Tag Archives: History

Before Robert Clive slit his jugular, perhaps in a paroxysm of violent pain in the abdomen, he had excused himself from a game of whist to visit the toilet. He was in his Berkeley Square townhouse in London and had ordered for his carriage to take him to Bath later after noontide.

‘The 1940s’, observes Ashis Nandy, ‘introduced into the South Asian public life a new actor—the refugee.’

Bakhtiar Dadabhoy’s political biography of Salar Jung I, the administrator most often credited with engineering Hyderabad’s turn to modern times is a welcome addition to the field of Hyderabad studies. It tracks the life and times of a man widely acknowledged.

As our Republic  turns 70, there is a distinct anti-intellectual wind blowing in the air, by which I mean not merely a certain wariness often bordering on suspicion of ideas but outright disrespect for ideas that are not popular. Ideas that question or point to flaws.

Today history is being reinterpreted if not rewritten—mainly by those who would prefer India to melt into a single religious identity. But historical events and historical figures cannot be understood, let alone judged, in isolation. This can happen only.

It could be argued that recent discourse in the Indian socio-political milieu suggests a movement towards narratives that favour a particular interpretation of history at the expense of others, in order to further a specific ideological agenda.

This is a remarkable book, a sweeping political history of technology written by a scholar who is also adept at dispensing insights for those working in public policy. In Midnight’s Machines, we have ample evidence that its author Arun Mohan Sukumar has an impressive capacity to read documents.

Amiya Sen calls his book Chaitanya: A Life and Legacy: 1) a biography of Chaitanya, 2) a story that he has ‘narrated to himself’1 as a historian and ‘not as a scholar of religious studies’2, 3) a ‘not so serious yet reflexive’3 work which he believes will not please either the pious Vaishnava (‘for a palpable lack of faith’4).

‘The Epic Story of Robert Clive and the Dawn of the British Empire In India’. So says the punch line on the front page of this exhilarating book Fortune’s Soldier by Alex Rutherford which though is to a large extent misleading. The reader would expect to be acquainted.

Esther Fihl is the Research Leader of the Tranquebar Initiative of the National Museum of Denmark, and Professor at the Department for Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. She has compiled a monumental work, which brings.

Valiant efforts by many authors and discussants, by two skilled editors, and by committed publishers produced this remarkable volume in record time. Based on a conference conceived in 2017 and held in 2018, under the auspices of The Book Review Literary Trust

This collection of articles by Joya Chatterji presents multiple dimensions of the consequences of India’s Partition and resultant violence and migration. Although Indian Partition has been a crowded topic, Chatterji has successfully made a notable mark in this field…

That Hindu-Muslim conflict, either in its simmering presence or in its periodic violent expressions, has been endemic to Indian public life cannot be denied. And, politically, the malady has been routinely attributed to the obnoxious ‘other’. There was once a group which used…

In September 1499 Vasco da Gama returned to Lisbon, having successfully travelled to Malabar via the Cape of Good Hope route. A century later, a group of London merchants launched the trading venture, which was to grow into a giant modern corporation, the East India Company (EIC)…

The latest contribution by Professor Grewal towards delineating the history of the Sikh faith is most informative. It has the added advantage of being easy to read and extensively referenced, thus allowing the curious reader to delve even deeper into the history of Sikhs…

Prashant Kidambi’s Cricket Country: The Untold History of the First All India Team is ostensibly about the first Indian cricket team to have toured Britain. However, in reality, the book is much more than that. It is about how sport helped dissolve national, caste, class and community.

‘We are off’ was the cryptic concluding line of a telegram two young British Telegraph officers managed to send out from Delhi to Ambala on 11th May, 1857, informing British military authorities there that the mutiny had spread to Delhi. Thus the Revolt of 1857…

‘The hungry rarely write history, and historians are rarely hungry.’
I have known the author of this astonishing book, Professor Sheila Zurbrigg, for a long time. I first read her book Rakku’s Story: Structures of Ill-health and Source of Change in the late seventies…

Fikr Taunsvi or Ram Lal Bhatia was an Urdu language poet and satirist, from western Punjab, in present day Pakistan. Maaz Bin Bilal explains that Bhatia found his name ‘vahiyaaat’ or ‘fake’ and ‘absurd’ and adopted the pen name Fikr Taunsvi in the tradition.

Jab Neel ka Daag Mita: Champaran 1917 recounts the processes and procedures whereby Gandhi became a Mahatma for Indians. The Champaran Satyagraha was seminal to challenging an oppressive regime of British indigo planters and restoring the rights and dignity of peasants as cultivators and human beings.