Great Power Games is an authoritative account of the world order in flux, from the ashes of the Second World War to the fractured present.

For decades, the United States and its Western allies shaped the global system through treaties, institutions and a carefully constructed rules-based order. That edifice now shows deep cracks.Hot wars rage on multiple fronts, the West is riven by internal turmoil, and America, under the disruptive presidency of Donald Trump, has abandoned the very frameworks it once created.

In this gripping narrative, Vikram Sood, former chief of the R&AW, reveals how nations pursue power. Behind the handshakes and communiqués lie covert operations, espionage, proxy wars, disinformation campaigns and economic coercion. From the Cold War’s shadow battles to the unipolar arrogance of post-Soviet America, he charts how the West rose, and how it is now faltering.He traces how the Cold War divided the world into camps, how the Soviet Union fell, how America reigned in unipolar arrogance, and how a new balance of power is now emerging.

Today, as China asserts itself with economic and military might and India positions itself as a pivotal actor, the old powers – the US and Russia – remain locked in dangerous contests of ambition.The result is a volatile, multipolar world where the rules are being rewritten in real time.

Incisive, unsettling and panoramic in scope, Great Power Games is both a history of global geopolitics and a warning about the turbulent future we are entering.

India’s story has never been one of uninterrupted peace or of permanent defeat. It is the story of a civilization that has endured invasions, empires, partitions and wars, yet has never surrendered its identity. Across millennia, kingdoms rose and fell, frontiers shifted and conquerors came and went. India was wounded at times, divided at others, but always capable of renewal.

From ancient battlefields to the World Wars, where Indian soldiers fought under a foreign Crown, and to the mountains of Kashmir, where they defended a newly independent India, generations answered the call of duty. Their courage shaped history far beyond the subcontinent, yet many of their stories faded into obscurity. The history of India’s wars is therefore not merely a record of battles fought, but a testament to a people who refused to forget who they were. It restores these forgotten stories to their rightful place in India’s civilizational journey.

More than a chronicle of campaigns and commanders, India at War explores memory, sacrifice, resilience and the enduring spirit of a civilization. It explores how India survived when many empires vanished into history and why its identity endured despite centuries of conflict.

India Reborn is a global history of the precipitous relative economic decline between 1757 and 1990 of the world's oldest surviving civilization, the rejuvenation that began under Rao, and how Modi's moral regeneration can restore India’s civilizational state to its rightful place as the world's most consequential political economy. It demonstrates that the revolutionary freedom struggle was more crucial than its nonviolent strand in obliging Britain to surrender its empire, revealing how the loot from India financed Britain's industrialization, the Iran-Iraq logic of why India was partitioned, and the socioeconomic repercussions of Anglophilia on today's India. Gandhi's better-known nonviolent mobilization was repeatedly crushed. But 1858's independence war ended Company rule, 1905-11 obliged the rescinding of Bengal's partition, 1919 brought the Rowlatt Act betraying Montague's 1917 promise of self-determination, and the INA-inspired military mutinies of 1946 obliged the end of Britain's empire. India did too little to change the economic status quo between 1947 and 1990, or to build on India's strategic heritage. Outsiders to the Anglicized elite (Shastri, Vajpayee, Rao, Modi) led democratizing economic reforms and gave strategy a spine. Modi's vast expansion of sanitation and financial inclusion advanced that transformation, but implementing labour market reform is vital to completing it, thereby ushering in Japan/Taiwan/RoK-style inclusive prosperity.

Indic Kingship in Theory and Practice examines the scriptural, political, and administrative dimensions of Indic kingship from its early historical origins to the advent of British colonial rule. In doing so, it challenges prevailing Marxist historiography, which portrays kingship as a predominantly repressive and class-exclusive institution. Instead, the book argues that Indic kingship largely functioned without reliance on coercive force and sought to represent and address the social body as a whole rather than privileging select groups. This orientation stemmed from its strong—often scripturally grounded—spiritual and moral foundations, as well as its composite, multi-layered, and potentially empowering political and administrative structures.

How did a student-led revolt topple a government? Who betrayed Sheikh Hasina? What is next for Bangladesh?

In 2024, Bangladesh was convulsed by its most dramatic political upheaval in decades. What began as student protests over job quotas swelled into a mass uprising that brought millions into the streets and forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina – once unassailable after fifteen years in power – to flee to India.

This book is the first full chronicle of that extraordinary year. It traces how simmering frustrations with unemployment, authoritarianism and dynastic politics erupted into open revolt. In an exclusive conversation for the book, Hasina has blamed the US and her successor Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus for plotting her downfall using students’ ire as shield.

