Mexico City is among the most distant places from India where Indian history and culture are taught and studied. The Centre for Asian and African Studies, part of El Colegio de México which was founded as the ‘Casa de España’ in 1938 with the purpose to offer a place of study to Spanish intellectuals who had fled the civil war in their country, is the largest and most prestigious of its kind in Latin America.
Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi (1855- 1907) wrote and published four parts of his novel Sarasvatichandra between 1887 and 1901. For over a century it has remained a canonical text of Gujarati literature, unmatched in popularity and influence. Govardhanram chose the novel form not for its aesthetic possibilities but because it allowed shaping the minds of his people.
Twenty-two year old ‘Mr Knight, Merchant’ caught a glimpse of the Empire’s underbelly even as he stepped off the steamer that brought him to Bombay on 8 October, 1847.
The year 2007 was celebrated in India as the 150th anniversary of the Great Uprising of 1857 by the state and the community of Indian historians with much fanfare. Seminars were held all over the country to celebrate the event.
Alice Albinia’s book Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River brings to life almost all major episodes in the long history of human settlements along the river Indus. The river rises on the northern slopes of Mt. Kailash in the Gangdise range of the Himalayas in the region of Tibet.
The book, a narrative of the growth of chemical sciences during the colonial period, is authored by a trained analytical chemist whose work presents an insider’s view on the subject.