The Indus Quest


Book Description

'The Indus Quest’, a pacy political thriller with a historical twist, from Ranjan Mitra. Follow the story of Subhadra Acharya, a 38-year-old archaeologist, as she reunites with her estranged friend, Dwip Ray, an ex-Indian Police Service officer, on a rain-soaked August evening in Kolkata, after fourteen long years. Their reunion takes a sinister turn as Subhadra is abducted later that night. The abductors are desperately seeking an artefact allegedly removed by Subhadra from a recently excavated Indus Valley Civilization site, near the Great Rann of Kutch. This object can solve a four thousand-year-old mystery, with explosive consequences for modern India. Walter Chacko, a Deputy Director in the Intelligence Bureau, is summoned to Delhi to unravel a bizarre conspiracy against Prime Minister Venkataraman's government. The unknown mastermind seeks to radically alter India’s political destiny. Subhadra, Dwip, and Walter navigate through ancient sites and follow the clues left in a thousand-year-old journal of a Chinese traveller. It becomes a race against time to unveil a mind-bending truth about India’s history—a revelation that may decide the future of the world’s largest democracy. ‘An edge-of-the-seat thriller, from the first page onwards’ Shirish Thorat, author & screenplay writer ‘Ranjan has created a fascinating world with compelling characters and a thrilling storyline’ Rahil Nadiadwala, writer & film director




Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River


Book Description

“Alice Albinia is the most extraordinary traveler of her generation. . . . A journey of astonishing confidence and courage.”—Rory Stewart One of the largest rivers in the world, the Indus rises in the Tibetan mountains and flows west across northern India and south through Pakistan. It has been worshipped as a god, used as a tool of imperial expansion, and today is the cement of Pakistan’s fractious union. Alice Albinia follows the river upstream, through two thousand miles of geography and back to a time five thousand years ago when a string of sophisticated cities grew on its banks. “This turbulent history, entwined with a superlative travel narrative” (The Guardian) leads us from the ruins of elaborate metropolises, to the bitter divisions of today. Like Rory Stewart’s The Places In Between, Empires of the Indus is an engrossing personal journey and a deeply moving portrait of a river and its people.




The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture


Book Description

This work studies how Indian scholars have rejected the idea of an external origin of the Indo-Aryans, by questioning the logic assumptions and methods upon which the theory is based.




The Ethical Challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima


Book Description

This book addresses the problem of religion, ethics, and public policy in a global technological civilization. It attempts to do what narrative ethicists have said cannot be done--to construct a cross-cultural ethic of human dignity, human rights, and human liberation which respects the diversity of narrative traditions. It seeks to do this without succumbing to either ethical relativism or ethical absolutism. The author confronts directly the dominant narrative of our technological civilization: the Janus-faced myths of "Apocalypse or Utopia." Through this myth, we view technology ambivalently, as both the object of our dread and the source of our hope. The myth thus renders us ethically impotent: the very strength of our literal utopian euphoria sends us careening toward some literal apocalyptic "final solution." The demonic narrative that dominated Auschwitz ("killing in order to heal") is part of this Janus-faced technological mythos that emerged out of Hiroshima. And it is this mythic narrative which underlies and structures much of public policy in our nuclear age. This book proposes a coalition of members of holy communities and secular groups, organized to prevent any future eruptions of the demonic. Its goal is to construct a bridge not only over the abyss between religions, East and West, but also between religious and secular ethics.




The Hindus


Book Description

An engrossing and definitive narrative account of history and myth that offers a new way of understanding one of the world's oldest major religions, The Hindus elucidates the relationship between recorded history and imaginary worlds. The Hindus brings a fascinating multiplicity of actors and stories to the stage to show how brilliant and creative thinkers have kept Hinduism alive in ways that other scholars have not fully explored. In this unique and authoritative account, debates about Hindu traditions become platforms to consider history as a whole.







Stepping Out of the Brain Drain


Book Description

Stepping Out of the Brain Drain is an important contribution to the intensifying debate about highly skilled migration from developing to developed countries. Addressing the issue from the perspective of Catholic social thought, the authors demonstrate that both the economic and ethical rationales for the teaching's opposition to 'brain drain' have been undermined in recent years and show how the adoption of a less critical policy could provide enhanced opportunities for poor countries to accelerate their economic development.




Catholic Missions


Book Description