Tag Archives: History

‘It is, of course, fashionable to blame a stepmother for most of the misfortunes of the world, but Frenchman Claude Martin’s stepmother appears to have inspired in him a veritable obsession.’ This opening statement of one of the chapters should give the reader an idea of the delightful prose that characterizes The Lion and the…

Indian weavers were not totally oblivious of the idea of cooperative societies as panchayats or shrenis had existed in India since ancient times. Moreover, panchayats also used to control transactions and prices of goods till as late as the early nineteenth century. Yet these very weavers could not associate themselves with the new organizations formed by the government. The formation of new organizations and societies interfaced with the existing social relations. In a community where ustads, grihastas and sardars had always played an important role in decision making, and where panchayats were included within the public sphere of the community, attempts to elect or nominate

This led, further, to disintegration of large kingdoms. Shrimali, while following Sharma’s formulations closely, pushes the beginnings of feudalism to circa 100 CE. This timeline removes Sharma’s key causative factor, i.e., the Hun invasions, from the frame of analysis because these took place only around the fourth-fifth century. This leads to the situation of a solution emerging about four hundred years before the crisis. Secondly, the early centuries of the Common Era are associated with the high point of international trade. Shrimali airbrushes both anachronisms by saying, ‘…the rise of the toiling, subject and immobile peasantry and artisans…are the hallmark of the feudal apparatus…’ (p. 427). If agrarian relations alone were to define the nature of society,

Further strength of the monograph lies in its integration of environmental history into political analysis. Kundan Kumar’s close reading of inscriptional references to rivers, forests, irrigation structures, and agrarian categories allows him to reconstruct the ecological contexts of state formation. The transformation of forested zones into agrarian villages emerges as a crucial dimension of early medieval expansion. Political authority was inseparable from environmental modification, rulers and their beneficiaries reshaped landscapes to generate revenue and sustain ritual institutions. In this sense, territoriality was materially grounded in processes of cultivation and ecological reordering.

Nowhere is that tension clearer than in the contested legacy of Chhatrapati Shivaji, claimed in turn by Hindu nationalists, by high-caste Brahmins, and by Bahujan-Dalit movements. Deshpande’s careful reading shows instead a practical and tolerant ruler who respected all faiths, built a mosque in his capital for his Muslim subjects, and trusted Muslims with the command of his navy. That record sits awkwardly with every party that invokes his name to divide people. Beneath the portrait runs a sharper argument, which is that the icon was itself manufactured over time,

The book would be a remarkable tool-book for those walkers or others (whether in Delhi or distant from it) keen on knowing Delhi, especially the monuments in Old Delhi, and the general ambience around them—street food, transport facilities, the people. A valuable aspect of the book is that it ‘creates a roadmap for a feminist lens of reading the city’, and focuses on ten powerful, influential women of the historical past, particularly the Mughal past, who contributed to the cityscape and architecture of Delhi. These women, erased from the patriarchy-driven contemporary popular accounts, perhaps because of their non-conformism and daring emboldened spirit, are retrieved by Jain from behind the purdah, the walled harem.

. Bordeaux urges caution in numismatic studies, emphasizing the need for chemical analysis in addition to the usual focus on visual representations, scripts and the external forms of coins so as to arrive at surer conclusions. Kazim Abdullaev’s discussion, highlighting the problems when the provenance of coins is unknown, is in a sense complementary; he also touches on the untidy, and occasionally murky world of markets for antiquities. François Thierry provides a glimpse of premodern ‘numismatists’—Chinese scholars who described,

The next two chapters are about the archaeological remains of the greater Varanasi zone covering Sarnath and Saidpur-Ghazipur area on the left bank of the Ganga and Vindhya-Kaimur Hill zone on the southern side. These contain information about a lesser-known Gupta temple at Bhitari in Ghazipur district and stone quarries at Chunar and other places on the southern side which supplied sculptural and architectural elements to Sarnath and other places. Then there is a short essay on the clay bull figurines from the early historic period at Hastinapur which, according to Jayaswal, formed part of fire rituals or yagnas.
The concluding essay,

Amalananda Ghosh would be involved in the Bikaner survey, and he would present some of his findings to the Indian History Congress in Jaipur in 1951: ‘The discovery of these mounds brings the Harappa culture much closer to the heart of India and reveals how deeply it had taken its roots in the Indian soil.’ The authors however also point out that Ghosh was not, in referring to India,

In this context, she emphasizes the role of natal affiliations, marriage alliances, affect and emotions in the political process. Tazkiras, when compared with information in the Mughal official records, are extremely valuable for studies on elite Mughal women, who are presented as politically influential, with vast personal economic power, creativity, self-expression, and as patrons of political and cultural activities, particularly, architectural enterprise and building construction. The tazkiras,

who visited the site in 2021 when thousands of villagers were in town in double-decker trolleys for a mela. One of the stops before the Swarn Mandir (Golden Temple) was the Bagh. But where was the Bagh I saw as a child? In its place was a shiny new memorial with museums cooled by Chinese air conditioners. The entry has been widened, and the walls of the entry passage are adorned with murals. An exit is provided, possibly to aid tourists.

