Avinash Paliwal’s India’s Near East: A New History is about the complex set of forces and actors that shaped an entire region east of West Bengal, which the author terms “near east”. The “new history” is a deep dive into India’s domestic and foreign policies in three parts of this near east: one within and two outside, each politically separated from the other by international boundaries yet densely linked and sundered by identity, the flows of people and goods, and a shared co...
