In this episode of Navigating India, released on March 22nd, 2026, exactly six years after India observed the Janta Curfew, an initiative by the Government of India to combat COVID, we are joined by journalist Jyoti Yadav to discuss her book 'Faith and Fury: Covid Dispatches from India's Hinterlands'. While much of India locked itself indoors during the pandemic, she set out from Delhi to the rural heartlands of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, documenting the hardships faced by migrant workers, the shortage of oxygen cylinders, the undercounting of deaths, children orphaned by the virus, and the collapse of the state's health infrastructure. Her book is an important record of India's pandemic years, raising serious questions that the nation has been too eager to forget, at a time when the media has largely written Covid off as a closed chapter.

References

1. Jyoti Yadav: Website, X, LinkedIn
2. Book: Faith and Fury: COVID Dispatches from India’s Hinterland by Jyoti Yadav

Gandhi’s method of non-violence faced significant challenges after Jinnah’s declaration of Direct Action Day, continuing until the partition and beyond. The miracle of non-violence seemed to fade, leaving peace as a fleeting hope. To counter the violence, Gandhi walked through areas devastated by violence- Noakhali, Bihar, Calcutta, and Delhi in the last fifteen months of his life, before his tragic assassination. During these travels, he advocated for peace and offered courage to those in need. In his recent book, 'Gandhi: The End of Non-Violence', Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee delves deeper into the questions that remain: Why did a nation that had fought through non-violence descend into violence? What is the psychology behind communal violence? What is non-violence, and how can it transform the human condition? What does it mean ‘to die a beautiful death’? And how can one write the history of a period so tragic? Tune into this episode to find answers to these questions and many others.

References:

1. Gandhi: The End of Non-Violence by Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee
2. Other Works by Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee: Nehru and the Spirit of India, Looking for the Nation: Towards Another India of India, The Town Slowly Empties: On Life and Culture During Lockdown
3. Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee: X
4. Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule by M.K. Gandhi
5. Nationalism by Rabindranath Tagore
6. The Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru
7. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism by Ashis Nandy
8. The Power Game by Paavo Havikko, translated from Finnish by David Barrett
9. Otherwise Than Being, or Beyond Essence by Emmanuel Levinas, translated from French by Alphonso Lingis
10. Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
11. On Violence by Hannah Arendt
12. Pakistan or the Partition of India by B.R. Ambedkar

In 1908, an Indian revolutionary from Madras arrived in Marseille, France, and later travelled to Paris, London, Lisbon, New York, Berlin, and Russia with two main objectives: to unveil the brutality of British colonialism and to reject the idea of the universalisation of the nation-state. He made significant contributions to our understanding of resistance to oppression in all its forms, as embodied by the nation-state. He was one of India’s most prominent anarchist activists and theoreticians, M.P.T. Acharya. To explain his life trajectory and the various themes that have shaped it, we are in conversation with historian Ole Birk Laursen.

References:

1. Ole Birk Laursen: Website, LinkedIn
2. Anarchy Or Chaos: M.P.T. Acharya and the Indian Struggle for Freedom by Ole Birk Laursen
3. We Are Anarchists: Essays on Anarchism, Pacifism, and the Indian Independence Movement 1923 - 1953 by M.P.T. Acharya, edited by Ole Birk Laursen
4. ‘I have only One Country, it is the World’: Madame Cama, Anticolonialism, and Indian-Russian Revolutionary Networks in Paris, 1907–17 by Ole Birk Laursen
5. John Steinbeck, Charles Dickens, Samuel Selvon, V.S. Naipaul, George Lamming
6. Spies, Lies and Allies: The Extraordinary Lives of Chatto and Roy by Kavitha Rao (Episode 12 of Navigating India)
7. Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia by Sam Dalrymple (Episode 15 of Navigating India)
8. Magda Nachman: An Artist in Exile by Lina Bernstein
9. The Ghadar Movement: A Forgotten Struggle by Rana Preet Gill

As recently as 1928, a vast region spanning twelve of today’s Asian countries—India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait—were bound together as a single entity known as the Indian Empire, or simply the Raj. In less than 50 years after 1928, this Indian empire was shattered by five partitions, which created new nations, redrew maps, led to mass migrations, and left behind a legacy of conflict that still haunts the region. What led to these partitions and the creation of new nations? And why is studying these partitions important today in a globalised world? In this episode, Sam Dalrymple joins us to answer these questions.

References:

1. Sam Dalrymple: Website, X, Instagram, Substack
2. Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia by Sam Dalrymple
3. Project Dastaan
4. Aanchal Malhotra, Kavita Puri, Anirudh Kanisetti
5. Mere Piya Gaye Rangoon from the movie Patanga, sung by Shamshad Begum and C. Ramachandra
6. Quote from Jinnah’s Speech, 11 August 1947:
7. Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right, 1924–1977 by Abhishek Choudhary
8. Believer’s Dilemma: Vajpayee and the Hindu Right's Path to Power, 1977–2018 by Abhishek Choudhary
9. Gandhi’s Assassin: The Making of Nathuram Godse and His Idea of India by Dhirendra K. Jha