Tag Archives: History

Ever since the sesquicentennial birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore in 2011, there has been a steady increase in scholarly publications on him from various perspectives and even a decade later, the trend is still continuing. Tagore practiced all the major literary genres—poetry, drama, fiction…

It would not be amiss to say that Dadabhai Naoroji has been languishing for a long time in the lounge of history, waiting to be ushered into the hall of fame. The near absence of Naoroji’s memory from the political landscape of today is a rude reminder of the injustice done…

This book is a romantic narrative about overcoming the centrifugal forces unleashed by various Indian Princely States during the tumultuous years leading up to and shortly after Independence. Like all romantic narratives, the tone of the book is heroic…

Stretching her observations across some 200 pages, Naomi Appleton has managed, in her book, to fence in  a scholarly  enclosure into which she has herded not only the three major dharmas of the subcontinent but also some of their most important deities and heroes…

Litigating the past in the manner of the British created a new reality for India. It gave shape to religion and provided the bases for many a confrontation between religions and the religious-minded in this country of hundreds of personalized religions…

Books such as Making India Great Again: Learning from Our History are meant to have a long life. However, books are also reflective of a particular time and a milieu. Context does have an influence on what is written and when it is written…

The United Service Institution (USI) describes itself as the oldest think-tank in Asia. Set up by the British, it opened in Simla in late nineteenth century. Soon after Independence, it moved to New Delhi. Though under considerable pressure from lack of resources in the early years…

The volume under review is a reprint of the book with the same name written by Brijen K Gupta. While the Orient BlackSwan in association with Ashoka University has published the reprinted version in 2020, EJ Brill, Leiden, Netherlands, had published the original work in 1966…

This quote from an army recruitment propaganda pamphlet around World War I exemplifies the ethos of the average Indian sepoy. For him cultivation and soldiering were honourable professions and he was careful to distinguish himself from the menial followers in the army…

At the time of Independence India and Pakistan had to urgently deal with, among numerous other problems, the problem of incorporating those Princely States which were contiguous with and adjacent to their respective territories. The British had quite cynically…

The ownership and manner of use of built heritage brings out intense emotion among people. This is true whether the heritage belongs to society at large or even when it is owned by private parties as evocatively shown in the popular film, Gulabo Sitabo. Meha Mathur’s maiden book…

Bombay/Mumbai will continue to fascinate historians, sociologists, artists, writers, filmmakers and poets for years to come.  For there remains so much more to document, as is evident from the most recent addition to the collections of books on the city…

In the last several decades, history of emotions has emerged as an important field in South Asian historiography. Enriched with interdisciplinary insights, the field has introduced fresh perspectives on the role of feelings in shaping historical change…

There is a photograph of Romila Thapar smiling that you see as you open the book. She is sitting at the entrance of a cave site in Maijishan in China and it was taken when she was a twenty-six year old postgraduate student. Most of her reading public and scores of her students…

‘A definitive biography’ is how author Ira Mukhoty introduces her work…

This book unlocks the mesmerizing mojo of medieval Braj region. Masterfully written by Irfan Habib and Tarapada Mukerjee, it is an exemplary work of intense research. The primary source materials for this work are the Vrindavan Documents––a treasure trove of information…

Part of an encyclopaedic project on the history of an important region in the eastern part of the subcontinent, the volumes under consideration focus on the ancient and early medieval periods. The first and longer volume is more heterogenous, while the second is more sharply focused.

Among the many voices of history in early India, women were marginal and their voices were almost unheard. Fortunately with the continuous efforts of a few historians (Sukumari Bhattacharji, Uma Chakravarti, Kumkum Roy, Vijaya Ramaswami and others), largely since the 1980s.

The work under review is the thirty-first volume in the People’s History of India textbook series edited by its author Irfan Habib himself. The publisher’s intention behind this series is the promotion of ‘scientific method in History, and resisting communal.

For the last hundred years, Ambedkarite politics has been imperatively speaking to the people of India about the idea of constitutionalism. In 1919, while submitting a memorandum to the South Borough Commission on behalf of the Depressed Classes.