A US scholar made her name as an expert on Nepal’s cultural heritage – while illicitly buying sacred artefacts and smuggling them out to the United States

IT IS DIFFICULT to write about Indian Buddhism with any certainty even though its world-historical importance is not in doubt. Its decay in India from around th

Nepal’s staggering journey from Gen Z protests to new government

Nepalis don’t often pay attention to the politics of their Southasian neighbours beyond India. But when Sri Lankans rose up in 2022 to boot out the Rajapaksa re

This story first appeared in Kalam Weekly. It has been republished with updates and edits. Monday, 8 September, started out optimistic. A Gen Z protest against

On the 22nd of August, Colombo police arrested the former president of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe over allegations that he used public funds on a two-day pe

Donald Trump, the president of the United States, had kept the global economy on tenterhooks for the last four months. On 2 April, he announced a set of import

In October 2024, two months after the monsoon revolution in Bangladesh toppled Sheikh Hasina as prime minister and Awami League government, four gender experts

Trump’s aid cuts have broken global health but we can fight back

India’s fascist turn under Modi’s Hindu nationalism mirrors Nazi tactics, targets Muslims and threatens democracy

Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwe

In mid-April, young people took to the streets of Malé, the capital of the Maldives to protest the country’s culture of political impunity and nepotism. The tri

In mid-April, young people took to the streets of Malé, the capital of the Maldives to protest the country’s culture of political impunity and nepotism. The tri

Himal Southasian Podcast Channel · Episode

In early May, when the world’s attention was on the escalating conflict between India and Pakistan and the threat of war, India’s government released data th...

HOW MUCH SPACE is there in India for citizens to question and dissent from the actions of their government in a time of war or near-war? Today the answer is not

In early March this year, a massive gathering of some 10,000 royalist supporters gathered to greet Nepal's former king, Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah, as he retu...

This story is part of “Pills, Perils, Profits”, a Himal investigative series on Southasian pharmaceutical manufacturing and exports.Reporting for this story was

After decades as a political flop, Wickremesinghe engineered a nascent economic recovery and quietly depleted the once-mighty Rajapaksas. Has his presidency, for all its flaws, given Sri Lanka a…

The Indian tennis star who has succeeded despite a dysfunctional sports administration and woeful funding – and Indian tennis is refusing to learn its lessons

Himal Southasian Podcast Channel · Episode

In his new memoir, spanning the 1980s and the present, the renowned writer and activist reflects on neoliberalism in the West and turmoil in Southasia, and f...