To many, Yunus’s elevation symbolized a break from the past. A year on, the rising influence of Islamist groups like the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami threatens internal peace and regional stability even as the country faces a massive financial crisis.

Drawing on eyewitness testimony, political analysis and regional context, Inshallah Bangladesh reveals how a nation on the brink tried to redefine itself, why the journey has been ridden with pitfalls and why the aftershocks of 2024 will shape South Asia for years to come.

The Long War against Maoism, and the Doctrine That Ended It

For over five decades, Maoist violence cast a long and bloody shadow across India’s heartland, eroding state authority, terrorising tribal communities, and normalising insurgent brutality in the name of revolution. What began with the Naxalbari uprising of 1967 metastasised into the country’s gravest internal security threat, sustained by ideological indulgence, policy drift, and moral confusion — until the Indian state was finally compelled to confront red terror with clarity, resolve, and force.

In Naxal Terror Vanquished, well-known author and BJP National Spokesperson Tuhin A. Sinha chronicles India’s decisive push to defeat Maoist insurgency as the government moves towards a Naxal-free Bharat by 31 March 2026. The inflection point, Sinha argues, came under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, whose comprehensive strategy produced transformative outcomes: a near 100 per cent decline in violence since 2014, a drastic contraction of affected districts from 100 in 2014 to barely two now, nearly 1,000 Naxals killed and 4,000 surrendered in just the last four years. Parallel investments in tribal welfare and infrastructure have weakened the insurgency’s social base.

Yet the story does not end with security operations alone. The book also warns of the continuing influence of the Urban Naxal ecosystem in sections of academia that has long provided oxygen to militant networks. At the same time, it examines the vast economic potential of nearly a hundred formerly Naxal-affected districts now poised to join India’s developmental mainstream — and what their transformation could mean for the nation’s larger Viksit Bharat ambitions.

Combining security, politics, and economic transformation, Naxal Terror Vanquished offers sharp insights for readers interested in national security, governance, and India’s development trajectory.

The Vedic order in Tamilakam: Sangam Literature, Dharma, and Kingship presents a bold and meticulously researched re-reading of early Tamil civilization (inspired by scholars like KA Nilakanta Shastri and Dr. Nagaswamy). Drawing upon Sangam poems that refer to kings performing great Vedic sacrifices—such as the Rajasuya and other yajnas—and titles like Rajasuyam Vetta Perunarkilli, Professor Ramaswami Subramony demonstrates that ancient Tamilakam was deeply engaged in the wider Vedic world. Literary echoes of the Mahabharata, references to dharmic kingship, and the celebration of sacrificial generosity reveal a shared ethical and political imagination across the subcontinent.

The book further explores how texts like the Silappadikaram portray a distinctly Vedic lifestyle—ritual observances, Vedic settlements, sacred fires, and the performance of yajnas—embedded within Tamil social life. The presence of Chaturvedimangalams (settlements of scholars versed in the four Vedas), inscriptional evidence of Vedic patronage, and references to Brahmins well-versed in the Vedas confirm that Tamilakam was not peripheral but integral to India’s sacred and intellectual traditions. Through close readings of poetry, grammar, ritual vocabulary, and historical sources, this study shows how Vedic concepts of yajna, dharma, kingship, and cosmic order were creatively reimagined within the Tamil tinai landscape and akam-puram poetics. Scholarly yet accessible, the work challenges divisive narratives and restores to ancient Tamil civilization its rightful place within the evolving continuum of Indian cultural unity.

In 1947, the Indian subcontinent was partitioned, and Pakistan was born. A shared heritage, a composite culture and centuries-old bonds between people, all seemed to vanish overnight. Nowhere was this rupture more profound than in the Indus Basin―once a unified lifeline of the region, now fragmented by sovereign borders, its rivers flowing through two nations immediately at odds with each other.

The Indus Waters Treaty was signed in 1960, proving that even bitter adversaries could cooperate over shared resources. Yet, it never brought lasting peace. The treaty was suspended by India in April 2025 as a punitive measure in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack, and its future remains shrouded in uncertainty. Can it still endure and adapt? Perhaps the time has come for a new arrangement―one that is not just inevitable but essential.

This book traces the turbulent history of the Indus Basin and examines how the Indus Waters Treaty has been shaped by the region’s ever-evolving political dynamics. It explores the role of key leaders on both sides, as well as external pressures, in shaping and reshaping one of the world’s most critical transboundary water agreements.

The Indus Basin has been a witness to conflict, compromise and survival. And if you seek to understand the true nature of India–Pakistan relations, start with the rivers that bind them. Trial by Water leads us in that direction.