Permanent Black

17/07/2025

"This is a wonderful book which may be termed as 'micro history on a global scale' " says Vikas Rathee, in an expansive review of Rahul Markovits' A PASSAGE TO EUROPE in The Book Review. Visit our website for details of this fascinating tale with many twists.

What was an Indian prince doing in the retinue of a French envoy at Constantinople in 1796? When Sultan Selim III, struck by the sight of a fellow Muslim in a French cortège, asked how he got there, he was told the traveller’s extraordinary story.It had begun in 1772 with the annexation by the Ea...

12/07/2025

Out now in both electronic & paperback editions.
"Yogendra Yadav's voice has a familiar, unruffled & calm quality to it even as it has pronounced on the turbulent ructions of Indian politics. That same unruffled, calm quality can be heard speaking through these pages" Amir Ali, The Book Review

10/07/2025

We were honoured to publish C. M. Naim, to have him in our lives for many years as author and friend. Erudite but never pompous, he was a soft-spoken, elegant, warm, generous presence - a great story-teller who would settle down for leisurely conversation, and a passionate gardener who exchanged plant news and brought bulbs & seeds as gifts. He will be deeply missed.

08/07/2025

"A collection of remarkable essays marks an important contribution to the conversation that Dr B.R. Ambedkar himself opened up"
Rosalind O'Hanlon reviews Dalit Journeys for Dignity

A collection of remarkable essays marks an important contribution to the conversation that Dr B.R. Ambedkar himself opened up.

05/07/2025

Back in print, Mukul Kesavan's Homeless on Google Earth, with a smart new cover.

‘Homeless’ in the title of this book means ‘cosmopolitan’. Mukul Kesavan, considered by many to be India’s most articulate and sophisticated scholar-journalist in English, covers a huge range of political and cultural subjects, local and international, in this collection of opinion pieces....

05/07/2025

Just published!
This major work by Rosalind O'Hanlon is indispensable for an understanding of the making of Brahman power, its internal contradictions, its repercussions in the colonial era, and its continuing legacy.

Lineages Of Brahman Power: Caste, Family, and the State in Western India 1600–1900 The Marathas of western India came into prominence in the seventeenth century, when Shivaji carved out an independent kingdom. In the eighteenth century the Marathas established an India-wide empire, with their Brah...

31/05/2025

Deeply saddening news has just come of the passing of Valmik Thapar. We imagine him leaving us flanked by troops of his beloved tigers, in the tawny, dappled light of the forests he photographed and fought for so magnificently.
Valmik Thapar's book Saving Wild Tigers was among our early titles at Permanent Black. He was one of the world's foremost tiger conservationists. He anchored the hugely successful BBC television series titled 'Land of the Tiger' and published two books with OUP Delhi, Wild Tigers of Ranthambhore and The Secret Life of Tigers. He spent twenty-five years working to save wild tigers. He has been chairman of the Cat Specialist Group of IUCN for South Asia and a member of several committees relating to India's Ministry of Environment and Forests. He was the founder of the Ranthambhore Foundation which both works to save the tiger across India as well as networks on tiger-conservation issues across the planet.

29/05/2025

The story of legal transformations of forests across India through collective action. Anand Vaidya follows the work of activists and forest dwellers who turned to the law to shift the balance of power. Out now. Details on our website.

Future of the Forest is the story of legal transformations of forests across India through collective action. Since the nineteenth century, Indian forest dwellers have been unable to enforce their claims to forest land and its products. But at the turn of the twenty-first century, a new national mov...

20/05/2025

Can a dead Estonian writer come to the defence of Prof. Ali Khan Mahmudabad? Read Nayanjot Lahiri here on why Jaan Kross's powerful novel about the crushing of dissent is relevant to India today.
To buy Czar's Madman, go to http://permanentblack.com

https://tinyurl.com/yn3bhswc

His work is a torrent of stories that convey cultural traditions which pre-dated, resisted, and refused integration into hegemonic European moulds.

10/05/2025

Just out!
This book focuses on the theme of Dalit struggles for dignity in India. It begins by documenting the role of India’s Dalits in ensuring inclusion of the term “dignity” in the Indian Constitution of 1950. Introducing Ambedkar’s concept of “moral stamina”, which emphasised the role of ethical ideas in democracy, the Introduction pairs this idea with the notion of dignity and demonstrates the foundational influence of these two concepts in Dalit activism and writings.

Dalit Journeys for Dignity: Religion, Freedom, and Caste This book focuses on the theme of Dalit struggles for dignity in India. It begins by documenting the role of India’s Dalits in ensuring inclusion of the term “dignity” in the Indian Constitution of 1950. Introducing Ambedkar’s concept ...

10/05/2025

Just out!
MRINALINI VENKATESWARAN's Compelled to Collect
As a catastrophe that uprooted millions, the partition of India has a compelling hold on South Asia and its historians. More specifically, Punjab has, as the partition’s western heartland, shaped modern India’s perception of itself in fundamental ways.

Focusing on this region, Venkateswaran argues that collecting “tangible history” – relics, documents, and paintings – for museums was a crucible in which citizenship, national identity, and belonging were articulated, forged, contested, and denied in the aftermath of partition.

Compelled To Collect: Museums and the Race for India’s National Past As a catastrophe that uprooted millions, the partition of India has a compelling hold on South Asia and its historians. More specifically, Punjab has, as the partition’s western heartland, shaped modern India’s perception of ...

01/05/2025

Tisha Srivastav remembers Bill Aitken in an obituary that he would have loved to read, it captures him with such accuracy and affection.

Bill Aitken passed away on April 16, 2025 at the age of 90. What stands out in Aitken’s journey is his ability to bear witness with good cheer and an intelligence that helped shape a growing world of Indian travel writing.