AND DIPLOMAT WHO HELPED SHAPE A POST-COLONIAL INDIA.
K.M. Panikkar was a multifaceted man, one of India’s first public intellectuals as India won its independence. His imprint is all over India’s colonial and post-colonial history: from constitutional reform in the princely states, where he was a strong advocate for India’s current federal model to charting India’s maritime policy as a free country. He believed in an essential Hindu culture that held his land together, yet he was a committed secularist. He was Gandhi’s emissary and the founder of the Hindustan Times. He was independent India’s first and most controversial ambassador to both Nationalist China and the People’s Republic of China. He was Nehru’s man in Cairo and France and a member of the States Reorganisation Commission. He had enemies in the CIA as well as in India’s own Ministry of External Affairs. He frustrated his admirers as much as he provoked their reluctant respect.

From the British Raj to the Constituent Assembly, across two world wars and an ensuing Cold War, K.M. Panikkar was India’s go-to man in all seasons.

Through it all, he never stopped writing—on Indian identity, nationalism, history and foreign policy—material that remains as relevant today as it was seven decades ago.

Yet, about the man himself, strangely little is known. In A Man for All Seasons, Narayani Basu bridges that gap. Drawing on Panikkar’s formidable body of work, as well as on archival material from India to England, from Paris to China, and from Israel to the United Nations, as well as on first-time interviews with Panikkar’s family, Basu presents a vivid, irresistibly engaging portrait of this most enigmatic of India’s founding fathers. Featuring a formidable cast of characters—from Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel to Zhou Enlai, Chairman Mao and Gamal Abdel Nasser—A Man for All Seasons is as much a sweeping history of a young India finding its place in the world as it is the story of a man who was impossible to ignore then and remains so now.

Narayani Basu is the bestselling author of V.P. Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India (2020) and Allegiance: Azaadi & the End of Empire (2022). A historian and foreign policy analyst, her current area of interest focuses on the less known but key players in the story of Indian independence. She lives in New Delhi. This is her third book.

27 July 2025

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