Meeting at the intersection of faith and history.
India Books & Videos
BOOKS
Behind the Beautiful Forevers (non-fiction)
In this brilliant, breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, based on years of uncompromising reporting, carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds—and into the hearts of families impossible to forget.
Caste Away: Growing Up in India's "Most Backward" Caste (biography)
Growing Up in India's 'Most Backward' Caste is a coming of age story told through the eyes of a "Most Backward" boy growing up in Tamil Nadu, India. Its pages are ripe with shame, honor, and survival-based decisions, such as a father killing his own daughter to preserve the family's reputation, a grandfather thieving a goat to feed his family and burying its bones in the night, and women employing natural poisons to kill their female infants in order to avoid the devastating costs of dowry. Its author, Dr. Hill Krishnan, took on multiple identities disallowed by his roots: engineer, movie actor and performer, political scientist, professor, candidate for public office in the United States, motivational speaker, and as an author telling his story.
Iqbal (fiction, youth-centric)
When young Iqbal is sold into slavery at a carpet factory, his arrival changes everything for the other overworked and abused children there. It is Iqbal who explains to them that despite their master's promises, he plans on keeping them as his slaves indefinitely. But it is also Iqbal who inspires the other children to look to a future free from toil...and is brave enough to show them how to get there. This moving fictionalized account of the real Iqbal Masih is told through the voice of Fatima, a young Pakistani girl whose life is changed by Iqbal's courage.
Religion in India: A Historical Introduction (non-fiction)
Religion in India is an ideal first introduction to India's fascinating and varied religious history. Fred Clothey surveys the religions of India from prehistory and Indo-European migration through to the modern period. Exploring the interactions between different religious movements over time, and engaging with some of the liveliest debates in religious studies, he examines the rituals, mythologies, arts, ethics and social and cultural contexts of religion as lived in the past and present on the subcontinent.
Religions of India: A User Friendly and Brief Introduction to Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and the Jains (non-fiction)
A concise and plain spoken introduction to Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and the religion of the Jains. This book is for students and anyone else desiring to learn the basics of religion in India in a quick yet comprehensive way.
The White Tiger: A Novel (fiction)
The White Tiger follows a darkly comic Bangalore driver through the poverty and corruption of modern India’s caste society. The white tiger of this novel is Balram Halwai, a poor Indian villager whose great ambition leads him to the zenith of Indian business culture, the world of the Bangalore entrepreneur. On the occasion of the president of China’s impending trip to Bangalore, Balram writes a letter to him describing his transformation and his experience as driver and servant to a wealthy Indian family, which he thinks exemplifies the contradictions and complications of Indian society.
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Beyond Guilt Trips: (non-fiction)
Mindful Travel in an Unequal World Every year, hundreds of thousands of young people pack their bags to study or volunteer abroad. Well-intentioned and curious Westerners--brought up to believe that international travel broadens our horizons--travel to low-income countries to learn about people and cultures different from their own. But while travel abroad can provide much-needed perspective, it can also be deeply unsettling, confusing, and discomforting. Travelers can find themselves unsure about how to think or speak about the differences in race or culture they find, even though these differences might have fueled their desire to travel in the first place.
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VIDEOS
An award-winning, all-star cast, led by Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, and Maggie Smith, lights up this "buoyant comedy laced with genuine emotion." (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone) When seven cash-strapped seniors decide to "outsource" their retirement to a resort in far-off India, friendship and romance blossom in the most unexpected ways. Smart, life- affirming and genuinely charming, THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL is a "true classic that reminds us that it's never too late to find love and a fresh beginning at any age." (Rex Reed, The New York Observer).
A true inspirational story of self-discovery, second chances and personal triumph in the face of adversity. In a last-ditch effort to save his career, sports agent JB Bernstein (Jon Hamm) dreams up a wild game plan to find Major League Baseball's next great pitcher form a pool of cricket players in India. He soon discovers two young men who can throw a fastball but know nothing about the game of baseball. Or America. It's an incredible and touching journey that will change them all -- especially JB, who learns valuable lessons about teamwork, commitment and family. (First half of film in India.)
The rain is coming - and so is the family in this critically acclaimed celebration of life, love and laughter that Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune calls "sumptuously entertaining.” You are invited to join the festivities as one colorful and eclectic family gathers from all over the world for a traditional wedding - a non-stop four-day celebration as unpredictable as the monsoon season itself. Anything goes when love, lust, hope and happiness take them by storm and bring them ever closer. With this family, when it rains, it pours. From award-winning director Mira Nair, Monsoon Wedding is an exhilarating film Carrie Rickey of the Philadelphia Inquirer calls "a banquet for the heart".
A Dickensian drama about the desultory life and times of an Indian boy whose bleak, formative experiences lead to an appearance on his country's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" Jamal and his brother are orphaned as children, raising themselves in various slums and crime-ridden neighborhoods and falling in, for a while, with a monstrous gang exploiting children as beggars and prostitutes. Driven by his love for Latika, Jamal, while a teen, later goes on a journey to rescue her from the gang's clutches, only to lose her again to another oppressive fate as the lover of a notorious gangster.
The Story of India (in 6 Parts on YouTube)
Michael Wood travels throughout the subcontinent, tracing the richness and diversity of its peoples, cultures and landscapes. Through ancient manuscripts and oral tales Wood charts the first human migrations out of Africa. He travels from the tropical backwaters of South India through lost ancient cities in Pakistan to the vibrant landscapes of the Ganges plain.
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Victoria & Abdul
This 2017 British biographical historical drama film. The film is based on the book of the same name by Shrabani Basu, about the real-life relationship between Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and her Indian Muslim servant Abdul Karim.