M.J. Akbar – författare

The Shade of Swords is the first cohesive history of Jihad, written by one of India's leading journalists and writers. In this paperback edition, updated to show how and why Saddam Hussein repositioned himself as a Jihadi against America, M.J. Akbar explains the struggle between Islam and Christianity. Placing recent events in a historical context, he tackles the tricky question of what now for Jihad following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime.With British and American troops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and once again in Iraq, the potential for Jihadi recruitment is ever increasing. Explaining how Jihad thrives on complex and shifting notions of persecution, victory and sacrifice, and illustrating how Muslims themselves have historically tried both to direct and control the phenomenon of Jihad, Akbar shows how Jihad pervades the mind and soul of Islam, revealing its strength and significance.To know the future, one needs to understand the past. M.J. Akbar's The Shade of Swords holds the key.

The Shade of Swords is the first cohesive history of Jihad, written by one of India's leading journalists and writers. In this paperback edition, updated to show how and why Saddam Hussein repositioned himself as a Jihadi against America, M.J. Akbar explains the struggle between Islam and Christianity. Placing recent events in a historical context, he tackles the tricky question of what now for Jihad following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime.With British and American troops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and once again in Iraq, the potential for Jihadi recruitment is ever increasing. Explaining how Jihad thrives on complex and shifting notions of persecution, victory and sacrifice, and illustrating how Muslims themselves have historically tried both to direct and control the phenomenon of Jihad, Akbar shows how Jihad pervades the mind and soul of Islam, revealing its strength and significance.To know the future, one needs to understand the past. M.J. Akbar's The Shade of Swords holds the key.

The Shade of Swords is the first cohesive history of Jihad, written by one of India's leading journalists and writers. In this paperback edition, updated to show how and why Saddam Hussein repositioned himself as a Jihadi against America, M.J. Akbar explains the struggle between Islam and Christianity. Placing recent events in a historical context, he tackles the tricky question of what now for Jihad following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime.With British and American troops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and once again in Iraq, the potential for Jihadi recruitment is ever increasing. Explaining how Jihad thrives on complex and shifting notions of persecution, victory and sacrifice, and illustrating how Muslims themselves have historically tried both to direct and control the phenomenon of Jihad, Akbar shows how Jihad pervades the mind and soul of Islam, revealing its strength and significance.To know the future, one needs to understand the past. M.J. Akbar's The Shade of Swords holds the key.

The Shade of Swords is the first cohesive history of Jihad, written by one of India's leading journalists and writers. In this paperback edition, updated to show how and why Saddam Hussein repositioned himself as a Jihadi against America, M.J. Akbar explains the struggle between Islam and Christianity. Placing recent events in a historical context, he tackles the tricky question of what now for Jihad following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime.With British and American troops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and once again in Iraq, the potential for Jihadi recruitment is ever increasing. Explaining how Jihad thrives on complex and shifting notions of persecution, victory and sacrifice, and illustrating how Muslims themselves have historically tried both to direct and control the phenomenon of Jihad, Akbar shows how Jihad pervades the mind and soul of Islam, revealing its strength and significance.To know the future, one needs to understand the past. M.J. Akbar's The Shade of Swords holds the key.

Blood Brothers is M.J. Akbar's amazing story of three generations of a Muslim family - based on his own - and how they deal with the fluctuating contours of Hindu-Muslim relations. Telinipara, a small jute mill town some 30 miles north of Kolkata along the Hooghly, is a complex Rubik's Cube of migrant Bihari workers, Hindus and Muslims; Bengalis poor and 'bhadralok'; and Sahibs who live in the safe, 'foreign'world of the Victoria Jute Mill. Into this scattered inhabitation enters a child on the verge of starvation, Prayaag, who is saved and adopted by a Muslim family, converts to Islam and takes on the name of Rahmatullah. As Rahmatullah knits Telinipara into a community, friendship, love trust and faith are continually tested by the cancer of riots. Incidents - conversion, circumcision, the arrival of the plague of electricity - and a fascinating array of characters - the ultimate Brahmin, Rahmatullah's friend Girija Maharaj; the worker's leader, Bauna Sardar; the storyteller, Talat Mian; the poet- teacher, Syed Ashfaque; the smiling mendicant, Burha Deewana; the sincere Sahib, Simon Hogg; and then the questioning, demanding third generation of the author and his friend Kamala - interlink into a narrative of social history as well as a powerful memoir. Blood Brothers is a chronicle of its age, its canvas as enchanting as its narrative, a personal journey through change as tensions build, stretching the bonds of a lifetime to breaking point and demanding, in the end, the greatest sacrifice. Its last chapters, written in a bare-bones, unemotional style, are the most moving as the author searches for hope amid raw wounds with a surgeon's scalpel.

