Nirvana Express News Today

400 years after Sir Thomas Roe visited India, while yoga mats have become necessary personal accessories in the West, mobility, visa restrictions, and rights of international students continue to be flashpoints between New Delhi and London; and India and the UK are locked up in hard negotiations to finalise a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement.

An excerpt from ‘The Nirvana Express: How the Search for Enlightenment Went West,’ by Mick Brown.

A new book looks at India’s role in sating spiritual searches | Culture

In a lively narrative, delivered with wit and warmth, Brown shows how Eastern mysticism went from being suspect to venerable, and back again to a subject of scepticism.

In recent years when we’ve talked about the relations between India and the West, we’ve gone back to stressing the impossibility of interchange. A hundred years ago, E.M. Forster ended A Passage to India with the certainty that Aziz and Fielding could not be friends. Forster thought things would be different after Indian independence, but

In this entertaining history of the West’s fascination with Indian spirituality, Mick Brown covers all manner of curious characters