‘Punjab ka Khoon’ written by Kavi Das in 1922 expresses the pain of families whose relatives were killed in this massacre, and challenges the British saying, ‘dekhenge tere kaam, karishme apne bhi dikhla denge, tu aankh nikal dekh, ahinsha se swarajya ham pa lenge’.
The fourth chapter includes only one poem, ‘Gaurang Gunanuvad’ written by Sree Muktajeev. The poet describes the quality of the Whites in his poem of 52 lines.

‘The Serpent in the Melting Pot: Kuṇḍalinī in North American Counterculture’ examining the concept of ‘experience’ is perhaps the most theoretically sophisticated and engaging. Drawing on thinkers such as William James, Michel Foucault, and Talal Asad, the section contends that religious experiences are not raw, unmediated phenomena. Instead, they are always articulated within particular discursive frameworks. Kuṇḍalinī, therefore, becomes a case study in the historicity of interiority itself.

who enjoyed the support of influential figures within the imperial harem. Despite the shift, the Jesuits continued to carry out their duties and were able to translate further portions of the Gospel into Persian. By 1582, however, the debates at the Ibadat Khana had been suspended. In the same year, hostilities between the Mughal and Portuguese further complicated the situation, leading the Jesuits Provincial in Goa to consider recalling the missionaries

For Gulfishan Khan, one such bureaucrat, intellectual and historian was the author of Siyar-ul-Muta’khkhirin (An Overview of the Modern Times), Ghulam Husain Khan Tabatabai (born 1727). With deep connections in the old Mughal world of Delhi, Agra, Patna, and Murshidabad, Ghulam Husain wrote the book in 1783 for his British patrons in Calcutta. A fine English translation of the work was almost simultaneously prepared by a scholar, later identified as Haji Mustafa. Considered to be one of the best historical works produced in the late eighteenth century, it offers ‘a description of glorious past, as well as a sad narrative of the Mughal decline, and above all an indigenous critique of the impact of the early colonial rule’ (p. 46).

At over 600 pages, his book is comprehensive and deeply researched. It is built from extensive research into primary sources, including war diaries, personal letters and regimental records. These sources document the deployment of Indian infantrymen, artillery units, mule transport and logistic corps, and the hardships they endured on the Dardanelles Peninsula from April to December 1915

The author subjects this interpretive tradition to sustained critical scrutiny and ultimately dislodges it with compelling force. Drawing upon expansive and carefully curated archival corpus, he demonstrates that French imperial expansion was neither anomalous nor benign, but instead grounded in modalities of power and domination structurally analogous to those deployed by other European empires.

Today, nine years later, seeing the terrifying effects of Zionist zealotry unfold all across West Asia in real time, Jews with a conscience, whether in the US, Israel or Europe are asking themselves what constitutes morally defensible Jewish politics. What should their stance be, so as to not relentlessly weaponize either the long historical memory of anti-semitism or the relatively recent experience of the Holocaust? How should they stop their co-religionists from seeking to oppress and dominate supposed enemies, especially Muslims, whether in Palestine, Lebanon,

The areas explored in Sheher Mein Gaon sit atop deep and complicated sediments: the residues of older Delhis, the scars of 1857 and Partition, the afterlives of endowment, and the shifting meanings of heritage. Hauz Khas, in particular, poses a question the book might have confronted: why do the architectural remains of great learning complexes in much of the Muslim world continue to function as transregional centres of scholarship, while in India similar sites survive largely as aesthetic fragments, embedded in precarity and neglect? Delhi is full of structures that once organized knowledge, devotion, and public life.

Subsequently, Bahu Begam consented to abandon the remains of her wealth to the Company, and emerged as one of the largest individual investors in British India’s public debt. This action demonstrated not only the willingness of the Company to reinstate the Nawab but also its anxiety to be recognized as a sovereign state in the South Asian political order, and its dependence on the financial and political capital of women like Bahu Begam.