Have Pen, Will Travel is a highly engaging collection of reportage and travel pieces that appeared originally in leading journalist and author M.J. Akbar's column, Byline. The intrepid author ambles - or sometimes jogs - through Africa, America, Asia and of course the innumerable corners of India to record an engrossing mix of piquant observation, geography and history. With a keen eye, deft insight and wit, Akbar assembles a rich mosaic of a world that enlightens and entertains.

Kashmir lies at the edge of India's borders and at the heart of India's consciousness. It is not geography that is the issue; Kashmir also guards the frontiers of ideology. If there was a glow of hope in the deepening shadows of a bitter Partition, then it was Kashmir, whose people consciously rejected the false patriotism of fundamentalism and made common cause with secular India instead of theocratic Pakistan. Kashmir was, as Sheikh Abdullah said and Jawaharlal Nehru believed, a stabilising force for India. Why has that harmony disintegrated? Why has the promise been stained by the blood of rebellion? M.J. Akbar, the celebrated author of India: The Siege Within, Nehru: The Making of India, Riot After Riot and The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity delves deep into the past for the roots of Kashmiriyat, the identity and culture that has blossomed within the ring of mountains for thousands of years. He records Kashmir s struggle in the century to first free itself from feudal oppression and then enter the world of modern India in 1947. Placing the mistakes and triumphs of those early, formative years in the perspective of history, the author goes on to explain how the 1980s have opened the way for Kashmir s hitherto marginalized secessionists. Both victory and defeat have their lessons; to forget either is to destablize the future. Kashmir and the mother country are inextricably linked. India cannot afford to be defeated in her Kashmir.

ndia: The Siege Within is a non-fiction work by M J Akbar, who is the national spokesperson for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and an influential journalist. He has authored many political non-fiction works like Kashmir Behind The Vale, Riot After Riot and Nehru: The Making Of India. M J Akbar was editor-in-chief for India Today and The Deccan Chronicle and also launched a weekly newspaper called "e;The Sunday Guardian"e; in 2010. India: The Siege Within is a riveting attempt by this journalist and gives an account on how present India exists and what role unity plays, with its diverse population. The book also addresses the issues relevant to the Hindu and Muslim diaspora. M J Akbar regards his book as an account of the policies that India has adopted for democracy and how some of the policies have both worked and failed. The book traces the origin of real Indian polity, which starts from 1947 and how prior to that there was not much deliberation on the separation of Hindu and Muslim states. He also points out the role of the British administration of the time and how he believes that nationality should have nothing to do with what religion you belong to. He says he is an Indian first, especially at a time when the freedom of his nation is concerned. India: The Siege Within also highlights the origins of the cracks in the unity of India, which have traces in the history of nation s freedom struggle. The book is a well-documented and researched work, which delves into the emotions which binds and unites a nation, which has undergone massive changes with regard to the political affiliations of the people within. Author M J Akbar tugs at the heart of India s development as a united country on the global map. The new edition of the book was published by Roli Books in 2003 and is available in paperback. Key Features:India: The Siege Within Challenges To A Nation s Unity sheds light on the present and past political scenes that made India what it is today. This book is an accurate and detailed account have been accumulated by M J Akbar, making this an interesting and engaging read.

