The armed forces play a key role in protecting India and occupy a special place in people’s hearts. Yet, standard accounts of contemporary Indian history rarely have a military dimension. In India’s Wars, serving Air Vice Marshal Arjun Subramaniam, who has a Ph.D in Defence and Strategic Studies, seeks to give India’s military exploits their rightful place in history. Beginning with a snapshot of the growth of the armed forces, he provides detailed accounts of the conflicts from Independence to 1971: the first India-Pakistan war of 1947-48, the liberation of Hyderabad and Junagadh, the campaign to evict the Portuguese from Goa in 1961, and the full-blown wars against China and Pakistan.At the same time, India’s Wars is much more than a record of events. It is a tribute to the valour of the men and women in olive green, white and blue in the hope that it reaches out to a large audience, specially the youth. It highlights ways to improve the synergy between the three services, as too emphasizes the need to declassify material about national security. Laced with veterans’ exhilarating experiences in combat operations, India’s Wars fuses the strategic, operational, tactical and human dimensions of war with great finesse. Deeply researched and passionately written, it unfolds with surprising ease and offers a fresh perspective on independent India’s history.
The armed forces play a key role in protecting India and occupy a special place in people’s hearts. Yet, standard accounts of contemporary Indian history rarely have a military dimension. In India’s Wars, serving Air Vice Marshal Arjun Subramaniam, who has a Ph.D in Defence and Strategic Studies, seeks to give India’s military exploits their rightful place in history. Beginning with a snapshot of the growth of the armed forces, he provides detailed accounts of the conflicts from Independence to 1971: the first India-Pakistan war of 1947-48, the liberation of Hyderabad and Junagadh, the campaign to evict the Portuguese from Goa in 1961, and the full-blown wars against China and Pakistan.At the same time, India’s Wars is much more than a record of events. It is a tribute to the valour of the men and women in olive green, white and blue in the hope that it reaches out to a large audience, specially the youth. It highlights ways to improve the synergy between the three services, as too emphasizes the need to declassify material about national security. Laced with veterans’ exhilarating experiences in combat operations, India’s Wars fuses the strategic, operational, tactical and human dimensions of war with great finesse. Deeply researched and passionately written, it unfolds with surprising ease and offers a fresh perspective on independent India’s history.
The story of India’s soldiers missing in action is one that remains unfinished, a spillover of the wars with Pakistan. These are men who went missing in enemy territory while on daring missions during the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars. The nation has forgotten them, though successive governments continue to make token acknowledgements about their missing status. Over the last five decades, there have been scattered reports offering information piecemeal, but this is the first time the saga has been fully told. The result of years of research, the book unearths startling revelations that shed new light on the subject. Amid much hearsay and dismissive commentary, this book is an attempt to find answers to the question, ‘What happened to these men?’ It also hopes to open up a debate on how soldiers are often used as pawns by governments, even as they pay lip-service to their cause.
"There are many intellectual biographies of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, but until now none has sought to reveal the personality of the man. They will tell you what he thought or what he wrote, but remain silent about who he actually was, his inner struggles, how he felt. They give information about Ambedkar, but do not talk about his interior life, his personal growth or how he came to be the man who left such an indelible mark on modern India’s constitutional, political, social and religious landscapes.
The first of an ambitious two-volume biography, Becoming Babasaheb traces Ambedkar’s life journey, from his birth in 1891 to the transformative Mahad Satyagraha in 1929. It takes a completely fresh look at Ambedkar’s lived experiences and teases out the nature and character of the man behind the legend. It offers an extensive, personality-driven narrative covering Ambedkar’s life, along with salient aspects of his contemporary legacy, unfolding as a tale of remarkable tenacity, which it chronicles in all its rich vitality.
All of Ambedkar’s books and speeches are publicly available, so large volumes will forever appear interpreting his writings and presenting his ideas. Meanwhile, old myths and inaccurate ‘facts’ about his thought and life events, even his relationships, persist. Becoming Babasaheb has been written on the basis of entirely original archival research to set the historical record straight. A vivid portrait of the man in his times, both volumes of this biography will present readers with a new Ambedkar, the true Ambedkar."
