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New Lines Magazine •

Writers Explore the Long Shadow of Partition in South Asia

The first time I learned about the Partition, it must have been through school textbooks. But they didn’t delve into the mass displacement, violence and trauma caused by one of the largest forced migrations and tragedies of the 20th century, which occurred when British India was divided into India and Pakistan in 1947 as the countries gained independence from colonial rule. Over 14 million people migrated and over a million were killed in the communal riots that engulfed the region. It was perha...
New Lines Magazine •

Pakistani Singer Ali Sethi Blends the Traditional and the Transgressive

Once celebrated on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, the Pakistani singer and composer Ali Sethi now finds himself estranged from his homeland, unwelcome in India and disillusioned with the United States, where he has lived and worked in recent years. After the April attack on tourists near Pahalgam in Kashmir, which India blamed on Pakistan-based groups, Sethi’s music and social media accounts were among those banned by the Indian government in a sweeping crackdown on Pakistani cultural...
New Lines Magazine •

Cultural Ties Binding India and Pakistan Face Unprecedented Strain

In the wake of deadly bombing and shooting attacks in Mumbai, India, in November 2008, anti-Pakistan sentiments surged in the country. Shortly afterward, in 2009, one of the most revered Sufi devotional music ensembles in Pakistan, Fareed Ayaz, Abu Muhammad Qawwal and Brothers, celebrated globally for their mastery of the form known as qawwali, arrived in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru to perform at a cultural festival. The organizers had managed to arrange visas for them after great diff...
New Lines Magazine •

Are India and Pakistan Edging Closer to the Brink of War?

Tensions are running high in India and Pakistan as the two nuclear-armed countries face a situation close to war, after one of the worst clashes between them in more than two decades. India has blamed Pakistan for the April 22 attack in Kashmir that claimed the lives of 26 civilians, mostly Hindu tourists, but Islamabad has denied involvement, leading to a historic low point in relations. Key treaties have been suspended, visas revoked, airspace closed and diplomatic missions reduced in both cou...
New Lines Magazine •

India is Reeling as the Illusion of Normalcy Dissolves in Kashmir

A week after Indian naval officer Vinay Narwal married Himanshi Sowami on April 16, he was dead. The couple wanted to visit Switzerland for their honeymoon, but since he did not get permission to travel abroad from the naval authorities, they went instead to Kashmir, a popular tourist spot. They were in the Baisaran meadow, a 4-mile trek from the tourist town of Pahalgam — dubbed a “mini Switzerland” because of its breathtaking views of snow-capped mountains and pine forests — when Vinay was sho...
New Lines Magazine •

A New Book Tells Stories of Love and Longing Under Lockdown in Kashmir

On the night of Aug. 4, 2019, Khawar and Iqra were on one of their routine calls but were extremely scared. Rumors had been floating around in Kashmir that the Indian government would annul Article 370 of the Indian Constitution and that the act could result in a war. The article served as the basis for Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to the Union of India in 1947, and granted the region its special semiautonomous status. There were reasons to believe the rumors at that time. Additional paramilita...
New Lines Magazine •

Modi Is Placating Trump on Illegal Migration, Despite Opposition at Home

On a cold night in 2022, 24-year-old Ashish Solanki (his name has been changed at his request) clicked away at the cash register of a 7-Eleven in SeaTac, a small city on the edge of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. He had a set routine during his 11-hour shift at the convenience store. He scanned items one by one, waiting for a green light and a beep, followed by the tap of a credit card. After an approval message, he put the items into a paper bag to complete the transaction. If the card d...
New Lines Magazine •

Musk and MAGA Fight Over Visas

Just a few days before Christmas, when U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced the appointment of the Indian-born venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, tensions within Trump’s 2024 coalition led to a full-blown online war between certain Trump advisers, like the entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, and supporters who take a more hard-line stance against immigration. Krishnan,...
New Lines Magazine •

