The Makkah Pact’s risks for Bangladesh and its India ties
Himal Southasianby Maruf Hasan2d ago
ON 7 AUGUST, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye signed a joint defence agreement in Makkah, one of the holiest cities in Islam.
Himal Southasian
himalmag.comadded August 2026
top 27%The unreconciled conflict between Manipur’s Kukis and Nagas
Himal Southasianby Nikita Jain10d ago
KACHEAKLUNGLIU WAS still reeling from shock as she sat in the psychiatric ward of the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital in Imphal, the capital of Manipur, on 19 June.
The limits of Pankaj Mishra’s reckoning on Gaza and Zionism
Himal Southasianby Rahul Rao19d ago
EVEN AS THE GENOCIDE in Gaza continues, and also the wider conflagration it has unleased in West Asia and beyond, the wheels of scholarly production grind inexorably on.
Gloria Steinem’s tainted legacy on sex work in Southasia
Himal Southasianby Meena Saraswathi Seshu23d ago
SINCE GLORIA STEINEM passed away on 2 September, the US feminist’s global legacy has been lauded and extolled, as well as critiqued seemingly threadbare.
Mary Slusser’s secret loot of Nepal’s sacred art and heritage
Himal Southasianby Erin L Thompson26d ago
MARY SHEPHERD SLUSSER landed in Kathmandu on 13 November 1965. She was carrying a typewriter, a pair of cats named Latsa and Bratsa, and two Persian rugs she had purchased in Tehran during a...
‘Elephants in the Fog’ and the fight for trans rights in Nepal
Himal Southasianby Diwash Gahatraj10 Sept 2026
ELEPHANTS IN THE FOG announces itself first through sound. The screen remains dark. What arrives is chanting from villagers patrolling the edge of their settlement, a collective rhythm to guard...
The climate warning from Nepal’s Rasuwa flood disaster
Himal Southasianby Kanak Mani Dixit7 Sept 2026
SOME PEOPLE, particularly outside Nepal, have rushed into a geopolitical blame game even before the slurry on the Bhotekoshi River has had time to dry, even as people are being rescued from flooded...
Anuradha Roy’s home in a Himalaya under ecological crisis
Himal Southasianby Sukhada Tatke4 Sept 2026
IN ANURADHA ROY’S novel The Folded Earth, a young woman leaves her home in Hyderabad and moves to Ranikhet, a hill town in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, in the wake of a tragedy.
The Cockroach Janata Party’s caste blindspot
Himal Southasianby Ankush Pal25 Aug 2026
THE COCKROACH JANATA PARTY (CJP) began in May 2026 with a single demand: the resignation of India’s education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan.
A radical theory of jallikattu and Vijay’s rise in Tamil Nadu
Himal Southasianby Ashik Kahina21 Aug 2026
THE ACTOR-TURNED-POLITICIAN Vijay’s victory in Tamil Nadu’s state assembly election this April was unexpected.
Local water management challenges Ken-Betwa Link in Bundelkhand
Himal Southasianby Ankit Mishra18 Aug 2026
On the bed of the Ken River in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda district this June, farmers were growing vegetables in the exposed silt, running portable pumps into the last shrinking pools to keep the crop...
Maruti Suzuki workers’ long protest for labour rights
Himal Southasianby Kinshuk Gupta14 Aug 2026
ON THE AFTERNOON of 29 January 2025, a large gathering of former workers from Maruti Suzuki’s automobile factory in the industrial model town of Manesar, in the northern Indian state Haryana...
The Kabul hotel that tells a people’s history of Afghanistan
Himal Southasianby Taran N Khan13 Aug 2026
WHEN LYSE DOUCET began talking to the staff of Kabul’s Hotel Inter-Continental, she found that their memories were rarely about the coups or the upheavals.
Sunsari shootings and Nepal police’s history of violence in the Madhesh
Himal Southasianby Anjali Sah7 Aug 2026
ON THE NIGHT of 26 July, a dispute between Hindus and Muslims over religious flags and loud music in Dewanganj, a municipality in Sunsari district of Nepal’s Tarai, ended with the police opening...
Why Meitei, Kuki and Naga violence persists in Manipur
Himal Southasianby Patricia Mukhim4 Aug 2026
IN EARLY JUNE, the home department of Manipur, the conflict-stricken state in India’s Northeast, released data revealing that more than 700 people had died over the past three years in relief camps...
The Last of Earth’ and the real Himalaya of pundit explorers
Himal Southasianby Amish Raj Mulmi31 Jul 2026
AMONG ALL THE fabled gold mines of Tibet, the Thok Jalung mine in the Changthang plain of western Tibet – “a large desolate plain of which the prevailing color was reddish brown”, a Survey of India...
Bangladesh’s Islamist resurgence threatens women’s rights
Himal Southasianby Nawshin Flora29 Jul 2026
Bangladesh’s Islamist extremist resurgence has feminists raising the alarm As right-wing Islamist extremist groups gain in Bangladesh, feminists are fighting for women’s rights and gender equality...
How NEET paper leak and CJP protests shook Modi government
Himal Southasianby Neha Dixit25 Jul 2026
“IN MY MEMORY, I have only heard that people who speak against the Indian government are ‘anti-national’,” Pragya Gautam, a 20-year-old Dalit student from the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, told me...
Sri Lanka’s war and migration in S Shakthidharan’s memoir
Himal Southasianby Fathima Cader21 Jul 2026
ARTWORK BY SUSIMAN NIRMALAVASAN bookends the award-winning playwright S Shakthidharan’s new memoir, Gather Up Your World in One Long Breath.
Chandu Maheria on Gandhi’s complex role in Dalit history
Himal Southasianby Chandu Maheria15 Jul 2026
Introduction Chandu Maheria, a prominent Dalit intellectual, activist, journalist and columnist from Gujarat, is a litterateur unnoticed and unrecognised by the Gujarati literary establishment.