Byline anthologises M.J. Akbar's finest writings over the last decade, bringing together essays that reflect the author's versatility and range. The book is divided into five seamless sections, each with its own identity, woven together by M.J. Akbar's delectably informal prose.'Travel' is the first section in which the author shares his passion for history and the occasional fable, the obscure detail, the glorious and the ludicrous. This is followed by 'Politics and History' in which the reader is provided a view of some events and people in the recent past with all the quirks and whims that characterise the great as well as the mundane. The reader then moves on to 'Sidelines' (those delightfully off-centre pieces). M.J. Akbar says in an essay in this section: "e;The train of thought has moved. But that is the way with trains. They must travel."e;'Memories' is the most personal and autobiographical part of the entire selection, mixing regret, nostalgia and deeply felt sorrow for the friends and times gone forever.Byline ends with a short section entitled 'On a Personal Note' in which James Bond must live to die another day, The Telegraph has to learn to live beyond the age of twenty and Dev Anand remains young forever.

The Shade of Swords: M.J. Akbar writes the first cohesive history of jihad. From the Prophet Muhammed to the presence of British and American troops in Afghanistan, and more recently in Iraq, Akbar shows how jihad's origins lie in the earliest consciousness of Muslims, how it thrives on complex notions of persecution, victory and sacrifice. Jihad pervades the mind and soul of Islam. This book reveals its strength and significance, and this jihad has come to Iraq in a new Shia dimension.

In July 1765 Robert Clive, in a letter to Sir Francis Sykes, compared Gomorrah favourably to Calcutta, then capital of British India. He wrote: ''I will pronounce Calcutta to be one of the most wicked places in the Universe.'' Drawing upon the letters, memoirs and journals of traders, travellers, bureaucrats, officials, officers and the occasional bishop, Doolally Sahib and the Black Zamindar is a chronicle of racial relations between Indians and their last foreign invaders, sometimes infuriating but always compelling. A multitude of vignettes, combined with insight and analysis, reveal the deeply ingrained conviction of ''white superiority'' that shaped this history. How deep this conviction was is best illustrated by the fact that the British abandoned a large community of their own children because they were born of Indian mothers. The British took pride in being outsiders, even as their exploitative revenue policy turned periodic drought and famine into horrific catastrophes, killing impoverished Indians in millions. There were also marvellous and heart-warming exceptions in this extraordinary panorama, people who transcended racial prejudice and served as a reminder of what might have been had the British made India a second home and merged with its culture instead of treating it as a fortune-hunter''s turf. The power was indisputable-the British had lost just one out of 18 wars between 1757 and 1857. Defeated repeatedly on the battlefield, Indians found innovative and amusing ways of giving expression to resentment in household skirmishes, social mores and economic subversion. When Indians tried to imitate the sahibs, they turned into caricatures; when they absorbed the best that the British brought with them, the confluence was positive and productive. But for the most part, subject and ruler lived parallel lives. From the celebrated writer of the bestselling Gandhi''s Hinduism: the Struggle Against Jinnah''s Islam comes this extensively researched and utterly engrossing book, which is easy to pick up and difficult to put down.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, justly venerated as a Mahatma, dismantled the mightiest empire in world history through the inspirational power of three pivotal mass campaigns across two decades. In 1920 Gandhi liberated Indians from fear through the unprecedented mass mobilization of the non-cooperation movement. In 1930 he turned a pinch of salt into a metaphor for the punitive, heartless colonial exploitation of the impoverished. The 1942 call to ''Quit India'' sent a final, unambiguous message to foreign overlords: Indians would prefer to die rather than live in British fetters. Once Gandhi had unchained India, history could no longer remain dormant. Akbar draws on historical archives and contemporary narratives to vividly depict the mass ferment and individual protest that swept across the subcontinent. The combination of meticulous scholarship with riveting storytelling, make Gandhi in Three Campaigns an unmissable fresh portrait of an icon and a time.

This belief went back to pre-Islamic cultural roots and the bloodlines of Chengiz Khan, descendant of the mother goddess Alanqoa. Akbar created the formal position of Jotik Rai, or royal astrologer, a post held for a century by Brahmin pundits from Benares who were gifted their weight in gold and silver as reward for an accurate forecast. In 1542 Humayun, then a hunted fugitive without hope, became certain that the Mughal empire would be reborn after reading his son Akbar's horoscope.

