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This question of the role of Brahmans in the kali yuga is a central one around which Brahman scholarship and judicial power pivot themselves over the centuries. One discursive context can be found in the history of critical responses of Maratha Brahmans like Krishna Sesa (16th c.) and Kamalakarabhatta (17th c.) to Gopinatha’s Jativiveka (circa 14th/15th c.). The Jativiveka, a key scholarly reference point until the 19th century and consulted in various disputes across centuries into the colonial period, defended the varnashrama dharma, was hostile to varnasamskara and Bhakti, and traced Kayasthas to a degraded pratiloma intermarriage. While both Krishna Sesa and Kamalakarabhatta widened the range of communities to which the ‘good’ Sudra status applied, Kamalakarabhatta also defended the survival of Kshatriyas and Vaishyas in the kali yuga,

The Subaltern Studies collective after four decades of its academic rise and dominance has now started being questioned in terms of what it has really achieved. The recent book by Meera Nanda has already been cited and follows another book-length study over a decade earlier by Vivek Chibber, Post-Colonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, which was equally damning in terms of its assessment.

Like Jaffe, Robb also emphasizes dialogue between imperial ideals and local realities. However, he goes further and excavates the moral self-understanding of administrators themselves. Moreover, Robb’s approach adds a significant layer to intellectual histories of the empire, such as those explored in the works on liberal imperialism. Unlike ideological accounts that locate justification in theory, the present study turns our gaze to administrative interiors, showing how moral and legal discourses shaped bureaucratic decision-making in substantial ways.

Datta serves up this delicious nugget that one of the more well-known residents of the area was Florence Ezekiel, more popularly known as Nadira, the actress!
The history of Mumbai’s Irani restaurants, cafés and bakeries has been documented in films and books. Sadly, many have shut down, the latest being another favourite, B. Merwan opposite Grant Road station.

The Delhi Sultanate, ruling over large parts of the subcontinent till the early sixteenth century, became the home of immigrants from the Central Islamic lands. Pant’s treatment of Delhi’s cuisine under the Sultans is disappointingly brief as it mainly relies on information from the writings of Amir Khusrau, the famous poet and Ibn Battuta, the fourteenth century Moroccan traveller.