‘You can become a philosopher after you become rich.’—Shah Rukh KhanActor and superstar Shah Rukh Khan, the object of the intelligent Indian woman’s fantasies, warns of the perils of getting lost in intellectualizing life before securing its material bases.
It is not easy to pen down in a book the journey of a multifaceted personality who spanned a century of the performing arts in India and Europe, with accomplishments in dance, theatre, film and television. The author of the biography Zohra! A Biography in Four Acts, Ritu Menon, acknowledges this challenge right in the beginning and articulates in the preface the locus of the book: ‘For Zohra, I thought I could situate her remarkable life and the choices she made in the equally significant and transformative junctures she found, or placed herself in, whether in Dresden or Almora, Lahore or Bombay, London or Delhi.
Photography emerged as a bare witness to the happenings and developments that were taking place in the fast-changing world of the nineteenth century. The veracity of the camera was undisputed, as it overcame the interpretation of its predecessor—the illustrator’s brush. Photojournalism took some time to emerge on its own, as the technology to transfer photos on to the newsprint was initially not there. India was lucky to have an early tryst with photography as the British who were its pioneers had just established their presence in the form of the East India Company.
In 2018, a group of researchers based in different research groups at the University of Bonn joined together with a common interest in studying pre-modern courts as centres of social interaction and decision-making.[1] Coming from as different disciplines as European Medieval History, English Studies, History of the Middle East, in particular Mamluk Studies, Iranian Studies, Sinology, Japanese Studies, and Art History, the editors and their participating colleagues embarked in a process of building a common method allowing for transcultural and interdisciplinary comparison.
Alexander Cunningham was the first Director General of the newly established Archaeological Survey of India and had spent his entire career in the Army in India as an engineering officer participating in a number of East India Company’s campaigns in the 1830s and 1840s and also in the second Anglo-Sikh war. His wide travels enabled the development of a serious interest in ‘antiquarianism’ as it was then termed. Evidence of this is to be found in his monographs and articles on ancient coinage, architecture, early trade and pilgrim routes.
Within the next three decades, India is expected to have more than half of its population living in urban areas.[1] India’s urbanization is unfolding across a wide diversity of cities and towns, from megacities like Mumbai and Kolkata to a massive constellation of smaller cities and towns that are strewn throughout the country.