The deep faith of Mughal kings in astrology has been hidden in plain sight, ignored by those who failed to understand its relevance. The evidence lies in original sources: commissioned biographies like Humayunnama and Akbarnama, autobiographies such as Baburnama and Tuzuk-i-Jahangir, records of imperial correspondence and court documents. This belief went back to pre-Islamic cultural roots and the bloodlines of Chengiz Khan, descendant of the mother goddess Alanqoa. Akbar created the formal position of Jotik Rai, or royal astrologer, a post held for a century by Brahmin pundits from Benares who were gifted their weight in gold and silver as reward for an accurate forecast. In 1542 Humayun, then a hunted fugitive without hope, became certain that the Mughal empire would be reborn after reading his son Akbar's horoscope. Humayun wore clothes of different colours each day, as prescribed by planetary positions. Astrology was part of statecraft. In one instance , Akbar's astrologer convinced him to march against Kashmir's ruler Yousaf Shah Chak in 1586 when his commanders advised that the army's passage through the mountains might be ruinous. Jahangir issued coins with a zodiac theme. Shahjahan took pride in the title Sahib-i-Qiran-i-Sani, or Lord of the Two Conjunctions. Even Aurangzeb set aside his religiosity when it came to astrologers-they fixed the time of his two coronations. At the age of seventy-seven, Aurangzeb told his son Bahadur Shah that every single occurrence in his tempestuous life had been predicted in the horoscope cast at his birth. Every Mughal prince consulted astrologers to fix the auspicious time for the day's appointments.

Jawaharlal Nehru's extraordinary life was divided into three phases. For nearly thirty years, he was a wealthy Anglophile from a privileged Kashmiri Brahmin family, before Mahatma Gandhi drew him into the dream of freedom, and made him a pillar of the struggle for independence from British rule. Nehru resolved the contradictions between an aristocratic inheritance and nationalist commitment with intellectual sangfroid and personal conviction. Between 1947 and 1962 he was the anointed architect of the making of a new nation, adding his own socialist layer and worldview to the foundation of Gandhi's moral vision through the uncertain, difficult and defining 1950s. He shaped the temper and strength of Constitutional institutions in a committed democracy even as he nourished the economic aspirations of a country coming to terms with freedom. His tragic flaw was to ignore national security in the belief that an idealistic foreign policy was sufficient to preserve India's integrity in a post colonial world. Defeat in the China war of 1962 reduced his place in history. In this incisive biography, M.J. Akbar explores the social, cultural, and intellectual worlds that shaped Nehru, revealing the private man behind the iconic statesman. Drawing on a wealth of material from British archives and Nehru's own papers, Akbar situates his life within the turbulent currents of twentieth-century India, years marked by soaring hope and self-defeating error, sacrifice and resolve. As sovereign India negotiated challenges of immense political and social complexity, Nehru stood at its centre: visionary, flawed, but in his age indispensable. Written with authority and insight by one of India's most distinguished authors, this book is a classic and compelling portrait of the man who helped India begin its journey towards the modern age.

Gandhi, a devout Hindu, believed faith could nurture the civilizational harmony of India, a land where every religion had flourished. Jinnah, a political Muslim rather than a practicing believer, was determined to carve up a syncretic subcontinent in the name of Islam. His confidence came from a wartime deal with Britain, embodied in the ''August Offer'' of 1940. Gandhi''s strength lay in ideological commitment which was, in the end, ravaged by the communal violence that engineered partition. The price of this epic confrontation, paid by the people, has stretched into generations. M.J. Akbar''s book, meticulously researched from original sources, reveals the astonishing blunders, lapses and conscious chicanery that permeated the politics of seven explosive years between 1940 and 1947. Facts from the archives challenge the conventional narrative, and disturb the conspiratorial silence used to protect the image of famous icons. Gandhi''s Hinduism: The Struggle Against Jinnah''s Islam delves into both the ideology and the personality of those who shaped the fate of a region between Iran and Burma. It is essential reading for anyone interested in modern Indian history, and the past as a prelude to the future.