In an era governed by systemic attrition, state-sanctioned violence, and the steady dismantling of democratic institutions, despair is frequently framed as a personal pathology or tragedy that is difficult for one to reconcile with. This is particularly the case if one lives in conditions of political instability burdened with a conscience – knowing full well what is right and what is wrong but not having the power to make a difference. Contemporary neoliberal politics routinely urges the disenfranchised to practice ‘resilience’ or ‘mindfulness’ without offering serious means to deal with unbearable situations. That process helps strong-man and dictatorial politics to not only survive but also justify their destructive politics. Jamil, Ghazala,What to Do with Political Sadness: And Other Essays on Death, Destruction and Hauntology,Simon & Schuster India and Yoda Press (2026)Ghazala Jamil thoughtfully deals with what happens when one must deal with politics of violence up front in her collection of essays, What to Do with Political Sadness: And other Essays on Death, Destruction and Hauntology. Jamil argues that the political sadness felt by marginalised people experiencing juridical, economic and physical destruction is neither an aberration nor a personal failure. It is, instead, a rational and ethically sound response to state power built on dispossession and intimidation. For Jamil, political sadness is a method of both perseverance in difficult conditions and hope as well as a way of imagining a future despite being surrounded by orchestrated death, destruction and dispossession.Rather than attempting to ‘cure’ this sadness or dismiss it as weakness, Jamil interrogates its anatomy to locate something far more durable than passive optimism or taken-for-granted fatalism so familiar in South Asia. That is a radical, unyielding form of idealism rooted in memory and a refusal to be silenced. Idealism in this sense is increasingly becoming a scarce resource in the circumstances where most of us live and work. While reading Jamil’s essays and writing this review, I was also contemplating on the unfolding politics in my own location, Sri Lanka. A recent tweet by me in response to a statement by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Margaret Satterthwaite on proposed judicial reforms in Sri Lanka drew criticism. While I was concerned overall on the reforms meant to increase the retirement age of judges across the judicial hierarchy on matters of principle and potential impact on democratic governance in the country, my immediate concern was the UN’s established bias in responding to these kinds of issues. That is, the blatant lack of equality where people at the receiving end usually happen to be nations without a veto or the ability to control one in the UN. Many people, both known and unknown, were upset with the post, claiming I did not know how the UN system worked. My sense was, I was considered naïve or even stupid as I harboured a sense of idealism that they had sadly lost. Jamil, on the other hand, might agree with me. Three main theoretical propositionsAcross 19 essays, spanning political philosophy, urban sociology and cultural critique, the collection is based on a close reading of three primary and closely related theoretical positions buttressed by immediate life experiences in both India and beyond. The first position deals with what might be called, mechanics of state violence. Here, Jamil explores the politics of physical and institutional mechanisms that range from spatial segregation and legal disenfranchisement – such as the weaponisation of citizenship laws – to the degradation of public resources such as education and transport. In this situation, she considers death and destruction as essential byproducts of governance that may not however be always intended. But ultimately, such mechanisms define the nature and reach of state authority. The second position she deals with has to do with bodily dissent and martyrdom. It is in this discussion that Jamil analyses extreme forms of political protest, such as hunger strikes and suicide, drawing from experiences ranging from India to Ireland. When the state strips vulnerable communities of institutional recourse to justice and fair play, the body becomes the final site of sovereignty and agency. But bodily self-sacrifice forces a public ethical showdown, demonstrating that even the dispossessed retain the agency to expose the moral bankruptcy of majoritarian power. Even so, such extreme protests do not always work, nevertheless keeping alive political unhappiness, and with it hope.The final position Jamil explores is focused on the idea of hauntology and futures. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology, Jamil examines the spectral presence of unfulfilled post-colonial promises. In the Indian context, the constitutional ideals of secularism, egalitarianism, and social justice have been systematically compromised or dismantled, even though their ‘ghosts’ refuse to disappear. They haunt the present, reminding us of what was promised, what was destroyed and what remains to be reclaimed and achieved. Therefore, this also becomes a repository for hope from where futures may be imagined. Hope in the debris of political griefAs far as my reading is concerned, the core strength of Jamil’s work lies in how she retrieves hope from the debris of political grief. Her kind of idealism rejects toxic positivity, insisting that genuine hope can only emerge after we fully confront destruction. This, I think, is essential, and speaks to me directly in a situation where such idealism has been compromised by an unfortunate combination of naivety and political foolishness. For Jamil, hauntology acts as an engine of political memory. The ghosts of past struggles prevent us from normalizing present atrocities. Idealism, therefore, is not an abstract dream of a utopian future. Instead, it is the stubborn refusal to allow state violence to dictate the limits of human imagination. To feel political sadness is to remember that things were supposed to be different, and that they still could be.Though Jamil writes from her location in India augmented by theoretical arguments that are in global circulation, what she has to say speaks to the world in the present time. This makes her critique both locally grounded and regionally and globally applicable.As far as India is concerned, Jamil’s critique speaks to a situation marked by the relentless rise of ethno-nationalism, religious intolerance, bulldozer politics of dispossession, and the systematic marginalisation of minority identities and their sense of being. Hope in this context is found in grassroots resistance, such as the constitutional consciousness kept alive by student movements, civil rights activists, and community-led dissenters who insist on asserting full citizenship despite systemic hostility. I would locate the recent Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) agitations in this context. As far as my own location, Sri Lanka is concerned, Jamil’s exploration of hauntology provides immediate resonance and painful familiarity. Sri Lankan society is haunted by unresolved ghosts of wartime as well as post-war absence of state accountability, forced disappearances, alienation of minorities, and the catastrophic economic collapse that dismantled public security. This is without even venturing into the violence and dispossession orchestrated by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and Janata Vimukti Peramuna, when these entities wielded power in their agitations against the state. The mass uprising of 2022, known locally as the ‘aragalaya’, placed in context both the transformative power of collective hope and the tragic reality of state appropriation. Reading Jamil from Colombo underscores how South Asian states export and replicate tools of division, militarization, and erasure.Beyond South AsiaBeyond the subcontinent, Jamil’s writing indicates the necessity that localised grief must be connected to globally intertwined histories. From hyper-capitalist labor exploitation to climate displacement, the Global South faces a collective and ongoing crisis of hegemony. Reclaiming hope requires cross-border solidarity, recognizing that struggles against authoritarianism or majoritarianism in South Asia and elsewhere is part of a worldwide fight for human dignity. For me, Ghazala Jamil’s What to Do with Political Sadness is an essential and thoughtful manual for ethical survival and the generation of hope in difficult times. It does not offer easy comfort or simple solutions. Instead, it offers something far more valuable: a framework for ethical survival and persevering with idealism and hope. By transforming political grief into an active analytical tool and method for hope, Jamil reminds us that our sadness is proof of our lingering moral clarity. In many ways, her effort is a conversation among theory, life experience and hope. For most of us, living under the shadow of disrupted pasts and lost futures, this book serves as a powerful reminder that as long as we remember what has been destroyed, the blueprint for a just world remains alive.Sasanka Perera is chairman at the Colombo Institute for Human Sciences and director at Tambapanni Academic Publishers.