How Diljit Dosanjh Changed the Way Sikh Men Are Viewed in Pop Culture

In 2023, when Diljit Dosanjh became the first Punjabi — and Indian — artist to perform at Coachella Festival, he turned up on stage in a traditional Punjabi outfit of “kurta and chadra,” with a turban. (A kurta is a knee-length, collarless shirt, while a chadra is a type of loincloth worn in the state of Punjab in northwestern India.) He paired this with a black Carhatt WIP vest, retro monochrome Air Jordans and a pair of neon yellow gloves — effortlessly fusing the traditional with streetwear....
Allure •

Alia Bhatt Is Going Global

Bhatt, a British citizen born and raised in Mumbai, is among the most celebrated actors in India and currently one of the most popular Indian celebrities in the world. In India she’s broken several glass ceilings for women in a male-dominated industry by producing films and drawing audiences to the theater with her star power alone. According to a recent report, she was the only woman among the top five Indian celebrities with the highest brand value, a list that includes superstar Shah Rukh Kha...
New Lines Magazine •

In India, Rape Culture Continues Unabated

Whenever rape makes the news in India, one particularly horrific instance is brought up. In the winter of 2012, a 22-year-old woman was brutally raped on a bus by six men after a movie night with a friend. Her injuries were so gruesome that she died two weeks later and the details so gory that widespread protests were sparked across the country. Drawing international attention, the case led to New Delhi — or perhaps India — being dubbed the world’s “rape capital.”The attack prompted a series of...
New Lines Magazine •

A Film About a Goatherding Indian Migrant Sparks a Gulf Controversy

In 2008, the Malayalam writer Benny Daniel, known by the pen name Benyamin, published his first novel “Aadujeevitham.” Later translated into English as “Goat Days,” it punctured the image of the Gulf Dream for many in southern India.Starting in the 1970s, the southern Indian state of Kerala experienced a “Gulf boom” as people migrated to the region en masse in search of work. In the popular imagination, the Arab “Gulf man” was someone affluent and the Gulf was a land where people fulfilled their...
New Lines Magazine •

Indian Films Are Showing the Realities of Life for the Country’s Housewives

In 2012, when the Indian actor Sridevi, a glamorous star of the 1980s and ’90s, decided to play the role of a housewife in her comeback film “English Vinglish,” it surprised audiences and the industry alike. It wasn’t that they had not seen a housewife in a film before, but the characters were either obedient, devoted wives or ailing but tender mothers — mere supporting characters on the peripheries. That’s why in “English Vinglish” filmmaker Gauri Shinde put the protagonist, Shashi, a belittled...
New Lines Magazine •

The End of Populism in the World’s Largest Democracy? — With Shruti Kapila

Hosted by Surbhi GuptaFeaturing Shruti KapilaProduced by Finbar AndersonListen to and follow The LedeApple Podcasts | Spotify | PodbeanThe surprise Indian election result earlier this month upended the established consensus on Indian politics that had been crafted not least by incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.“There was this kind of inevitability written by not just exit polls, not just the mainstream media, but very much the way Modi himself has fashioned his rule,” Shruti Kapila,...
New Lines Magazine •

Why the Indian Election Results Present Modi With a Defeat Within a Win

“A defeat that feels like a win, and a win that feels like a defeat” — this is how Indians have summarized one of the most unexpected election results in India’s political history. Exit polls predicted that a win would be a cakewalk for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), with over 353 seats. Some even predicted 400 seats. For the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), a big tent multiparty bloc led by the Indian National Congress, they pro...
New Lines Magazine •

An Indian Singer Stirs Mubarak Nostalgia for Egyptians

In January, the Indian singer Abhijeet Bhattacharya was invited as a special guest on an episode of “Indian Idol,” the popular singing competition television series. Bhattacharya is one of the playback singers who lend their voices to actors in Indian movies. He has sung some of the most iconic songs of the ’90s and 2000s in Bollywood and is popularly known as superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s voice, having rendered it in over 30 songs. Those unaware of the tradition of playback singing, even in India,...
New Lines Magazine •

