Background note

I was asked to create a sort of “essential reading” by multiple compatriots so I put the following together. In my experience the modern Hindus are rather lazy and disinclined to read anything unless it is something along the lines of “One Night in a Call Center”. Therefore I limited the list to what I felt was essential reading material keeping in mind the current situation that we Hindus face. In addition, I assume some familiarity with basic texts such as Ramayana, and thus did not include them. My Hindi is rather middling and certainly not good enough to read books, so while I am sure there are many good books in Hindi, I am not a proficient Hindi reader. I can read, write, and speak Telugu fluently, so perhaps I may make a separate post later on for Telugu readers with books of interest I came across.

In this list I have tried to cover a range of books and articles on different subjects which I felt were essential reading for Hindus and may help our continued existence as a civilization. Readers may also note the books on China and Japan which are important civilizations for Hindus to understand, especially with the current rise of the Han empire with global ambitions. Particular attention must be paid to the “Anti Foreignism…” book by Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi because it contains a full translation of the great Japanese thinker Aizawa Seishisai’s Shinron (New Theses) which in my view must be compulsory reading for the navel gazing Hindu elite alongside our own classics.

If the books/articles are available online even partly, I provided links.

Economics

How the World Works by James Fallows

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/12/how-the-world-works/305854/

Bad Samaritans by Ha Joon Chang

http://analepsis.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/ha-joon-chang-bad-samaritans.pdf

How Rich nations got Rich Essays in the History of Economic Policy by Erik S. Reinert

https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/32638/WP2004-01.pdf?sequence=1

National System of Political Economy by Friedrich List

https://archive.org/details/nationalsystemof00listrich

Report on Manufactures by Alexander Hamilton

http://www.constitution.org/ah/rpt_manufactures.pdf

Statecraft

Arthashastra by Kautilya

https://archive.org/details/Arthasastra_English_Translation

The Shukraniti (Original Sanskrit Text with English Translation, Index of Verses, Sanskrit Word Index and Notes)

http://mybooks.co.in/index.php/the-shukraniti-original-sanskrit-text-with-english-translation-index-of-verses-sanskrit-word-index-and-notes.html

Mahabharata (attention must be paid to the shAnti parvan where the grandsire expounds on rAjanIti)

http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m12/index.htm

Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early Modern Japan The New Theses of 1825 by Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi

Fully available at:

https://archive.org/details/AntiForeignismAndWesternLearningInEarlyModernJapan

Jimusaku by Aizawa Seishisai, translated by Donald Keene

http://www.docdroid.net/calh/jimusaku.pdf.html

The Book of Lord Shang

http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/duyvendak_jjl/B25_book_of_lord_shang/duyvlord.pdf

The Republic by Plato

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm

On The Commonwealth by Marcus Tullius Cicero

http://genius.com/albums/Marcus-tullius-cicero/On-the-commonwealth

The Ajnapatra or Royal Edict – Relating to the Principles of Maratha State Policy by S. V. Puntambekar

China’s Legalists: The Earliest Totalitarians and Their Art of Ruling By Zhengyuan Fu

http://tinyurl.com/o7jnngu

Autocratic Tradition and Chinese Politics By Zhengyuan Fu

http://tinyurl.com/pfl9m7b

The Muqaddimah by ibn Khaldun Translated by Franz Rosenthal

https://asadullahali.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/ibn_khaldun-al_muqaddimah.pdf

History

Peter the Great by Robert K. Massie

http://bookzz.org/book/1123312/54074f

New History of the Marathas in 3 Volumes by GS Sardesai

https://indianhistorybooks.wordpress.com/tag/new-history-of-the-marathas/

http://www.dli.ernet.in:8080/dlix/handle/2015/7650

The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns and the Contest for India: The Struggle for Control of the South Asian Military Economy by Randolf G. S. Cooper

The Secret History of the Mongols

http://tinyurl.com/otwxg27

The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler

https://archive.org/details/Decline-Of-The-West-Oswald-Spengler

“Rulers Ruled By Women” An Economic Analysis of the Rise and Fall of Women’s Rights in Ancient Sparta by Robert K. Fleck

Click to access hanssen.pdf

Demography

Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-first Century by Eric Kaufmann

http://bookzz.org/book/864289/fce229

In addition to this we suggest going through the work of Michael Blume here:

http://www.scilogs.com/nature-of-faith/author/miblume/

http://www.blume-religionswissenschaft.de/english/index_english.html

Monotheism

Bible

Quran

Muslim Separatism: Causes and Consequences by Sita Ram Goel

http://voiceofdharma.org/books/muslimsep/

Jesus Christ – An Artifice for Aggression by Sita Ram Goel

https://orphicplatonism.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/jesus-christ-an-artifice-for-aggression-by-sita-ram-goel.pdf

Understanding Islam through Hadis Religious Faith or Fanaticism? by Ram Swarup

http://voiceofdharma.org/books/uith/

The Passion of the Greeks: Christianity and the Rape of the Hellenes by Evaggelos G. Vallianatos

The Word as Revelation: Names of Gods by Ram Swarup

Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism By Jan Assmann

http://bookzz.org/book/977597/3f185f

The Price of Monotheism by Jan Assmann

http://bookzz.org/book/1014794/ffded0

Law

Hindu Law: Beyond Tradition and Modernity by Werner Menski

http://books.google.ca/books/about/Hindu_Law.html?id=DfdnQgAACAAJ

Comparative Law in a Global Context: The Legal Systems of Asia and Africa by Werner Menski

http://bookzz.org/book/609727/dc5b7a

History of Dharmashastras by PV Kane

https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22dharmasastra%22

Biology

The War Against Human Nature II: Gender Studies by Frank Salter

http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2012/07-08/the-war-against-human-nature-ii-gender-studies-part-1/

Sex and culture by J. D. Unwin (with particular attention to Chapter 5)

https://archive.org/details/b20442580

On Human Nature by EO Wilson

http://bookzz.org/book/979420/db74f0