Mu'in al-Din Hasan Chishti Sijzi, known reverentially as Khawaja Gharib Nawaz, was a Persian Islamic scholar and mystic from Sistan, who eventually ended up settling in the Indian subcontinent in the early 13th-century, where he promulgated the famous Chishtiyya order of Sunni mysticism. This particular Tariqa (order) became the dominant Islamic spiritual order in medieval India. Most of the Indian Sunni saints are Chishti in their affiliation, including Nizamuddin Awliya and Amir Khusrow.
Unani or Yunani medicine is Perso-Arabic traditional medicine as practiced in Muslim culture in South Asia and modern day Central Asia. Unani medicine is pseudoscientific. The Indian Medical Association describes Unani practitioners who claim to practice medicine as quacks.
The Dom, also known as Domra, Domba, Domaka, Dombara and Dombari, are castes, or groups, scattered across India. Dom were a caste of drummer. According to Tantra scriptures, the Dom were engaged in the occupations of singing and playing music. Historically, they were considered an untouchable caste called the Dalits and their traditional occupation was the disposal and cremation of dead bodies. They are in the list of Scheduled caste for Reservation in India in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and West Bengal.
Urvashi Butalia is an Indian feminist writer, publisher and activist. She is known for her work in the women's movement of India, as well as for authoring books such as The Other Side of Silence: Voices from and the Partition of India and Speaking Peace: Women's Voices from Kashmir.
Dholavira is an archaeological site at Khadirbet in Bhachau Taluka of Kutch District, in the state of Gujarat in western India, which has taken its name from a modern-day village 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) south of it. This village is 165 km (103 mi) from Radhanpur. Also known locally as Kotada timba, the site contains ruins of a city of the ancient Indus Valley civilization. Earthquakes have repeatedly affected Dholavira, including a particularly severe one around 2600 BCE.
Malhotra is an Indian surname of the Dhai Ghar sub-group of Khatris from Punjab. Malhotra is a modified Punjabi language version of Mehrotra. Families with last name Malhotra can be Khatri or Sikh.
Ikhtiyār al-Dīn Muḥammad Bakhtiyār Khaljī, also known as Bakhtiyar Khalji, was a Turko-Afghan military general of the Ghurid ruler Muhammad of Ghor, who led the Muslim conquests of the eastern Indian regions of Bengal and parts of Bihar and established himself as their ruler. He was the founder of the Khalji dynasty of Bengal, which ruled Bengal for a short period, from 1203 to 1227 CE.
Rahi Masoom Raza was an Indian Urdu and Hindi poet and writer and a Bollywood lyricist. He won the Filmfare Best Dialogue Award for the film Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki in 1979, followed by Mili and Lamhe. He is best known for the screenplay and dialogues of 1988 TV series Mahabharat.
Hindush was an administrative division of the Achaemenid Empire. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, it was the "easternmost province" governed by the Achaemenid dynasty. Established through the Persian conquest of the Indus Valley in the 6th century BCE, it is believed to have continued as a province for approximately two centuries, ending when it fell to the Macedonian Empire during the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great.
Emily Chang is an American journalist, television host, executive producer, and author. In 2023, she launched a new show with Bloomberg Originals called The Circuit where she interviews influencers in technology, business, entertainment and culture. In addition to a premium show, extended interviews are released in The Circuit podcast. Chang was the anchor and executive producer of Bloomberg Technologyfor over a decade, a daily TV show focused on global technology, and Studio 1.0, where she regularly spoke with top executives, investors, and entrepreneurs. Chang is the author of Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley, which explores gender inequality in the tech industry.
Janice Pariat is an Indian poet and writer. She was born in Assam and grew up in Shillong, Meghalaya.
Kishore Namit Kapoor is an Indian actor, author and acting teacher. He has trained some of the most prominent film and television actors of the Hindi industry including Hrithik Roshan, Priyanka Chopra, Kareena Kapoor, Ranveer Singh and Vicky Kaushal.
S. R. Chishti is a tabla player of Lucknow gharana (tabla) and composer. S R Chishti completed his PhD from Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University, Agra in music (Tabla).
Jyoti Arora is an Indian author of several books, including Dream's Sake (2011), Lemon Girl (2014) and You Came Like Hope (2017). She is also a tech blogger.
In 2016 and 2017, there was a significant debate on how topics related to South Asia were represented in California middle school textbooks—a follow-up to a related set of debates that took place from 2005 to 2009. These new debates were fueled by varying religious groups who felt the 2009 changes were incorrect, or pushed political agendas. The California Department of Education runs a public process to update the history and social sciences curriculum frameworks, which help guide the textbooks that publishers develop for students. Starting in 2016, groups submitted textbook revisions dealing with a variety of issues related to histories of South Asia, India, Hinduism, Sikhism, Dalits, Muslims, Ravidassias, the Indus Valley civilization, and the rights of women, as taught in California 6th and 7th grade history and social science textbooks. The Department of Education made final decisions on the topics in 2017, retaining content on the caste system, and referring to all of historical South Asia as India, among many other decisions.
Aanchal Malhotra is an Indian oral historian, author and artist, known for her work on the Partition of India. Her research and writings focus on the oral histories of individuals affected by the Partition, capturing their memories and the tangible remnants of that period.
Permanent Black is an independent publishing press headquartered in Ranikhet, India. It was founded in 2000 by novelist Anuradha Roy, and her husband, editor Rukun Advani. It is considered one of India's major academic imprints and has tied up with the Ashoka University to publish a scholarly series titled "Hedgehog and Fox" edited by the historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee. It has published books by noted scholars, including Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Muzaffar Alam, Romila Thapar, Tanika Sarkar, Sudipta Kaviraj, Sheldon Pollock, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Nivedita Menon, Ramachandra Guha, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Mukul Sharma, Kaushik Basu and Partha Chatterjee. Their books are distributed by the Indian publishing house Orient Blackswan. It has in the past partnered with various foreign university presses, such as University of California Press, Harvard University Press, Princeton University Press, University of Chicago Press, University of Washington Press, and State University of New York Press to co-publish their titles in Europe and the USA.
Shambhudan Gadhvi is a former master clerk and amateur geologist from Gujarat who discovered the Indus valley site of Dholavira in the early 1960s.
Alpa Shah is a British social anthropologist and writer specialising in South Asia. She is Professor of Anthropology at London School of Economics and author of the award-winning Nightmarch: Among India’s Revolutionary Guerrillas, a finalist for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Writing. Shah has written for newspapers and magazines in the UK, US and India, including the New Statesman, Foreign Policy, New York Review of Books, The Times of India and Hindustan Times. Shah has also made a radio documentary on ‘India’s Red Belt’ for BBC Radio 4 Crossing Continents, reported for BBC Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent, and co-curated a major photographic exhibition 'Behind the Indian Boom'.
Shubhangi Swarup is an Indian author, journalist and educator. She is best known for her novel Latitudes of Longing, which was published in 2018 by HarperCollins and was declared a bestseller soon after its release in India, and Sweden.