Democracy and Controversy in the World's Largest Elections — With Surbhi Gupta

Hosted by Kwangu LiweweFeaturing Surbhi GuptaProduced by Finbar Anderson Listen to and follow The LedeApple Podcasts | Spotify | PodbeanIn a year of elections across the globe, none will be bigger in scale than that in India, where nearly 1 billion people are eligible to vote. “In the seven decades since India got its independence, democracy has been its identity,” Surbhi Gupta tells Kwangu Liwewe on The Lede. Gupta notes that India, despite its significantly higher population, managed to draw a...
New Lines Magazine •

The Ambani Gala Expands the Limits of the Big Fat Indian Wedding

In 2013, when a journalist asked Shah Rukh Khan if we would ever see the three Khan superstars of Bollywood — him, Aamir and Salman — in a film together, he jokingly replied, “One would have to sell their undergarments while trying to sign the three of us,” indicating how expensive and difficult this collaboration would be. When these three come together at an event the cameras are always pointed toward them. So when the trio performed at the pre-wedding celebrations of Anant Ambani — the younge
New Lines Magazine •

The War on India’s Free Press — with Manisha Pande and Samar Halarnkar

India’s media ecosystem has a long and proud history. It was in Kolkata, after all, that the first newspaper in Asia was published. But journalists and observers inside the country are speaking with increasing alarm about a climate of repression and self-censorship, in which outlets that challenge the official government line expose themselves to sanctions.

“There’s a complete and near-total capture of mainstream voices, especially the loudest voices, the most prominent voices,” says Manisha Pa
New Lines Magazine •

Podcast | India’s Political Hinduism — with Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay

The small town of Ayodhya in northern India has long been a major flashpoint for communal tensions in the country. Believed by Hindus to be the birthplace of Rama, one of the most revered gods in Hinduism, it was also the site of the 16th-century Babri Mosque. Enmity between Hindus and Muslims over the site grew through the 20th century before reaching its climax in 1992, when leaders of Hindu nationalist organizations, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), incited a crowd of activists to
Pulitzer Center •

Kashmir’s Wular Lake Is in Crisis

Situated in north Kashmir, the Wular Lake has been gulping sewage, industrial, and horticulture waste, replete with fertilizer and pesticide, for decades.

As we drive through the outskirts of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir—the conflict-ridden Muslim-majority region in India—and enter Ganderbal district, environmental filmmaker Jalal Jeelani comments, “All of this used to be agricultural land, but villagers are selling more and more of it, and people are building huge hou
New Lines Magazine •

After a Seattle Cop Disdains Value of a Student’s Life, Indian Americans Are Outraged

Last week, a viral video of a Seattle police officer sent shockwaves around the United States and India. It captured a conversation between Daniel Auderer, vice president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, and its president, Mike Solan, as they joked about a fatal crash that had killed Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year-old Indian student, earlier in January. Officer Kevin Dave was driving at 74 mph while responding to an overdose call when his car hit Kandula as she was crossing the street. Her bod
New Lines Magazine •

Indians Are Celebrating the Moon Landing — One Song at a Time

In 1972, when the 11th and final mission of NASA’s Apollo program was taking place and Americans were exploring the moon, one of the most iconic romantic musicals was released in India. “Pakeezah” (“The Pure One”) has some of the most celebrated love songs of Hindi cinema. One song, “Chalo Dildar Chalo, Chand Ke Paar Chalo” (“Let’s Go Beloved, to the Other Side of the Moon”), penned by the Urdu poet Kaif Bhopali, sees lovers embarking on a romantic journey beyond the moon. The veteran Indian jou
New Lines Magazine •

Podcast | India’s Star Crossed Lovers — with Mansi Choksi

“I have a line in my book where I say marriage is the only intended outcome of growing up in India,” Mansi Choksi tells New Lines magazine’s Surbhi Gupta. “Like, that’s how it feels for a lot of us.”

Choksi, author of the “The Newlyweds” and co-host of the latest season of NPR’s Rough Translation podcast, has spent many years untangling the fraught politics of marriage in the country. “On a family level, it’s almost as if it’s seen as a marker of success. Finding the right match for your son or
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